In light of all the recent firings at WOTC, it is good to see Jeremy Crawford able to maintain his job security through vaguely written rules for D&D 5.24 and the publishing of the errata for Sage Advice.
The weird thing is that no rpg has access to a larger pool of playtesters than D&D, so why weren't the flaws caught before it went to print? Oversights/broken combos/etc that would be forgivable in a game from a small publisher with limited resources are inexcusable from the industry leader.
BZ wotc doesn't wanna cure their game. They wanna keep selling you medicine. Subscription based remember? Wotc sells fixes and patches and updates. They aren't flaws. They're features.
Dang, it is fun to watch you do the scripted and focused thing. I’m sure it’s a ton of work, but this is a great, far-ranging review. I feel like limiting what you allowed yourself to show actually made your expressed arguments clearer and stronger.
I'll admit that my biases with respect to your biases told me that this was going to be a tough watch. While you still, rightfully, wear your opinions on your sleeve, I'm impressed by what feels like a fair review of the content. Well done. Cheers!
I basically agree with every class opinion (i think the wizard was the measuring stick for all spellcasting class changes though, which is why it barely changed). It's healing to hear someone also think druid has lost some of its class identity while keeping its clunkiness and insane wildshape complexity after reading the comments on my video. (Also do people not like the new rogue????? It's like top 3 for me of the 2024 ones)
Yeah, there’s a lot that “works”, and is stronger, but it feels like tons of levers and buttons. I think Druid has so much more potential, but it needs a totally new concept to do it.
I have a minor disagreement: I think all-in digital D&D does affect the way other people want to play. Once players and GMs lock into a subscription model, it will de-incentivize those players to want to try any other way of playing. They will literally be throwing money down the drain if the gaming group switches to another system, such as Shadowdark or Dungeon Crawl Classics. I also think it will create laziness when it comes to character creation and management if they get too used to the machine doing all the heavy lifting
Character creators already have made a lot of players lazy, so I agree with you honestly. Edit: I should say this includes myself! It’s hard to ween off convenience when you have it.
I think there is a timeline where WOTC stops printing physical books that incorporate any future errata. Heck we already saw that with the 4e core books. Which definitely affects people's ability to enjoy the game outside a DDB subscription.
Sunk cost fallacy is just as real with physical books as print media... and more expensive per book. Overall I highly encourage anyone to give other systems a try, though. Many are FAR more affordable, readable, and teachable, and honestly worth buying just to steal rules from to homebrew D&D even if you don't run the other system.
@@jimmyrepine8952 However, it is almost guaranteed they will have a subscription model for GMs and players, and that is the main problem. As a business owner, you can also see how this will harm the friendly local game shops.
I've played D&D for over 30 years. Shortly after I got into it, TSR started to teeter into failure, and everyone jumped ship and played other games until it changed hands and got its shit together. D&D is going through that now and WOTC/Hasbro doesn't seem to think it could ever fail. I'm 100% uninterested in this edition and so is my entire playgroup. We'll play other things until it dies on the vine, is pruned, and someone new who knows how to care for it steps up. RIP
I think Wotc missed a very elegant fix for Divine Smite: just make the Smite spells work like the new True Strike. Action casting time where you make an attack as part of the spell with the Smite effect applied to it. Then at 5th level, the Paladin can get an addition to its Extra Attack that let's it attack twice when it Smites. It's still very strong, essentially getting a free Smite at no spell slot cost, but limited to one Smite per turn and no stacking. It also frees up your bonus action so you can use all those features which got turned into bonus actions. If you want to Smite on an opportunity attack there's War Caster for that (unless it changed).
It was extremely helpful to hear such a solid breakdown from an experienced rules designer. Your grading system was laugh-out-loud funny. One really small thing... independent mounts (IE, other players) retain their own place in initiative order. At least, that's how I interpreted the rules. So I don't think it can be cheesed, and certainly wouldn't allow that at my table. I give this review a Captain America. ⭐︎
About the shoves: Its probably even better as martial protection, or for taking cover dynamically, as a small wizard with 2-5 animated objects, you can stand behind a pillar, pop out when you feel like countering a spell or using a sight based reaction or such, and pop back in cover when the enemy archers turn rolls around Aw man, I liked contested checks, they made a lot of narrative sense sometimes when trying to pry the mcguffin from someone or try to keep a door closed.
I honestly don't want WotC to die... I want them to change and get better. But I sincerely hope they survive, because I have, for my whole life, loved D&D. I've moved to other games, and I'm happy with them. There are a LOT of great games out there, and I hope everyone finds the game they love. Even if that's WotC D&D. For me, it's not anymore. And that's ok. I appreciate your perspective, Indestructo. Thanks for staying in the fight.
@AJBernard dude I hear you, but here's the thing: watch and hasboro do not own DnD, we do. It can never die so long as we play it. This whole mentality I feel is like, abusive. It's the kind of stuff I hear in domestic abuse training. Girl, you don't need wotc. There's tons of fun systems to date, and they will appreciate you more. You can bring your old outfits into the game room, pathfinder thinks it's hot.
Wotc isn't DND, we all are DND. Pray that the people who love DND own it not Hasbro or wotc who have proven they don't care about it and care more about selling it.
@@Sockcatgoldpuppet I agree. "D&D" is a concept, like "Kleenex" or "Bandaid." it's a brand name that stands in for the whole of the thing. I LOVE Pathfinder 2e. I've spent tons of cash over the last 20 months on PF2e stuff, and I'm thrilled with it. But I also love ICRPG and Shadowdark and Marvel Multiverse and Delta Green and... And all of these things are D&D to me. I'm right there with ya.
@@tine1012 Sorry if I was unclear... I'm never giving WotC another penny as long as I live. I'm all in on Pathfinder 2e and DC20 and several other games. I'm not propping up WotC. ever.
Refreshing, to the point and seemingly honest assessment of a controversial hot topic product. I feel way more informed having watched this video and I mean that as high praise. Cheers!
I was not excited about DND2024 and have been receiving messages from my players about importing the new rules into my current campaign. Truthfully I just dont want to bother with cross comparing rules. The weapon masteries do not fill the same space as maneuvers would. The unarmed attack grab and shove are in my opinion just an alternate take, not a solution to a problem. The release of 2024 is just a reminder that after my current campaign I am going to look for another system like Vagabond (I know the work you put into your baby and I am eager for the final product) or Shadowdark (Less rules is sometimes better with RPGs). Thanks for the review, I appreciate your critiques as always
I know he was against the idea of baking battle master maneuvers into the base fighter class, but I really think that fighters in particular should have extreme flexibility and customization in how you want to play them. You’re right though, martials in general could have been so much better with what you said. If they are adamant about keeping the current combat rules (action, BA, free action, movement, reaction) then giving them more cool shit to do other then attack would have gone so far. More choices that equal more dynamic gameplay instead of “I can attack and do this now.” Of course, they would have to buff martials in other ways on top of this, but it doesn’t seem WOTC in keen on putting this kind of effort into the game.
SPOT ON! While criticism of WOTC/Hasbro is legit, an honest critique of the PHB should be based entirely on the PHB as a separate entity. You can always do a *separate* video extolling the virtue or destroying WOTCH/Hasbro for their many mistakes/intentional infliction of harm in separate videos on *those topics.*
I just finished a 2 year 5e campaign, level 1-13, and it became a combat slog. I struggled to get excited for every session, knowing the pace it would grind to. I am exhausted and looking for something refreshing, and this upgrade does not sound like it will do it. The idea of picking and choosing between 2024 and 2014 to make something that works is intriguing, but a lot of work, and is inherently difficult to share that type of cobbled system with players. I think I need to ask my players about their interest in trying out a new system, such as Shadowdark, or maybe the Nimble system I have seen advertised... Oh look, there is a link to your game just 3 inches away from my cursor. Let's see what that is about.
I'm about ¾ of the way thru the vid, and it seems like at least some of the things that you (and other TTRPG pros) dislike might have been improved by ideas that went out in UA play tests but got downvoted away. WoTC was very cautious with this revision, seemingly out of a fear of hurting their market dominance. I'm sure it'll still be a fun game, but it's hard not to wish this revision were a little bolder in places.
There's some truth to this. The UA's started out making it look like a whole new version of the game and by the end everything got watered down to an iterative revision.
30:25 or so, re: 5e crafting rules. What I've wanted out of crafting has always been a place to show a character's specialization. Ability checks using tools to determine *either* pace or cost-efficiency. A flat amount of gold, a flat amount of time, and a flat amount of value created doesn't do it for me. In most cases a 20th-level artificer and a 1st-level sorcerer with the same tool proficiency crafting the same item have the same experience. That doesn't seem right to me.
The old Wendy’s commercial would say “Where’s the Beef?” Live your content. Personally, I loved the Micro Transactions they had in DnD Beyond. I could pick and choose my class, specials and other items and pay way less than buying a full book, but if I ever spent enough purchasing enought out of a single book, you would get the full digital book for free. So sad they removed that option. I could have bought a few small things I want from the 2024 phb, but as it is, I won’t pay for anything.
This is the first new version of D&D I am not excited for. Sad to hear where they rushed it or ended up whiffing on things they spent time addressing. On the plus side, homebrew content will likely be inspired that will fix a lot of the mess, and make it much better and more interesting.
Thank you for this review. I used to follow the DND One UA pretty religiously, until the OGL stuff happened and I was not sure whether I wanted to give the new edition a shot. I'm glad you stayed focused avoided the drama in this review, it made it easier for me to get back into this topic. I appreciate that! I was hoping this would be a more streamlined 5e for newer and older players, but it seems that this isn't that... shame! I really wanted to like this :( I guess I'll just implement some of the refined classes and rules, and keep it at that.
Obviously, screw the fetid soul-eating business liches that are Hasbro, but I appreciate your work. Solid analysis of this game is invaluable, both discussion of what works and what doesn't. I saw your accessibility rants live and it was excellent. So thanks for reviewing stuff like this
nice calm and collected video 'reviews should inform, not convive The information can be convincing' learnt something today I often take the approach to convince from the get go. I will changed the way I think of things.
two things: I feel like this one of the most honest, thoughtful and analytical reviews of the... how the fuck are we calling it? 5.5 or 2024's ph?'. Anyways, you actually look the wording, the changes they implemented, the ones who doesnt got pass a decade of feedback, trying to look for the better implementation and understanding of the game (as a designer tries to do). im not calling other dndtubers shills but i've seen some reviews that feel/seem more in the way of "we're honestly trying to stay neutral and yes, the new book has some good and bad changes, but we're trying to stay in wotc's creator program" at the same time and im not blaming them, but i like your "designer-first" approach. the other thing is that dude, i believe i was already subscribed, but when i opened the video it wasnt. idk, felt weird.
great, spellcasters just getting to do things nobody asked for. level 20 martial can hack away at the tiny hut for the full duration and get nowhere, caster just needs to cast harder and be level 9+. what a fair and balanced and definitely necessary change.
Alright I did the math for the school sticker grading system as it appeared, adding or subtracting points based on the *perceived quality* of the sticker. Let's see how everyone else arbitratily scored the arbitrary scoring system, and compare! Rules seemed to get a net -5 Classes got a net +/-0
Here's my breakdown of the scoring system ice cream +1 smiling dog +1 silver star +1 cold side of pillow +2 sad dad -2 confused kitty -1 unsettling horse -1 upsetti spaghetti -1 dirty ashtray -2 empty christmas present -1 shiny pot of gold +2 gold star +2 title belt +3 brownie clownie -1 bundle of bad christmas lights -2 brain fog -2 hammer for a screw -1 arcane mishap -2 was this a mistake? 0 13-18 = Net -5 Classes: Happy kratos +2 squire bullet +1 flying lawnmower -2 awkward turtle -1 sword held high +2 polished turd +1 horse 0 mourning aragon -2 applause +1 fireworks +1 missed opportunity -1 two stale grapes -2 8-8 = Net +/-0
Appreciate your vegetarian take, I’ll probably only use Nimble 5e to run DnD now. Though I’ve greatly enjoyed Shadowdark, Mothership and even Cyberpunk RED. Play more games folks, they’ll teach you plenty about this wonderful hobby!
Ooooh I know it’s tiring cuz I’m actually interested to hear your take on 5E and power creep. I didn’t think it was a thing until I had to go through the feats and magic items of the game. I just think their design philosophy changed and their older stuff needed a facelift or a bit of homebrew. Look at the amount of feats vs “half feats” its insane how much power increases with a +1 to a stat
a reason a lot of people have complaints about the crafting system is that, when you put them in the context of chronologically short adventures like, strahd, waterdeep, etc, which are the majority of what WotC has published over time, they are functionally unusable, i can make 4 common healing potions over the incredibly short time some of the campaigns take, and that feels pointless and removes the interest in actually playing a character that is crafting focused, whether i want minecraft or skyrim crafting, or just to play a quirky tinkerer, i cant leverage features of the game via 2014 crafting rules. a strahd campaign i played was a total of like 6 in world days.
I really value your thoughts and insights on the 2024 PHB, it helps put quite a few things in perspective! That said, my day job is a pig farmer... 😂😂😂
Thanks for the review, I appreciate the insight, but I'm personally concerned with one specific element of the book I couldn't find any details about online, and that is what the new stats for the some of the weapons are. It seems that they've made changes to the way that two weapon fighting works, in making it built onto the "light" weapon property itself now, and so, I wanted to ask if they've made any changes to weapons to give more weapons to light property to counterbalance this fact. Since beforehand, while there was not many weapons with the light property, taking the dual wielder feat had let you expand all the way into any 2 non-two handed weapons, but now you still need at least one light weapon, which may go against the build or the character aesthetic you wish to go for.
This was a great review, dude. BTW when is the backer kit launch of Vagabond? I think your system is super underrated and overlooked (based on the playtest). I can't wait to see the full version.
Yo, Taron, I gotta disagree with you on the Grappling/Shoving. I agree that it's cleaner in the sense that it's not a "special melee attack that you can only do if you have a hand free" anymore. But in all other respects, it's far, far worse. Grappling wasn't really that much of a big issue before, since it doesn't provide insane mechanical benefits, but was reliable through things like expertise and advantage on the checks, and the only time it could maybe possibly be seen as strong is in like the 1 combo that requires at least 2 characters to pull off. Now, grappling/shoving is worse in all respects - it's not more powerful mechanically, it's worse by far mathematically, and there's less options to augment the rolls. Literally the only things you can do is to somehow give disadvantage on the enemy save or subtract from their save in some way (like Bane or the Bard's inspiration-feature, I forgot the name). Monsters have always had way, way better saving throws than checks, with a few exceptions, and there's literally no way to increase the DC that we've seen so far other than to increase your Strength score. And Strength is usually one of the monsters' best saving throws behind Constition. And if they somehow have a bad STR save, there's a chance they'll be able to make up with a good Dex save. Grappling/shoving right now, in terms of usefulness, is objectively worse in every possible way. The only good thing is that you can understand easier how it works. And I don't think the new feats make up for it in any way. They make grappling/shoving go from extremely shitty to only very shitty. Oh, and on top of that, with the new weapon masteries, there's almost no reason to think about shoving, for example, since anything you can do with a shove, you can do infinitely better with a weapon with said properties. Shoving only shoves 5 feet and requires a save which will most likely fail, whilst a weapon with the Push mastery autoshoves 10 feet away. Topple still requires a save, similar to wanting to shove someone on the ground, but you can do damage AND do it with every attack, whilst shoving with an unarmed strike still requires a save, but you can only do it once per turn if you wanna do damage with it, and that's only if you take a feat. Otherwise you're wasting your whole attack to maybe possibly but more likely not shove someone to the ground. So, yeah, brawling, as in being unarmed is, in my opinion, worse off than it was before.
I would object on one ground. Grappling was in a weird place where it was as you said save for using it to drag people through spike growth or to drag an enemy into a spirit guardians. That's where grappling goes from OK to potentially buck wild (along with pushes/pulls).
God you are so right, its refreshing to see someone who actually know what they are on about, I've been trying to explain to people how much worse grappling is now with it being save based but people cant seem to think for themselves even when you compare an expertise athletics av 29 check to beat to a measly 18dc . Monsters get dex or str save prof far more often than ath or acro prof and now with legendary resistances blocking grapples and legendary reaction teleports, end game grappling sucks ass. Heck it wasnt even like monks sucked at grappling all they needed was athletics expertise and they could reliably grapple on their first attempt with av 80% success rate rather than wasting 4 attack attempts with 40% success rate like they will now.
Love your classifications and your hearing your thoughts. I am not a 5e player, and wish its fans no ill will. My ongoing hope is that folks ALSO learn to love other systems too. So glad you have.🎉
I write out my own character sheets, since I dont have a printer or have a computer. Im glad the actually showed how to fill in the character sheet, since 2014 seemed a bit complicated( when simply reading, when beginner) Them not have a visual chacater sheet for 2024 is silly .
The more I read and think about the new rules the more I notice that this update is kinda slapstick and poorly done form a rules standpoint. They added a ton of new things for each player to keep track of, and there is massive powercreep across the entire play set, and a TON of unclear text. I mean - they could have easily playtested these things better and fixed them.
Yeah miss me on this new addition. Vagabond on the other hand, SLAPS. I picked it up last night and my friends and I are writing up a weird west game with it. I homebrewed up a Bison beastfolk called a Tatankan, which has "Big Beast" your horns count as a brawling weapon (d6) and "End of the Trail" (yes I'm referencing the WWF wrestler. Lol) which lets you shove an additional 5ft if you spent at least half of your movement speed first. Feel free to steal it. :) I definitely want to see more Vagabond content going forward.
For me, my biggest issue I have is character creation. RAW players are incredibly limited on build diversity with premade backgrounds and lackluster origin feats, and since most campaigns end around 10 you're only getting two feats to try to differentiate from the general features of class/subclass. It's really mad me look forward to PFPC2 because it looks like theres much more build diversity with how they do feats.
29:21 Important to note: shields are still considered armor, not weapons, and the rules for making attacks specify that you can equip or unequip a single weapon. Shields still require an action to equip or unequip as always. Frankly, I'm also a little skeptical that topple is as problematic as it's made out to be here. First, there's no reason to continue making topple attempts against enemies once you've successfully made them prone, so in order to create the scenario you're describing, you need to hit four times and have the enemy pass their save three times. While technically possible, it's statistically very unlikely given that both your hit chance and weapon mastery save DCs are based on the same ability score, so the more likely you are to hit, the less likely they are to pass the save. Finally, making enemies prone is a difficult tactic to pull off in a party of mixed classes and fighting styles, since it will impose disadvantage on ranged attacks.
That page reference excuse is like saying "we cant have links between the pages or sections on our website or to other websites because {insert what they said about page references}" (10:15)
Pretty sure spell scrolls won’t be activated via the Magic Action, but by whatever action the specific spell on the scroll specifies. thus Thief Rogue can’t use one as a BA.
Thanks for this beef-free review. Sadly, even though we're now in an era where 5e variants are becoming more prolific, D&D 5e is just way too prevalent throughout the 5e landscape (let alone the TTRPG landscape). Heck, I even caved and bought my first-ever 5e alternative product, Anime 5e, because it’s the closest compromise that I can think of: being able to bring massive customization to this generation's most popular TTRPG engine. Surprisingly, the stat blocks are a lot cleaner, too, because all of the abilities come from the same source, which massively reduces text bloat.
loved your preamble. great job and good opinions we couldn't get from the deliberately bland and pollyannaish shills who walk their viewers off cliffs to keep on hasbro's good side...
The art doesn't work for me at all. Every character looks like they spend hours on hair and makeup every day. Like they're in a performance at the Grammys. It's all so safe, clean, sleek and sanitized. It feels almost anti-adventure to me. Now, this is not a dig at the artists. Technically the work is stunning. It's just the tone and motifs I don't love.
Yeah I miss the gritty wayne reynolds art. This art Is like current magic the gathering art too, boring and soulless corporate slop with no style or substance.
To me the BIGGEST half baked design is the Spell Casting Sheet. Sad because the designers the Character Sheet in many ways. The PHB itself tells you to always open the PHB spell section when you want to cast a spell. How about making giving the Spell Sheet additional optional pages. They actually designed a clean and neat structure to track the important factors of Spells. (Attack Roll/Saving Throw, Casting Time, Range, checkboxes for Concentration, Ritual, Material Components, but no Somatic or Verbal for some reason?) BUT because the lines are so long there is only one columm without Preperation tracking, that doesn't fit that many Spells. So instead of making more pages, you are supposed to erase and rewrite you Spellcasting Sheet every Long Rest (except Bard, Sorcerer., Warlock EK and AT obviously). So you need to first look at the Class Section to see your Spelllist then flip back and forth to the Spell Section, to add insult to injury, without Cross Referencing! Isn't that a horrible experience? Making Long Rests suck so much game time, especially those precious beginners. My guess is beginners will just never change their Spells. 1 step forward 2 steps back. I am convinced no one playtested the new Sheet on paper.
Overall, I like the book and what it does for a lot of underpowered subclasses (2024 ranger doesn't exist). With that being said, I will still only be allowing my homebrew rules for Paladin at my table. Divine Smite is capped at once per turn, scales like a cantrip based on levels, and does not require a spell spot. I think taking away the paladins bonus action is, arguably, the worst thing they could have done to balance Divine Smite, especially when the class is intended to be a more supportive front liner based on the spells available to it. I still think it has some of the best flavor in the game though. I, also, think the weapon swapping shenanigan's will be addressed as 1 weapon swap per turn by most DMs, myself included. I think MOST of what this book brings to the table is, overall, a very positive upgrade to 5e, but needed more time in playtest and development and WoTC needed to take player feedback more seriously. Great video, very well spoken, and please never stop lobbying (is that the right word?) WoTC for more accessibility in their books, like page references. God that's annoying. God bless.
I think that there is a better than even chance we will see a lot of stuff like group checks probably got moved to the DMG. Contested rolls are probably more likely to be gone all together, but may be there too as an optional rule or something. I'm also guessing there will be more about passive checks there since passive perception is kind of mentioned only in passing in the PHB from what I've heard.
If they have fully got rid of group checks entirely that kills the book for me (although I wasn’t interested to start with). Group checks are a brilliant mechanic imo.
So my thoughts are this is a really big tashas cauldron of everything. I think many things got shunted to the DMG, but with the gap in roll out it leaves us in a bad place. I like the changes for weapon masteries and most class changes. I do not mind the power creep as long as it doesn't leave you in a position that you don't play any of the previous material. I think there are many elements like the spells that they could have fixed but didn't have time and space for. I love the artwork, but it's cost to the number of pages, and undoubtedly being prioritized over rules improvements makes me wish there were less of it. I think this helps the game substantially in general, but also just left many things untouched when it should have fixed them. I have purchased this for my players and am generally happy but also wanted more. It feels like they stopped making improvements at 70% complete. Just my thoughts.
The real D&D is in books with other titles on the cover anyway. WotC/Hasbro are just the only ones allowed to use the brand. Because they gave someone money for that. FREE D&D!
Also on Polearm Master Fighter with Topple that is likely the only reason I would play a fighter! Especially with Tactical Master adding Push, Slow and Sap at level 9 so you do not even need to change weapons.
Firstly, I agree that the change to making it an unarmed strike and using saving throws is a much cleaner mechanic. That said, I have a gripe that monks are now grappling the best. Barbarians (who imo should be the best at grabbing people) get a nerf due to rage not helping now, but monks get more opportunities for grapple, more speed, and options to use dex. Thematically I like monks shove/tripping, but grabbing someone and moving them 40+ft in a few seconds, on a character with no strength? Boo. To be clear, aside from this interaction, I really like what they did with monk which needed a lot of love (though I agree a bigger redesign to avoid focus points would have been better). My thematic opinions aside, I'm a little confused on your feeling about movement/shove/grapple. You mention an issue with shove causing potential peasant teleport interactions in the movement section due to choosing to fail saving throws. Agree. As you say, this is unlikely to see play but is poor design. But then you don't mention the grappling rules causing much more likely problematic interactions (some of which existed before but it's worse now); a PC dragging a woodchipper cleric around the battlefield, or enemies through spike growth etc. I know this is an issue with spells, but lots of such spells exist. Even without that there are some insane grapple moves with the new feat and especially monk. Isn't that going to cause far more issues at the table?
I'm just getting a sense that this new edition is going to be more work than it's worth. I'm not hearing anything compelling to play it but their sounds to be enough changes that is going to be a pain in the butt to accommodate. I think WotC really screwed up and they should have included a lot of the content creators in the process of refining these rules but they just slammed and jammed them through and didn't get enough feedback from the community first. I wouldn't be surprised if this edition becomes one of those oopsy rough draft got it out too quickly don't look at it anymore once we get the polished version out things.
I have to say that imo the sticker system retracted from the seriousness of the review, but that is solely a personal preference that has nothing to do with the sustance of the critique. Otherwise as a dnd 5.24 Stan and arguably fan-boy i think this review was insightful and thorough, and fairly anti-Wotc/hasbro corp bias free. You objectively critiqued the system for what it is, and gave fantastic insight into why and what would have worked better. 10/10 review.
Weapon mastery: Couldn't agree more. Mastery is bloaty, Topple is a nightmare... and weapon swapping makes the whole thing a mess. In my game i won't be using mastery mostly due to what my players want (my most martial PCs in the game are players who want less rules, not more). I do think the shield swap thing is a little overblown. It seems to me that shields are still armor, not weapons. As such you need to use your object interaction to swap them, which means you can either start OR end your turn with a shield, but not both. This is far less abusable if I cam correct (I haven't got the book and have had trouble clarifying this). But tbh, I kind of wish they'd just made don/doffing a shield a BA to avoid all of this mess and keep some cost to adding +2AC; that's what I'll be doing.
I don't mind smite being limited to 1/turn - multi-smite nova turns were bad in every way - bad because they were mostly an inefficient use of spell slots, bad because when they were good they were one shotting enemies that should have been engaging tough encounters for the whole party so they killed the funn, bad because chasing the nova caused a lot of paladin players to not engage with their spell list. However, I HATE that smites use a bonus action. This severely curtails the paladin's ability to engage with other bonus action offensive options, which needlessly restricts combat style options, penalizes the use of many paladin spells (something also prevented by smite being a spell to begin with, so I don't like that either), and worst of all it prevents the use of off turn smites, which means no smiting on opportunity attacks which was a key tool in the kit of any paladin wanting to play the role of party tank. Rather than making divine smite work more like the previously bad and still mostly not very good smite spells, I would have rather wizards made smite more of its own feature - maybe with uses recharging on a short rest which is a resource paladins are otherwise lacking in - with the option to burn spell slots when you use it for added damage or added effects as you level, replacing the smite spells entirely. Between the changes to smite and the decision to pass over the thematically and mechanically compelling conquest paladin for the imo comparatively boring oath of glory and I think I'll be taking a break from what was my favorite class in 5e. nbd, illusionist wizard & shadow monk are looking kind of cool, there are other options.
As a forever DM I get the vibe that my players are going to like it initially and then realize the flaws later, as the impression they're getting is that everything is a buff. I don't think they've seen the nerfs yet, or that everyone getting subclasses at level 3 now means they no longer start with one or get it earlier in some classes. From my perspective it just looks like it's making the game harder to run and solving problems that were already solved by the community a good decade ago. The difficult thing is that at my main table I have one player that doesn't care and quote "I just hope they have more weapons", one that likes some stuff from the new but doesn't mind if I run the old, and one that whales every single thing they ever touch (and then never plays them) that's fully bought in to the 2024 and 3D VTT hype. This last player is the one I'm most concerned about because they are already trying to force me (and the rest of the table) to [literally] buy-in to 2024 and I'm just not sold on it yet or see it as much of an improvement for ROLE PLAYING in role playing game. I don't give a shit about balance and no one can interpret the dumb ass arcane flimsy rules and just does what they want anyway. I can't make this up, but the person literally got excited about rule changes that we had already homebrewed into the game (namely, health potions as a bonus action). As a DM I'm looking at this and thinking - so I need to spend $100 on a, at best mostly unchanged, and at worse... WORSE, version of the game we're already playing? If anything it seems crunchier than what we're already doing, not easier and more streamlined like they're spinning it as. I don't want to remove anyone from my table over this, but if 2024 gets pushed too hard and other players don't like it then I might have to. They share all their stuff on D&D Beyond with me but I don't care. It doesn't make my games any better and I own half of it on Roll20 myself anyway and they always act like they're doing me some big favor by reminding me that I can read it there if I want. I get why my players use it, but as a DM I barely use Beyond and if anything it feels like the entire website is just a justification as to why we can't have nice official clean PDFs of the things I've already purchased and own instead of looking for terrible scans to read the stupid book on a computer screen for a game that markets itself as a "NOW YOU CAN PLAY ANYWHERE, NOT JUST THE TABLE" game. IDK, even without all the WoTC controversies and them turning fully corporate and bullying smaller fish it just seems like a rushed money grab. Even if it isn't. Even if the game maybe did "need" an update. I didn't see a whole lot of people that actually wanted this before. I think people just wanted better 5e books, not a total overhaul of the game they were already playing and enjoying. Edit: Also, how did none of the things people actually cared about get fixed. I have yet to see solid evidence that crafting, exploration, survival, economy, adventuring, ROLE PLAYING is getting any better. Maybe I'm wrong, and I'd truly love to be, but it just feels like more of the same with some tweaks and dial turning. Edit: They don't want you to actually play the game anyway, just buy it. They don't want us to have PDFs because they want us to not pirate them (which forces people to pirate them) and instead buy the physical books to justify being a book company and owning a printing press, but the physical books fall apart the first time you open them (our old PHB is in shambles and we had to glue it back in to the spine) and we can't have full digital books on anything outside of Beyond which you have to click through instead of scroll and it fucks up my TTS (text-to-speech) that I use to help me read and stay focused and guess what, the compendiums are all like that and Foundry is so worried about you stealing their shit or getting sued that they don't even have official TTS and it's not in web so you can't use it there and have to hope the outdated GitHub library still functions and the voice isn't too whacky to be useable. But guess what the thing that would really break the game is if they sold PDFs. That's the thing that would make this whole fucking ship sink is if we had official fucking PDFs like every other fucking game on the fucking planet has. /rant Edit: It has just occurred to me while rereading this that for my own sanity and mental stability I might need to consider other TTRPGs lol
I feel like with they kept Eldritch Blast a spell because they make Divine Smite a spell even though i think people would like them both as a class feature (And also Hunters Mark for Ranger)
Haven't read the book but I think the intent is that a shield is armor and not a weapon? and so it follows the don/doff armor rules and not the weapon attack swap rules, meaning it takes an action to don/doff a shield and can't do attack and switch to shield. other than monk and the unarmed strike/grapple/shoves, I think I'll be sticking to 2014 and finding new games to play
honestly my favorite one of your videos. It was nice to get to see you without the hostility. I usually only get recommended your "why watc is evil and dnd sucks stuff" and as a person who likes dnd it's always rubbed me the wrong way.
Isn't the mounting thing only for controlled vs uncontrolled mounts? Doesn't it say something along the lines of sentient creatures isn't a controlled mount?
Yeah so this is where the rules murkiness around this is going to get pushed my munchkins. The wording implies that it's the mount itself that chooses whether or not it acts independently from the rider.
I suppose so. As a DM I would just common sense rule this, but then you run into the whole, the rules should be the bad guy, not the DM. Also to be fair, my players wouldn't even try this lol.
I’d love to see the 3rd party creators you collaborate with to do their own D&D 24 edition. I get that Vagabond is partially about that, but I’d like to see something that plays nice in the 5e ecosystem. Could I do that right now by mixing together existing 3rd party material? Sure, but I’d like to see you guys get a $1M Kickstarter of your own.
I don't always agree with your opinions but I enjoy your reviews because you've always been honest and that shows integrity. I appreciate that.
Same here. My opinions often don't align with things here, but I respect the opinions and thoughts expressed here.
@@DorsonKieffer ditto. Dudes chill.
Vegetarian review of the dnd 2024 players handbook
In light of all the recent firings at WOTC, it is good to see Jeremy Crawford able to maintain his job security through vaguely written rules for D&D 5.24 and the publishing of the errata for Sage Advice.
The weird thing is that no rpg has access to a larger pool of playtesters than D&D, so why weren't the flaws caught before it went to print? Oversights/broken combos/etc that would be forgivable in a game from a small publisher with limited resources are inexcusable from the industry leader.
It does not mater how many playtesters you have if you don’t let them see what you want them to test.
BZ wotc doesn't wanna cure their game. They wanna keep selling you medicine. Subscription based remember?
Wotc sells fixes and patches and updates. They aren't flaws. They're features.
Because the flaws he's talking about are ridiculous and would likely never be tolerated at any table.
Because the people at WotC don't even play.
@@VhaidraSaga that's objectively wrong. The design team played the game quite a bit. But tell yourself whatever you need to.
Dang, it is fun to watch you do the scripted and focused thing. I’m sure it’s a ton of work, but this is a great, far-ranging review. I feel like limiting what you allowed yourself to show actually made your expressed arguments clearer and stronger.
I'll admit that my biases with respect to your biases told me that this was going to be a tough watch. While you still, rightfully, wear your opinions on your sleeve, I'm impressed by what feels like a fair review of the content. Well done. Cheers!
I basically agree with every class opinion (i think the wizard was the measuring stick for all spellcasting class changes though, which is why it barely changed). It's healing to hear someone also think druid has lost some of its class identity while keeping its clunkiness and insane wildshape complexity after reading the comments on my video.
(Also do people not like the new rogue????? It's like top 3 for me of the 2024 ones)
Yeah, there’s a lot that “works”, and is stronger, but it feels like tons of levers and buttons. I think Druid has so much more potential, but it needs a totally new concept to do it.
I have a minor disagreement: I think all-in digital D&D does affect the way other people want to play. Once players and GMs lock into a subscription model, it will de-incentivize those players to want to try any other way of playing. They will literally be throwing money down the drain if the gaming group switches to another system, such as Shadowdark or Dungeon Crawl Classics. I also think it will create laziness when it comes to character creation and management if they get too used to the machine doing all the heavy lifting
Character creators already have made a lot of players lazy, so I agree with you honestly.
Edit: I should say this includes myself! It’s hard to ween off convenience when you have it.
I think there is a timeline where WOTC stops printing physical books that incorporate any future errata. Heck we already saw that with the 4e core books. Which definitely affects people's ability to enjoy the game outside a DDB subscription.
Sunk cost fallacy is just as real with physical books as print media... and more expensive per book. Overall I highly encourage anyone to give other systems a try, though. Many are FAR more affordable, readable, and teachable, and honestly worth buying just to steal rules from to homebrew D&D even if you don't run the other system.
@@MannonMartin I think there is a little bit of a difference between paying an ongoing subscription and a one-cost purchase of a physical book
@@jimmyrepine8952 However, it is almost guaranteed they will have a subscription model for GMs and players, and that is the main problem. As a business owner, you can also see how this will harm the friendly local game shops.
I've played D&D for over 30 years. Shortly after I got into it, TSR started to teeter into failure, and everyone jumped ship and played other games until it changed hands and got its shit together. D&D is going through that now and WOTC/Hasbro doesn't seem to think it could ever fail. I'm 100% uninterested in this edition and so is my entire playgroup. We'll play other things until it dies on the vine, is pruned, and someone new who knows how to care for it steps up. RIP
I think Wotc missed a very elegant fix for Divine Smite: just make the Smite spells work like the new True Strike. Action casting time where you make an attack as part of the spell with the Smite effect applied to it. Then at 5th level, the Paladin can get an addition to its Extra Attack that let's it attack twice when it Smites. It's still very strong, essentially getting a free Smite at no spell slot cost, but limited to one Smite per turn and no stacking. It also frees up your bonus action so you can use all those features which got turned into bonus actions. If you want to Smite on an opportunity attack there's War Caster for that (unless it changed).
Thank you Indestructaboy. I enjoy your humor and no-nonsense analysis
It was extremely helpful to hear such a solid breakdown from an experienced rules designer. Your grading system was laugh-out-loud funny. One really small thing... independent mounts (IE, other players) retain their own place in initiative order. At least, that's how I interpreted the rules. So I don't think it can be cheesed, and certainly wouldn't allow that at my table. I give this review a Captain America. ⭐︎
About the shoves: Its probably even better as martial protection, or for taking cover dynamically, as a small wizard with 2-5 animated objects, you can stand behind a pillar, pop out when you feel like countering a spell or using a sight based reaction or such, and pop back in cover when the enemy archers turn rolls around
Aw man, I liked contested checks, they made a lot of narrative sense sometimes when trying to pry the mcguffin from someone or try to keep a door closed.
Thanks for the review! It’s good to hear a game designer’s view on the 2024 PHB, not just talking about the system but also the layout.
I honestly don't want WotC to die... I want them to change and get better. But I sincerely hope they survive, because I have, for my whole life, loved D&D.
I've moved to other games, and I'm happy with them. There are a LOT of great games out there, and I hope everyone finds the game they love. Even if that's WotC D&D. For me, it's not anymore. And that's ok.
I appreciate your perspective, Indestructo. Thanks for staying in the fight.
@AJBernard dude I hear you, but here's the thing: watch and hasboro do not own DnD, we do. It can never die so long as we play it.
This whole mentality I feel is like, abusive. It's the kind of stuff I hear in domestic abuse training.
Girl, you don't need wotc. There's tons of fun systems to date, and they will appreciate you more. You can bring your old outfits into the game room, pathfinder thinks it's hot.
DnD has outlived TSR and DnD will outlive WotC. I think your love of DnD should not prop up a company that does not seem willing to change.
Wotc isn't DND, we all are DND. Pray that the people who love DND own it not Hasbro or wotc who have proven they don't care about it and care more about selling it.
@@Sockcatgoldpuppet I agree. "D&D" is a concept, like "Kleenex" or "Bandaid." it's a brand name that stands in for the whole of the thing.
I LOVE Pathfinder 2e. I've spent tons of cash over the last 20 months on PF2e stuff, and I'm thrilled with it. But I also love ICRPG and Shadowdark and Marvel Multiverse and Delta Green and...
And all of these things are D&D to me. I'm right there with ya.
@@tine1012 Sorry if I was unclear... I'm never giving WotC another penny as long as I live. I'm all in on Pathfinder 2e and DC20 and several other games.
I'm not propping up WotC. ever.
Refreshing, to the point and seemingly honest assessment of a controversial hot topic product. I feel way more informed having watched this video and I mean that as high praise.
Cheers!
I was not excited about DND2024 and have been receiving messages from my players about importing the new rules into my current campaign. Truthfully I just dont want to bother with cross comparing rules. The weapon masteries do not fill the same space as maneuvers would. The unarmed attack grab and shove are in my opinion just an alternate take, not a solution to a problem. The release of 2024 is just a reminder that after my current campaign I am going to look for another system like Vagabond (I know the work you put into your baby and I am eager for the final product) or Shadowdark (Less rules is sometimes better with RPGs).
Thanks for the review, I appreciate your critiques as always
Really wish we just got basic martial maneuvers instead of the semi manuevuers that the weapons give
I know he was against the idea of baking battle master maneuvers into the base fighter class, but I really think that fighters in particular should have extreme flexibility and customization in how you want to play them.
You’re right though, martials in general could have been so much better with what you said. If they are adamant about keeping the current combat rules (action, BA, free action, movement, reaction) then giving them more cool shit to do other then attack would have gone so far. More choices that equal more dynamic gameplay instead of “I can attack and do this now.”
Of course, they would have to buff martials in other ways on top of this, but it doesn’t seem WOTC in keen on putting this kind of effort into the game.
SPOT ON! While criticism of WOTC/Hasbro is legit, an honest critique of the PHB should be based entirely on the PHB as a separate entity. You can always do a *separate* video extolling the virtue or destroying WOTCH/Hasbro for their many mistakes/intentional infliction of harm in separate videos on *those topics.*
I just finished a 2 year 5e campaign, level 1-13, and it became a combat slog. I struggled to get excited for every session, knowing the pace it would grind to. I am exhausted and looking for something refreshing, and this upgrade does not sound like it will do it. The idea of picking and choosing between 2024 and 2014 to make something that works is intriguing, but a lot of work, and is inherently difficult to share that type of cobbled system with players. I think I need to ask my players about their interest in trying out a new system, such as Shadowdark, or maybe the Nimble system I have seen advertised... Oh look, there is a link to your game just 3 inches away from my cursor. Let's see what that is about.
I'm about ¾ of the way thru the vid, and it seems like at least some of the things that you (and other TTRPG pros) dislike might have been improved by ideas that went out in UA play tests but got downvoted away. WoTC was very cautious with this revision, seemingly out of a fear of hurting their market dominance. I'm sure it'll still be a fun game, but it's hard not to wish this revision were a little bolder in places.
There's some truth to this. The UA's started out making it look like a whole new version of the game and by the end everything got watered down to an iterative revision.
30:25 or so, re: 5e crafting rules. What I've wanted out of crafting has always been a place to show a character's specialization. Ability checks using tools to determine *either* pace or cost-efficiency. A flat amount of gold, a flat amount of time, and a flat amount of value created doesn't do it for me. In most cases a 20th-level artificer and a 1st-level sorcerer with the same tool proficiency crafting the same item have the same experience. That doesn't seem right to me.
I really enjoyed your rating system and actually found it much more usefull than an arbitrary number rating system.
it never occurred to me that you could equip a shield with your last attack... that feels very weird
Because you can't. Shields are armor, not weapons, so they still require an action to don or doff.
It requires a utilise action to don/doff a shield
A very entertaining and thoughtful review! I personally loved the sticker choices.
The player core is more um actually than the most obnoxious stereotype of a vegan
The old Wendy’s commercial would say “Where’s the Beef?”
Live your content.
Personally, I loved the Micro Transactions they had in DnD Beyond. I could pick and choose my class, specials and other items and pay way less than buying a full book, but if I ever spent enough purchasing enought out of a single book, you would get the full digital book for free.
So sad they removed that option. I could have bought a few small things I want from the 2024 phb, but as it is, I won’t pay for anything.
Monk is my favorite class and I know it needed a tweak or two, but I feel like they buffed it wayyy too much.
This is the first new version of D&D I am not excited for. Sad to hear where they rushed it or ended up whiffing on things they spent time addressing. On the plus side, homebrew content will likely be inspired that will fix a lot of the mess, and make it much better and more interesting.
Thank you for this review. I used to follow the DND One UA pretty religiously, until the OGL stuff happened and I was not sure whether I wanted to give the new edition a shot. I'm glad you stayed focused avoided the drama in this review, it made it easier for me to get back into this topic. I appreciate that!
I was hoping this would be a more streamlined 5e for newer and older players, but it seems that this isn't that... shame! I really wanted to like this :(
I guess I'll just implement some of the refined classes and rules, and keep it at that.
I think your last comment sums it up really well. Fine for a one shot or a bit of fun but better options out there if you want to run a campaign.
Obviously, screw the fetid soul-eating business liches that are Hasbro, but I appreciate your work. Solid analysis of this game is invaluable, both discussion of what works and what doesn't.
I saw your accessibility rants live and it was excellent. So thanks for reviewing stuff like this
I gotta say, your intro & disclaimed was such a breath of fresh-fucking-air, and should be shared around the dungeontuber community. Keep it up, man.
A very refreshing review from you, two sodas out of half a horse.
I just want the alt-cover by Wylie Beckert. I love their art.
I'd recommend checking out my other reviews!
nice calm and collected video
'reviews should inform, not convive The information can be convincing' learnt something today I often take the approach to convince from the get go. I will changed the way I think of things.
two things: I feel like this one of the most honest, thoughtful and analytical reviews of the... how the fuck are we calling it? 5.5 or 2024's ph?'. Anyways, you actually look the wording, the changes they implemented, the ones who doesnt got pass a decade of feedback, trying to look for the better implementation and understanding of the game (as a designer tries to do). im not calling other dndtubers shills but i've seen some reviews that feel/seem more in the way of "we're honestly trying to stay neutral and yes, the new book has some good and bad changes, but we're trying to stay in wotc's creator program" at the same time and im not blaming them, but i like your "designer-first" approach.
the other thing is that dude, i believe i was already subscribed, but when i opened the video it wasnt. idk, felt weird.
leomund's tiny hut changes now allow a caster to throw 4+ level spells from inside their own hut. hurrah...
And lvl 4 enemy spells to enter it as well . . .
great, spellcasters just getting to do things nobody asked for. level 20 martial can hack away at the tiny hut for the full duration and get nowhere, caster just needs to cast harder and be level 9+. what a fair and balanced and definitely necessary change.
Alright I did the math for the school sticker grading system as it appeared, adding or subtracting points based on the *perceived quality* of the sticker. Let's see how everyone else arbitratily scored the arbitrary scoring system, and compare!
Rules seemed to get a net -5
Classes got a net +/-0
Here's my breakdown of the scoring system
ice cream +1
smiling dog +1
silver star +1
cold side of pillow +2
sad dad -2
confused kitty -1
unsettling horse -1
upsetti spaghetti -1
dirty ashtray -2
empty christmas present -1
shiny pot of gold +2
gold star +2
title belt +3
brownie clownie -1
bundle of bad christmas lights -2
brain fog -2
hammer for a screw -1
arcane mishap -2
was this a mistake? 0
13-18 = Net -5
Classes:
Happy kratos +2
squire bullet +1
flying lawnmower -2
awkward turtle -1
sword held high +2
polished turd +1
horse 0
mourning aragon -2
applause +1
fireworks +1
missed opportunity -1
two stale grapes -2
8-8 = Net +/-0
Appreciate your vegetarian take, I’ll probably only use Nimble 5e to run DnD now. Though I’ve greatly enjoyed Shadowdark, Mothership and even Cyberpunk RED.
Play more games folks, they’ll teach you plenty about this wonderful hobby!
Ooooh I know it’s tiring cuz I’m actually interested to hear your take on 5E and power creep. I didn’t think it was a thing until I had to go through the feats and magic items of the game. I just think their design philosophy changed and their older stuff needed a facelift or a bit of homebrew. Look at the amount of feats vs “half feats” its insane how much power increases with a +1 to a stat
Squier Bullet? Finally a rating system I can understand.
ranger review was beautifully put.
Great review! Thanks for the unbiased thoughts.
a reason a lot of people have complaints about the crafting system is that, when you put them in the context of chronologically short adventures like, strahd, waterdeep, etc, which are the majority of what WotC has published over time, they are functionally unusable, i can make 4 common healing potions over the incredibly short time some of the campaigns take, and that feels pointless and removes the interest in actually playing a character that is crafting focused, whether i want minecraft or skyrim crafting, or just to play a quirky tinkerer, i cant leverage features of the game via 2014 crafting rules. a strahd campaign i played was a total of like 6 in world days.
Appreciate you keeping us updated so we don’t have to research
I just wanna learn how to play Vagabond.
There's a freebie Quickstart on my shop!
I really value your thoughts and insights on the 2024 PHB, it helps put quite a few things in perspective! That said, my day job is a pig farmer... 😂😂😂
Thanks for the review, I appreciate the insight, but I'm personally concerned with one specific element of the book I couldn't find any details about online, and that is what the new stats for the some of the weapons are. It seems that they've made changes to the way that two weapon fighting works, in making it built onto the "light" weapon property itself now, and so, I wanted to ask if they've made any changes to weapons to give more weapons to light property to counterbalance this fact. Since beforehand, while there was not many weapons with the light property, taking the dual wielder feat had let you expand all the way into any 2 non-two handed weapons, but now you still need at least one light weapon, which may go against the build or the character aesthetic you wish to go for.
This was a great review, dude. BTW when is the backer kit launch of Vagabond? I think your system is super underrated and overlooked (based on the playtest). I can't wait to see the full version.
so it's a 75 USD errata?
MSRP is $49.99, but yeah
Yo, Taron, I gotta disagree with you on the Grappling/Shoving. I agree that it's cleaner in the sense that it's not a "special melee attack that you can only do if you have a hand free" anymore. But in all other respects, it's far, far worse. Grappling wasn't really that much of a big issue before, since it doesn't provide insane mechanical benefits, but was reliable through things like expertise and advantage on the checks, and the only time it could maybe possibly be seen as strong is in like the 1 combo that requires at least 2 characters to pull off.
Now, grappling/shoving is worse in all respects - it's not more powerful mechanically, it's worse by far mathematically, and there's less options to augment the rolls. Literally the only things you can do is to somehow give disadvantage on the enemy save or subtract from their save in some way (like Bane or the Bard's inspiration-feature, I forgot the name). Monsters have always had way, way better saving throws than checks, with a few exceptions, and there's literally no way to increase the DC that we've seen so far other than to increase your Strength score. And Strength is usually one of the monsters' best saving throws behind Constition. And if they somehow have a bad STR save, there's a chance they'll be able to make up with a good Dex save.
Grappling/shoving right now, in terms of usefulness, is objectively worse in every possible way. The only good thing is that you can understand easier how it works. And I don't think the new feats make up for it in any way. They make grappling/shoving go from extremely shitty to only very shitty.
Oh, and on top of that, with the new weapon masteries, there's almost no reason to think about shoving, for example, since anything you can do with a shove, you can do infinitely better with a weapon with said properties. Shoving only shoves 5 feet and requires a save which will most likely fail, whilst a weapon with the Push mastery autoshoves 10 feet away. Topple still requires a save, similar to wanting to shove someone on the ground, but you can do damage AND do it with every attack, whilst shoving with an unarmed strike still requires a save, but you can only do it once per turn if you wanna do damage with it, and that's only if you take a feat. Otherwise you're wasting your whole attack to maybe possibly but more likely not shove someone to the ground.
So, yeah, brawling, as in being unarmed is, in my opinion, worse off than it was before.
I would object on one ground. Grappling was in a weird place where it was as you said save for using it to drag people through spike growth or to drag an enemy into a spirit guardians. That's where grappling goes from OK to potentially buck wild (along with pushes/pulls).
God you are so right, its refreshing to see someone who actually know what they are on about, I've been trying to explain to people how much worse grappling is now with it being save based but people cant seem to think for themselves even when you compare an expertise athletics av 29 check to beat to a measly 18dc . Monsters get dex or str save prof far more often than ath or acro prof and now with legendary resistances blocking grapples and legendary reaction teleports, end game grappling sucks ass. Heck it wasnt even like monks sucked at grappling all they needed was athletics expertise and they could reliably grapple on their first attempt with av 80% success rate rather than wasting 4 attack attempts with 40% success rate like they will now.
Listening now . . .
Great video, appreciate your insight. Thanks!
Exploration gives me a plate of upsetti spaghetti, too 🍝
Love your classifications and your hearing your thoughts. I am not a 5e player, and wish its fans no ill will. My ongoing hope is that folks ALSO learn to love other systems too. So glad you have.🎉
I write out my own character sheets, since I dont have a printer or have a computer. Im glad the actually showed how to fill in the character sheet, since 2014 seemed a bit complicated( when simply reading, when beginner)
Them not have a visual chacater sheet for 2024 is silly .
The more I read and think about the new rules the more I notice that this update is kinda slapstick and poorly done form a rules standpoint. They added a ton of new things for each player to keep track of, and there is massive powercreep across the entire play set, and a TON of unclear text. I mean - they could have easily playtested these things better and fixed them.
Yeah miss me on this new addition. Vagabond on the other hand, SLAPS. I picked it up last night and my friends and I are writing up a weird west game with it. I homebrewed up a Bison beastfolk called a Tatankan, which has "Big Beast" your horns count as a brawling weapon (d6) and "End of the Trail" (yes I'm referencing the WWF wrestler. Lol) which lets you shove an additional 5ft if you spent at least half of your movement speed first. Feel free to steal it. :) I definitely want to see more Vagabond content going forward.
Oh my GOD I want to see this so bad!!!
@@Indestructoboy once I draft up a lil' setting doc, I can send it to you! :)
Absolutely! Are you in the Discord for it?
@@Indestructoboy oh shit, no but I'd love to hop in! Is it under your channel name or what's good?
For me, my biggest issue I have is character creation. RAW players are incredibly limited on build diversity with premade backgrounds and lackluster origin feats, and since most campaigns end around 10 you're only getting two feats to try to differentiate from the general features of class/subclass. It's really mad me look forward to PFPC2 because it looks like theres much more build diversity with how they do feats.
I love that you reference Free League stuff as superior, I love those games so much!
29:21 Important to note: shields are still considered armor, not weapons, and the rules for making attacks specify that you can equip or unequip a single weapon. Shields still require an action to equip or unequip as always.
Frankly, I'm also a little skeptical that topple is as problematic as it's made out to be here. First, there's no reason to continue making topple attempts against enemies once you've successfully made them prone, so in order to create the scenario you're describing, you need to hit four times and have the enemy pass their save three times. While technically possible, it's statistically very unlikely given that both your hit chance and weapon mastery save DCs are based on the same ability score, so the more likely you are to hit, the less likely they are to pass the save. Finally, making enemies prone is a difficult tactic to pull off in a party of mixed classes and fighting styles, since it will impose disadvantage on ranged attacks.
I first I thought this said, "Beer Free Review" and I was like, "Why would he do that to himself?"
That page reference excuse is like saying "we cant have links between the pages or sections on our website or to other websites because {insert what they said about page references}" (10:15)
Pretty sure spell scrolls won’t be activated via the Magic Action, but by whatever action the specific spell on the scroll specifies. thus Thief Rogue can’t use one as a BA.
Thanks for this beef-free review.
Sadly, even though we're now in an era where 5e variants are becoming more prolific, D&D 5e is just way too prevalent throughout the 5e landscape (let alone the TTRPG landscape).
Heck, I even caved and bought my first-ever 5e alternative product, Anime 5e, because it’s the closest compromise that I can think of: being able to bring massive customization to this generation's most popular TTRPG engine. Surprisingly, the stat blocks are a lot cleaner, too, because all of the abilities come from the same source, which massively reduces text bloat.
Pretty dam good intro dialogue about the polemics that has been going on
loved your preamble. great job and good opinions we couldn't get from the deliberately bland and pollyannaish shills who walk their viewers off cliffs to keep on hasbro's good side...
Eh - looks about the same as 5e. Probably not a buy for me unless the rest of my group wants to use it.
Top tip: use the free rules. Homebrew what you like.
Add in all the free unearthed arcana articles and other spinoff games and build your own edition to suit your table and style!
Top Tip: Don't play anything that WotC publishes.
The art doesn't work for me at all. Every character looks like they spend hours on hair and makeup every day. Like they're in a performance at the Grammys. It's all so safe, clean, sleek and sanitized. It feels almost anti-adventure to me. Now, this is not a dig at the artists. Technically the work is stunning. It's just the tone and motifs I don't love.
Couldn't have put it better myself, exactly this
Yeah I miss the gritty wayne reynolds art. This art Is like current magic the gathering art too, boring and soulless corporate slop with no style or substance.
To me the BIGGEST half baked design is the Spell Casting Sheet. Sad because the designers the Character Sheet in many ways.
The PHB itself tells you to always open the PHB spell section when you want to cast a spell. How about making giving the Spell Sheet additional optional pages. They actually designed a clean and neat structure to track the important factors of Spells. (Attack Roll/Saving Throw, Casting Time, Range, checkboxes for Concentration, Ritual, Material Components, but no Somatic or Verbal for some reason?)
BUT because the lines are so long there is only one columm without Preperation tracking, that doesn't fit that many Spells. So instead of making more pages, you are supposed to erase and rewrite you Spellcasting Sheet every Long Rest (except Bard, Sorcerer., Warlock EK and AT obviously). So you need to first look at the Class Section to see your Spelllist then flip back and forth to the Spell Section, to add insult to injury, without Cross Referencing!
Isn't that a horrible experience? Making Long Rests suck so much game time, especially those precious beginners. My guess is beginners will just never change their Spells.
1 step forward 2 steps back. I am convinced no one playtested the new Sheet on paper.
Can I get cheese with this review?
Overall, I like the book and what it does for a lot of underpowered subclasses (2024 ranger doesn't exist). With that being said, I will still only be allowing my homebrew rules for Paladin at my table. Divine Smite is capped at once per turn, scales like a cantrip based on levels, and does not require a spell spot. I think taking away the paladins bonus action is, arguably, the worst thing they could have done to balance Divine Smite, especially when the class is intended to be a more supportive front liner based on the spells available to it. I still think it has some of the best flavor in the game though. I, also, think the weapon swapping shenanigan's will be addressed as 1 weapon swap per turn by most DMs, myself included. I think MOST of what this book brings to the table is, overall, a very positive upgrade to 5e, but needed more time in playtest and development and WoTC needed to take player feedback more seriously. Great video, very well spoken, and please never stop lobbying (is that the right word?) WoTC for more accessibility in their books, like page references. God that's annoying. God bless.
I think that there is a better than even chance we will see a lot of stuff like group checks probably got moved to the DMG. Contested rolls are probably more likely to be gone all together, but may be there too as an optional rule or something. I'm also guessing there will be more about passive checks there since passive perception is kind of mentioned only in passing in the PHB from what I've heard.
If they have fully got rid of group checks entirely that kills the book for me (although I wasn’t interested to start with).
Group checks are a brilliant mechanic imo.
So my thoughts are this is a really big tashas cauldron of everything. I think many things got shunted to the DMG, but with the gap in roll out it leaves us in a bad place. I like the changes for weapon masteries and most class changes. I do not mind the power creep as long as it doesn't leave you in a position that you don't play any of the previous material. I think there are many elements like the spells that they could have fixed but didn't have time and space for. I love the artwork, but it's cost to the number of pages, and undoubtedly being prioritized over rules improvements makes me wish there were less of it. I think this helps the game substantially in general, but also just left many things untouched when it should have fixed them. I have purchased this for my players and am generally happy but also wanted more. It feels like they stopped making improvements at 70% complete. Just my thoughts.
The real D&D is in books with other titles on the cover anyway. WotC/Hasbro are just the only ones allowed to use the brand. Because they gave someone money for that. FREE D&D!
I'm guessing contested & group checks will be presented as optional variants in the dmg.
Hey man, if you spent hours untangling Christmas lights without testing them while they were tangled first, that's on you.
Also on Polearm Master Fighter with Topple that is likely the only reason I would play a fighter! Especially with Tactical Master adding Push, Slow and Sap at level 9 so you do not even need to change weapons.
Firstly, I agree that the change to making it an unarmed strike and using saving throws is a much cleaner mechanic. That said, I have a gripe that monks are now grappling the best. Barbarians (who imo should be the best at grabbing people) get a nerf due to rage not helping now, but monks get more opportunities for grapple, more speed, and options to use dex. Thematically I like monks shove/tripping, but grabbing someone and moving them 40+ft in a few seconds, on a character with no strength? Boo. To be clear, aside from this interaction, I really like what they did with monk which needed a lot of love (though I agree a bigger redesign to avoid focus points would have been better).
My thematic opinions aside, I'm a little confused on your feeling about movement/shove/grapple. You mention an issue with shove causing potential peasant teleport interactions in the movement section due to choosing to fail saving throws. Agree. As you say, this is unlikely to see play but is poor design.
But then you don't mention the grappling rules causing much more likely problematic interactions (some of which existed before but it's worse now); a PC dragging a woodchipper cleric around the battlefield, or enemies through spike growth etc. I know this is an issue with spells, but lots of such spells exist. Even without that there are some insane grapple moves with the new feat and especially monk. Isn't that going to cause far more issues at the table?
I'm just getting a sense that this new edition is going to be more work than it's worth. I'm not hearing anything compelling to play it but their sounds to be enough changes that is going to be a pain in the butt to accommodate. I think WotC really screwed up and they should have included a lot of the content creators in the process of refining these rules but they just slammed and jammed them through and didn't get enough feedback from the community first. I wouldn't be surprised if this edition becomes one of those oopsy rough draft got it out too quickly don't look at it anymore once we get the polished version out things.
Druid *is* a nature cleric, that *is* its class identity.
I have to say that imo the sticker system retracted from the seriousness of the review, but that is solely a personal preference that has nothing to do with the sustance of the critique.
Otherwise as a dnd 5.24 Stan and arguably fan-boy i think this review was insightful and thorough, and fairly anti-Wotc/hasbro corp bias free. You objectively critiqued the system for what it is, and gave fantastic insight into why and what would have worked better.
10/10 review.
Weapon mastery: Couldn't agree more. Mastery is bloaty, Topple is a nightmare... and weapon swapping makes the whole thing a mess. In my game i won't be using mastery mostly due to what my players want (my most martial PCs in the game are players who want less rules, not more).
I do think the shield swap thing is a little overblown. It seems to me that shields are still armor, not weapons. As such you need to use your object interaction to swap them, which means you can either start OR end your turn with a shield, but not both. This is far less abusable if I cam correct (I haven't got the book and have had trouble clarifying this). But tbh, I kind of wish they'd just made don/doffing a shield a BA to avoid all of this mess and keep some cost to adding +2AC; that's what I'll be doing.
I don't mind smite being limited to 1/turn - multi-smite nova turns were bad in every way - bad because they were mostly an inefficient use of spell slots, bad because when they were good they were one shotting enemies that should have been engaging tough encounters for the whole party so they killed the funn, bad because chasing the nova caused a lot of paladin players to not engage with their spell list.
However, I HATE that smites use a bonus action. This severely curtails the paladin's ability to engage with other bonus action offensive options, which needlessly restricts combat style options, penalizes the use of many paladin spells (something also prevented by smite being a spell to begin with, so I don't like that either), and worst of all it prevents the use of off turn smites, which means no smiting on opportunity attacks which was a key tool in the kit of any paladin wanting to play the role of party tank.
Rather than making divine smite work more like the previously bad and still mostly not very good smite spells, I would have rather wizards made smite more of its own feature - maybe with uses recharging on a short rest which is a resource paladins are otherwise lacking in - with the option to burn spell slots when you use it for added damage or added effects as you level, replacing the smite spells entirely.
Between the changes to smite and the decision to pass over the thematically and mechanically compelling conquest paladin for the imo comparatively boring oath of glory and I think I'll be taking a break from what was my favorite class in 5e. nbd, illusionist wizard & shadow monk are looking kind of cool, there are other options.
How does equiping a shield works in 2024? it does not require an action anymore??
@@dmgrisix1835 the gist of it is that it can be done as a part of an attack.
As a forever DM I get the vibe that my players are going to like it initially and then realize the flaws later, as the impression they're getting is that everything is a buff. I don't think they've seen the nerfs yet, or that everyone getting subclasses at level 3 now means they no longer start with one or get it earlier in some classes. From my perspective it just looks like it's making the game harder to run and solving problems that were already solved by the community a good decade ago. The difficult thing is that at my main table I have one player that doesn't care and quote "I just hope they have more weapons", one that likes some stuff from the new but doesn't mind if I run the old, and one that whales every single thing they ever touch (and then never plays them) that's fully bought in to the 2024 and 3D VTT hype.
This last player is the one I'm most concerned about because they are already trying to force me (and the rest of the table) to [literally] buy-in to 2024 and I'm just not sold on it yet or see it as much of an improvement for ROLE PLAYING in role playing game. I don't give a shit about balance and no one can interpret the dumb ass arcane flimsy rules and just does what they want anyway. I can't make this up, but the person literally got excited about rule changes that we had already homebrewed into the game (namely, health potions as a bonus action). As a DM I'm looking at this and thinking - so I need to spend $100 on a, at best mostly unchanged, and at worse... WORSE, version of the game we're already playing? If anything it seems crunchier than what we're already doing, not easier and more streamlined like they're spinning it as.
I don't want to remove anyone from my table over this, but if 2024 gets pushed too hard and other players don't like it then I might have to. They share all their stuff on D&D Beyond with me but I don't care. It doesn't make my games any better and I own half of it on Roll20 myself anyway and they always act like they're doing me some big favor by reminding me that I can read it there if I want. I get why my players use it, but as a DM I barely use Beyond and if anything it feels like the entire website is just a justification as to why we can't have nice official clean PDFs of the things I've already purchased and own instead of looking for terrible scans to read the stupid book on a computer screen for a game that markets itself as a "NOW YOU CAN PLAY ANYWHERE, NOT JUST THE TABLE" game.
IDK, even without all the WoTC controversies and them turning fully corporate and bullying smaller fish it just seems like a rushed money grab. Even if it isn't. Even if the game maybe did "need" an update. I didn't see a whole lot of people that actually wanted this before. I think people just wanted better 5e books, not a total overhaul of the game they were already playing and enjoying.
Edit: Also, how did none of the things people actually cared about get fixed. I have yet to see solid evidence that crafting, exploration, survival, economy, adventuring, ROLE PLAYING is getting any better. Maybe I'm wrong, and I'd truly love to be, but it just feels like more of the same with some tweaks and dial turning.
Edit: They don't want you to actually play the game anyway, just buy it. They don't want us to have PDFs because they want us to not pirate them (which forces people to pirate them) and instead buy the physical books to justify being a book company and owning a printing press, but the physical books fall apart the first time you open them (our old PHB is in shambles and we had to glue it back in to the spine) and we can't have full digital books on anything outside of Beyond which you have to click through instead of scroll and it fucks up my TTS (text-to-speech) that I use to help me read and stay focused and guess what, the compendiums are all like that and Foundry is so worried about you stealing their shit or getting sued that they don't even have official TTS and it's not in web so you can't use it there and have to hope the outdated GitHub library still functions and the voice isn't too whacky to be useable. But guess what the thing that would really break the game is if they sold PDFs. That's the thing that would make this whole fucking ship sink is if we had official fucking PDFs like every other fucking game on the fucking planet has. /rant
Edit: It has just occurred to me while rereading this that for my own sanity and mental stability I might need to consider other TTRPGs lol
Honestly I mostly want this book for the cool new art
One thing that felt weird while looking at the book was how all the full page art for the classes look like AI art they look artificial
The book doesn't have a character sheet in it????? What the heck????
Not a blank one. There's a labeled one for a guide in Chapter 2.
@@Indestructoboy That's still ridiculous.
I feel like with they kept Eldritch Blast a spell because they make Divine Smite a spell even though i think people would like them both as a class feature (And also Hunters Mark for Ranger)
I usually eat my beef after I enjoy the sides. Great stuff.
Play whatever edition of D&D you want. New doesn’t equate to better. And why change; I hate change. AD&D for me.
Haven't read the book but I think the intent is that a shield is armor and not a weapon? and so it follows the don/doff armor rules and not the weapon attack swap rules, meaning it takes an action to don/doff a shield and can't do attack and switch to shield. other than monk and the unarmed strike/grapple/shoves, I think I'll be sticking to 2014 and finding new games to play
A very big wall and everyone at WotC had very full bladders.
honestly my favorite one of your videos. It was nice to get to see you without the hostility. I usually only get recommended your "why watc is evil and dnd sucks stuff" and as a person who likes dnd it's always rubbed me the wrong way.
You should watch some of my non-D&D content then!
Isn't the mounting thing only for controlled vs uncontrolled mounts?
Doesn't it say something along the lines of sentient creatures isn't a controlled mount?
Yeah so this is where the rules murkiness around this is going to get pushed my munchkins. The wording implies that it's the mount itself that chooses whether or not it acts independently from the rider.
I suppose so. As a DM I would just common sense rule this, but then you run into the whole, the rules should be the bad guy, not the DM. Also to be fair, my players wouldn't even try this lol.
You should've been harsher on the Artwork imo
I’d love to see the 3rd party creators you collaborate with to do their own D&D 24 edition. I get that Vagabond is partially about that, but I’d like to see something that plays nice in the 5e ecosystem.
Could I do that right now by mixing together existing 3rd party material? Sure, but I’d like to see you guys get a $1M Kickstarter of your own.