Wizards of the Coast released a sizable Errata for the 2024 Core Rulebooks. In this digital age, where I mainly use my D&D Beyond copies of those books, this will come in automatically, but it's worth noting how things are changing.
For those obsessives who really pay attention to the nitty-gritty, the least surprising change was a nerf to Conjure Minor Elementals. The spell is still very powerful (I think a Valor/Swords Bard or Bladesinger Wizard is going to make the best use of it) but its scaling was toned down (though not as much as I've seen some suggest it should be).
Let's take a look at things. For changes that are purely or almost purely wording, I'll skip them. You can look at the full list here.
A lot of these changes are fairly minor - Goliaths getting advantage on ability checks rather than saving throws to escape being grappled (good, given that you don't do saving throws to escape grapples).
More impactful, some spells have been straight-up nerfed - typically in their spell-level scaling.
Of course, the spell everyone identified as being the primary candidate for this is Conjure Minor Elementals. This 4th level Conjuration spell was radically transformed in 2024, now acting as a buff to your attack damage. The spell still adds 2d8 of elemental damage (the usual suspects of things like acid, cold, fire, lightning, etc.) when you hit a creature with an attack while that creature is within your 10 foot emanation, but now when you upcast it, the damage only increases by 1d8, rather than 2d8 for each level. That still means that you can get this up to 7d8 on every attack if you cast it at 9th level, meaning it'll still likely be a mainstay for Valor Bards and Bladesinger Wizards (it's not bad for Eldritch Knights, or Bladelocks of any stripe, but won't scale up the same way).
Other spells that scaled with two dice per spell level are also getting nerfed: Conjure Elemental, Conjure Fey.
Some of these changes, again, are likely clarifications, though they could be seen as nerfs, like Giant Insect gaining HP based on spell level above 4 rather than just raw spell level (which would seem to lose them 40 HP).
The Monster Manual actually got several changes, and these straight-up appear to be for balance in many cases, though there are some common-sense ones (like a Carrion Crawler's Paralyzing Tentacles calling for a Con save instead of a Dex save).
Most of the changes to monsters I'm seeing are actually making them tougher, with higher ACs or attack bonuses.
Again, I'm just touching on some of the broad and big changes.
As someone who has been playing WoW for nearly 20 years, I'm no stranger to patch notes. But I imagine if you're in the emphatically non-digital world of physical books and paper character sheets, I wonder how you'll receive these. This is a pretty big chunk of errata, and while there's precedent for big things like this, it's clear that this isn't all just "oops, we had a typo here." Some of this was really balance adjustment.
I'm kind of fine with it, but I can imagine being philosophically unhappy with it.
The digital, online world where games can be rebalanced whenever the people controlling the game want to do so is one that creates certain vulnerabilities. I like to retain my physical books (the only one I have digital-only is the Book of Many Things, just because it was so profoundly cheaper than getting the giant set with the actual cards) and feel some comfort in the sense that if Wizards of the Coast vanished or were taken over by some far-right asshole who wants to purge the existence of anything "woke" like queer and/or non-white people just fucking existing from the game, I'd have what I have to continue using without the fear of things being swept away.
But I'm also someone who feels very comfortable using digital tools - being able to keep open multiple tabs on the three or four monsters I'm using in a fight while DM'ing or having a digital character sheet is all really convenient. I like these digital tools. And I hope that they continue to be useful.
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