As I've posted about often, the campaign I'm currently running is over four years in, with players at level 17 now (not... terribly close to hitting level 18, but we're through the second of four major arcs I want to do before they hit that).
I've been following the development of 2024's new core rulebooks (one of which actually lands in 2025) very closely, and while there are one or two things I'm not terribly happy about (Divine Smite), I've been pretty on-board for the vast majority of the changes (really, if anything, my biggest issue with them is that I think they could have gone farther. And I'd have liked to see the Artificer elevated to a core class so that we could get new subclasses and spells for it with each Xanathar's/Tasha's-like book).
Starting off a new campaign with these revised rules would be pretty straightforward. You might have a bit of an adjustment period in learning some of the nuances of the various changes, but you'd be starting fresh. And brand-new players will simply learn these rules as if they were always in place.
But what about converting an existing campaign?
Now, I think this is doable for sure. But I also think that there are a lot of questions about how players might wish to "retcon" some of their choices in a way that might make their characters profoundly different.
Let's start with feats. Technically just an optional feature in the 2014 rules, feats are now a core mechanic in 2024, and one that every character will get when they first arrive on the scene at 1st level.
Origin Feats (I believe that's the new term for level-1 feats) are generally useful and typically broad - feats like Tough or Skilled. No one is going to regret having these, but they might not be the character-redefining feats like Great Weapon Master (though that's also been nerfed).
Where I think this gets trickier, though, is that higher-level feats (those that you won't get until 4th level) now all come with a one-point ability score bonus.
This has led me to suspect that we're going to see a lot more characters in 2024 and beyond with lower general ability modifiers but with more feats - if your Rogue can still eventually max out their Dexterity but get a bunch of cool features along the way, you might be more tempted to pick up Sharpshooter and Skulker and all those little Rogue-friendly things.
And thus, I think some of your players might be tempted to re-think how their character is built, maybe having taken primarily ASIs over feats in the 2014 rules.
Would it break the game for them to change this? Probably not, but you'd need to be careful and ensure that this doesn't break other little things: consider a Cleric who had a 16 in Strength now dropping potentially down to 14. If they use heavy armor, they might now be slowed down by the plate armor they're wearing.
In fact, Clerics in particular might wind up requiring a bit of transformation - with armor training no longer tied to subclass but instead Divine Order, you might need to ensure that that Life Cleric who no longer has heavy armor training has a set of roughly equivalent medium armor that they can use instead.
Now, what I think is important in converting is making a firm choice to do so - as best you can, if you are converting, try to make sure that you're replacing all PHB content. While I think the 2024 PHB is mostly a buff to just about every class, there are a few nerfs here and there, such as the change to Divine Smite (though the same change effectively buffs the other Smite spells) or the nerfing of Great Weapon Master and Sharpshooter.
If you leave it up to the players, they're going to be tempted to cherry-pick all the most powerful options from the two versions of their classes, effectively shielding them from any nerfs while gaining any buffs. While as always, D&D doesn't need to be super balanced to be fun, I'd still recommend putting a foot down and insisting that, at least on a player-by-player basis, if you want to upgrade to the new version for your character, you've got to take the whole thing - class mechanics, spells, feats, etc.
However, you'll likely still encounter some Frankensteined characters - the PHB is not reprinting every single character option that has come before, after all. If you have a School of Necromancy Wizard, you should be able to let them upgrade the base class while retaining the 2014 subclass, but you'll need to take a look at all the new interactions. We haven't seen the new version of Animate Dead yet, but given how most spells that summon creatures have been significantly transformed and semi-replaced with the Tasha's-style summon spells, some of that subclass' features (like automatically getting a bonus skeleton or zombie with Animate Dead) might not even make sense anymore with the new version of it. We have yet to see how specific the guidance on older spells and features will be.
I think some players might also be tempted to significantly reconceptualize their characters with this revised game system. For example, on a flavor level, I adore the Monster Slayer Ranger. I think I'm on the record on this blog for having a soft spot for gothic monster-hunters (one of the main characters in the novel I'm writing becomes one, though I think she'd be more of a battle master fighter if she were a D&D character). However, some of the flavor of the Monster Slayer has kind of dripped into the 2024 version of the Hunter, such as the ability to learn a monster's damage vulnerabilities, resistances, and immunities. Thus, it's possible for a player to feel that some revised subclass option fits their character better than their current choice.
Where this might get a little tricky is if they try to fully shift classes. A character might have been flavored as a warrior who uses a kind of combat-dance to fight their adversaries. They might have been a Bladesinger Wizard or maybe a re-skinned Drunken Master Monk, but now there's a perfect subclass for that very concept - the College of Dance Bard.
Fully reconstructing a character is, of course, at the discretion of the player and the DM, but I'd caution that this will be a very big change that could disrupt the balance of the party, and even cause problems regarding what equipment they possess.
One note as well is that the PHB is, mechanically, eliminating the Half Elf and Half Orc. These are still options for a character in the universe of your game, but the idea is that any hybrid character (even people with mixed ancestries outside of these two options) will simply choose which species they most closely match on a physiological level - a person with a human parent and an elf parent will now simply choose to be either mechanically human or mechanically an elf.
Again, the game should still work just using the 2014 Half Elf for such a character, but this is a moment where a player might think the new version of these two species fits better (trade that Darkvision for a level 1 feat?)
One of the big headlining changes to the game is the introduction of Weapon Mastery, which will create additional effects caused by different kinds of weapons for Barbarians, Fighters, Paladins, Rangers, and Rogues (and with feats to allow other classes to get in on the fun). I've seen some concern that these additional effects might slow combat down, but I think that for the most part, because martial characters tend to use the same weapon for a long time, they'll simply know what that weapon does and use its property.
Still, this might also encourage players to seek out weapon types they weren't as into previously, and DMs might consider ensuring a greater variety of magical weapons to appear in the game.
Two additions that might be controversial are the Pistol and Musket. These weapons hit harder than most ranged weapons, but also have pretty short normal ranges. The big thing is that these do make firearms a core option for the game. Classes don't tend to start with a free choice of ranged weapons (Rangers have the option to specifically get a Longbow, and most classes that get a free choice of martial weapons have to specifically choose martial melee weapons). Thus, I believe that Muskets and Pistols are sort of gatekept by the DM (though possibly with certain invocations a Warlock might theoretically be able to conjure one as a Pact Weapon).
Now, what we haven't seen much of in the way of previews is stuff like the redesigned monsters in the Monster Manual and what new magic items show up in the DMG. I believe we've been told that items that will buff unarmed strikes are going to be part of that - likely a simple reprint of the Wraps of Unarmed Mastery (+1/2/3) which showed up in the Book of Many Things, and basically act like +X weapons for your unarmed strikes (obviously ideal for Monks). As a DM, you'll probably want to make sure you look at what new items you can toss at your players.
I think the key here is to get buy-in from friends. If they're excited to see the new character options and the tweaks to the rules systems, you should consider converting the campaign. If people want to stick with what's familiar, the 2014 (updated in Xanathar's and Tasha's) version of D&D is still a fantastic game.
Indeed, the fact of the matter is that this transition is much less than going to a fully new edition, and I'm given to understand is even less of a change than the transition from 3rd to 3.5 edition. Converting will have its challenges, but I don't think it will be too hard.
In fact, even in the playtest process I started implementing a couple of changes from the UA - particularly when it comes to Tool Proficiency (very useful when one of your players is an Artificer).
No comments:
Post a Comment