D&D (2024) Do you plan to adopt D&D5.5One2024Redux?

[Hriston]

This probably deserves it's own thread, but how many players in 5e actually used the traits, ideals, bonds and flaws they picked out for their character? As far as I can tell, no one in my group uses them.

As a player, I use them, and, when the players choose them, I use them as a DM to present the players with situations that address them. I'm just giving my reasons why I'm not going to adopt the 2024 rules.

 

[mamba]

The "Character Origins" UA covered backgrounds. It appears the background feature was to be replaced with the first-level feat, so instead of something that grounds the character in the setting, there's a minor mechanical benefit.

reading the UA right now, it sounds more like that in addition to skills, languages, and tools, the background now also gives you a feat (and the +2 and +1 ASIs)

There's no mention of traits, ideals, bonds, or flaws, but the changes to inspiration in that document indicate they would no longer be tied in to that mechanic.

yes, because it was too 'random' / reliant on DM judgement, they changed it to rolling a 20 instead. I did not interpret that as getting rid of bonds and flaws

I mostly lost interest and stopped paying attention to the playtest at that point.

that was the first playtest package, took me longer

 

[Olgar Shiverstone]

Nah.

Skip alternate editions.

 

[cole1312]

No, by the end of its lifetime I no longer liked 5e and their design goal seems to be "more 5e."

 

[Corinnguard]

In Level Up, Traits, Ideals, Bonds and Flaws were replaced with Connections and Mementos. A Connection was an acquaintance, ally, or enemy from your past. A Memento otoh was an item of sentimental value worth less than 30 gold.

Soldier Connections
1. Your old commanding officer who still wants you to rejoin.
2. The commander who callously sent your unit into a slaughter.
3. Your shady war buddy who can get their hands on anything with no questions asked.
4. Your best friend who went missing on the battlefield.

Soldier Mementos
1. A broken horn, tooth, or other trophy salvaged from a monster’s corpse.
2. A trophy won in a battle (a tattered banner,a ceremonial sword, or similar).
3. A gaming set.
4. A letter from your sweetheart.

Every background gave you 10 connections and 10 mementos. The Narrator can use them to introduce a NPC known by one of the PCs, or to make an item into a possible plot element.

 

[Parmandur]

are they backpedaling? I don’t think I saw them in the playtest, but to me that just means there is nothing to discuss here. WotC either keeps them the same or knows what they are doing with them (which theoretically could go either way, even though I am not expecting a change)

They haven't had them in any book for a few years now, since about the time they started planning the revision. The mockup pages for Backgrounds they shared ar PAX don't show them, either.

However, that was always fluff anyways.

 

[Moonmover]

Probably. It mainly depends on how interested my group is; personally, I don't need yet another slightly-different take on dungeon fantasy. But it could be good.

 

[MonsterEnvy]

#1: What it did to the OGL.

#2: The massive amount of unnecessary gibberish about what we're supposed to call the darn thing.

Which is to say, my biggest complaints are about marketing, not rules.

Ah, heck with it, let's go for the trinity of triggering talking points. I also don't like floating ASIs.

1: So nothing?

2: D&D is what we are supposed to call it. It’s been other people making it more complicated.

3: they are already in the game. For the new version you can just say they are limited to the backgrounds as written so scores don’t float

 

[Clint_L]

There is a good saying in Italy. Stucco e pittura fan bella figura ( you can slap some mortar to fix minor holes and some paint to look new and fresh, but underneath it's still same old house with all structural problems). In the context of D&D, stucco or mortar is minor mechanical tweaks and updates, pittura is new book design, layouts, artwork. But underneath it's still 10 year old game chassis. There is a limit how much you can tweak without needing to overhaul entire system ( and then it becomes new edition) and without breaking more or less plug and play compatibility with 5ed adventure books and supplements.

Same thing happened with 3.5. You could more or less use all the 3.0 splat books with minor tweaking and sometimes without any tweaking at all.

There is a limit how much you can add, remove, tweak around and generally improve in increments (when we talk about mechanics). But sooner or later, you reach the limit where you can't do much more and you ether do new edition or you do overhaul so drastic that it just may be new edition in all but name.

That might be true with architecture, though there are some very old structures that are still very much in use. As I'm sure an Italian can attest!

But it's irrelevant, because WotC has specifically used a different, and very telling analogy for their plans for D&D going forward: evolution.

In evolution, the old chassis is never thrown out. Incremental change can lead to drastic alteration given enough generations, but there is no firm line between one species and another. There's no such thing as a "new edition," and most change is barely noticeable when it occurs.

That is very specifically what WotC has declared as their plan going forward: to stick with the 5e skeleton, and allow gradual change over time. In another 50 years, the game may look quite different. But they want to get there through incremental changes so that they stop dividing their own player base according to "editions."

This makes sense. And evolution has been pretty successful.

 

[Parmandur]

evolution has been pretty successful.

Some of my best friends evolved from simpler life forms!