So with the NuDnD book out, I have a few questions for those who have read or played DnD 5E and this. Is the Nu stuff better than 5E? Are the rules better? Is the artwork better? Is it worth the money to buy?
Artwork is 10000% worse. Looks like they contracted out to any random "comms open" artist on X or DeviantArt. Seriously, their list of interior artists is HUGE in the 2024 book, and many of them have online handles instead of real names; it looked like maybe three times the size of the list in the 2014 book, I compared the two along with Pathfinder 2e and tales of the valiant PHB. 2024 book is the largest by a country mile along with most of it looking like it was taken from AI prompts that were then redone by a human.
Gameplay wise I can't say as my only experience with 5e comes from Baldur's Gate 3.
Not a simple answer, honestly. My family is all-in for 5E so I bought a couple of copies of the new PH for table use. (I would rather play DCC or C&C, but my family likes the layers of character creation found in 5E. Also, 5E finally got spellcasting "right" in that cantrips allow wizards to actually do magic most of the time, and we do like that aspect of 5E.)
I don't think there are that many changes overall to the content, but the organization of the new version is so much better. For example, the druid looks like this:
(1) Page of artwork
(2) Page of core druid concepts
(3) Half page chart of level-by-level
(4) a couple more pages of druid progression information
(5) Now they list druid cantrips and druid spell lists (around 2 pages worth)
(6) Finally they get to druid sub-classes
In D&D 2014 you had to skip to the back half of the book to find your spell lists. (You still need to go to the back half to look up the spell information, but most players don't need to do that often.) D&D 2024 just has everything laid out better and is easier to read. How important is that? Well, to an experienced player maybe you don't need the changes because you already know the rules. (Well, it might help if WotC would post a "edition change" PDF or something, but there are a number of blogs listing that sort of information.) For a newcomer I think this would be a big bonus in trying to learn how to play.
What about the art? Personally, I thought the "sweet spot" for D&D artwork was during the 2E era. The 3E art was okay and some of the 4E art was nice (and some was trash) but the 5E art has never really grabbed me whether we are looking at 2014 or 2024. On the other hand, artwork in a RPG isn't my primary selling point.
As to the changes in the content, much of it is superficial. Stat bonuses are moved from race to background, which may be confusing at first but at the end stats pretty much end up in the same place. Smite and healing potion consumption are now "bonus" actions, which screws the paladin a little and makes healing a little cheap. I think the cure wounds spell is an extra d8 better than the 2014 one. Little tweaks that won't have a huge impact at my table overall.
I feel like a lot of posters here aren't big 5E fans, and so for you this version of 5E probably won't win you over. For better or worse, it's a lot like the 2014 version of 5E. In my opinion.
5.5 has fewer direct improvements to 5.0 than I thought. Stuff that should have strict rules in a game like D&D 5, like stealth and such, is still split into multiple places with weird wording. The new weapon tricks interact poorly with the rest of the game engine, and right off the bat you have to houserule nerf unintended multiple hit combos. You also have yet more oddities with dual wield, which was poorly handled in 5.0 and continues this in 5.5.
I think there's gonna be value in the subclasses if you're willing to do the work, and most importantly, if you run that kind of table. If your players like looking through options and picking from a list of official whatevers, the fully armed and operation 5.5 (like in a year) will probably be better for that than 5.0 is. But even that I'm not sure of.
Art wise it seems like a substantial downgrade. The wording is written a bit more technically, which is either good or bad, but there's still no definitions of things that need it in some cases (not in the sense of keywords, but in the sense of "if this is worded 'blah', how do I interpret that", which will of course eventually push us back to Crawford making incendiary remarks on podcasts and such. The loss of "race" is deliberate and political, and there's no way to make that ok.
Overall if you are running 5.0, you'll want this book as a reference, and it will be vital if you ever switch to a mostly-5.5 type of table. If you neither run nor play 5e then there's nothing to recommend it; perhaps the DMG will have something to offer such a reader.
Quote from: Venka on September 15, 2024, 07:33:39 PMOverall if you are running 5.0, you'll want this book as a reference, and it will be vital if you ever switch to a mostly-5.5 type of table. If you neither run nor play 5e then there's nothing to recommend it; perhaps the DMG will have something to offer such a reader.
Given that the contents of the new DMG and MM received zero public playtest I don't really think that will be the case.
I don't recall the 5.0 DMG having huge amounts of DMG-specific playtesting, but it has plenty of good stuff, including alternate rules for a variety of things, suggestions on how to rule things that are outside the scope of the standard stuff, and a pretty good writing style. I also tend to doubt that 5.5 will keep those merits, but it is at least possible that it will have its own.
The one piece that really sticks out to me as terrible in the 5.0 DMG is, in the suggestions for improvising damage, there's a listed amount for "wading in lava". Despite not being possible normally based on weight and density, it's one of those "hitpoints versus meatpoints" moments that shows up in every version of D&D, where the game assures you hitpoints are an abstraction and then had something one-off where something physically unsurvivable becomes very survivable. While this is a suggestion and not a rule, it's still in the 5.0 DMG and will be forever, waiting to be brought up disingenuously.
Beyond that though, the 5.0 DMG covers a lot of ground and gives you hints about how you should plug pieces of anything into the sides of the 5.0 engine for your own game, which is just generally solid advice there. If 5.5 keeps that, great. But it will probably spend some time scolding the reader for being white or whatever instead.
I've ran several 5e campaigns but only briefly read 2024.
I think the system looks a bit better and crunchier. Lots of additional options in the PHB. The fighter get some much-deserved toys to play with. But there is no significant improvements. Some obvious errors such as darkness/concealment didnt get corrected.
Apparently the "outlander" background is no more, which I found odd; please correct me if I'm wrong. Also it seems now certain classes are "forced" into certain backgrounds.
I'm unlikely to ever play 2024 because I found out 5e was already too crunchy for me.
Quote from: Eric Diaz on September 16, 2024, 12:54:07 PMAlso it seems now certain classes are "forced" into certain backgrounds.
In a similar way to how they were previously "forced" into certain races. Which is to say, that's only true if optimization is what's forcing the selection.
Nude Dnd only sounds better than normal DnD...
Until you consider who plays DnD and whether you actually would want to see them nude. Then you have to factor the types of people writ-large that actually plays DnD...
It's a wash.
Quote from: tenbones on September 17, 2024, 03:04:51 PMNude Dnd only sounds better than normal DnD...
Nude D&D sounds good until you remember what most D&D players look like...
Quote from: jeff37923 on September 14, 2024, 08:12:13 AMSo with the NuDnD book out, I have a few questions for those who have read or played DnD 5E and this. Is the Nu stuff better than 5E? Are the rules better? Is the artwork better? Is it worth the money to buy?
From just 5.0 PHB to 5.24 PHB it's a mixed book. Art wise, with a couple of exceptions, the art in 5.24 is horrendously worse and it's going to age really bad and doesn't inspire you to adventure. Rules wise it's an overall improvement. It's better organized and structured. Some things do make more sense. If you're not influenced by art and can ignore it than it can be a sourcebook to get.
I think the best use of this book is to treat it as a rules sourcebook to your 5e game. It's not a new game at all, but something to cherry pick and steel from.
The real test will be when we can compare the DMGs because we all know that the 5e DMG is the worst DMG in the history of the game.
Here you go, you can check for yourselves:
https://www.dndbeyond.com/sources/dnd/free-rules
Since its free, I might make a deep dive later on... Having this SRD is really great. System-wise, they didn't seem to even fix obvious things, e.g., this was already bad and they've made it WORSE:
Great Weapon Fighting
Fighting Style Feat (Prerequisite: Fighting Style Feature)
When you roll damage for an attack you make with a Melee weapon that you are holding with two hands, you can treat any 1 or 2 on a damage die as a 3. The weapon must have the Two-Handed or Versatile property to gain this benefit.
This one was sub-par and now it is mandatory for anyone with the soldier background (which seems to be the go-to "martial" background):
Savage Attacker
Origin Feat
You've trained to deal particularly damaging strikes. Once per turn when you hit a target with a weapon, you can roll the weapon's damage dice twice and use either roll against the target.
They are probably assuming you will compensate in other ways (other feats, for example).
EDIT: I wrote extensively about 5e weapons and armor before (and published a couple of PDFs - if you care about this stuff, check them out), so I'll add a couple of extra comments.
The armor types are still a headache for OCD players , with some light armor being heavier than some medium armor, etc.
The weapon properties are a cool addition if you think fighters deserve more toys (I do). But they make combat a bit more complicated and are not particularly sensible:
The longsword and the mace have the same "sap" trait, for example. The shortsword curiously seem to only function if you have more than one attack, which is odd. The greatclub is still basically useless because quarterstaff - but at least it has A function (pushing people). But, overall, I give them props for trying. The pike still weights 18 lb with the same reach as the 6 lb glaive.
"Light" and "Heavy" weapons still mean big and small, regardless of weight.
Muskets and pistols are part of the weapon list, no longer optional DM stuff.
Crafting rules: nice and simple but also seem to indicate everyone who can craft anything makes 5 gp a day, so they can all afford a "wealthy" lifestyle. Otherwise they can probably save enough money to get a "wish" spell in a big city once every few decades, which is interesting but not game-breaking. OTOH raise dead costs only 2500 gp - a couple of years of saving money and living in modest conditions.
Quote from: RebelSky on September 18, 2024, 11:50:47 AMQuote from: jeff37923 on September 14, 2024, 08:12:13 AMSo with the NuDnD book out, I have a few questions for those who have read or played DnD 5E and this. Is the Nu stuff better than 5E? Are the rules better? Is the artwork better? Is it worth the money to buy?
From just 5.0 PHB to 5.24 PHB it's a mixed book. Art wise, with a couple of exceptions, the art in 5.24 is horrendously worse and it's going to age really bad and doesn't inspire you to adventure. Rules wise it's an overall improvement. It's better organized and structured. Some things do make more sense. If you're not influenced by art and can ignore it than it can be a sourcebook to get.
I think the best use of this book is to treat it as a rules sourcebook to your 5e game. It's not a new game at all, but something to cherry pick and steel from.
The real test will be when we can compare the DMGs because we all know that the 5e DMG is the worst DMG in the history of the game.
I'd say the 2nd Edition AD&D DMG, deserves that title.
The 5e DMG I thought actually had some useful info. The only one that was straight dogshit was 2e.
Quote from: HappyDaze on September 16, 2024, 01:35:52 PMIn a similar way to how they were previously "forced" into certain races. Which is to say, that's only true if optimization is what's forcing the selection.
I disagree.
If you're playing core 5.0, your choice of race gives you some fixed stats, possibly a feat, several racial powers, and likely a skill. It also gives you things like, a lifespan, a size, a physical description. It's definitely not trivial, and if you're choosing the race that you judge ideal for your class or class combination, you're going to have to work all those other details into your character. You also don't get to pick and choose easily; you might want a racial feature from a race that has no helpful stat bonuses, or the other way around.
You have to be pretty serious as an optimizer to pick something as important as race just based on stuff like that.
By contrast, 5.5 takes the background feature, previously something with almost no mechanical implications*, something that was around before as a mostly-RP feature, and turns it into something vital, containing a feat and gating which stat scores, along with some skills. So now if you want "Merchant" because of the skill and the Lucky feat, you take this as your background. Now when you actually write your background, you suddenly have this burden- you have to put the merchant part somewhere.
So you go from having to actually make a real choice to minmax, and then having this great RP-only feature, to just checking the "best background" box and you no longer get to have a cool background any more, you write your own thing and are like "...and spent a year working for the Merchant's guild..." and nothing reflects your actual story up until that point.
Anyway 5.5 is much worse at this than 5.0 was.
*the little perk that you'd get in 5.0, that almost never mattered mechanically, like being able to forage enough food for yourself or demand lodging in certain places, was the only mechanically relevant part of backgrounds- the sample backgrounds listed skills, but the default rules told you to change them to whatever you wanted.
In theory I like the background giving you the bonus, because it lets you tailor your character to be slightly different. For example you could be a Fighter who was a goon for a crime boss or something and take the Criminal background, or maybe you want your Fighter to have originally been training as a mage and take the Sage background so you can get some cantrips. But it seems like just another "pick this to min-max, pick this other thing if you're a casual scrub" kind of thing.
Like on paper that sounds great. But I doubt it works that way in practice.
Quote from: Nobleshield on September 18, 2024, 09:15:07 PMIn theory I like the background giving you the bonus, because it lets you tailor your character to be slightly different. For example you could be a Fighter who was a goon for a crime boss or something and take the Criminal background, or maybe you want your Fighter to have originally been training as a mage and take the Sage background so you can get some cantrips. But it seems like just another "pick this to min-max, pick this other thing if you're a casual scrub" kind of thing.
Like on paper that sounds great. But I doubt it works that way in practice.
In terms of game design, if classes have prime ability, then it mucks up the balance if other choices (like race or background) have important ability modifiers. i.e. If fighters depend on Strength, then having super-Strength ogre as a race option ruins other fighters.
AD&D dealt with this mainly by having only small modifiers (+1 or -1 max), and Basic/BECMI had no ability modifiers. AD&D mods were a little unbalanced, but it was only a small effect. This got a little worse with 3E which went to +-2, and it's stayed that way for a while until recently.
I think it's also bad to put ability modifiers hard-coded with backgrounds. The playtest 2024 rules had an optional rule for players just taking whatever ability shifts they want with background, and I think that made more sense. It also is very reasonable that, say, a criminal fighter has a bonus to Strength as he went around breaking people's legs who messed with the gang.
Quote from: jhkim on September 19, 2024, 12:16:29 AMIn terms of game design, if classes have prime ability, then it mucks up the balance if other choices (like race or background) have important ability modifiers. i.e. If fighters depend on Strength, then having super-Strength ogre as a race option ruins other fighters.
If the super-Strength ogre only really has strength going for him but humans have some feat access, and some other wacky auxiliary splatbook elf has a teleport, then maybe the thing isn't about attributes; there will always be a One True Build if you are minmaxing for a fixed goal, but maybe these other things make good fighters too. That's the power of racial picks; you can have more stuff going for them, and in a non-OSR game you should (an OSR game doesn't really have that as an obligation).
The game suffers immensely by taking away the attribute modifiers from races. The game doesn't even seem to think it has races, calling the species.
Quote from: Eric Diaz on September 18, 2024, 12:57:42 PMSystem-wise, they didn't seem to even fix obvious things, e.g., this was already bad and they've made it WORSE:
Great Weapon Fighting
Fighting Style Feat (Prerequisite: Fighting Style Feature)
When you roll damage for an attack you make with a Melee weapon that you are holding with two hands, you can treat any 1 or 2 on a damage die as a 3. The weapon must have the Two-Handed or Versatile property to gain this benefit.
I really have no idea why this nerf happened. GWF was already the worst of the weapon focus things, by quite a bit- the old one (which allowed for a reroll) capped out at an average of +1.33 if you used one of the 2d6 two handed weapons, and was lower in all other cases. By contrast of course, dueling (which works on weaker weapons) is +2 to damage, and the general strongest out of all of them, archery, remains a mighty +2 to hit (granted, there's no more sharpshooter power attack here). This is a really bad change for sure, and it's exactly the type of easy-to-avoid L that I assumed they would never willingly go on a quest to retrieve.
Yet here we are.
QuoteThis one was sub-par and now it is mandatory for anyone with the soldier background (which seems to be the go-to "martial" background):
Savage Attacker
Origin Feat
You've trained to deal particularly damaging strikes. Once per turn when you hit a target with a weapon, you can roll the weapon's damage dice twice and use either roll against the target.
Ok so here you're not being fair to the bad feat. While this feat needed a lot of help in 5.0, in 5.5 it is an "origin feat", meaning you get it at level 1 as part of some other selection (such as the soldier background you mention). If you go to the section on origin feats, you'll see that they all are designed to a lower power level. The "general feats" are the ones for higher levels, and those have all gotten stronger (exceptions include like the top four feats in the game, which even in their nerfed form have become feats that give you +1 to a stat so even they are kind of a wash).
There are, as you might guess, some clear winners in the Origin Feat category- but it's still much closer to those than it was to all the other real feats in 5.0.
QuoteThe longsword and the mace have the same "sap" trait, for example.
A lot of weapons have the sap trait- I don't see any common reasoning for it.
QuoteThe shortsword curiously seem to only function if you have more than one attack, which is odd.
For most shortsword users (like in the game world), the function of Vex seems to be to give advantage on an opportunity attack (aka "everyone has more than one attack, if the enemy turns tail and runs"). If you gain a second attack obviously it becomes easier to make use of that, though.
I really don't know what to think of these weapon traits.
Quote from: Venka on September 19, 2024, 01:05:22 AMOk so here you're not being fair to the bad feat. While this feat needed a lot of help in 5.0, in 5.5 it is an "origin feat", meaning you get it at level 1 as part of some other selection (such as the soldier background you mention). If you go to the section on origin feats, you'll see that they all are designed to a lower power level. The "general feats" are the ones for higher levels, and those have all gotten stronger (exceptions include like the top four feats in the game, which even in their nerfed form have become feats that give you +1 to a stat so even they are kind of a wash).
There are, as you might guess, some clear winners in the Origin Feat category- but it's still much closer to those than it was to all the other real feats in 5.0.
Fair enough, I hadn't considered this is supposed to be one of the "weak" feats now. Still, it is the WORST origin feat in the SRD IMO. Well, Alert is not that great either - but everyone should prefer three skills or 2 cantrips + spell over a couple of points of damage once per turn.
And IIRC - this is a couple of points of damage AT MOST. You'd need a d12 weapon, which doesn't have a decent fighting style. Even if you have the -5/+10 feat (is this still a thing?), would make your meager +2 damage matter even less. And, of course, it has diminishing returns as you go up in level and get more attacks...
I doubt there is any possibility that this can ever beat the dueling style, since it also gets you a shield and doesn't cost you your origin feat.