Nikosandros
Golden Procrastinator
What they should really do is give a detailed description of the magnetic and conductive properties (both electric and thermal) of all the metallic dragons.
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D&D (2024) What is your oppinion of 5.24 so far?
- Thread starter Maenalis
- Start date
DrJawaPhD
Adventurer
If #2 is addressed (big IF), it would be in the DM guide so we wouldn't know yet. I wouldn't hold my breath since it's so DM dependent in terms of what type of campaign setting you're running, and WotC tends to err on the side of providing zero guidance in cases like this where providing any guidance is going to step on the toes of certain DM styles
#3 would be addressed in the monster manual so also we don't know yet. I bet it will be improved but I wouldn't count on much since it's soooo group dependent in terms of number of players and their skill (and willingness) towards optimization. Even the most perfectly designed CR system is going to require heavy DM tailoring to their particular group
They have addressed #4 somewhat in the PHB by toning down most of the egregious nova damage abilities. If every class is more limited by their Damage Per Round capabilities than they are by overall daily resources, then it doesn't really matter how many encounters you say the game is balanced around. I hope they do more in the DMG and/or MM though, it would be great if they would at least acknowledge the fact that 1-2 combats per adventuring day is FAR more commonplace than 6-8
No. Those are all problems where the root cause is found in the 2014 phb. The PCs themselves were designed for an expected adventuring day that shares no resemblance to how people actually play or anything but video games where that level of starting gear filler can be designed and tested.
One could say that the mm is where they fix the expectation of no feats no magic items by adjusting the math, but that too stems from the phb. Different classes gain significantly different benefits from magic items and again it's the core phb rules(PCs themselves who need to be designed so that monster math is capable of scaling in ways that makes good matter .
The mm & dmg have needs if their own that they need to fill. Those needs are undercut and made secondary, at best, if the two books need to serve as some kind of day zero thebesda style paid dlc hotfix to the phb before even getting to serving the needs of those two books .
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Neonchameleon
Legend
It's basically what they are calling it. 5e Revised. I think all the changes that made it through playtesting are good ones and the classes are better versions of the 5e base classes with the arguable exception of the smite spamming paladin (especially the spear and shield PAM variant)
It's made a huge change to 5e's massive balance failure; in base 5e fighters and barbarians have all the out of combat ability of a wizard or cleric caught in an anti-magic field (just same value of stats and same number of skills). And they've tuned up all classes except the wizard (who was already top) and returned the paladin away from a smite bot.
They've mostly "balanced on the 90%" while massively increasing player options. Taking away combos (GWM, Sharpshooter power attacks being the obvious) while leaving most melee martials able to compete with old school GWM plus accuracy builds. Ranged combat on the other hand lost its top end SS combos so it's no longer simply better than melee.
The characters are generally more diverse; feats are now more competitive with ASIs and there's more viable with in-class customisation. For two examples cleric weapon+heavy armour or cantrip spam for example is a choice that is now separate from your subclass so anyone can go either way, and warlocks have fewer total invocations as they cleared out the complete junk and then substantially buffed a lot of the rest including the obvious blade pact buff (and you can now take a pact boon as an invocation if you want more).
In general it's an around improvement.
It's made a huge change to 5e's massive balance failure; in base 5e fighters and barbarians have all the out of combat ability of a wizard or cleric caught in an anti-magic field (just same value of stats and same number of skills). And they've tuned up all classes except the wizard (who was already top) and returned the paladin away from a smite bot.
They've mostly "balanced on the 90%" while massively increasing player options. Taking away combos (GWM, Sharpshooter power attacks being the obvious) while leaving most melee martials able to compete with old school GWM plus accuracy builds. Ranged combat on the other hand lost its top end SS combos so it's no longer simply better than melee.
The characters are generally more diverse; feats are now more competitive with ASIs and there's more viable with in-class customisation. For two examples cleric weapon+heavy armour or cantrip spam for example is a choice that is now separate from your subclass so anyone can go either way, and warlocks have fewer total invocations as they cleared out the complete junk and then substantially buffed a lot of the rest including the obvious blade pact buff (and you can now take a pact boon as an invocation if you want more).
In general it's an around improvement.
I worry they added too much, making the game more complex with longer turns and more decisions. Non-optional feats at 1st level, weapon masteries, sneak attack options, and so on. This was clearest to me when they described the rogue who now gets a free off-hand attack when using a dagger, more options on their bonus action, and choices about how to spend sneak attack dice. It’s a lot of extra stuff and I see no way it won’t make combat take longer. Having seen what long combat can do to the rest of the game in 4e, I’m not excited for that.
It’s not clear to me if weapon masteries are limited to once per turn – I don’t think they are – and that seems like a problem after they said that it was a problem with stunning strike and divine smite. The idea of a fighter trying to knock a boss prone four to six times in a turn doesn’t excite me as a DM, that’s for sure.
Twice now WOTC made remarks on D&D Beyond and on their YouTube videos like “frustrating for DMs” and “monsters will hate this” and avoiding “mother may I” (or, as I see it, GM agency over the situation) which makes me think they steered it towards a game where the DM is the adversary. I have no desire for a game like that. Again, they tried to do this in the 4e days and many DM, myself included, felt like we could go down stairs and play PlayStation while the players ran the monsters themselves. I’m not eager to return to that.
So we’ll see but, for me, it feels like a big bag of candy handed to players with no consideration to how DMs have to deal with it when all this new stuff hits the table and we have to build a fun game for everyone out of it.
None of these changes matter if DMs don’t want to run it.
I’m happy to have a lot of options though. I’m enjoying my Level Up Advanced 5e game right now and Tales of the Valiant looks great with many similar changes to D&D 2024 but more restraint (they have weapon masteries but they can only be used once per attack action). When WOtC puts out the 2024 rules into the 5.2 SRD other creators can build more new versions as well so we can fix it if we need. Houseruling is also an option but it feels like a failure if we have to house rule it right away.
Anyway, those are my thoughts.
It’s not clear to me if weapon masteries are limited to once per turn – I don’t think they are – and that seems like a problem after they said that it was a problem with stunning strike and divine smite. The idea of a fighter trying to knock a boss prone four to six times in a turn doesn’t excite me as a DM, that’s for sure.
Twice now WOTC made remarks on D&D Beyond and on their YouTube videos like “frustrating for DMs” and “monsters will hate this” and avoiding “mother may I” (or, as I see it, GM agency over the situation) which makes me think they steered it towards a game where the DM is the adversary. I have no desire for a game like that. Again, they tried to do this in the 4e days and many DM, myself included, felt like we could go down stairs and play PlayStation while the players ran the monsters themselves. I’m not eager to return to that.
So we’ll see but, for me, it feels like a big bag of candy handed to players with no consideration to how DMs have to deal with it when all this new stuff hits the table and we have to build a fun game for everyone out of it.
None of these changes matter if DMs don’t want to run it.
I’m happy to have a lot of options though. I’m enjoying my Level Up Advanced 5e game right now and Tales of the Valiant looks great with many similar changes to D&D 2024 but more restraint (they have weapon masteries but they can only be used once per attack action). When WOtC puts out the 2024 rules into the 5.2 SRD other creators can build more new versions as well so we can fix it if we need. Houseruling is also an option but it feels like a failure if we have to house rule it right away.
Anyway, those are my thoughts.
mellored
Legend
The fact that they rebalanced the PCs also goes a long way to having a useful CR.
g00se99994
Explorer
I agree. I really hope they ramp up the power of creatures because a 5th level+ party of four or more players is going to be pretty darn strong.
M.L. Martin
Adventurer
A substantial but not groundbreaking revision
Of an edition that I never found compelling
Of a game which I'm concluding I'm fundamentally ill-suited to playing
From a company that seems to regard me with hostility and contempt.
Yeah, I think I'll pass again.
Of an edition that I never found compelling
Of a game which I'm concluding I'm fundamentally ill-suited to playing
From a company that seems to regard me with hostility and contempt.
Yeah, I think I'll pass again.
deadman1204
Explorer
This was never the norm though. I've played every version of dnd except 4th ed, and I can tell you I've never had a single session where we had 8 combats in a "day". Heck, out of every rpg in my life I've never once even had 6 seperate combats in a single day. This entire idea is a massive design fail that the makers of 5th ed made up when they created it. So many problems in the edition stem from this awful design failure.
