5th Edition has been the most popular and successful version of the age-old TTRPG. It's brought tons of new players into the fold (myself included) and seen the brand explode in popularity thanks in part to actual-play shows like Critical Role and Dimension 20.
When I was first getting started, veterans praised 5th Edition as a great time to jump in, with a more approachable rules system.
As I've been documenting on this blog, I've been learning the Starfinder game system, which is based largely on Pathfinder, itself built on D&D's 3.5th edition. While it's very exciting to have a game similar to D&D that takes place within a sci-fi setting, I certainly feel that it's going to take a lot of effort to get players to invest in what is certainly a more complicated rules system.
Having not actually played Starfinder yet, I don't know how it will feel, exactly. And to be fair, there's a lot of stuff that I've just internalized with D&D over six years of playing it that gives it a significant head start in terms of familiarity.
In 2024, WotC will be releasing new core rulebooks, but this is not being billed as a true 6th edition. Indeed, the books are being designed to be compatible with 5th Edition adventures and books, meaning that we will be getting a somewhat more conservative update.
How conservative or radical the changes are remains to be seen, and we're also 3 years off, so I'm sure that's an internal debate still going on. But let's talk about changes we might anticipate. These might be granular things or broader ideas.
1: Artificers in the PHB
With the addition of the Armorer subclass, WotC has shown a willingness to expand upon the Artificer, first introduced in Eberron: Rising from the Last War. However, because it is not in the Player's Handbook, the philosophy of only ever requiring that a play group has the core rulebooks to use any other books (which I think is a sound policy, mind you) means that any addition to the class requires a full reprint. The Artificer fills a niche that was not filled by other classes, and I think has been a popular addition. Putting it in the Player's Handbook would free Wizards to simply add new subclasses and features like infusions in future rules-expansion or campaign setting books without having to print the whole thing again (along with an ever-expanding list of subclasses). Artificers have had their time to prove themselves both non-game-breaking and also cool enough to warrant inclusion in the core books. As a side note, I'd also love to see some Artificer-exclusive spells, which could perhaps be easier to do if it were a PHB class.
2: Clearer Uses for Tool Proficiencies
Artificers get a bunch of tools to use, but they're of course not the only ones. Tool proficiency makes a ton of sense from a flavor perspective, but the clear opportunities to actually use them are not very well-delineated. Does one make a "thieves tools check" or is it simply a "sleight of hand check" using thieves tools to pick a lock? I'd love to see these get some clarification.
3: Better Uses for Money
To be fair, this might be a bit of a controversial one. For some people, the acquisition of gold in D&D and then spending it is pretty dull. Brennan Lee Mulligan (DM of Dimension 20) makes a pretty compelling argument that a magic weapon is way cooler when you get it after completing some grand quest instead of just stopping by the "magic item store" and buying it from some dude. At the same time, though, I do feel like, if you're rewarding gold for defeating monsters at the rates suggested in the DMG, your players are likely going to wind up with more gold than they know what to do with. Indeed, only a few characters wear heavy armor, and once those characters have a set of plate, there's very little left to actually spend that gold on that has a clear mechanical benefit.
Now, I don't know if you want to go all the way into Starfinder's style - where you're going to constantly get more powerful weapons as you level up for more and more credits (for one thing, D&D's difficulty scaling is much slower, so having a greatsword that does like 6d6 damage on every hit is going to be a tad OP.)
Having rules to purchase magic items could potentially help with this, though perhaps things like legendary items and artifacts would be priceless. I don't know.
4: Clean Up Old Classes and Subclasses
This is probably the most expected change coming in the new books. As design has evolved over the course of 5th Edition, many of its subclasses are just kind of strictly better than the ones that first appeared in the PHB. When I did my subclass review earlier this year, I found that the designers were just far too conservative in the concepts and abilities that many of the original subclasses got. For example, if you compare the level 1 telepathic communication features of the Great Old One Warlock to the Aberrant Mind Sorcerer, the sorcerer subclass' feature is far superior in basically every conceivable way. And a lot of subclasses (including the GOO) have profoundly underwhelming features that pale in comparison to things other subclasses get at those levels. So, a rework and even a full redesign would be in order. The PHB subclasses often represent the most iconic archetypes for each class, and so it would be nice to see mechanics that allow for those iconic designs to be playable without feeling like the player is handicapping themselves.
5: Rangers
As written, the Ranger doesn't really have much to recommend it over a dexterity-based fighter. Tasha's made an attempt to improve that, though a few of the replacement abilities missed the mark, ironically enough. For example, Favored Foe is a sort of attempt to turn Hunter's Mark into a class feature, but is overall just kind of worse than the spell, and it's not like you can even stack them.
To be fair, some later ranger subclasses wound up granting the class a fair amount of power, but it seems that either they've got to recognize that the subclass features are where the class power lies, and redesign the PHB options to reflect that, or they need to give Rangers some serious power baseline.
6: Warlocks
I actually love Warlocks as they are. But there are a few tweaks and adjustments that I'd like to see to make them a bit more versatile. As it stands, Warlocks more or less work as a magical version of a martial class, with Eldritch Blast playing the role that a Fighter's longbow might. While I get that that's kind of their whole deal, I'd want to allow their actual spellcasting to be a little more flexible, so that the Warlock could play the role of the group's arcane magic person if needs be.
One suggestion I saw was giving Warlocks spell slots equal to their proficiency bonus. As it stands, you start off with just 1, getting two at level 2, and then you have only two spell slots until level 11. Then, you only get 4 at level 17. This would unquestionably be a buff to the class, but I don't know that it would break the game.
Next, when learning cantrips, I'd say that Warlocks should automatically learn Eldritch Blast. Making it optional feels mostly like a trap for new players, rather than allowing for unusual builds.
Finally, I think some of the functionality of the Hexblade needs to be rolled into the Pact of the Blade. With the exception, perhaps, of multiclassers, I don't see any Warlock who wants to fight with a weapon as going anything other than a Hexblade. At the very least, I'd have the pact weapon scale with Charisma, and then perhaps add the ability to get medium armor and a shield as an invocation (that requires pact of the blade.)
7: Include the Xanathar's Guide to Everything guidance for Encounter Building
Dear lord, did the charts introduced in Xanathar's just make encounter building way easier than the system in the DMG. For those who are unfamiliar, rather than applying various multipliers and having an XP budget and all that, the Xanathar system just gives you ratios of how many monsters of a certain CR equate to a player of a certain level. So when I build an encounter, I often go "ok, I've got 5 level 13 PCs. CR 3 monsters are each worth about half a player, so I'm going to have six CR 3 monsters, which leaves me with 2 players' worth of monster. So, I can either do two CR 6 monsters or a single CR 8. Great! That's their leader!
It's a lot quicker and easier.
8: Monster Reworks
This we know is happening. Monsters, especially spellcasting ones, are going to get a new system where they have a signature move that is intended to be what they do on most turns and then have spells that act more for utility. I'd like to have those signature abilities classified as spells, though, to allow players to counterspell them. Then we're gold.
9: Race Reworks
Naturally, I expect we'll see the changes to ability score bonuses that came with Tasha's baked into the PHB, which is a major boon for the game. I also would like to see the PHB Dragonborn reflect the updates found in Fizban's.
Now, should any additional playable races be added to the PHB? I think we're actually ok without that. They can't just add and add to the PHB, and I think the options presented in the regular 5E PHB do a decent job covering your options.
10: Spell Clarifications
There are a few ambiguities here and there that I'd like to see addressed. (Basically, arguments I've had with my DM.) For example, I believe Jeremy Crawford has said that the blasts form Eldritch Blast go off sequentially, so you can wait and see if you've killed a monster with a first blast before targeting it with your second or third. Also, with the Shield spell, does the DM have to tell you what they rolled on their attack or only whether or not it hit your armor class before you decide whether to burn the spell slot?
11: Something Radical
What I've been suggesting is far more iterative than revolutionary. And I think that the popularity of 5th Edition means that WotC should tread carefully and not butcher the golden goose. But I think there's definitely some room to go in unexpected directions.
This is certainly a self-interested suggestion, but I think also maybe a viable one. I think in the past, genre fans have really preferred to keep fantasy and sci-fi, and other speculative fiction genres, separate. I, however, have always been one to prefer some mix. I love getting a little sci fi in my fantasy and vice-versa. But beyond that, I'd also love to see support for fantasy games in modern-like worlds.
To be fair, this might not be a "core books" kind of thing to add. It's very likely that Spelljammer is coming next year, which to be fair is less sci-fi than just fantasy-in-space, but it's a step in that direction. Chris Perkins has mentioned that they're developing brand-new, original to D&D settings that might see release in 2023 or so, and one idea I've seen bandied around is an Urban Fantasy setting (which is the general term for modern fantasy worlds, usually with a focus on urban locations.)
The 5th Edition DMG has a brief segment that introduces firearms and other more modern (or futuristic) weapons, but seeing those ideas expanded upon and explored could be very cool.
We've got a lot of time to wait before these new books come out. As new products come out in the next few years, we'll have a better sense of the direction the game is moving - we know that the Monsters of the Multiverse book will be a sort of preview of the new philosophies, applying to creatures found in books like Volo's Guide to Monsters and Mordenkainen's Tome of Foes. Until then, though, we can only speculate!
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