For the tables I play at the way it changed DDB it has ruined the game. All but 1 (a mostly pencil & paper game) of my tables has left D&D for other games solely for this reason. For that i think 5.5 is hot garbage.
Switching away from D&D entirely because you can’t use one website (especially when you can, I’m playing three 2014 games using it) sounds more like they’ve got a problem with D&D in general and wanted an excuse rather than a problem with 2024.
the problem they have is trust in wizbro, I would love to stick with D&D, the people I play with refuse to support a business that would punish customers for not buying new rules. I haven't found fault in their argument, the tides pull more than the sunk costs ever will.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
CENSORSHIP IS THE TOOL OF COWARDS and WANNA BE TYRANTS.
I worry that us seasoned veterans might be left yearning for a bit more depth and complexity.
Starting from the Basic Rules, and most of the players in our group are from that era. A lot of rules had to be made up wholesale by the DM, so it doesn't bother me that they didn't include everything.
2nd edition had an overwhelming amount of optional rules and rule books you needed to buy for those rules. So if they can simply things to not need all that, I'm fine with that. Probably the biggest reason I miss the ala cart system having played through that period of the game. I could pull sub classes, monsters, or whatever as I needed rather than buying book that I'd only use 10% of.
Personally a lot of the spell updates alone make it worth it to me. We've mostly transitioned over other than weapon masteries at this point, and its been an improvement overall, but not a major change.
For the tables I play at the way it changed DDB it has ruined the game. All but 1 (a mostly pencil & paper game) of my tables has left D&D for other games solely for this reason. For that i think 5.5 is hot garbage.
Switching away from D&D entirely because you can’t use one website (especially when you can, I’m playing three 2014 games using it) sounds more like they’ve got a problem with D&D in general and wanted an excuse rather than a problem with 2024.
the problem they have is trust in wizbro, I would love to stick with D&D, the people I play with refuse to support a business that would punish customers for not buying new rules. I haven't found fault in their argument, the tides pull more than the sunk costs ever will.
If that floats your boat, fair enough. Frankly, the only thing in the past few years I've seen that wasn't a tempest in a teacup or just a case of "X book is functional, but it could be better" was the OGL issue, and while the initial draft was not a great deal for 3PPs, a lot of the hardline pushback I saw didn't exactly inspire confidence in that bloc either, between the extremely slanted and garbled clickbait videos a lot of content creators put up and the fact that rather than accept an agreement that literally would have been the best of both worlds for each side, the anti-WotC bloc decided to put a poorly worded napkin contract on a pillar and cut off the community's nose to spite their neighbor in the poll (which got a lot less feedback than the UA polls did, so it didn't even represent a particularly useful data point regarding the trends of the community as a whole).
As for the Legacy thing, nearly every spell affected was already text-heavy rather than a Fireball-style "XdY to all targets in Z area, ABC save for half damage", so the actual effect on integration was minimal, particularly when since this is browser-based people could simply bookmark the relevant spell descriptions for reference in maybe 10 seconds more time than reading them off a Beyond character sheet offers. And WotC literally went back to the drawing board and banged out the integration anyways after the community spoke up. Yes, 2014 is being phased out to one degree or another. Welcome to capitalism as applied to entertainment products; models stop getting manufactured, older gen electronics stop getting software updates, and decade old game content gets revised and resold. This is not some special conspiracy WotC cooked up just for their consumers, this is how market forces and marginal gains/expense production ratios work. If you can figure out and implement a better model, congratulations and don't spend your Nobel Prize money all in one place. Not saying WotC are saints, but frankly most of the pushback I see seems come more from people feeling WotC isn't serving their personal wants rather than any actual changes in how business is being carried out.
I really don't see much of a difference in simplification or mechanics, subtle changes. As for the balance, we won't know it's done well until MM comes out. It reminds me of the 3.0 to 3.5 update, subtle changes none of which sped up the game or simplified it, but they tweaked the balance.
That being said I have decided not to invest just yet. Between the books and being a digital DM having to purchase new rules I didn't think it was something that really mattered to my group vs the bottom line. I have the PHB hardcover and like it but again didn't see the need to shell out a couple hundred just yet. As mentioned I also want to wait until the MM is released, CR and balance has been a unicorn since forever but let's see what they do. I feel CR and balance is what it is due to the nature of RPGs in general but again I want to see what they do.
I like some of the improvements, particularly with martials and weapon mastery. I LOVE the Path of the World Tree Barbarian.
They should have included Artificer as a base class. I don't particularly care for it, but my players do. And the disappointment was palpable when it wasn't in the PHB.
Too much ambiguity in the new rules, so many open loopholes make me think this wasn't play tested well. This has led to about 1000 wild rules interpretations that are going to be really annoying for DMs to have to sort through. There is a whole youtube culture specifically dedicated to finding crafty exploits. And that is what happens when you leave massive amount of room for interpretation (simply put - poorly written game design).
Strange decision on Conjure Minor Elementals. It's very, very broken. Lift/throw mechanics using the poorly worded Crusher feat, etc. Two weapons fighting with vex and nick interactions was a bit confusing at first. Weapon stowing/swapping is generating some buzz/irritation and seems exploitish through object use. Bottom line is, intent is not fleshed out well.
Just check out the average Pack Tactics, Treantmonk or DnD Shorts video for your daily DM headache.
As someone else said earlier, this game is increasingly becoming a superhero fantasy with zero risk. I will wait until the Monster Manual comes out, but the power creep is definitely being felt towards the player side. Getting real close to Munchkin/CareBear territory at this point.
Too much ambiguity in the new rules, so many open loopholes make me think this wasn't play tested well. This has led to about 1000 wild rules interpretations that are going to be really annoying for DMs to have to sort through. There is a whole youtube culture specifically dedicated to finding crafty exploits. And that is what happens when you leave massive amount of room for interpretation (simply put - poorly written game design).
I mean, this is no different than what was going on in 2014 5e.
In my opinion as a massive rules nerd, 2024 is tighter written than 2014. There's still quite a bit of sloppiness, and a bunch of things I would have done differently, but it cleans up a lot of the fuzzy ambiguous stuff from before. And yes, it sometimes introduces new ambiguity, but it's a net win in that regard, and it's impossible to avoid it completely in a system with this much stuff in it.
The big difference is that it's all new, so the general understanding of how things really work is unsettled. In six months, most of the Extremely Online D&D folks will have settled into a general consensus.
Yes, 2014 is being phased out to one degree or another. Welcome to capitalism as applied to entertainment products; models stop getting manufactured, older gen electronics stop getting software updates, and decade old game content gets revised and resold. This is not some special conspiracy WotC cooked up just for their consumers, this is how market forces and marginal gains/expense production ratios work.
And it isn't like this didn't happen for any previous edition change. This is probably the most mild shift in the history of D&D edition changes.
As far as I'm concerned its been a mild investment, I just used my gaming change jar to pay for it (throw all my loose change in a jar, and use it as fun money even if I don't have to restrict to that because I like to keep myself budgeted anyway). Though it was a pretty dead year on the gaming front for me so I had a lot of change.
Too much ambiguity in the new rules, so many open loopholes make me think this wasn't play tested well. This has led to about 1000 wild rules interpretations that are going to be really annoying for DMs to have to sort through. There is a whole youtube culture specifically dedicated to finding crafty exploits. And that is what happens when you leave massive amount of room for interpretation (simply put - poorly written game design).
I mean, this is no different than what was going on in 2014 5e.
In my opinion as a massive rules nerd, 2024 is tighter written than 2014. There's still quite a bit of sloppiness, and a bunch of things I would have done differently, but it cleans up a lot of the fuzzy ambiguous stuff from before. And yes, it sometimes introduces new ambiguity, but it's a net win in that regard, and it's impossible to avoid it completely in a system with this much stuff in it.
The big difference is that it's all new, so the general understanding of how things really work is unsettled. In six months, most of the Extremely Online D&D folks will have settled into a general consensus.
Actually, I am the opposite. I find that, because of that, 5e generally is the edition most prone to rules lawyering. When the rules are looser, it is easier for a DM to fall back on "I am the DM, this is my interpretation."
I mean, this is no different than what was going on in 2014 5e.
In my opinion as a massive rules nerd, 2024 is tighter written than 2014. There's still quite a bit of sloppiness, and a bunch of things I would have done differently, but it cleans up a lot of the fuzzy ambiguous stuff from before. And yes, it sometimes introduces new ambiguity, but it's a net win in that regard, and it's impossible to avoid it completely in a system with this much stuff in it.
The big difference is that it's all new, so the general understanding of how things really work is unsettled. In six months, most of the Extremely Online D&D folks will have settled into a general consensus.
Actually, I am the opposite. I find that, because of that, 5e generally is the edition most prone to rules lawyering. When the rules are looser, it is easier for a DM to fall back on "I am the DM, this is my interpretation."
I'll take you on your word for that, because rules lawyering is not a problem I have. But that sounds like a table problem, because the DM can do that in any case.
With tighter rules, it's less likely they have to. (Though there is always "not going digging now".)
Well-written, tight, rules also make for consistent play from group to group. It's good to know if basic stuff like two-weapon fighting works like you expect it to.
I realised that I've only responded to questions and clarified things and not offered my own opinion.
I think it's better than 2014e, all things being equal. However, it doesn't go far enough to differentiate itself from 2014e (and even less when I walk back the changes I don't like) in my opinion, it feels like premium errata for those of us who had the 2014e. At least for the PHB - I'm still making my mind up about the DMG. While I haven't seen the MM yet, the Statblocks released so far haven't impressed me - the graphics is a minor stepdown, but more importantly, they didn't go far enough in trying to fix the CR system. I can only hope they scrap it and start again for 6e.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
If you're not willing or able to to discuss in good faith, then don't be surprised if I don't respond, there are better things in life for me to do than humour you. This signature is that response.
Rules are nothing but a tool . The ammount of rules in a game doesn't trump DM ruling, if anything they can help guiding decisions if need be. The clearer the rules are, the less room for interpretation there is that's for sure. Now how DM decide to rule in any given situation is independant on wether there is existing guideline for it or not, but i agree with jl8e that the use of published rules make for more consistent play from group to group, both f2f & online, still houserules and optional rules makes for variations that can also change such expectations but globally its more consistent in general.
Too much ambiguity in the new rules, so many open loopholes make me think this wasn't play tested well. This has led to about 1000 wild rules interpretations that are going to be really annoying for DMs to have to sort through. There is a whole youtube culture specifically dedicated to finding crafty exploits. And that is what happens when you leave massive amount of room for interpretation (simply put - poorly written game design).
I mean, this is no different than what was going on in 2014 5e.
In my opinion as a massive rules nerd, 2024 is tighter written than 2014. There's still quite a bit of sloppiness, and a bunch of things I would have done differently, but it cleans up a lot of the fuzzy ambiguous stuff from before. And yes, it sometimes introduces new ambiguity, but it's a net win in that regard, and it's impossible to avoid it completely in a system with this much stuff in it.
The big difference is that it's all new, so the general understanding of how things really work is unsettled. In six months, most of the Extremely Online D&D folks will have settled into a general consensus.
Actually, I am the opposite. I find that, because of that, 5e generally is the edition most prone to rules lawyering. When the rules are looser, it is easier for a DM to fall back on "I am the DM, this is my interpretation."
If that’s the case, considering the mantra of this edition has been “rulings, not rules” since 2014, I’d say things are working quite well.
I've looked over and "built" a few characters under the new rules. I have reviewed some of the changes to spells and slight mechanical tweaks. I have compared these to the '14 versions and found I prefer the '14 for characters, in a big way, mechanics, I am more neutral. I don't like a lot of the limitations and narrowing of abilities, skills and spells. I don't care for the masteries, seems an added bit that was put in simply for the sake of adding SOMETHING to the melee classes. The spell reworking, in many cases, seems to be trying to foil what some called exploits, or some had a hard time determining exact intent for. Our group never really had issue with any of the spells, any that were less than perfectly clear, we discussed, came to agreement and moved on.
I guess, for me, who has only played in the one group (our group had 5/6 of us and 3 of us swapped DM role here and there) the new stuff is entirely "meh" and certainly not worth the hefty price tag. Maybe the fact that we all worked as a unit to make the most of what '14 had made us happy and this shift, as a result, feels like it's "broken" some of the things I used to like. Examples are available, but thus far, the most glaring change I don't care for, at ALL, is what they did to Warlocks. Scrapped the way they came together and made, to ME, at least, a class where every subclass felt VERY different, into a vanilla pact grabber, who can do ANY of the "cool warlock stuff" no matter which way they choose to go. Never been a fan of games where every class seems able to do every thing with equal proficiency (actual proficiency, not in game mechanic)
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Talk to your Players.Talk to your DM. If more people used this advice, there would be 24.74% fewer threads on Tactics, Rules and DM discussions.
I'm basically finding that the system is one step forwards, one step backwards. There are changes I like and changes I hate.
Lots of the new features are more user friendly, or work across more builds giving freedom in character creation. Which is something I love. For example being able to pick the casting modifier for species and feat spells.
I really dislike how the system is feeling more 'gamified' though. Everything is feeling more and more like a video game with arbitrary rules, while making less and less sense as a consistent world and setting.
My gaming circle loves it so far. We chose to go with custom backgrounds, but otherwise play pretty much straight 5.24 rules. There are only about 30 in our circle of friends and family that play so make of that what you will.
Dramatic or not it is a fact.
CENSORSHIP IS THE TOOL OF COWARDS and WANNA BE TYRANTS.
the problem they have is trust in wizbro, I would love to stick with D&D, the people I play with refuse to support a business that would punish customers for not buying new rules. I haven't found fault in their argument, the tides pull more than the sunk costs ever will.
CENSORSHIP IS THE TOOL OF COWARDS and WANNA BE TYRANTS.
Starting from the Basic Rules, and most of the players in our group are from that era. A lot of rules had to be made up wholesale by the DM, so it doesn't bother me that they didn't include everything.
2nd edition had an overwhelming amount of optional rules and rule books you needed to buy for those rules. So if they can simply things to not need all that, I'm fine with that. Probably the biggest reason I miss the ala cart system having played through that period of the game. I could pull sub classes, monsters, or whatever as I needed rather than buying book that I'd only use 10% of.
Personally a lot of the spell updates alone make it worth it to me. We've mostly transitioned over other than weapon masteries at this point, and its been an improvement overall, but not a major change.
If that floats your boat, fair enough. Frankly, the only thing in the past few years I've seen that wasn't a tempest in a teacup or just a case of "X book is functional, but it could be better" was the OGL issue, and while the initial draft was not a great deal for 3PPs, a lot of the hardline pushback I saw didn't exactly inspire confidence in that bloc either, between the extremely slanted and garbled clickbait videos a lot of content creators put up and the fact that rather than accept an agreement that literally would have been the best of both worlds for each side, the anti-WotC bloc decided to put a poorly worded napkin contract on a pillar and cut off the community's nose to spite their neighbor in the poll (which got a lot less feedback than the UA polls did, so it didn't even represent a particularly useful data point regarding the trends of the community as a whole).
As for the Legacy thing, nearly every spell affected was already text-heavy rather than a Fireball-style "XdY to all targets in Z area, ABC save for half damage", so the actual effect on integration was minimal, particularly when since this is browser-based people could simply bookmark the relevant spell descriptions for reference in maybe 10 seconds more time than reading them off a Beyond character sheet offers. And WotC literally went back to the drawing board and banged out the integration anyways after the community spoke up. Yes, 2014 is being phased out to one degree or another. Welcome to capitalism as applied to entertainment products; models stop getting manufactured, older gen electronics stop getting software updates, and decade old game content gets revised and resold. This is not some special conspiracy WotC cooked up just for their consumers, this is how market forces and marginal gains/expense production ratios work. If you can figure out and implement a better model, congratulations and don't spend your Nobel Prize money all in one place. Not saying WotC are saints, but frankly most of the pushback I see seems come more from people feeling WotC isn't serving their personal wants rather than any actual changes in how business is being carried out.
I really don't see much of a difference in simplification or mechanics, subtle changes. As for the balance, we won't know it's done well until MM comes out. It reminds me of the 3.0 to 3.5 update, subtle changes none of which sped up the game or simplified it, but they tweaked the balance.
That being said I have decided not to invest just yet. Between the books and being a digital DM having to purchase new rules I didn't think it was something that really mattered to my group vs the bottom line. I have the PHB hardcover and like it but again didn't see the need to shell out a couple hundred just yet. As mentioned I also want to wait until the MM is released, CR and balance has been a unicorn since forever but let's see what they do. I feel CR and balance is what it is due to the nature of RPGs in general but again I want to see what they do.
I like some of the improvements, particularly with martials and weapon mastery. I LOVE the Path of the World Tree Barbarian.
They should have included Artificer as a base class. I don't particularly care for it, but my players do. And the disappointment was palpable when it wasn't in the PHB.
Too much ambiguity in the new rules, so many open loopholes make me think this wasn't play tested well. This has led to about 1000 wild rules interpretations that are going to be really annoying for DMs to have to sort through. There is a whole youtube culture specifically dedicated to finding crafty exploits. And that is what happens when you leave massive amount of room for interpretation (simply put - poorly written game design).
Strange decision on Conjure Minor Elementals. It's very, very broken. Lift/throw mechanics using the poorly worded Crusher feat, etc. Two weapons fighting with vex and nick interactions was a bit confusing at first. Weapon stowing/swapping is generating some buzz/irritation and seems exploitish through object use. Bottom line is, intent is not fleshed out well.
Just check out the average Pack Tactics, Treantmonk or DnD Shorts video for your daily DM headache.
As someone else said earlier, this game is increasingly becoming a superhero fantasy with zero risk. I will wait until the Monster Manual comes out, but the power creep is definitely being felt towards the player side. Getting real close to Munchkin/CareBear territory at this point.
I mean, this is no different than what was going on in 2014 5e.
In my opinion as a massive rules nerd, 2024 is tighter written than 2014. There's still quite a bit of sloppiness, and a bunch of things I would have done differently, but it cleans up a lot of the fuzzy ambiguous stuff from before. And yes, it sometimes introduces new ambiguity, but it's a net win in that regard, and it's impossible to avoid it completely in a system with this much stuff in it.
The big difference is that it's all new, so the general understanding of how things really work is unsettled. In six months, most of the Extremely Online D&D folks will have settled into a general consensus.
And it isn't like this didn't happen for any previous edition change. This is probably the most mild shift in the history of D&D edition changes.
As far as I'm concerned its been a mild investment, I just used my gaming change jar to pay for it (throw all my loose change in a jar, and use it as fun money even if I don't have to restrict to that because I like to keep myself budgeted anyway). Though it was a pretty dead year on the gaming front for me so I had a lot of change.
Actually, I am the opposite. I find that, because of that, 5e generally is the edition most prone to rules lawyering. When the rules are looser, it is easier for a DM to fall back on "I am the DM, this is my interpretation."
I'll take you on your word for that, because rules lawyering is not a problem I have. But that sounds like a table problem, because the DM can do that in any case.
With tighter rules, it's less likely they have to. (Though there is always "not going digging now".)
Well-written, tight, rules also make for consistent play from group to group. It's good to know if basic stuff like two-weapon fighting works like you expect it to.
I realised that I've only responded to questions and clarified things and not offered my own opinion.
I think it's better than 2014e, all things being equal. However, it doesn't go far enough to differentiate itself from 2014e (and even less when I walk back the changes I don't like) in my opinion, it feels like premium errata for those of us who had the 2014e. At least for the PHB - I'm still making my mind up about the DMG. While I haven't seen the MM yet, the Statblocks released so far haven't impressed me - the graphics is a minor stepdown, but more importantly, they didn't go far enough in trying to fix the CR system. I can only hope they scrap it and start again for 6e.
If you're not willing or able to to discuss in good faith, then don't be surprised if I don't respond, there are better things in life for me to do than humour you. This signature is that response.
Rules are nothing but a tool . The ammount of rules in a game doesn't trump DM ruling, if anything they can help guiding decisions if need be. The clearer the rules are, the less room for interpretation there is that's for sure. Now how DM decide to rule in any given situation is independant on wether there is existing guideline for it or not, but i agree with jl8e that the use of published rules make for more consistent play from group to group, both f2f & online, still houserules and optional rules makes for variations that can also change such expectations but globally its more consistent in general.
If that’s the case, considering the mantra of this edition has been “rulings, not rules” since 2014, I’d say things are working quite well.
I've looked over and "built" a few characters under the new rules. I have reviewed some of the changes to spells and slight mechanical tweaks. I have compared these to the '14 versions and found I prefer the '14 for characters, in a big way, mechanics, I am more neutral. I don't like a lot of the limitations and narrowing of abilities, skills and spells. I don't care for the masteries, seems an added bit that was put in simply for the sake of adding SOMETHING to the melee classes. The spell reworking, in many cases, seems to be trying to foil what some called exploits, or some had a hard time determining exact intent for. Our group never really had issue with any of the spells, any that were less than perfectly clear, we discussed, came to agreement and moved on.
I guess, for me, who has only played in the one group (our group had 5/6 of us and 3 of us swapped DM role here and there) the new stuff is entirely "meh" and certainly not worth the hefty price tag. Maybe the fact that we all worked as a unit to make the most of what '14 had made us happy and this shift, as a result, feels like it's "broken" some of the things I used to like. Examples are available, but thus far, the most glaring change I don't care for, at ALL, is what they did to Warlocks. Scrapped the way they came together and made, to ME, at least, a class where every subclass felt VERY different, into a vanilla pact grabber, who can do ANY of the "cool warlock stuff" no matter which way they choose to go. Never been a fan of games where every class seems able to do every thing with equal proficiency (actual proficiency, not in game mechanic)
Talk to your Players. Talk to your DM. If more people used this advice, there would be 24.74% fewer threads on Tactics, Rules and DM discussions.
I'm basically finding that the system is one step forwards, one step backwards. There are changes I like and changes I hate.
Lots of the new features are more user friendly, or work across more builds giving freedom in character creation. Which is something I love. For example being able to pick the casting modifier for species and feat spells.
I really dislike how the system is feeling more 'gamified' though. Everything is feeling more and more like a video game with arbitrary rules, while making less and less sense as a consistent world and setting.
Only 30? You don't realize how lucky you are>
Then don't use it. There is nothing forcing you to switch to Greyhawk.