Ok, short answer is yes, obviously.
The more interesting question, though, is whether it's worth it.
There are now more people playing D&D than ever in the game's 49-year history, meaning that for a huge swath of players (probably a majority, especially given that it's been the "current" one for nearly a decade now) 5th Edition is D&D.
5E did a few things to simplify the game, though as a 5E baby myself, I can't say exactly what it was like playing the older editions.
The point is, there are fundamentals to D&D that I wouldn't want them to change, and overall, Wizards of the Coast doesn't want to create a rift in the playerbase. They don't want to have play groups fighting over which version of the rules they want to use, and so they've presented the revised species, classes, subclasses, spells, feats, etc., as content rather than systems.
To put it another way, we're getting modular updates - but they want to keep those modules compatible with the system that allowed the old modules to work.
So, in theory, next year if your party has two Bards, one could be using the one that saw print in the 2014 PHB and another using the one in the 2024 PHB, and they should be able to play nicely together.
Actually, it's more profound than that.
Rather, WotC wants to make sure that you can play a 2024 version of the Bard that uses the College of Whispers from Xanathar's Guide to Everything. Or, even, if you want to go nuts - they want to let you make a 2024 Bard that can use the 2014 College of Lore, even though there will be a new version of the Lore subclass.
There's a certain comfort to this.
Most classes are getting additional subclasses in the new PHB - each class will now have four, when most had only two or three in the 2014 version. However, Clerics and Wizards each got well over four, and so there will be some that don't make it to the 2024 PHB. Assuming they stick with the options presented in Playtest 6, Clerics will not get a new version of the Knowledge, Nature, or Tempest domains.
But, despite there not being a new version of these subclasses, WotC wants to give you no reason you can't simply pick the old version of these domains to use with the new Cleric. Nothing is lost; at worst, something you hoped to gain might not be.
But indeed, there are gains that we will miss out on should they be committed to this.
The Bard, for some reason, only gets subclass features at three levels - other classes typically get subclass features at four levels.
In an earlier version of the playtest, they changed it so that all classes got their subclass features at level 3, 6, 10, and 14. But they reverted this.
Why? Well, I think one reason is that old subclasses could become confusing or even unbalanced. In the case of the Bard, actually, there' not a ton of confusion - you just skip level 10 and everything else is the same. The only problem is that the new subclasses would get an additional feature.
But it could create issues. The Paladin, for example, gets its final subclass feature at level 20, and this typically takes the form of what I call its "Ult," typically a big transformation that has powerful effects in combat and can only be done once a day. Getting these six levels earlier, at 14, might be an issue - sure, you're powerful at 14, but should you be powerful enough to banish every monster you hit that fails a saving throw, like the Watcher Paladin does at level 20?
So, in some cases, reverting this preserves the feel and rhythm of these classes. And, honestly, a lot of these classes already got their subclass features at these levels anyway, with one or two that are a level off.
But Bards, and Rogues - the latter of whom have to wait all the way to level 9 before they get their second subclass feature - wind up losing out here.
And yet, there are some preserved changes - Clerics, Druids, Sorcerers, Warlocks, and Wizards each currently pick subclasses at level 1 or 2, but they're pushing all subclass choices back to level 3, and that's sticking.
I realize, though, I'm getting stuck in the minutiae. But the point I'm trying to make is that for all the things we want to carry on from the existing 5E material, this focus on backward compatibility might also force us to take along stuff we don't want.
Wild Shape, as presented in the Druid & Paladin playtest, was broken. It was basically not worth using ever in combat, and was even hard to use effectively outside of combat (they had made the ability to shift into a Tiny form a level 11 feature, for example).
The next take on it in Playtest 6 was, I think, far more popular and restored some of the utility to the feature. But I'll confess - I liked the idea of the feature using scaling stat blocks rather than Beast stat blocks from the Monster Manual. Yes, there are utility elements that you lose, but I sort of which that they had built a more rugged and versatile way to customize the stat blocks rather than throwing the doors open to all Beasts of a certain CR.
Now, it isn't as if we haven't seen radical class redesigns - the Warlock, for instance, is pretty profoundly changed, not just in its Spellcasting feature (which the 2014 one doesn't have - it has Pact Magic instead) but also in that your choice of Pact Boon (now swapping with the patron, level-wise) also determines your spellcasting ability. This means that if I updated by original D&D character to the new version, I'd also have to rebalance his ability scores, because Pact of the Tome doesn't get the option to use Charisma.
That said, given what we've seen with the pull back toward more conservative design (though I'll shout out Cunning Strikes as a great and welcome addition to Rogues that I hope to see make it to print) I wonder if, in the end, we'll actually wind up seeing the Warlock reverted to using Pact Magic just like in 2014.
See, I actually really want to see some changes specifically to the Warlock and the Great Old One Patron, because I think that the subclass at least was held back by an overcautious (or even just uninspired) design back in the day (Entropic Ward, the GOO's 6th level feature, remains the one I dislike the most because it seems to have nothing to do with the cosmic horror entity that the Warlock is aligned with, and Awakened Mind is bizarrely limited compared to the telepathy granted by later subclasses).
Part of the conservatism in the approach here has been in the hopes of maintaining that continuity of 5th Edition, and avoiding alienating people (though I've talked to a lot of people who have a knee-jerk rejection of it without having looked at it - I think those people might be surprised at how, for the most part, similar things are). But I also think some of the conservatism is more about fear of trying something new - they know 5E works, or at least works enough to be popular - and that we might not, then, see cool innovations that will carry us on to the future.
We'll see - the test is ongoing, and again, for all my concerns that they're not going far enough, there are some changes that are still pretty big (indeed, I'd even prefer Warlocks to get Pact Magic restored to them, though I think there's got to be some new design that solves the issues with the 2014 Warlock without demoting the Warlock's spellcaster status).
But I do think it's important that we see enough new, fresh ideas, and a commitment to resolving the problems that have plagued 5E since 2014, because there's also the element here that they're presumably expecting to sell us three new books, each for 60 bucks (though I'm sure there will be a bundle,) and I sure hope that there's enough in those to justify the purchase (I'm still feeling burned by Spelljammer, and feeling worried that Planescape is using a similar format).
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