D&D (2024) WotC Fireside Chat: Revised 2024 Player’s Handbook

In this video about the upcoming revised Player’s Handnook, WotC’s Jeremy Crawford and Chris Perkins reveal a few new tidbits.

• The books are near final and almost ready to go to print
• Psionic subclasses such as the Soulknife and Psi Warrior will appear in the core books
• Named spells have art depicting their creators.
• There are new species in the PHB.

​

 

[Steampunkette]

John Henry was a folk hero who performed feats beyond what a normal man can do. Hence, he had supernatural abilities. That's what supernatural means.

Nope. Within the context of the story he was just a man. Nothing Supernatural about it. No magic. No mutation. He was just "Really Good" at his job.

Of course it's not -real-. But neither is Batman, who also does ridiculous superhero BS that would kill a normal human being. But in the story he does it without superpowers as just a "Peak Physicality Human".

Because that's what that story calls for. And what that setting allows.

If you wanna get serious with trying to map D&D to reality, get a high end swordsman to move 30ft and make 4 -effective- attacks on someone within 6 seconds.

It ain't gonna happen. But that's the "Reality" in D&D.

 

[Charlaquin]

But whatever that transformation is, it gives the character supernatural power, whether they cast spells or not.

Again, supernatural need not be magical. They’re different words, and we do the language a disservice by assigning them identical meanings.

 

[Remathilis]

High level fighters are not normal folk. What exactly sets them apart from normal folk varies from character to character. They may come from some supernatural ancestry, or be chosen by the gods, or fate. They might have gained power through exposure to some magical energy. The rules don’t prescribe the means, so that players have the freedom to define it for themselves, as suits their concept.story.

What other class does that? Every other class gives a discernable source of power: primal spirits, words of creation, faith, oaths, pacts, bloodlines, the Weave, deities or ki/spirit. Every class that asks you to suspend disbelief provides a handwavium reason. Except fighters and rogues.

It seems like I can call it whatever I want, as long as I want to call it magic. Because any time I dare suggest a character be capable of superhuman things by means other than magic, we end up having this same argument.story.

Extraordinary abilities require extraordinary explanations. Call it psionics, call it supersoldier serum, call it godly bloodlines, call it exposure to radiation or the X-gene or technology.

Of course that’s the case. Like, literally, that’s what high-level PC abilities do.story.

So all people in a village are high level now?

Getting enough XP (if your DM even uses XP; it seems like few do anymore) necessarily entails going on fantastical adventures, delving into mysterious and magical places, fighting monsters and faeries and perhaps even gods. One does not do such things and remain a humble farmboy. What exactly causes the transformation from farmboy to hero varies from story to story.

Then the gang should account for that. "You are born with a unique potential for supernatural things that few others have and by adventuring, you harness your potential." Then let your subclass define your potential if you want.

Just don't Underpants Gnomes me. I need some step between "collect XP" and "split mountains"

 

[Micah Sweet]

When you say “innate supernatural power,” you are describing ways in which the fictional world differs from the real one. These things don’t work in real-life physics, but they are still ordinary within the context of the fiction. The fictional world is governed by different rules than the real world is, but dragons flying or giants not collapsing doesn’t break the rules of the fictional world. Magic does bend or break the rules of the fictional world. An agent such as a god, monster, or magic user uses some supernatural means to alter reality according to their will, to create some effect that would not otherwise happen on its own (or, one might say, “naturally”). In D&D, that is typically done by altering the field called “the weave,” or by entreating another agent to do so on your behalf.

This isn't about the PCs in-universe perspective. This is to create and support the frame of reference of those playing the game, who are all (as far as I know) humans from Earth. The perspective of humans from Earth is what they have to work with, so anything beyond what Earth physics allows is be definition supernatural.

 

[FitzTheRuke]

I think all of this would be solved by the game having a very grounded feel from levels 1-12 (perhaps even having the PHB STOP there) and then have the power curve jack up FOR ALL CLASSES from 13-20 (perhaps in a separate book, with totally different guidance on how to run, prep, and play the hijinks involved in those games).

I honestly think that only a small subset of D&D players wouldn't like it that way. What do you say, ENWorlders? Does anybody HATE that idea? If so, why?

 

[Charlaquin]

Emphasis mine


The square cube law does not say that giant organisms cannot exist. It says that if you take something of size X and scale it up, things will stop working/get complicated/etc.

Thus, if giants are natural beings, they are not simply "scaled up" humans. They would have their own natural anatomy and features that evolution would have granted them, completely distinct from humans.

They sure look like scaled up humans in all the art.

 

[DarkCrisis]

This is a terrible misuse of that quote.

 

[grimmgoose]

Do you have a suggestion for how to fix this, specifically?

Yeah, there's a few options (and we'll see exactly none of these in 5E 2024):

• roll to cast spells (turns spells from "I Win" buttons to elements of risk)
• everybody gets spells (the 4E way; there are no "haves" and "have nots")
• spells/features add content, not remove content (this is harder to do, frankly impossible with high-level spells)
• cut down/nerf spells across the board (do we really need 500+?)
• baseline d&d only goes to level 10 (high-level would become opt-in; doesn't really fix the problem, but pushes it off)

These are hard sells. You will never see them pass a survey (though I personally think 'design by community' is a bad idea, but that's another topic). I do think they would make a better game, though.

edit: the basic problem (as I see it) is that 5E revolves around the Adventuring Day and resource management, but everybody interacts with it differently. That's what causes the friction.

 

[Charlaquin]

Folk heroes/stories are also explicitly stories that lack verisimilitude - they aren't meant to be realistic. Hence getting back to my earlier point about the two camps and their fundamental disagreement.

D&D isn’t meant to be realistic either. And I’d it was, it would be doing a terrible job of it.

 

[Charlaquin]

Yes, it is. He was referring to the way anime has been used to sexualize youth. Applying it to some shounen tropes you don’t care for is frankly pretty distasteful.