Some details of the updates to classes that are going to be in the new PHB and DMG are coming out via various youtube influencers - Ginny Di covered the new Bard subclass, for instance. Looks interesting, but isn’t going to make bards any more of a thing in my games than the current incarnations (by which I mean I explicitly don’t allow the Bard class in games I DM, any more than I allow evil characters, Barbarians or Dragonborn)
And sorry, missed this last month, as it wasn’t a direct reply to me:
I meant “low magic” in the sense of spells slung by party members and opponents, not artifacts.
Yes, LOTR is, and always has been, lousy with magic items. But Gandalf and Saruman aren’t slinging fireballs, yet in MERP, they very easily could be. They both explicitly have access to all of the Fire Law list, and the level and PPs to use it.
I’ve played a Bard exactly once in the last thirty years and he died during the very first adventure. What is it you have against Bards and Barbarians? I run a lot of campaigns and it wouldn’t enter my mind to ban any class or race from the PHB.
The Player’s Handbook (2024) is expected to release on Sep17 2024
Followed by the Dungeon Masters Guide (2024) on Nov 2, 2024
Monster Manual (2025) on Feb. 18, 2025
It looks like they’re seriously nerfing the Paladin by changing the Smiting to being a spell and not just using a spell slot on demand.
They’re making changes that look to be fixing Rangers quite a bit.
The Barbarian might be getting stronger ??? Also new subclass, Path of the World Tree.
Throughout the rules, where the word race was used, they now use species.
400 new spells. Not sure I love that, that is a lot more to be unsure about as a Ref.
New Weapon Mastery Traits for the martials and 10 new species, 75 feats and 16 backgrounds.
All 12 classes being revised, each class to have 4 official subclasses by revamping 45 existing ones and adding 3 new ones. Path of the World Tree Barbarian, College of Dance Bard, and the Circle of the Sea Druid.
Lots of things… The kind of players they attract. The particular gameplay they turn sessions towards. Some of the mechanics, especially around rage. The anomalous tone of both for my particular worldbuilding.
The annoying walking stereotypes of both classes in Critical Role/Vox Machina have not helped my view, either.
I do it frequently. I have run human-only campaigns, restricted player arcane spellcasters to only generalist wizards (so no sorcerors, warlocks or school specialists), had alignment restrictions, removed all necromantic spells, and the like. Not all at once, but I don’t think I’ve run an unrestricted anything-in-any-book campaign since … ever.
I do remember a time when the Bard wasn’t a baby making machine. Pretty much everyone I play D&D with is in their mid to late 40s and I don’t think Critical Role/Vox Machina has had much of an influence on us.
I have loremasters and musicians in my games, but they’re not their own class, they’re just characters with knowledge skills or the ability to play an instrument.
IMHO, it is the Monk that needs the biggest “fixes”. I mean, a d4? and Str and Dex saves? Why not dex and Wis?
yeah, the old “horney Bard” meme- which Ginni Di has made a YT about and yeah, that is one of the things I do not like about Critical Roll. But that isnt the bards fault.
Just about zero around here. In fact I dont really like watching CR, but I did like Vox Machina, after it’s slow start.
I love the bard class as it’s a great support class and I enjoy that role. But I also hate the stupid bard memes – not just the horny bit but the pun-name rock & roll bards, etc – and the bard from Vox Machina was a garbage character who embodied almost every stupid halfling meme and bard meme and is probably the main reason I haven’t started Season Two yet. The bard class though is awesome.
While I’d be grumpy about being blocked from playing a bard (not that it’ll happen with my group), I can’t take too much high ground since it’d be an uphill battle to convince me to allow an artificer in a game I’m running. And I think almost every campaign would benefit greatly from some dramatic PC species culling rather than the fantasy zoo grab bag.
College of Dance seems fine but the video was 90% “Hey, now you can be something you could be anyway” which is up Ginny’s alley (since she talks a lot on social side gaming) but mechanically the big change is that you can use Bardic Inspiration when Silenced? I guess? Be interesting to see if the premiere magic items for a bard remain the same cluster of Bardic Instruments. “Congratulations on being able to play a mime bard, here’s your Canaith mandolin.”
College of Dance felt decent but I assume Lore Bard will remain the top pick unless they change how College of Lore or how Magical Secrets works.
I find choice of species to be largely irrelevant today, made more irrelevant by floating ability score improvements replacing species based ASI. For the majority of adventures, it doesn’t really matter if your Fighter is a human, elf, dragonborn, or dwarf as the meat of the adventure, the experience, will remain the same.
WotC has assured us all material is 100% compatible. So you can use whatever is in your 2014 book. So I hear.
I like to multiclass a few levels as a bard; it’s a good way to make a paladin, for instance, more rounded and interesting. Plus I dig the warrior poet archetype.
Haven’t read anything about the new system yet but it never made sense to me to have party resurrections limited by money.
Instead of requiring materials to cast a revive spell I think adding a point of exhaustion for both the caster and the revived (and limiting opportunities for full rests while on a quest) is a more interesting mechanic. One revive = no big deal but the punishment ramps up brutally after that and has lasting effects on the rest of the quest.
It’s one of the remaining artifacts of 1E AD&D (and maybe even the original D&D, if Raise Dead or Resurrection were spells in those books). One of Gygax’s original design principles seemed to be to keep the player characters poor, by incorporating various rules designed to part them from the gold pieces which they had gained. I suspect that the reasoning was that, if PCs had too much gold, they could buy things that would break the campaign.
Expensive spell components – such as for Raise Dead, as well as for spells like Identify – were one major way to do that. (Another, IIRC, was that, in 1E, when you gained a level, you didn’t actually gain the benefits of that level until you undertook training, under an expert, which, of course, cost gold.)
To the contrary, 1e Raise Dead and Resurrection didn’t require diamonds. In fact, Raise Dead had no material component and Resurrection only required the cleric to have a holy symbol and holy water available. However, both forced the dead character to make a “resurrection survival” roll based on their constitution score or remain forever dead and Raise required them to convalesce a day for each day they were dead. You were also hard limited to never being raised more times than your constitution score.
Later editions made it more “player friendly” in that you weren’t going to be perma-killed for having a Constitution 8 and the various raise spells allowing you to resume adventuring immediately. I guess the designers felt that a gold cost would become the new limiting factor in how often you can re-assume your mortal coil.
Back in 1E, I played a magic user with a 5 Strength and 8 Constitution. After dying once, he was successfully resurrected, which knocked his Con down to 7.
Bear in mind that with death saves, Revivify spells and so on, it’s a lot harder to die in 5E than it was in earlier editions. I’ve been playing in a 6-person party for the past year and a half and not once has any of us actually died for more than a round or two, in spite of the efforts of our occasionally psychopathic DM.
I’m of the opinion that player death should be meaningful enough that its looming possibility creates dramatic tension. If coming back is as easy as respawning in a video game then players will approach challenges like they’re playing one.
Which is, of course, exactly how some tables want to play. Get rezzed and get back to chopping! That’s more than fine, but it’s a terrible baseline to build a ruleset on.
Healing Word (specifically the way it interacts with death saves) and Revivify are definitely massive hedges against player death. And there a dozen more ways the game’s been smoothed out. Compare the new Tomb of Annihilation to the old Tomb of Horrors for a great overview of all the things that simply aren’t things anymore.
I haven’t ever banned Revivify, but there’s definitely a grognard somewhere in the back of my head that scoffs whenever I think about that spell.