Anyone into D&D? Are you excited about the new core D&D books?

[XRay]

I am just wondering if there is a lot of overlap between fans of Fire Emblem and fans of D&D. If you thought Fire Emblem is niche, D&D is way more niche. I have not met a lot of people who play Fire Emblem, but I met even less people who play the table top role playing game D&D. I have met only two people who played D&D that I have not personally introduced D&D to; the first person I met talked about D&D at work, and then I read about D&D and got into it; the second person is another coworker at a different company, and we have similar hobbies and interest.

I think it will also be interesting to talk about D&D in a non-D&D forum/social media/community. I think it might be interesting to have a more outside perspective.

And for those who are into D&D, how do you feel about the new core rulebooks? I feel happy about them, but I do not feel the same excitement that others feel. I mean, I do feel a little excited, but that amount of excitement is about the same as I have for supplement books that regularly come out. There are a lot of new additions and changes, but it still feels very samey. Maybe it is because I am a game master so I read a lot more D&D books and am more familiar with the variety of variant rules, so all the new stuff in the Player's Handbook (PHB) feels pretty peanuts in comparison. Maybe I will feel more excited when they talk more about the new Dungeon Master's Guide (DMG) after the PHB releases.

[lenticular]

I've been keeping half an eye on the various announcements and updates, but nothing has really excited me or made me think that I'm going to pick up the revised editions. There are three reasons for this, I think.

1. Just the growing acceptance that it's ever harder and harder to get a group of friends together and all have free time at the same time, reliably enough to actually play the game much/at all.
2. The same problem you have about the changes not feeling significant enough. I'd have been much more interested in a full new edition than in the backwards compatibility approach that they decided to take.
3. General fatigue and distaste over WotC/Hasbro as a company after the OGL, Magic 30, and assorted other debacles.

[vanguard333]

I haven't played D&D, but I do watch some D&D Actual Plays, namely Adventure is Nigh, and I've been meaning to play Baldur's Gate 3.

I have kept an eye on some of the announcements, mainly to hear how they've changed the Archfey Warlock subclass (mainly because that is the subclass I would pick if I ever were to play D&D). I wasn't sure about having the subclass now revolve around teleporting, but it has grown on me. I would just hope that they didn't get rid of the charm-based abilities that the subclass got in 5th edition, like Fey Presence. Charm, trickery, and glamour/illusions are the things that I mainly think of when I think of fey magic.

Also, it's rather weird that warlocks now pick their patron at level 3. The whole idea of a warlock is that their magic comes from their patron, and their subclass is their patron, so it is weird to have a warlock that doesn't have a patron just because they're level 1 or 2. I get wanting all classes to get their subclass at the same level, but then why not have all classes get their subclass at level 1?

[lenticular]

6 hours ago, vanguard333 said:

Also, it's rather weird that warlocks now pick their patron at level 3. The whole idea of a warlock is that their magic comes from their patron, and their subclass is their patron, so it is weird to have a warlock that doesn't have a patron just because they're level 1 or 2. I get wanting all classes to get their subclass at the same level, but then why not have all classes get their subclass at level 1?

That's one of the changes that I actually quite like. I don't think of it as the warlock not having a patron at level 1 and 2; instead I think of level 3 as being the point at which the different patrons start to offer different abilities. Newbie warlocks get the same abilities regardless of who their patron is, and it's only when they start to get more advanced that the patrons start to offer different and unique abilities. The same thing with clerics and their gods.

As for why not give all subclasses at level 1, I think there are at least two good reasons not to do that. One that isn't really important to me but which I've seen the game designers state is in terms of new player experience. They want to gently ease new players into the class by introducing the core class features first, giving them time to get used to them before they get their subclass features too. The other is multiclassing. It's generally a good thing for original subclass features to be fairly powerful and if any character can grab those features with just a single level of multiclassing then that can be a problem. I'm not much of an optimiser myself when it comes to D&D, but I know that the "Peace dip" (1 level of Peace domain Cleric) and the "Hexblade dip" (1 level of Hexblade pact Warlock) are pretty infamous within optimiser circles as being pretty overpowered.

[vanguard333]

10 hours ago, lenticular said:

That's one of the changes that I actually quite like. I don't think of it as the warlock not having a patron at level 1 and 2; instead I think of level 3 as being the point at which the different patrons start to offer different abilities. Newbie warlocks get the same abilities regardless of who their patron is, and it's only when they start to get more advanced that the patrons start to offer different and unique abilities. The same thing with clerics and their gods.

As for why not give all subclasses at level 1, I think there are at least two good reasons not to do that. One that isn't really important to me but which I've seen the game designers state is in terms of new player experience. They want to gently ease new players into the class by introducing the core class features first, giving them time to get used to them before they get their subclass features too. The other is multiclassing. It's generally a good thing for original subclass features to be fairly powerful and if any character can grab those features with just a single level of multiclassing then that can be a problem. I'm not much of an optimizer myself when it comes to D&D, but I know that the "Peace dip" (1 level of Peace domain Cleric) and the "Hexblade dip" (1 level of Hexblade pact Warlock) are pretty infamous within optimizer circles as being pretty overpowered.

I suppose. It's still weird to me that a player can potentially go two levels without picking their patron when the whole thing is supposed to be their dynamic with their patron.

That's fair. However, the main reason the hexblade dip was so powerful was because hexblade warlocks were the only warlock class that could use their charisma modifier for melee attacks. This enabled melee classes that use charisma like the paladin to just rely on their charisma and not have to focus as much on strength or dexterity. Now, they've changed it so that any warlock of any subclass can use their charisma modifier for melee attacks when using their pact weapon if they take pact of the blade, which is now an eldritch invocation that's available at level 1. So, the overpowered level 1 dip is still there; it's just now a level 1 warlock dip instead of a level 1 hexblade warlock dip.

[lenticular]

On 7/5/2024 at 1:34 PM, vanguard333 said:

That's fair. However, the main reason the hexblade dip was so powerful was because hexblade warlocks were the only warlock class that could use their charisma modifier for melee attacks. This enabled melee classes that use charisma like the paladin to just rely on their charisma and not have to focus as much on strength or dexterity. Now, they've changed it so that any warlock of any subclass can use their charisma modifier for melee attacks when using their pact weapon if they take pact of the blade, which is now an eldritch invocation that's available at level 1. So, the overpowered level 1 dip is still there; it's just now a level 1 warlock dip instead of a level 1 hexblade warlock dip.

Yeah, the Hexblade dip likely wouldn't be as good any more, but that's not to say that something else wouldn't be busted instead. Maybe in the new version of the rules it would be some other class/subclass that would be an overpowered one level dip. Or maybe everything in the PHB will be fine, but there's some other subclass that will be published in some splatbook in 2028 that won't be balanced well. Making subclasses come at level 3 across the board helps to protect against any similar problem in the future.

[vanguard333]

2 hours ago, lenticular said:

Yeah, the Hexblade dip likely wouldn't be as good any more, but that's not to say that something else wouldn't be busted instead. Maybe in the new version of the rules it would be some other class/subclass that would be an overpowered one level dip. Or maybe everything in the PHB will be fine, but there's some other subclass that will be published in some splatbook in 2028 that won't be balanced well. Making subclasses come at level 3 across the board helps to protect against any similar problem in the future.

My point was that the hexblade dip has been preserved; it's just now been preserved as a Pact of the Blade dip rather than a hexblade dip.

Incidentally, I think it's clear that they want to get rid of the Hexblade subclass entirely (which is fair, as it had by far the weakest flavour of the warlock subclasses and it only existed to justify Pact of the Blade) and transfer most of the things that made it good to Pact of the Blade so they can be enjoyed by any warlock that chooses pact of the blade.

[lenticular]

On 7/7/2024 at 5:56 PM, vanguard333 said:

My point was that the hexblade dip has been preserved; it's just now been preserved as a Pact of the Blade dip rather than a hexblade dip.

I don't think I'd agree with that. We won't know for sure how things will play out until we've seen the entirety of the new PHB and then people have actually had a decent chance to play with it and figure out what actually works in practice, but I owuld be surprised if a single level dip for Pact of the Blad ends up being as impactful as the Hexblade dip in the current version. Partly because the Hexblade dip offered more than just attacking using Cha (it also gave medium armor proficiency and shield proficiency and the Hexblade's Curse feature and the Shield spell) and partly because of rebalances and buffs across the board that will (hopefully) even out power levels and prevent big power spikes. We'll just have to wait and see how things turn out, I guess.

[vanguard333]

On 7/9/2024 at 7:49 AM, lenticular said:

I don't think I'd agree with that. We won't know for sure how things will play out until we've seen the entirety of the new PHB and then people have actually had a decent chance to play with it and figure out what actually works in practice, but I owuld be surprised if a single level dip for Pact of the Blad ends up being as impactful as the Hexblade dip in the current version. Partly because the Hexblade dip offered more than just attacking using Cha (it also gave medium armor proficiency and shield proficiency and the Hexblade's Curse feature and the Shield spell) and partly because of rebalances and buffs across the board that will (hopefully) even out power levels and prevent big power spikes. We'll just have to wait and see how things turn out, I guess.

Ah, yes; that is a good point.

Anyway, I liked the changes to the monk class, though I am a little saddened that there's no kensei monk anymore. I liked the flavour of a monk that's a weapon master and I think a kensei monk subclass would align very well with the changes to the monk class.

[XRay]

I wonder how they will handle the Wish-Simulacrum wombo-combo. You can already spam Wish with Epic Heroism rest along with Spell Recall and High Magic, but Wish-Simulacrum takes into a whole other level by offloading the risk to the Simulacrum, and you can spam Wish without needing Epic Heroism rest.

[lenticular]

On 7/11/2024 at 7:04 PM, vanguard333 said:

Anyway, I liked the changes to the monk class, though I am a little saddened that there's no kensei monk anymore. I liked the flavour of a monk that's a weapon master and I think a kensei monk subclass would align very well with the changes to the monk class.

My understanding is that the new edition is supposed to be backwards compatible with all existing 5E material, so it should still be possible to use the existing Kensei monk. How well this will turn out in practice remains to be seen, but I think that's the intent.

1 hour ago, XRay said:

I wonder how they will handle the Wish-Simulacrum wombo-combo. You can already spam Wish with Epic Heroism rest along with Spell Recall and High Magic, but Wish-Simulacrum takes into a whole other level by offloading the risk to the Simulacrum, and you can spam Wish without needing Epic Heroism rest.

Honestly, I don't see this as something that particularly needs to be fixed. I won't mind if they do try to address it, but I don't see it as necessary. It's already very obviously in the realms of "if you and your group has fun with this sort of thing, then knock yourself out; if you won't have fun with it then just don't do it". D&D is always going to be a game that relies heavily on social contract, and anyone who is going to abuse Simulacrum-Wish at a table with people who aren't into it is going to find some other way of being a prick even if this one trick gets fixed.

[XRay]

6 hours ago, lenticular said:

My understanding is that the new edition is supposed to be backwards compatible with all existing 5E material, so it should still be possible to use the existing Kensei monk. How well this will turn out in practice remains to be seen, but I think that's the intent.

Yeah, I agree I do not see any compatibility issues in the YouTube videos so far. They have not really done anything to the core mechanics, so I do not see any compatibility issues with mixing and matching old and new stuff. All the new stuff just gives players more options. It is basically just 12 new Optional Class Features, or 12 new classes.

The most notable change is Surprise, with the old rule have Surprised enemies skip their first turn, while the new rule gives advantage/disadvantage on initiative checks. Since the old and new Surprise rules do not mechanically interfere with each other, you can even use both Surprised rules at the same time too if you cannot decide one which to choose, which is pretty neat.

[lenticular]

6 hours ago, XRay said:

The most notable change is Surprise, with the old rule have Surprised enemies skip their first turn, while the new rule gives advantage/disadvantage on initiative checks. Since the old and new Surprise rules do not mechanically interfere with each other, you can even use both Surprised rules at the same time too if you cannot decide one which to choose, which is pretty neat.

I think the only class or subclass that relied on the old mechanics for Surprise was the Assassin Rogue, right? And that isn't an issue since the new PHB has a revised Assassin. Another change that I know about is the change to summoning spells, with all the old Conjure spells being completely reworked into spells with the same name that work completely differently. That's going to mean that the old Shepherd Druid isn't going to work properly with the new rules, but I've already seen people doing homebrew reworks to make it compatible. And I'm sure that will end up happening to basically any old content that just doesn't work any more. People are going to come up with homebrews for things pretty quickly.

[XRay]

22 hours ago, lenticular said:

I think the only class or subclass that relied on the old mechanics for Surprise was the Assassin Rogue, right? And that isn't an issue since the new PHB has a revised Assassin. Another change that I know about is the change to summoning spells, with all the old Conjure spells being completely reworked into spells with the same name that work completely differently. That's going to mean that the old Shepherd Druid isn't going to work properly with the new rules, but I've already seen people doing homebrew reworks to make it compatible. And I'm sure that will end up happening to basically any old content that just doesn't work any more. People are going to come up with homebrews for things pretty quickly.

The old Assassin will still work with the new Surprise rule, since Surprised enemies will likely have not taken a turn yet with disadvantage on initiative rolls, it just might not work as well since Surprised enemies with disadvantage can still potentially roll a higher initiative and take a turn before the Assassin. And the new Assassin will work even better with the old Surprise rule, since Surprised enemies skip their first turn entirely. Personally, I like the idea of running both Surprise rules in tandem, as it makes Surprise more enticing to plan for and set up.

While there are a lot of spells that are being reworked, there is nothing wrong with having both old and new versions of the spell being available at the same time and treat them as different spells. My players have not made any gish characters yet, but if they did, I would let them pick either the pre-errata Green Flame Blade/Booming Blade or the post-errata one (I imagine most would pick the old one as it is just better).

Old content definitely work with new content, or at least with the stuff in the YouTube videos so far, and I am not sure why people see old and new content as an either/or thing when we can have both at the same time. ¿Por qué no los dos? As a GM, I paid for all the books, so you can bet my ass I and my players will use as many options as we can, or at least all the fun options (we ignored the boring logistics rules like life style expenses, food and water, etc.). Hell, Wizards even said in the DMG that GMs are referrees and we can change rules as we see fit, so I am definitely utilizing rule zero to the fullest extent and milk every ounce of fun out of all the rules, options, and books I paid for.

[lenticular]

2 hours ago, XRay said:

The old Assassin will still work with the new Surprise rule, since Surprised enemies will likely have not taken a turn yet with disadvantage on initiative rolls, it just might not work as well since Surprised enemies with disadvantage can still potentially roll a higher initiative and take a turn before the Assassin. And the new Assassin will work even better with the old Surprise rule, since Surprised enemies skip their first turn entirely. Personally, I like the idea of running both Surprise rules in tandem, as it makes Surprise more enticing to plan for and set up.

While there are a lot of spells that are being reworked, there is nothing wrong with having both old and new versions of the spell being available at the same time and treat them as different spells. My players have not made any gish characters yet, but if they did, I would let them pick either the pre-errata Green Flame Blade/Booming Blade or the post-errata one (I imagine most would pick the old one as it is just better).

Old content definitely work with new content, or at least with the stuff in the YouTube videos so far, and I am not sure why people see old and new content as an either/or thing when we can have both at the same time. ¿Por qué no los dos? As a GM, I paid for all the books, so you can bet my ass I and my players will use as many options as we can, or at least all the fun options (we ignored the boring logistics rules like life style expenses, food and water, etc.). Hell, Wizards even said in the DMG that GMs are referrees and we can change rules as we see fit, so I am definitely utilizing rule zero to the fullest extent and milk every ounce of fun out of all the rules, options, and books I paid for.

I generally wouldn't want to run (or play in) a game that used both sets of rules for surprise, because of the power level. When I've DMed, my goal has generally been to make encounters which will be tough but winnable for the players. Too easy feels boring but too hard feels unfair. The old rules for surprise always felt very swingy to me. Getting an entire free round of combat is massive, and is generally enough to trivialise most fights. I have no clue how to make fights that will still be interesting if my players get surprise but won't be deadly if they don't. And adding both sets of surprise rules on top of each other just makes it even more powerful and even more swingy.

But with that said, if it is fun for you and your group to run things that way, then absolutely that's the way that you should play. I don't think I've ever played D&D without having some manner of house rules or unofficial content in place, and I don't think I would want to. One of the strengths of D&D is that every group can and should play it differently. Personally, I'll be glad to see the back of old surprise rules, old Conjure Animals, and a few other things that are getting cut, but if there is anything in the old rules that I miss, then I will absolutely be suggesting keeping it to my group if and when I do play again.

[miranda]

I have never played D&D yet, but I plan to

 

Mini Militia App Lock

Edited September 15 by miranda

[XRay]

1 hour ago, lenticular said:

I generally wouldn't want to run (or play in) a game that used both sets of rules for surprise, because of the power level. When I've DMed, my goal has generally been to make encounters which will be tough but winnable for the players. Too easy feels boring but too hard feels unfair. The old rules for surprise always felt very swingy to me. Getting an entire free round of combat is massive, and is generally enough to trivialise most fights. I have no clue how to make fights that will still be interesting if my players get surprise but won't be deadly if they don't. And adding both sets of surprise rules on top of each other just makes it even more powerful and even more swingy.

My players cannot shut down an encounter in one or two rounds though, and I often utilize enemy reinforcements, so the party have to be careful with resource management and going nova accordingly. A lot of GMs say they balance their encounters, but they do not actually balance their encounters during combat when it needs balancing intervention the most. I guess since I come from Fire Emblem and played a lot of Left 4 Dead, using reinforcements feels natural to me, and balancing an encounter as it happens is far easier than trying to balance an encounter before it happens. And what makes L4D particularly satisfying across all difficulty levels is that the AI Director does not just generate a map and randomize zombie placement before play, the AID also actively reacts to the players as they play, and the AID intervenes during play with special zombie spawns and item spawns to further balance the game to make the game feel like the right difficulty.

2 hours ago, lenticular said:

But with that said, if it is fun for you and your group to run things that way, then absolutely that's the way that you should play. I don't think I've ever played D&D without having some manner of house rules or unofficial content in place, and I don't think I would want to. One of the strengths of D&D is that every group can and should play it differently. Personally, I'll be glad to see the back of old surprise rules, old Conjure Animals, and a few other things that are getting cut, but if there is anything in the old rules that I miss, then I will absolutely be suggesting keeping it to my group if and when I do play again.

The old Surprise rule will always be there though. Unless you are playing AL where you have to follow all errata and updates, if you are at your own table, all the old rules are still available to you along with the new rules, and nothing is cut unless you decide to cut them.

[lenticular]

14 minutes ago, XRay said:

My players cannot shut down an encounter in one or two rounds though, and I often utilize enemy reinforcements, so the party have to be careful with resource management and going nova accordingly. A lot of GMs say they balance their encounters, but they do not actually balance their encounters during combat when it needs balancing intervention the most. I guess since I come from Fire Emblem and played a lot of Left 4 Dead, using reinforcements feels natural to me, and balancing an encounter as it happens is far easier than trying to balance an encounter before it happens. And what makes L4D particularly satisfying across all difficulty levels is that the AI Director does not just generate a map and randomize zombie placement before play, the AID also actively reacts to the players as they play, and the AID intervenes during play with special zombie spawns and item spawns to further balance the game to make the game feel like the right difficulty.

I have done balance on the fly like that, both with reinforcements and by fudging monster hitpoints, but it always feels deeply unsatisfying to me. I generally hate adaptive difficulty in video games as well, so it's not surprising that I don't enjoy it in D&D either. I know that it's fairly popular, but to me, it makes everything feel pointless. It feels like there's no consequences for good or bad play; everything is going to be homogenised in the end, so why even bother trying? If it works for you and your group, then that's great, but it's not for me.

25 minutes ago, XRay said:

The old Surprise rule will always be there though. Unless you are playing AL where you have to follow all errata and updates, if you are at your own table, all the old rules are still available to you along with the new rules, and nothing is cut unless you decide to cut them.

Sure. I will be cutting the old surprise rules, though, because I don't like them. (At least, I will if I ever DM again, which is doubtful for the reasons I stated upthread.) If someone else likes the old ones and dislikes the new, they should stick with the old ones. Likewise if someone wants to play with both rules, neither of them, or a homebrew version of surprise that's completely different again.