Based on the copious feedback the list got from various places after reaching a bit of a wider audience that I was thinking about originally, I've made some updates to make it a little bit more clear, and divided it into four categories:
"Actual Mistakes" are things that, major or minor, are just mistakes that should be errata'd in the future; these are rules that almost certainly don't function correctly.
"Rules Oddities (Probably Mistakes)" are things that seemed to be intentional changes, but have probably have unintended consequences if used as written.
"Things I Sort of Hate" are just things that are either obnoxious in the course of play, massively powercreep the players, or otherwise are changes I think make the game worse. Lastly,
"Carried Over Problems" things they either tried and failed to fix, or didn't try to fix at all.
https://old.reddit.com/r/KibblesTasty/comments/1eoxg8f/summary_of_dd_2024_rules_issues/
To be abundantly clear though, I'm not an advocate for these exploits. I typically DM the game, and I make content for it as a living. I evaluate rules from a player point of view, because I want to know how the players will think the rules work when they read them (or, perhaps more likely, hear about them online, through forums like this, social media, or YouTube videos).
Just to take an example, the whole reason Legendary Resistance exists is in 5e so the DM has a built in way to say 'nope, the big boss monster is not paralyzed and the fight is not over yet' (love or hate Legendary Resistance, that's its intended function). So that the new rules give you, for example, a way to paralyze a monster bypassing Legendary Resistance without exploiting any interaction (and using everything
as designed and how the player would think they work reading their abilities, if possibly by oversight) is something I (as a DM) would want a head's up on.
Thanks for all the thoughts and feedback, and feel free to let me know if there's anything else that should go on the list in the context it exists. Think less of is a manual of rules exploits, and more of as a lighthouse to rules hazards.
Or, to save people here the trip reddit:
Actual Mistakes
- Stunned Movement. You can now move normally while stunned. This almost certainly not intended, because if you look at Monk stunning strike, passing the save makes you move at half speed, while failing the save doesn't effect your movement. They clearly thought writing that that stunned made it so you cannot move like in 5e 2014.
- Poisoned Misses. The poisoner feat triggers the poison when “they take damage from the poisoned item” and lasts “until you hit”. This means you can use it is with a Graze weapon, and then give yourself disadvantage to spam miss the target while dealing damage with the weapon. This is not actually a good tactic in most cases, just an error in how it is written that leads to something silly.
- Somatic Components. It is no longer clear if you need a free hand to cast a somatic component. They removed the word ‘free’ from ‘free hand’ in the previous wording. This was a very weird interaction previously where you needed a free hand if the spell had no material component, but did not if it did, since you could use your arcane focus hand for somatic components only in that case. It’s not clear if they fixed that or not, and if they did they made it meaning you never need a free hand for them, which is probably not the intended due to the wording of War Caster.
- Not True Polymorph. True polymorph no longer ‘works’ since you transform back when you take a long rest, since True Polymorph uses temporary hit points, and those go away on a long rest. Makes the permanent part pointless.
- Otto's Strange Rules. For a creature with immunity to being charmed, it is better for them to fail their save against the throw against Otto's Irresistible Dance then succeed, because the "on a successful save" part makes them dance comically for one turn ignoring charm immunity, but the the "on failed save" part doesn't do anything to creatures immune to the Charmed condition. [Since a target can choose to fail a save now, you can actual bypass this mistake if you know ahead of time how it works, but its clearly not intended]
- Goliath Grappling. Powerful Build gives you "Advantage on any saving throw to end the Grappled condition". This does nothing, as you don't make a save to end the Grappled condition, you make Strength (Athletics) or Dexterity (Acrobatics) check. You only make save to avoid being grappled in the first place. Which, yeah, I can see how they got confused there!
Rules Oddities (Probably Mistakes)
- One Handed Dual Wielding. You can do dual wielding or two-weapon-fighting with one hand, as they removed the wording that requires you to hold the second weapon with your other hand. You can do TWF with a shield.
- Multiple Weapon “Dueling”. Due to the aforementioned rule above, Dueling is just a directly better Fighting Style for TWF than Two Weapon Fighting, unless you are using the Nick + Dual Wielder combo to get 4 attacks at level 5. This suggests the one handed TWF was not intended.
- Opportunity Shoves. You can now make opportunity attacks against your allies, which can be replaced by the shove action. This means you can shove an ally as they leave reach, essentially gifting them 5 feet of movement and sometimes making them avoid opportunity attacks. This is almost cool, but if this was the intention they really should have spelled it out in the opportunity attacks to avoid this being a ‘hidden’ feature. This starts to get out of hand with other interactions though (using allies bowling balls, using spirit guardians as a cheese grater, etc).
- Buff Slap. The above combined with War Caster means that you can now cast a buff on your ally as an opportunity attack. This is again a thing where that is ‘almost cool’ but between it not being spelled out by the feature that raw power of getting a free action to cast a fully leveled spell such as Haste or Polymorph with no action economy is extremely overwhelming for a feat that was already one of the best, and that has been buffed by making it half feat.
- Allied Bowling Balls. If you shove your friend into an enemy's space, you can force them to end ‘a turn’ in their space, which causes both creatures to fall down, or the smaller creature to fall down if one is larger. This means you can always knock down a creature smaller than one of your allies (like your summoned horse), without giving them a save/check or with any drawback; you can even knock down whole groups of enemies this way.
- Shield Toggling. You can equip a shield every other turn when using a two-handed weapon, due to removing the action to equip a shield.
- Nick Attack Stacking. Can do 4 attacks at level 4 across 4 different weapon masteries. Easiest way involves Light Weapon with Nick + Dual Wielder, since those stack and you can do both attacks. Stacking multiple effects that need to be tracked, triggering multiple saves off their attacks. Can even mix in a shield with its own free slam action once you get more feats.
- Irrelevant Reloading. Due to the new weapon swapping rules (you can draw a weapon as part of each attack), the loading property is mostly irrelevant, since you can just draw a new crossbow for each attack (shoot, sheath, draw shoot, object interaction to sheath, draw shoot). Works up to 3 attacks, breaks down after that with a heavy crossbow/musket, but most people don’t have more than 3. Hand crossbow/pistols are easier if you use both hands with them. This just seems to be a mistake between the interactions.
- Magic Action Clarity [Hallow as an Action]. How certain effects work with the Magic Action is very unclear. It seems like you can cast Hallow as an action using Divine Intervention (which automatically works); if this works, this is completely broken, but it's mostly just unclear if it works. It seems like in some cases they wrote 'as a magic action' thinking that was on '1 action' and in some cases they didn't.
- See Hidden Creatures. See Invisible can automatically see hidden creatures, as the rules for being Hidden just make you Invisible… Maybe, the rules here are somehow more complicated and less clear than they were in 5e 2014; they tried to clarify being Hidden as being Invisible, but in almost all cases it is not actually Invisible.
- Putrid Paralysis.The Undead Spirit Putrid form automatically paralyzes poisoned creatures on hit with no save. This was already a problem in 5e, since the putrid spirit has a high DC AoE con save vs. poison every turn, but at least they needed to fail that, and fail another save on hit. Now you can poison with Ray of Sickness with no save (or Quasit attack for Pact of the Chain, which poisons on hit without a save now), hit them with a Putrid Spirit, and Paralyze any boss not immune to poison (or paralysis) indefinitely with no save bypassing legendary resistance. Over and over.
- Double Dipping. Some ongoing areas of effect spells work when you enter them and at the start of your turn, this means characters shoved into the effect are subject to its effects twice before they go. This means it can be better to ‘miss’ them if another creature can knock them into the effect, as now they’d have to save twice.
- Spirit Grater. Spirit Guardians now works like it does in BG3, where moving it into someone damages them immediately (rather than waiting for them to start their turn in it). This isn’t necessarily a bad change in principle, but means that Cleric is now incentivized to run around hitting as many creatures as possible. Where this becomes problematic is the new allied shoving rules, as now you get a lot of value from moving the Cleric in and out of effects on turns other than the Cleric’s turn, leading to very cheesy behavior with mounts, shoves, etc. It is ‘once per turn’, but that can be ‘once per each player’s turn’ when combined with a mount that carries two people or shove mechanics.
- Infinite Armor of Agathys. Armor of Agathys now works with temporary hit points it didn’t create. This breaks at several points; Fiendish Vigor (+False Life changes) makes this extremely powerful at level 2, Polymorph being >100 temp hp at level 7+ makes this extremely strong, Dark One’s Gift at higher levels means you can kill an unlimited number of weak creatures with reflect (the only actual ‘infinite’ situation I can think of, though in a specific niche).
- Giant Insect Boss. The web bolt of the Giant Insect summoned creature is a spell attack that reduces the speed of the target to 0; with no save, no size limit, and multiattack.
- Double Cast. D&D 2024 attempts to clarify that you can only cast 1 spell per turn (preventing a bonus action leveled spell + action spell leveled) but did so by defining if you spend a spell slot (likely to avoid screwing all the elves they keep giving misty step as race bonus), but this unlocks the door for Spell Scrolls and Mystic Arcanum and other effects that don’t technically cost a spell slot to bypass it.
- Math Breaks [Conjure Minor Elemental]. The math on some spells just break down. In general, spells should not scale with multiple dice when you cast them at higher levels. The most obvious example is Conjure Minor Elemental; it’s a high level somewhat specific issue, but there is just no reason math should get that broken.
- Frightening Fey. Conjure Fey's summoned Fey creature frightens creatures on hit without a save, and makes them frightened of both you and the spirit (which cannot be killed), and can teleport, making it easy to put it on the far side of the creature of you. This means the creature cannot move in either direction and has disadvantage on all attacks (and cannot save against this effect at any point, so legendary resistance doesn't help).
- Familiar Conditions. Quasit poisons on hit with no save. Warlocks of Pact of the Chain can attack with a Quasit with their bonus action. On its own this merits a nitpick, but combos extremely well with Summon Undead for no save Paralysis every turn. Sprite can do charmed this way, but I haven't found a way that matters much yet. PC summoned monsters working this way causes a lot of problems. Pseudodragons can poison with your spell save DC, which makes the 'fail by 5 more and fail unconscious' rider a possibility.
Things I Sort of Hate
- Toppling Tedium. Topple triggers a saving throw on every hit. This isn’t a game breaking bug, but is extremely obnoxious. This means that with PAM + Shield Master at level 8 (using quarterstaff), you trigger no less than 4 saves per turn, every turn (or 6 with action surge). And you have to wait for the save after every hit, because you get advantage if they fail. Just extremely tedious in actual testing (where I discovered quarterstaffs are a 1-handed topple weapon and shield master shield slam doesn’t take a bonus action).
- Roadkill Ragdoll. The Grappler feat now removes the half speed while grappling a creature, which leads to a lot of problematic interactions. If a Monk grapples a creature (which they do with Dex now; and can do with their unarmed strikes made as a bonus action) a creature near a spiked growth spell it can deal 32d4 (at level 5, scaling up to 48d4 by tier 4) by dragging that creature back and forth along the edge of it. There’s other ways to break this, any character even without a speed boost can use it do 12d4. Flying, running up walls, or any other number of ways this can be used have this drag a creature extreme distances, often doing massive damage.
- Bonus Illusions. Illusion Wizard with Minor Illusion as a bonus action effectively makes you unseen every turn by putting up fake total cover you can see through.
- Defensive Duelist. Is very powerful, applies to all melee attacks, like Shield (the spell). At +2 it isn't that crazy, but by the time it is +6 every turn it is extremely powerful; even +2 is fairly powerful, since it is every turn.
- Weapon Mastery. Getting Weapon Mastery as a feat sort of invalidates niche protection of martials.
- Stacking Slows. Stacking different slows is too easy (ray of frost + slow weapon mastery, etc) making keeping enemies range indefinitely.
- Best Cantrip. True strike is pointlessly good (doing more damage than any other damage cantrip. With Bladesinger or Valor Bard, this is also just extremely good. It can be a melee or ranged cantrip, deals a very good damage type. Has everything going for it.
- Unreasonable Suggestions. Suggestion removing the ‘reasonable’ requirement just makes a silly spell sillier.
- Mirror Image. Mirror Image is now ridiculous on high AC casters (since the mirror images share your AC)
- WotC is clearly making fun of Rangers. Divine favor not being concentration while hunter’s mark is objectively funny but terrible design.
Carried Over Problems
- Light Hammer Taps. Despite being literally less than a centimeter from Hand Axe on the page, they are still for some reason 1d4 to a Hand Axe 1d6. They changed Trident… Why did they leave this one?
- Martial Exhaustion. Exhaustion mostly affects martial characters still. The obnoxious part is that this was fixed in the UA, and one of the few changes I adopted into my 5e games, but that was removed from print, as it no longer affects spell save DC. They could have wanted to avoid a floating modifier to spell save DC… but they add one of those into the game that gives them a +1 to it on Sorcerer, so that’s not it.
- Find Point. Find Traps is somehow very slightly worse. It still doesn’t find traps.
- Unbreakable Magical Forces. Wall of Force and Forcecage can both still not be dealt with by anything besides certain powerful magic or specific abilities.
- Animate Dead. Animate Dead is still there and still weird. Either make it more usable or remove it.
- Repelling Blast. Still still not 1/turn. Feels like we learned that lesson with the other previous new EB Invocations (Grasp, Lance, etc) being limited to 1/turn, but clearly that lesson didn't take.
- Heat Metal. Is somehow the same (removes the infinite range, but not the save-less disadvantage).
- Druidic Alphabetization. We can only assume the the druid skills are organized by the druidic alphabet, because they are still not in alphabetical order in English (much to the annoyance of a friend of mine... he knows who he is!); for people like me (and apparently WotC) that cannot figure out it... Arcane, Animal Handling
