What to Expect from 2024's "5.5E" Core Books

 As someone who jumped into D&D relatively soon after the release of 5th Edition and has purchased every single official 5th Edition D&D book (along with three monster books by the Kobold Press,) my thoughts on a true new edition are filled with a bit of anxiety. Obviously, the big 5 up there means they've rebooted the game four times in the past, but this is "my" D&D, and I don't want it to be "obsolete."

Now, of course, the nice thing about a pen-and-paper RPG system is that you don't have to worry about the game not working on "new systems" the way that, for example, there's not a great way to play something that came out on the Gamecube these days unless you have a functioning Gamecube or Wii. There's nothing stopping a group from gathering up a bunch of 2nd Edition books and running D&D that way, and the books I have will still be usable as long as they're legible.

But I felt a bit of trepidation about the launch of a 6th Edition that would make all the rules expansions and such that I've gotten over the years not work with new content. However, as it turns out, it looks like D&D's 50th anniversary will see the release of revised core rulebooks that are meant to be compatible with older 5th Edition content.

One of the things that has made 5E so popular, I think, is its relative simplicity. The whole game boils down to modifiers and DCs. Can I do this? Well, the DM has a target number and you have to roll a d20 and add the appropriate modifier. And everything else is just wrinkles on that central concept. I've read about THAC0, and I still have no freaking idea what it even means. Concepts like Attack Bonus and Armor Class are abstractions of something that's fairly easy to figure out.

Tasha's Cauldron of Everything gave us revisions to the existing classes in some cases. Most of these were quality-of-life stuff, like allowing classes to swap out cantrips, fighting styles, and other choices they've made over the course of the campaign. A couple got a little love with just brand-new abilities, like a Barbarian's ability to do a little charge toward their target when they start their Rage.

Could we expect to see these kinds of revisions baked into the 5.5 PHB? That could be what they do, but I'm hoping for something a little more ambitious.

First off, let's set some guidelines: I think that the PHB is going to focus on the core basics of the game, and as such we shouldn't expect to have some massive expansion of playable races or classes or subclasses. Monsters of the Multiverse will likely be the better go-to for expanding races.

But maybe we can get a little more ambitious:

I think the Artificer is probably the best-designed class in 5th Edition. It has a huge advantage in that its designers had the benefit of years of experience with the edition, but it also fills a niche that wasn't really covered in the PHB and just works out really effectively. I would love to see this class integrated as a PHB option, complete with a spell list that might include Artificer-exclusive spells. Its integration into the PHB would also mean that other rules expansions and campaign setting books could add new subclasses without needing to add the entire class.

Next, I'd like to see some class redesigns. Now, how does this remain compatible?

Well, the nice thing about a modular game like this is that as long as the parts can interface the same way, you can do whatever you want. In order for the additional Fighter subclasses found in Xanathar's, Tasha's, and Wildemount to work, all you need is to make sure that the subclass features are found at the same levels (well, ok, you also need to make sure to retain abilities to which the subclass features refer).

But I think a lot of classes could undergo significant redesigns while leaving the gap open for existing subclasses to still work with them. And when it comes to the subclasses in the PHB, these could be redesigned as well. (I would be overjoyed to see a nearly fully-reworked Great Old One Warlock - a subclass whose flavor I adore but whose mechanics are seriously lacking.)

Classes that only got two subclasses in the 5.0 PHB could also get a third one - giving each class a sense of truly having options to consider. I could imagine giving the Barbarian something like the Zealot, or the Ranger could get something like the Gloomstalker, giving something with a bit of distinctive flavor that still feels within the "classic" archetypes enough to work as a "standard subclass."

Still, we don't want this to be completely bloated, and I've just introduced not only a full class but also several subclasses. So let's see what else to look at:

When it comes to races, I think we'll likely be seeing the Tasha's-era rules go game-wide. Every race will get their ability score increases freely distributed, and we'll probably see things like languages and skill proficiencies as more of a guideline than a strict rule. Furthermore, I'd actually love to see each race given racial traits that don't pigeonhole them into a particular role. The half-orc, for example, was clearly designed to be a melee combatant, not only because of their Strength and Constitution increases, but also things like Savage Attacks (while we're at it, I know that things get a little fuzzy when it comes to fantasy races - orcs were invented to be a brutal, savage type of person, but at the same time, these words have some serious cultural baggage. I love exploring so-called monstrous races as fully-formed and nuanced people. Oh well, I think someone from a less privileged position might be better at figuring out what to do with terms like "savage" when used in this context). I'd love to see races designed so that there are benefits to playing them as a caster or as a brawler.

I suspect we're going to get the least revision to things like the action economy in combat, which for the most part is a "not broke, don't fix it" thing. I could see getting some change to spells, though I think this is a delicate thing to futz with when this is a revision rather than a new edition. We can't be going around with different versions of what "Fireball" actually does.

The Monster Manual, I think, will change in the ways we've already heard about with Monsters of the Multiverse. As a DM I'm overjoyed to hear about this simplification of spellcasting monsters. I also like the change in Wild Beyond the Witchlight that introduces the qualifier "typically" before alignment. There were may complaints when Candlekeep Mysteries and Van Richten's Guide to Ravenloft jettisoned monster alignment altogether, and I think this is a pretty good compromise. Alignment is a weird abstraction of complex and nuanced issues, but it's also an iconic part of the game that has informed the creation of the very multiverse. A devil is, by definition, lawful evil. But I think it's great that you could say that a red dragon is only "typically chaotic evil," and open up the fun possibilities of a friendly red dragon (or an evil gold one.) I also think that by introducing this variability in alignment, you can also give players and DMs a sense of what things are on that planar level in which their alignment defines them, as opposed to things that exist in more nuanced places, like the material plane or feywild. (Hell, I think that many Fey would be some kind of "lawful chaotic.")

Now, the DMG is sort of the weirdest of the core books, given that it's much less about a list of things to use and more chapters of guidance for how to run the game. I think a seasoned DM could easily run a D&D campaign without even using the DMG at all, but that's not to say the book is useless.

There's some guidance in Wild Beyond the Witchlight that should definitely go into the new DMG - stuff like how much information you owe players regarding a monster's health (my tendency is to say they're "bloody" or some variation thereof when they hit half their max HP and "they're looking very rough" when they're down to like 10% or lower.)

Personally, the part of the DMG I use the most is the chapter on customizing and creating new monsters. I've gotten pretty comfortable homebrewing creatures for my players to fight, and I'd like to see a bigger emphasis on this kind of stuff. The next major campaign I run, I will probably either do custom magic items or have the players find their big, powerful stuff early on (with the likely exception of any kind of "you can cast high-level spells multiple times a day" kind of things).

I'll be very curious to see how differently the game will play with these new revisions. My expectation is that the main emphasis will be cleaning up modular options like redesigning subclasses and class features. I would love for the Ranger, for example, to feel like a legitimate and good choice over, say, a Dex-based Fighter (actually, I'd also love for a Strength-based Ranger to work too.)

As another more specific note, I think I'd make Eldritch Blast either a class feature or a spell that Warlocks get for free, as it's so central to how they work.

Indeed, I might even have a part in each class section that explains what you can expect gameplay-wise from that class. Telling players that Warlocks are going to focus largely on either weapons or Eldritch Blast, with their spellcasting as a limited but still powerful supplement will give players a much better impression of what they're getting into.

We are, of course, over two years away from these releases, and there's going to be a ton of additional 5E content to come out between now and then. But I definitely have some gears turning in my mind, wondering what they'll come up with.