It's crazy to me that just about every "negative" change is either a much needed simplification of weird mechanics (winged boots/cloak of invisibility timer) or is a move that prevent exploits/nova damage. As a Dm, I'm much more likely to dish out certain magic items now that they're fixed.
Exactly, a power gamer being negative about these changes doesn't consider that their DM would be much more hesitant to give them said items before the "nerfs." D&D is not a video game.
"Fixed" You're already the DM dude, if you aren't interested in arguing just set clear boundaries and let people know if they wanna get creative they should clear it first otherwise they'll likely get disappointed when they blindside you with some fuckery you weren't expecting. It took years for myself and my friends to figure out this issue, I'm not an asshole, I'm just the kind of person who likes finding creative solutions, which caught my DM off guard... stressing him. So now I just try and check before, and if he says no I might get disappointed but I understand.
Wand of Magic Missile nerf brings it back into line with the DMGs rating for custom magic items. Having access to a 6th level spell is not 'Uncommon', but a 'Rare'. 'Uncommon' caps at 3rd level spells, which is 3 charges
Yeah it also makes sense to give this a nerf with the way the new Thief subclass works. Helps prevent unsuspecting dm’s from giving their party a couple of wands and suddenly having their rogue be capable of doing 16d4 + 16 unavoidable force damage in a single turn once per day. 48 average damage on something completely unavoidable is going to for trivialize the hell out of a lot of things you would throw at them
No, it doesn't... it isn't a 6th level spell, it is an item that can either be used multiple times or be used once for a single big use... it is 1 level per charge, that means it is not 6th level, it is not even 3rd level, it is 1st level 6 times or 1st level plus 1/3 of first level 1-5 extra times in the same round... for Magic Missiles to be equivalent to 6th level, it would need to be +3 Darts per charge, so 3/6/9 for 1-3 charges, or 12/15/18 for the no longer available 4-6 charges... remember, 1 charge is 6-15 damage (average 9), 2 charges is 8-20 damage (average 12), 3 charges is only 10-25 damage (average 15) ... compare that to Fireball (you know, the spell most people call the best 3rd level spell in the game), 8-48 damage (average 28). The only reason to cast magic missile at 3rd level vs fireball is Rogues and Monks have evasion and will take no damage on a successful save while Magic Missile always hits (except that is actually a lie, as most Force Spells or even just a Shield Spell block Magic Missile, so the Arcane Trickster Rogue is both immune to Magic Missile and can evade for no Fireball damage on a successful save... but at least can be dealt 1/4 damage on a failed save).
19:38 I know the reason, because it's bothered me for a while... Ring of Warmth is uncommon, and the Ring of Resistance (Cold) is rare. So it made no sense for the ring of warmth to do everything a more rare item could do, plus extra flavor text. So, this change was necessary for balance and to avoid redundancy.
Or they could have just made it rare. Heck standardize the 2d8 to -10 damage. 10 less is still worse than resistance after level 5 or so but it is nice to just take 0 against low end spells/effects.
The change works as they intended it - IF you change the F to C. Why they are stubbornly sticking to archaic non-metric measurements is beyond me at this point. It's an obvious typo as "below freezing" is the clear intent and always has been for the ring since its introduction. Some intern or writer I am positive thought that "0 F" meant "below freezing". Then it changes to basically "ignore all non-magical cold sources", plus a die roll to reduce magical cold effects. More useful outdoors but also slightly less useful than a resistance item.
It also makes more sense. A Ring of Warmth giving cold damage resistance just seems weird. Being warm should help a lot if you are getting hit with a small amount of cold damage, but it should be useless if you are getting blasted by a deadly cone of cold.
@@dwil0311 Correct. WOTC wants to make all damage the same, but it is not. Magical elemental damage is fundamentally different than normal environmental effects, because you have to save against it. ( it's magic - DUH ) :)
@silvle01 how tough is it to equip an enemy with Brooch of Shielding? Seems super easy to me... but if can't handle that, maybe sapphire ring of resistance... or staff of defense... or the Shield Spell on a scroll or a ring of spell storing or a Shield of Arrow-Catching... just a few counters...
@@01pantagruel did you spend gold and/or time to get those wands of Magic Missile? All these bad changes are BAD for the game, as they punish players, as a DM can choose to have the Archmage ignore all of them, while the players are constrained by the rules. Nerfing is nearly always a bad idea, there is no need for it, as the DM can do anything they want, have reality warp, so Nerfs only ever hurt PCs.
@@TxSonofLibertyNerfs are just as important as buffs, but they sting twice as hard. That's what makes it tricky to balance.There are two cases where alternatives wouldn't help. First, no changes. One way to hand out items is for the DM to give it to an enemy for the party to loot. Imagine if the party's 3rd level cleric got nuked by a goblin using the wand of magic missile. Most characters have less than 28 HP at that time. The other way would be to reduce the number of charges down to 4. Now you get literally half the use out of it, as most players don't want to burn that last charge. That's no fun at all!
Ring of Warmth I'm fine with not being resistance because that's what the ring or resistance is supposed to be. Now it's a cool and unique item that stacks, which is neat.
Also, Ring of Warmth at lower levels is practically either cold resistance or immunity, depending on the roll. With cold resistance you will always take damage, but not necessarily so with the Ring of Warmth. This can potentially prevent concentration saving throws via damage; really helpful if you are playing a class that regularly uses concentration spells (druid, ranger, cleric). Cold resistance would never prevent this, as you always will take some cold damage with it. Granted, at higher levels the higher damage outputs of enemies make the Ring of Warmth less useful than straight cold resistance, but it is an uncommon magic item after all, and you should probably be switching it out anyways at that point.
Totally agree. Though, I do feel like 2d8 is a little too swingy. Maybe 3d6 would be the better middle ground, basically still mirroring the expected damage of a 1st level spell but more stable?
2:35 Ted defines a *necessary restriction,* but reaches the opposite conclusion 😅 _"Everybody I know always just fire all 6 charges in a go (...) that just seems like an _*_unnecessary restriction_*_ (...) it always made sense to just go for broke."_ The change means that a DM doesn't have to think twice about handing out this _uncommon wand_ to a *Thief* as soon as level 3. Dealing 5d4+5 (17.5) *_twice_* instead of 8d4+8 (28) *_once_* doesn't sound half bad, especially not as a Bonus Action.
Nope, the change to Magic Missile Want just makes the thief even better at using magic items than spellcasters... it's a buff to an already powerful subclass. Why? Because casting two third level magic missiles is stronger than casting one sixth level magic missile. Spellcasters could make up some of the difference by upcasting MM to 6th level with the wand, but now they are limited to only casting it once at 3rd level.
I'd say the problem with Wand of magic missile is giving anyone an easy way to break enemy concentration unless you give shield to every enemy caster AND save their reactions.
@@Adurnis Helm Horror looks at you funny and kills you, as the Magic Missiles did 0 damage. The Wizard with a Brooch of Shielding laughs at your 0 damage as well, since it is a useless spell, stopped by numerous items, creatures, abilities, and spells. There never was 17.5, there was always 0, because it is a 0 damage spell that can't even crit, and is tiny weak darts nothingness. Oh, no, a Level 13+ Thief might be able to do jack and squat, wasting their turn, but now they waste their turn even more.
Something really I like about the changes to the Horn of Valhalla is that with only a few berserkers you can have it be the same warriors every time and give them personalities, even just a really brief sketch of one. Its a horn of summoning these two specific guys who might be curious about who has the horn now, complain about how long it's been since you called them, try to convince you that axes are better than swords, etc. God that would be so fun.
Who says it wasn't already? My 2014 party calls them the Cleveland Gang, they have them as a once a week save their hides against fights when they got in over there heads, but the 2024 versions are useless, as do next to nothing.
@@TxSonofLiberty Unless the berserker statblocks got beefed up, at least. ...And Iron is still a basketball team's worth. Silver could be a doubles tennis team. Give them the angry backhand swing.
On winged boots, the 2014 versions was effectively unlimited flying other than during travel. Rarely did you actually need to track the minutes you used it because it would rarely be 4 hours. This way is better in that it's actually a choice to use it.
I mean, yeah, but so did some races. This just opens the options. My barbarian bought a pair from a magic item shop, cost most of my gold. It's just about how you balance the cost. Also, they haven't broken the game once yet, I wanted them for story reasons
@@ardet7383 Officially they didn't bounce any costs, they went the easy way with them and basically made every magic item have a generic cost equal to their rarity. Which I think means they need to make some changes. Though I think they are hit or miss. Some items seem less powerful, and some items seem way too powerful now.
Net, cancelled and you get hurt... Earthbind, wasted your use and you get hurt... Walloping Arrow, you fall and nearly die... 2014 was useful, 2024 is a joke.
It seems like every negative change here was just, reasonable Nerfs. I feel like the Winged Boots were a bit overtuned for an Uncommon Item. It's basically unlimited flight. The Ring of Warmth was just a Better Ring if Cold Resistance at a lower Rarity, they could have either buffed it (2d8 Reduction and Resistance, but it's a Higher Rarity) or keep it at the same rarity with a lesser effect, they went with the later. The other nerfs are annoying sure, but I'd still want those items.
Winged boots were not a bit overturned. They were massively overturned. They were better than rare and very items that grant flight. In terms of usefulness they were very rare, knocking on the door of legendary.
Indeed, *Ring of Warmth* is as good as they could make it for an *Uncommon* item _(albeit, they seem to have mixed up Celsius and Fahrenheit)._ For *backwards compatibility* with the published 5e adventures, WotC want to preserve the *rarity* of magic items, *CR* of monsters, and *level* of spells.
The winged boots change is great as well. Now you can 'cast' fly as an action which last for an hour. The old boots gave perma flight which would make most DM's not want to pass it out to players.
@@Direloc I wouldn't just because it punishes barbarians, who are the ones to most likely need boots of flying due to their very limited range. Being so heavily locked to STR weapons leaves you feeling like a goose when a dragon shows up.
@@The_Crimson_WitchThat’s entirely fair! I like to encourage casters to ‘buff’ barbarians and fighters and such with flight. It conveys a sense of teamwork, but every table is different and sometimes you just don’t have the group makeup.
I think most of the "bad" changes that you talked about were actually necessary for improving magic item balance, making them easier to use, etc. I do think 2d6 damage with no attunement is a bit too good for the Vicious Weapon though.
Sword of wounding is an absolute buff. You would need to stack 5 wounds from the old version to surpass the amount of damage you can do with the new one, and that rarely happens Winged boots sucked in comparison to a broom of fly which gave you a flaying speed that was always on and was the same rarity. Plus, you could wear another pair of Magic boots. Now the gap between the two is even greater
I mean the first mistake was to hand out a broom of flying. Comparison of rarity never made much sense in DnD 5e, compare for example Winged boots (Uncommon) to Wings of Flying (Rare)
Well new Ring of Warmth is a value add for anyone that already has cold resistance. I think getting resistance AND 2d8 reduction after is probably too powerful for an uncommon magic item. Especially in the tier you have uncommon magic items, that's close to immunity to cold damage.
The issue is that some idiot typed in F instead of C. Change the temperature to metric in the description and it solves everything. Now it's a less powerful version of a ring of resistance, with the added benefit of environmental cold being basically ignored.
@@TylerDuRapau It's not. Damage is being changed such that all modifiers happen off/to the base damage and then elemental effects or resistances ( as well as vulnerabilities ) happen as the very last step in the calculation. This means that if you have a 3d6 cold spell in your face, you take 2D6 ( avg 7 ) off of the total and then apply resistances. It gets even worse with a larger 10D6 effect, where if it's all you have, you're taking 35 avg damage minus 7. 22 total. Vs resistance which drops you to 18, on average. If you roll poorly versus a slightly worse damage roll - say, 42 damage and you roll a 5 - then it's 37 you take to the face versus 21.
Honestly, these changes makes it easier to fine tune or complete homebrew items with the rarity now. It gives what the guid in the dmg should be. A guide for a better experience for all.
I see the nerf to the Wand of Magic Missile as saying no to a shotgun mage build. Using all or all but 1 charges and pulling out a different wand each round. No problems with it.
Especially with the new crafting rules. You could have a dozen wands of magic missile. You probably would even upcast to lvl 7 as you can always make more.
Perhaps a good thing that we arent letting a low level thief rogue to pick up two of them and be able to lay down 16d4+16 guaranteed force damage in a single turn
I have a PC who used their Horn of Valhalla against a boss, who then used an AoE that summoned gibbering mouthers for each failed save. Went from having a 17 numbers advantagse to a nightmare very quickly.
The magic missile nerf isn't a big deal to me. It's always been more economical to use a single charge at a time. The Evoker Wizard option doesn't work anymore because MM now requires a separate damage roll for each beam anyways.
@@alexirmendoza3600 Rolling damage only once for multiple targets now only applies to spells with a saving throw. Magic missile doesn't have a saving throw so it doesn't apply anymore. So each missile needs a separate roll and the bonus would only apply to a single roll. Here's the rule from the PHB: Saving Throws and Damage Damage dealt via saving throws uses these rules. Damage against Multiple Targets When you create a damaging effect that forces two or more targets to make saving throws against it at the same time, roll the damage once for all the targets. For example, when a wizard casts Fireball, the spell’s damage is rolled once for all creatures caught in the blast.
More economical, yes, but better for Action Economy, no. Am I better off casting a 1st level spell that deals 10.5-ish damage, or attacking with my cantrip that does 16.5 damage?
Hot take: There was no rebalancing, they were easy to run before, because you gave players cool toys and the dice screwed them just fine, you never needed to do any of this BS, because as a DM, you can decide the baddies have better versions, have the enemies equipped to compete, and it was NEVER a problem, unless you are a Horrible DM who cares more about killing players than making the game fun for everyone at the table, not just for your own tiny shallow cruel ego.
Wand of Magic Missile is also nerfed because Magic Missile itself is nerfed. The rule on simultaneous damage now specifies saving throw effects meaning Magic missile is no longer treated as one damage roll and instead is a different damage roll per dart which means bonuses to the damage don’t stack anymore.
I am 100% on board with the "bad" magic item changes. These items were mostly problematic to add to your game for various reasons and I'm very glad they've dialed in the balance.
What balance? Nothing was balanced. This unbalanced the game. Now the players are crippled, and the NPCs have access to the special stuff that ignores all this (because there is no such thing as balance... You give cool stuff to Players to use, or you give them garbage, the DM has access to the Simulacrum spell that makes a half dozen copies at once, while players have to build to even make one... DM can have an NPC have a +10 Sword of Endless Wounds, while Players can have a +1 Sword of +1 ness... stop thinking in the "We need to Nerf or Weaken Player Options", you never do. The Dice alone will punish players, if they are meant to lose, you don't have to even try, there is never a reason to make make magic items weaker or worse.
@@TxSonofLiberty they weakened notoriously overpowered items a tiny bit, and improved notoriously bad magic items. It is absolutely necessary to balance when you add crafting rules and set prices for each rarity of magic item. If you don’t like the changes don’t use them, but from what I can tell the majority of people welcome most of the changes.
re: Wands. Nice! I've had to house rule for years that wands can only be used to cast a spell as high a level as the user has access to; i.e., your 4th level Bard can only use a wand to cast a spell up to 2nd level, since that's the highest spell level they can cast (minimum level 1). This official change works just about as well.
I probably like your version more, but agree, it is an uncommon magic item allowing the casting of a 6th lvl. spell which for early levels (where you are expected to give out this item) is probably a little too much
@@Razdasoldier ANY spell level. So, yes, no magic power, no using it - seems fair. But almost every class has access to magic spells/levels at some point. I like this as it's going to make it less useful to a fighter and yet decently usable to alternate magic classes that don't have access to the spell. The original D&D 40+ years ago was also designed with this idea as well - that using a magic item if you knew nothing about magic (at all) was simply not possible or had significant penalties (low activation percent) to attempt to use.
I think the periapt of wound closure is overall a nerf, as by not stabilising you automatically, it means any death saving throws fails caused by damage don't automatically reset. It will make a person dying in the middle of a fight a lot easier to be finished off by an enemy
"Unharmed by temperatures as low as -50" seems to imply unharmed by any temperature above that, even extremely hot ones, which has to be an unintentional consequence... That one sounds like a classic of WotC publishing something without taking a really close look at it
I'm almost positive that reductions are applied after resistances, so the ring of warmth, when you have resistance, means Cold damage is reduced by half, and then the ring of warmth reduces that by a further 2d8. Which is massive. So now you have a scenario where you could save against a Cone of Cold (36 damage average reduced to 18), resist cold damage (18 reduced to 9), and then reduce 9 damage by 2d8. Edit: per the rules (p28 Order of Application in 2024 and p 197 Damage Resistance and vulnerabilities in 2014) its the opposite. Cold damage would be reduced by 2d8, and then resistance would cut it in half.
@@Ahglock 2024 PHB p28 Order of Application (2014 PHB p.197 Damage Resistance and Vulnerabilities). I was wrong its the other way around. "bonuses, penalties, or multipliers are applied first, then resistance, than vulnerability. For example If a creature is resistant to all damage, vulnerable to fire, and in a magical aura that reduces damage by 5. If it takes 28 fire damage, the damage is first reduced by 5 (23), then halved for the creature's resistance (11), and then doubled for it's vulnerability (22)"
I feel like the Ioun Stone of Greater Absorption should recharge in some way. Even if it was something like it regains 1d20 levels to absorb per year or something really limited and slow like that, at least it wouldn't be burnt out garbage.
14 good changes and 7 bad? That’s what we call in math a net positive babyy! And even then the Wand, boots and cloak don’t even seem that bad. And the Staff is understandable. Those are like, neutral.
I think I would make a few homebrew changes for the winged boots and cloak of invisibility in my campaigns. I would change it to 15 minutes per charge, give them 4x the listed charges, and they can expend one or more charges at a time. They can turn them on or off as a bonus action during the 15 minutes.
The reduction of 2d8 with ring of warmth now stacks with ring of cold resistance. So you would have resistance and whatever remaining damage you take would be reduced by 2d8. Or at least that's how I think it would work.
I really like the change to the mariner's armor. Had a Cleric player nearly die during an underwater combat when they were dropped to 0 right before their turn. They had water breathing cast on the whole party, but the player crit failed their first death save while they floated away from their group faster than any of the rest could swim. The Wizard had to abandon their plans to misty step after them to stop their assent so the Bard could get close enough to heal them. Even then, they only survived because they made the second death save.
Interesting to hear that glaives are available as swords now, they were always basically slashing swords on sticks, but now weapons that are "sword of ___" can be that. I love glaives, so this feels great to me.
Regarding the ioun stones, yes people could always attack or steal magic items you are holding or wearing. That's why spells such as fireball soecify they don't affect worn items.
24:45 Interestingly, that means RAW a level 13+ Thief Rogue can't use all of their attunements slots on Ioun Stones, since the stones have a built in limit of 3, even though thieves gain a 4th attunement slot at level 13.
The reason the Ioun Stones had that weird clause is a holdover from 3rd edition where they didn't take up a 'magic item slot' on the character (you could only wear one pair of gloves, one cloak etc.), so you just threw them up and they orbited around. However with 5th edition they made the stones require Attunement and limited characters to 3 attuned items...which completely nullified the one reason you wanted to use the Ioun stone, so removing all of it just brings them inline with how they *should* have functioned in 5th edition anyway.
One note on the periapt of wound closure, with it turning low rolls into 10s, if you have some kind of negative modifier (bane, exhaustion, etc) you can still fail death saves with it now, but thats generally pretty rare.
That armor of invulnerability is a huge nerf to the item. Previously, it gave you resistance to a whole load of stuff like dragon breaths and most of the spell-like abilities creatures got in the recent publications.
Say you are fighting an ice devil that deals an extra 10 cold dmg each time it lands a hit. If you have cold resistance, you'll still take 5 cold dmg/atk. The new ring of warmth has an excellent chance of reducing dmg below 5, and it can even negate the dmg completely with a decent roll. The same is true if you atk someone that has the cold version of fire shield. Also, two instances of cold resistance won't stack, but there is nothing in the rules preventing you stacking cold resistance *and* reducing the dmg by 2d8. The new ring of warmth is cool af. It's no longer overtuned for an uncommon item available to low-level characters, and it remains useful at higher levels.
The worst part about Ioun Stones in 2014 is that a single Fireball could destroy all of them. It's a 3rd level spell that basically every arcane caster has. It's dumb.
I like the change to ring of warmth. There are so many ways to get resistances in 5e, so a bonus that can stack with resistance will always be prefered. It also makes sense in roleplay. It makes it so small amounts of cold damage (9 on average) don't affect you at all, but massively chilling effects largely still overwhelm it.
I always found it strange that the hammer of thunderbolts has a 20 foot normal throw distance but creates a 30 foot stun AoE. You have to throw it at the long range to avoid potentially stunning yourself.
I think if you want Ioun Stones to all be on one attunement, you *gotta* keep the rules for snatching destroying them, keeps things interesting and means players will use them. I've played with Ioun stones in Pathfinder, and it was always a possibility I might lose them somehow, though the stones were far more accessible than they have seemed in 5e.
Honestly, the boots and the cloak are really good changes. Before, they were basically infinite and required clunky tracking. Now, they aren't endless, and you can track them easier, and there's no shenanigans and headaches with discussions about "well, I wanna fly for 1 minute, then land, then x then fly for another minute". Those are all awesome changes.
The change to Staff of the Woodlin is a good change. Ring of Warmth - Uncommon Ring of Cold Resistance - Rare. So removing the Cold Resistance is perfectly understanable.
The old Horn of Valhalla just makes me smile. In our current game the DM let us have the Bronze and MAN did that item PUT IN WORK! I think he sighed internally when my character, the only one that could use it, finally got killed off and the body was taken. 14 Berserkers all attacking is just amazing! Who cares if they attack and kill or fireball a bunch. If the other side killed a couple berserkers in two or three rounds. It’d still be worth it because they are focused fly swatting instead of me or my buddies.
The Ring of Warmth can have both effects, just increase it to a rare item. The same can be done with any magic item. If you make 2 common effects equal an uncommon item, 2 uncommon effects equal a rare item and so on. A rare item could have 4 common effects. If you're concerned about game balance then you can make it so that you need to expend charges to use specific effects or not all effects can be active at the same time. The books are just one source for ideas to create what ever you want to.
I think for the cloak I'd house rule that you get the charge for the full hour, and can pull the hood up or down as many times as you like during the hour (like, the clock doesn't stop when you drop invis, but if you need to drop invis for some reason you don't loose the rest of your time, you can still pop it back up as long as you're still in the hour) otherwise I'm fine with the new version
The actual problem with wand fo magic missiles is that they are an uncommon item that doesn't need attunement. It means a high level rogue could just have a bag of 20 wands and fire them at max power twice per turn
Ring of warmth now STACKS with resistance to cold damage though, which is kind of neat. Also, there's no infinite cold, so it just protects you down to absolute zero (-460 °F).
For the hammer of thunderbolts, everyone I've talked to about it says that since the text about throwing it comes after the giants bane part, that meant that the hammer of thunderbolts itself basically boiled down into a +1 maul that has 2 quests built in. Did I miss a compendium update?
@@sortehuse 0⁰ C is the freezing point of water. (32⁰F) 100⁰ C is the boiling point of water. (212⁰F) The calculation from C⁰ --> F⁰ is: 9/5 +32 or x1.8 +32 degrees. F⁰ --> C⁰ is 5/9 -32. Absolute Zero is -273⁰C. (-457⁰F) The Ring of Warmth will keep you feeling no colder than -17.7⁰C. (0⁰F)
It's an obvious typo. It should say 0 C. I'm shocked at how much archaic non-metric ( last major country to not convert at this point - yay 'Merica! ) is still written into the entire system.
Going to be honest. Every change you listed I 100% support and is good for the game. Especially the winged boots. A single uncommon item should not have given a player near endless flight with zero downsides, especially because it makes all the other similar items look bad I comparison. Like at least a broom can be targeted or a player can be knocked off of. It's good for the health of the game.
As DM, I see all these changes as additional options when choosing a particular magic item as reward, I can choose the 2014 or 2024 version. In D&D Beyond, I can even create a homebrew copy of a 2014 item (rather than toggling Legacy content) if I want to use that item, perhaps changing its Rarity and name. e.g. Alustriel's Winged Boots, Very Rare (2014 version).
The wand of magic missle in the hands of thief Rouge can still dispell its charge count and actually would shoot an extra missle as upposed to a straight up up cast magic missle
Ring of Warmth would stack with Cold Resistance. For example, you're taking half damage because of species, then 2d8 from that, which is potentially quite nice if you have Resistance already.
0 degrees farenheit is not infinitely cold. Also you almost understood the ring of warmth. Resistance is easy to come by and doesn't stack. Flat damage reduction is great. Heavy Armor Master is a really good feat that can give you a damage reduction of 3. The ring gives you 2-16. There's a reason they don't put many of those effects in the game.
Hey Ted thx for covering this. I don't have the dmg yet but them capping uncommon items upcast max 3rd level and rare items upcast mex 5th level makes perfect sense if very rare caps at 7th and legendary 9th. I won't know if I'm right until I see it... perhaps you can verify I'm intuiting this correctly?
FYI - Your the DM you can change any properties on a Magic Item you don't like. It is your table do what you want. I would ignore for example the new Wand of Magic missle wording and keep the old.
I get why the horn of valhalla was nerfed but it's very much a tactical decision to use when it has a cooldown time of a full week. Keeping players busy means there's less use of it overall when they aren't just taking down time and skipping through the days. The times I've used it were pivotal and made the difference between victory and a TPK. Most of the berserkers also went down fighting with glory since it was tier 3 play. I thought the item was fair as is. If the new berserker stat block is better, that lessens the blow of losing more of them per usage of the horn but I don't think we'll know until the MM is out.
Ring of warmth in the new style now makes you immune to ticking cold damage below 3 and is better than resistance for ticking cold damage below 9 per instance (such as moving through squares that inflict cold damage, magical environments that do cold damage per round or per minute, etc). On the downside, you can now suffer hypothermia while wearing the Ring of warmth, so long as the temperature is above 1 farenheight
I absolutely love the new Ring of Warmth. You can get Cold resistance in so many ways, but a further damage decrease that STACKS with cold resistance? Where can you get that? That ring is a great item when you're often getting hit by Cold damage. I actually ended up liking all of theother "bad" changes too.
Ring of warmth changed because it was an uncommon item that functioned explicitly better than a ring of cold resistance which is a RARE item. Now you can attune to both! Love changes to elemental rings. The ‘debuffed’ items are all objectively great changes for game balance. Effectively Infinite flight and invis is unbalanced in general. I understand the Staff of Woodlands nerf. Pass without Trace is effectively aoe Invisibility 30 ft radius now. They improved several magic weapon types to deal bonus dice. I predicted this change because they hard-nerfed GWM and Sharpshooter, and nerfed nearly all class abilities to adding bonus dice once per round. Lowering average character dpr by 30-40 by tier 2 meant they HAD to add in other options for added damage.
Simple reason fire gets immunity to fire is because you're getting movement through your element without damage to you, hence swim speed and breathing water or fly speed or traveling through stone or driving through fire without being burned. Now granted it should have said it in more of a precise manner so that it doesn't have these questions and that the immunity to fire is only when traveling through it but they assumed that it would be obvious.
For the ring of warmth did you say 0 degrees Fahrenheit and below? Freezing starts at 32 degrees and below... So do you think this was a typo and they meant 0 degrees Celsius?
18:38 About to start DMing my first campain - Icewind Dale: Rime of the Frost maiden!! (Avg ambient temperature -49 F) This will be a great ring to possibly award to my players :D
Also, ted, question - how do magic weapons deal damage? Do they have options to switch damage types? I know they wanted to move away from the "magical vs nonmagical" damage thing, but, now, if weapons just function the same, just having a bit different effects, then martials are royally screwed if they meet a creature with resistance/immunity, since, if I recall correctly, only Monk and like 1 paladin subclass can switch damage types. Meaning, yeah, weapons are stronger, but then you have the big problem of the resistances/immunities.
There doesn't seem to be magicsl vs. Nonmagical, at least from what we've seen class wise/weapon wise. It seems they do a different damage type, even for spells. For example, Hunter's Mark does Force damage instead of the same damage as the weapon. Monks can choose to do force damage instead of just having magical unarmed strikes, etc
The ring of warmth is a strait buff for what it was meant for. You take cold damage from exposure to cold below freezing. Iirc the amount you took was 2 damage per round or something. Now you don’t take the damage. However you still take damage for weather between freezing and 1 degree, which is odd.
The damage is reduced from the total, before resistances are applied. You are still taking 1 damage, on average, as it's really shaving off 7 from the total. The rest gets through. 3D4 is about as low as ice damage spells/effects go except at very low levels/cantrips. On average, you will take 8 damage ( 7.5 rounded up ) - with 2D6 ( 7 average ) from the ring. Leaving 1 that gets through. Reduced to 1 with the second ring ( 0.5 rounded up ). For most spells and effects at moderate levels, though - it barely does anything. 35 cold damage average 10d6) from a breath weapon attack minus 7.. it helps, but 22 is still getting through. The changes to having all effects now applied before resistances ( and vulnerabilities after that, as the final step/insult ) balances out much of the previous shenanigans of many OP character and munchkin builds. There is no immunity for most things, and 1/2 damage and then reduced further - simply isn't a thing any more. (good change, IMO)
Wand of magic missile. As u said everyone (including me) shoots all charges off at once. So it seems like a needed nerf. If everyone does something maybe it's not super to work that way
So the way I read from the 2014 DMG is that casting spells from items is imperceptible since they don't require any components V, S or M and the trigger for Counterspell is "which you take when you see a creature within 60 feet of yourself casting a spell with Verbal, Somatic, or Material components" in 2024 but you still couldn't really see a creature cast a spell in 2014 because there was no visible evidence of it. Therefore I have always ruled you can't counterspell spells from items. Has that changed in the new DMG?
about the Ring of Warmth, I'd say the reduction to damage is probably about the rarity I like the idea of even some nonmagical items like armor reducing damage by 2 or 3 like in BG3 this ring, being a magical item but of low power, it can protect you against cold damage, but not as much as a rare item that gives you cold resistance the weird thing about this is that, whenever taking cold damage, you might get more out of a 2d8 reduction that resistance, unless you take a very high amount of damage like a white dragon's cold breath
The armor of resistance is a bit of a nerf. With the 2014 version it made you resistant/immune to dragon breath weapons and most dragons didnt have magic natural weapons. Although still works against terrasqes
If the Sword of Wounding prevents all healing for the next hour and not just healing the damage dealt by the sword that's a pretty big deal - everyone else in your party is also dealing damage. Also, tracking the damage from the sword separately if you're fighting something that can heal itself has got to be annoying.
With the Ring of Warmth being an uncommon item, and rings of resistance being rare, I suspect that some of these changes are attempts to bring items in-line with their rarity.
I like changes to Wand of Magic Missile, Boots of Flying and Cloak of Invisibility. It was 3 items that seemed unbalanced to me, so I would never give them to my players. Now are the chances of them being used in my campaign much higher 🙂 I didn't get the answer to what I really wanted to know: Are all potions a bonus action to use now, or is it only healing potions?
Does the new book contain the Amulet of the Planes? Its always been very strong but they really nerfed the Planeshift spell so reasoned the item might have been nerfed or removed too.
I think it's weird that Ioun Stones require attunement at all... Their *thing* in 3.5 was not using a slot... I've taken the attunement out in my game... Adding a limit of 3 makes sense with that change.
Definitely think as a player winged boots nerf was needed for simplification because it was a headache tracking time/recovery if you werent using it for a specified time as in travel and such. Now the charges make it super simple. Yeah its kind of a nerf but i think it works out better.
Ring of warmth was intentionally made weaker because it’s the uncommon version of the ring of cold resistance which is rare. In 2014 they did they both gave you resistance to cold and yet warmth was uncommon and ring of resistance was rare. There was no reason to get the rare version.
Ok so some thoughts here and they may be a bit out of order from the video more just making sure it wasn't covered later kind of thing Ring of warmth: Ok it is a nerf but hear me out, it is uncommon and is strictly better than the rare ring of resistance, that should be enough on its own to give a reason for it to lose resistance and get something potentially worse but still beneficial. Vicious and wounding: I am kind of torn on this, ya they are easier to use and more commonly useful but it feels like a stealth nerf to flame tongue, vicious doesn't need attunement and doesn't have a resistance while wounding still gets a bit of an edge as the anti heal is (at least IMO) better than 40 feet of light with the added bonus of not taking a bonus action to turn on or off. Granted I haven't seen if flame tongue was changed or improved but ya I hope so or else this feels kinda bad for that item. Wand of magic missle: People can complain about the nerf but honestly it is a good thing Imo like others have said nova damage felt great for a player but also sucked to make a meaningful encounter a lot of the time. The wand meant you always had to keep in mind that 8d4+8 damage would be dealt first round to anything remotely seen as the scariest thing that day. Marniers: I have seen the edge case you were asking about, a player went down and before one of the healers could pick them back up with a spell they had floated out of range which sucked. Cloak of Invisiblity: While it is similar to magic missile (and the winged boots were the same as MM so didn't include it) honestly this needed the nerf, it was just too easy to spam it on and off when needed to essentially get near permanent invisibility when it mattered.
It's crazy to me that just about every "negative" change is either a much needed simplification of weird mechanics (winged boots/cloak of invisibility timer) or is a move that prevent exploits/nova damage. As a Dm, I'm much more likely to dish out certain magic items now that they're fixed.
Yup! These "nerf = BAD" people are not very good at game balance/design
Just go play baldurs gate
Exactly, a power gamer being negative about these changes doesn't consider that their DM would be much more hesitant to give them said items before the "nerfs." D&D is not a video game.
@@spaghettimonster7010 100%. With my DM hat on I like almost all of these changes
"Fixed" You're already the DM dude, if you aren't interested in arguing just set clear boundaries and let people know if they wanna get creative they should clear it first otherwise they'll likely get disappointed when they blindside you with some fuckery you weren't expecting. It took years for myself and my friends to figure out this issue, I'm not an asshole, I'm just the kind of person who likes finding creative solutions, which caught my DM off guard... stressing him. So now I just try and check before, and if he says no I might get disappointed but I understand.
Wand of Magic Missile nerf brings it back into line with the DMGs rating for custom magic items. Having access to a 6th level spell is not 'Uncommon', but a 'Rare'. 'Uncommon' caps at 3rd level spells, which is 3 charges
Yeah it also makes sense to give this a nerf with the way the new Thief subclass works. Helps prevent unsuspecting dm’s from giving their party a couple of wands and suddenly having their rogue be capable of doing 16d4 + 16 unavoidable force damage in a single turn once per day. 48 average damage on something completely unavoidable is going to for trivialize the hell out of a lot of things you would throw at them
I mean it's the wand of magic missile it was never game breaking in the first place but I get it. I'm more partial to it because I really like the og
@@Tuskbumper If you used old Wand of MM as a template for Wand of Chromatic Orb... things get messy fast
@Tuskbumper it might not have been _game_ breaking, but it was certainly _concentration_ breaking
No, it doesn't... it isn't a 6th level spell, it is an item that can either be used multiple times or be used once for a single big use... it is 1 level per charge, that means it is not 6th level, it is not even 3rd level, it is 1st level 6 times or 1st level plus 1/3 of first level 1-5 extra times in the same round... for Magic Missiles to be equivalent to 6th level, it would need to be +3 Darts per charge, so 3/6/9 for 1-3 charges, or 12/15/18 for the no longer available 4-6 charges... remember, 1 charge is 6-15 damage (average 9), 2 charges is 8-20 damage (average 12), 3 charges is only 10-25 damage (average 15) ... compare that to Fireball (you know, the spell most people call the best 3rd level spell in the game), 8-48 damage (average 28). The only reason to cast magic missile at 3rd level vs fireball is Rogues and Monks have evasion and will take no damage on a successful save while Magic Missile always hits (except that is actually a lie, as most Force Spells or even just a Shield Spell block Magic Missile, so the Arcane Trickster Rogue is both immune to Magic Missile and can evade for no Fireball damage on a successful save... but at least can be dealt 1/4 damage on a failed save).
19:38 I know the reason, because it's bothered me for a while... Ring of Warmth is uncommon, and the Ring of Resistance (Cold) is rare. So it made no sense for the ring of warmth to do everything a more rare item could do, plus extra flavor text. So, this change was necessary for balance and to avoid redundancy.
Or they could have just made it rare. Heck standardize the 2d8 to -10 damage. 10 less is still worse than resistance after level 5 or so but it is nice to just take 0 against low end spells/effects.
Came here to say the same.
The change works as they intended it - IF you change the F to C. Why they are stubbornly sticking to archaic non-metric measurements is beyond me at this point. It's an obvious typo as "below freezing" is the clear intent and always has been for the ring since its introduction. Some intern or writer I am positive thought that "0 F" meant "below freezing".
Then it changes to basically "ignore all non-magical cold sources", plus a die roll to reduce magical cold effects. More useful outdoors but also slightly less useful than a resistance item.
It also makes more sense. A Ring of Warmth giving cold damage resistance just seems weird. Being warm should help a lot if you are getting hit with a small amount of cold damage, but it should be useless if you are getting blasted by a deadly cone of cold.
@@dwil0311 Correct. WOTC wants to make all damage the same, but it is not. Magical elemental damage is fundamentally different than normal environmental effects, because you have to save against it. ( it's magic - DUH ) :)
I like the nerfs honestly. Wand of Magic Missile was a tough one as a DM to deal with and new crafting rules would have made it more problematic.
@silvle01 how tough is it to equip an enemy with Brooch of Shielding? Seems super easy to me... but if can't handle that, maybe sapphire ring of resistance... or staff of defense... or the Shield Spell on a scroll or a ring of spell storing or a Shield of Arrow-Catching... just a few counters...
Yeah all these "bad changes" are actually good for the game. Winged boots NEEDED the nerf, and the nova damage from Wand of Magic Missile was...a LOT.
Wand of magic missiles would be fine if it required attunement, but 'quiver of wands of magic missile to do 8d4+8 per turn' is not a good thing.
@@01pantagruel did you spend gold and/or time to get those wands of Magic Missile?
All these bad changes are BAD for the game, as they punish players, as a DM can choose to have the Archmage ignore all of them, while the players are constrained by the rules. Nerfing is nearly always a bad idea, there is no need for it, as the DM can do anything they want, have reality warp, so Nerfs only ever hurt PCs.
@@TxSonofLibertyNerfs are just as important as buffs, but they sting twice as hard. That's what makes it tricky to balance.There are two cases where alternatives wouldn't help.
First, no changes. One way to hand out items is for the DM to give it to an enemy for the party to loot. Imagine if the party's 3rd level cleric got nuked by a goblin using the wand of magic missile. Most characters have less than 28 HP at that time.
The other way would be to reduce the number of charges down to 4. Now you get literally half the use out of it, as most players don't want to burn that last charge. That's no fun at all!
One small advantage to the Ring of Warmth is that the reduction in cold damage stacks with resistance if you get cold resistance from another source.
*laughs in Silver Dragonborn*
And it’s a lower rarity so it shouldn’t be as good as a ring of resistance
Ring of Warmth I'm fine with not being resistance because that's what the ring or resistance is supposed to be. Now it's a cool and unique item that stacks, which is neat.
My thoughts exactly. Stacking Ring of Cold Resistance and Ring of Warmth could be crazy if you know you're dealing with cold damage.
Also, Ring of Warmth at lower levels is practically either cold resistance or immunity, depending on the roll. With cold resistance you will always take damage, but not necessarily so with the Ring of Warmth. This can potentially prevent concentration saving throws via damage; really helpful if you are playing a class that regularly uses concentration spells (druid, ranger, cleric). Cold resistance would never prevent this, as you always will take some cold damage with it.
Granted, at higher levels the higher damage outputs of enemies make the Ring of Warmth less useful than straight cold resistance, but it is an uncommon magic item after all, and you should probably be switching it out anyways at that point.
Totally agree. Though, I do feel like 2d8 is a little too swingy. Maybe 3d6 would be the better middle ground, basically still mirroring the expected damage of a 1st level spell but more stable?
The wand of magic missile change was needed due to the change to the thief class. It's still a very good item.
About 17.5 guaranteed damage ain't a bad use for a bonus action, I don't think.
2:35 Ted defines a *necessary restriction,* but reaches the opposite conclusion 😅
_"Everybody I know always just fire all 6 charges in a go (...) that just seems like an _*_unnecessary restriction_*_ (...) it always made sense to just go for broke."_
The change means that a DM doesn't have to think twice about handing out this _uncommon wand_ to a *Thief* as soon as level 3.
Dealing 5d4+5 (17.5) *_twice_* instead of 8d4+8 (28) *_once_* doesn't sound half bad, especially not as a Bonus Action.
Nope, the change to Magic Missile Want just makes the thief even better at using magic items than spellcasters... it's a buff to an already powerful subclass. Why? Because casting two third level magic missiles is stronger than casting one sixth level magic missile. Spellcasters could make up some of the difference by upcasting MM to 6th level with the wand, but now they are limited to only casting it once at 3rd level.
I'd say the problem with Wand of magic missile is giving anyone an easy way to break enemy concentration unless you give shield to every enemy caster AND save their reactions.
@@Adurnis Helm Horror looks at you funny and kills you, as the Magic Missiles did 0 damage. The Wizard with a Brooch of Shielding laughs at your 0 damage as well, since it is a useless spell, stopped by numerous items, creatures, abilities, and spells. There never was 17.5, there was always 0, because it is a 0 damage spell that can't even crit, and is tiny weak darts nothingness.
Oh, no, a Level 13+ Thief might be able to do jack and squat, wasting their turn, but now they waste their turn even more.
Something really I like about the changes to the Horn of Valhalla is that with only a few berserkers you can have it be the same warriors every time and give them personalities, even just a really brief sketch of one. Its a horn of summoning these two specific guys who might be curious about who has the horn now, complain about how long it's been since you called them, try to convince you that axes are better than swords, etc. God that would be so fun.
Silly berserkers, we all know that swords beat axes, axes beat lances, and lances beat swords!
Who says it wasn't already? My 2014 party calls them the Cleveland Gang, they have them as a once a week save their hides against fights when they got in over there heads, but the 2024 versions are useless, as do next to nothing.
@@TxSonofLiberty Unless the berserker statblocks got beefed up, at least.
...And Iron is still a basketball team's worth.
Silver could be a doubles tennis team. Give them the angry backhand swing.
On winged boots, the 2014 versions was effectively unlimited flying other than during travel. Rarely did you actually need to track the minutes you used it because it would rarely be 4 hours. This way is better in that it's actually a choice to use it.
I mean, yeah, but so did some races. This just opens the options. My barbarian bought a pair from a magic item shop, cost most of my gold. It's just about how you balance the cost. Also, they haven't broken the game once yet, I wanted them for story reasons
@@ardet7383 Officially they didn't bounce any costs, they went the easy way with them and basically made every magic item have a generic cost equal to their rarity. Which I think means they need to make some changes. Though I think they are hit or miss. Some items seem less powerful, and some items seem way too powerful now.
Net, cancelled and you get hurt... Earthbind, wasted your use and you get hurt... Walloping Arrow, you fall and nearly die... 2014 was useful, 2024 is a joke.
It seems like every negative change here was just, reasonable Nerfs.
I feel like the Winged Boots were a bit overtuned for an Uncommon Item. It's basically unlimited flight.
The Ring of Warmth was just a Better Ring if Cold Resistance at a lower Rarity, they could have either buffed it (2d8 Reduction and Resistance, but it's a Higher Rarity) or keep it at the same rarity with a lesser effect, they went with the later.
The other nerfs are annoying sure, but I'd still want those items.
Winged boots were not a bit overturned. They were massively overturned. They were better than rare and very items that grant flight. In terms of usefulness they were very rare, knocking on the door of legendary.
Indeed, *Ring of Warmth* is as good as they could make it for an *Uncommon* item _(albeit, they seem to have mixed up Celsius and Fahrenheit)._
For *backwards compatibility* with the published 5e adventures, WotC want to preserve the *rarity* of magic items, *CR* of monsters, and *level* of spells.
The winged boots change is great as well. Now you can 'cast' fly as an action which last for an hour. The old boots gave perma flight which would make most DM's not want to pass it out to players.
I would nerf it further to casting the fly spell honestly. Four level 3 spells? Still awesome.
@@Direloc I wouldn't just because it punishes barbarians, who are the ones to most likely need boots of flying due to their very limited range. Being so heavily locked to STR weapons leaves you feeling like a goose when a dragon shows up.
@@The_Crimson_WitchThat’s entirely fair! I like to encourage casters to ‘buff’ barbarians and fighters and such with flight. It conveys a sense of teamwork, but every table is different and sometimes you just don’t have the group makeup.
The new Winged Boots ONLY allow 30ft of movement... not your walking speed... so, it's been nerfed on that end, as well
@@DirelocI get where you're coming from but what if there is no caster lol
I think most of the "bad" changes that you talked about were actually necessary for improving magic item balance, making them easier to use, etc.
I do think 2d6 damage with no attunement is a bit too good for the Vicious Weapon though.
Would you rather have weapon damage you as well to balance it out?
@@sykune What are you even talking about?
Puts it on par with a flame tongue, which also doesn't require attunement.
@@neb985 trye but it's necrotic damage and does not require a bonus action to activate
@@sykune where did you hear that it was necrotic? Ted just said damage. The extra damage from the old version was the same as the weapon’s type.
Sword of wounding is an absolute buff. You would need to stack 5 wounds from the old version to surpass the amount of damage you can do with the new one, and that rarely happens
Winged boots sucked in comparison to a broom of fly which gave you a flaying speed that was always on and was the same rarity. Plus, you could wear another pair of Magic boots. Now the gap between the two is even greater
I mean the first mistake was to hand out a broom of flying. Comparison of rarity never made much sense in DnD 5e, compare for example Winged boots (Uncommon) to Wings of Flying (Rare)
Well new Ring of Warmth is a value add for anyone that already has cold resistance. I think getting resistance AND 2d8 reduction after is probably too powerful for an uncommon magic item. Especially in the tier you have uncommon magic items, that's close to immunity to cold damage.
The issue is that some idiot typed in F instead of C. Change the temperature to metric in the description and it solves everything. Now it's a less powerful version of a ring of resistance, with the added benefit of environmental cold being basically ignored.
@@plektosgaming It's better than ring of resistance(cold) for anyone that already has cold resistance via class or species features
@@TylerDuRapau It's not. Damage is being changed such that all modifiers happen off/to the base damage and then elemental effects or resistances ( as well as vulnerabilities ) happen as the very last step in the calculation. This means that if you have a 3d6 cold spell in your face, you take 2D6 ( avg 7 ) off of the total and then apply resistances. It gets even worse with a larger 10D6 effect, where if it's all you have, you're taking 35 avg damage minus 7. 22 total. Vs resistance which drops you to 18, on average. If you roll poorly versus a slightly worse damage roll - say, 42 damage and you roll a 5 - then it's 37 you take to the face versus 21.
Wait where were the bad changes?
Honestly, these changes makes it easier to fine tune or complete homebrew items with the rarity now. It gives what the guid in the dmg should be. A guide for a better experience for all.
I see the nerf to the Wand of Magic Missile as saying no to a shotgun mage build. Using all or all but 1 charges and pulling out a different wand each round. No problems with it.
Especially with the new crafting rules. You could have a dozen wands of magic missile. You probably would even upcast to lvl 7 as you can always make more.
I think the cap on Magic Missile makes sense. 6 honestly sounds kinda crazy.
Perhaps a good thing that we arent letting a low level thief rogue to pick up two of them and be able to lay down 16d4+16 guaranteed force damage in a single turn
I have a PC who used their Horn of Valhalla against a boss, who then used an AoE that summoned gibbering mouthers for each failed save. Went from having a 17 numbers advantagse to a nightmare very quickly.
The magic missile nerf isn't a big deal to me. It's always been more economical to use a single charge at a time. The Evoker Wizard option doesn't work anymore because MM now requires a separate damage roll for each beam anyways.
Which ruling states the multiple rolls mechanic?
@@alexirmendoza3600 Rolling damage only once for multiple targets now only applies to spells with a saving throw. Magic missile doesn't have a saving throw so it doesn't apply anymore.
So each missile needs a separate roll and the bonus would only apply to a single roll.
Here's the rule from the PHB:
Saving Throws and Damage
Damage dealt via saving throws uses these rules.
Damage against Multiple Targets
When you create a damaging effect that forces two or more targets to make saving throws against it at the same time, roll the damage once for all the targets. For example, when a wizard casts Fireball, the spell’s damage is rolled once for all creatures caught in the blast.
More economical, yes, but better for Action Economy, no. Am I better off casting a 1st level spell that deals 10.5-ish damage, or attacking with my cantrip that does 16.5 damage?
@@Adurnis I wouldn't use this wand on a spell caster. It's better for characters that don't have cantrips and have a low Dex but want a ranged option.
@@dabeef2112or a familiar. Or an NPC Ally. Even some Tasha’s Summons could probably use it.
Ted, curious about potions. Are they still an action to consume or like potion of healing did they all become bonus actions?
The Horn nerf was entirely necessary!!!
But my guys....
Hot take: Rebalancing magic items and make them easier to run is not a “bad change”
Hot take: There was no rebalancing, they were easy to run before, because you gave players cool toys and the dice screwed them just fine, you never needed to do any of this BS, because as a DM, you can decide the baddies have better versions, have the enemies equipped to compete, and it was NEVER a problem, unless you are a Horrible DM who cares more about killing players than making the game fun for everyone at the table, not just for your own tiny shallow cruel ego.
@@TxSonofLiberty you okay?
@@TxSonofLiberty Homie take your pills.
@@TxSonofLibertyThey hated him because he told the truth 😂
Wand of Magic Missile is also nerfed because Magic Missile itself is nerfed. The rule on simultaneous damage now specifies saving throw effects meaning Magic missile is no longer treated as one damage roll and instead is a different damage roll per dart which means bonuses to the damage don’t stack anymore.
I am 100% on board with the "bad" magic item changes. These items were mostly problematic to add to your game for various reasons and I'm very glad they've dialed in the balance.
What balance? Nothing was balanced. This unbalanced the game. Now the players are crippled, and the NPCs have access to the special stuff that ignores all this (because there is no such thing as balance... You give cool stuff to Players to use, or you give them garbage, the DM has access to the Simulacrum spell that makes a half dozen copies at once, while players have to build to even make one... DM can have an NPC have a +10 Sword of Endless Wounds, while Players can have a +1 Sword of +1 ness... stop thinking in the "We need to Nerf or Weaken Player Options", you never do. The Dice alone will punish players, if they are meant to lose, you don't have to even try, there is never a reason to make make magic items weaker or worse.
@@TxSonofLiberty they weakened notoriously overpowered items a tiny bit, and improved notoriously bad magic items. It is absolutely necessary to balance when you add crafting rules and set prices for each rarity of magic item. If you don’t like the changes don’t use them, but from what I can tell the majority of people welcome most of the changes.
The Sword of Sharpness had always cut off limbs (non-heads) while Vorpal Blades lopped off heads.
Shout out to Grog Strongjaw now he can canonically use the dwarven thrower
That is definitely why they made that change. 😂
re: Wands. Nice! I've had to house rule for years that wands can only be used to cast a spell as high a level as the user has access to; i.e., your 4th level Bard can only use a wand to cast a spell up to 2nd level, since that's the highest spell level they can cast (minimum level 1). This official change works just about as well.
I probably like your version more, but agree, it is an uncommon magic item allowing the casting of a 6th lvl. spell which for early levels (where you are expected to give out this item) is probably a little too much
I don't like this. A user of only a cantrip could use it. Now they never could. 😅
@@Razdasoldier ANY spell level. So, yes, no magic power, no using it - seems fair. But almost every class has access to magic spells/levels at some point. I like this as it's going to make it less useful to a fighter and yet decently usable to alternate magic classes that don't have access to the spell. The original D&D 40+ years ago was also designed with this idea as well - that using a magic item if you knew nothing about magic (at all) was simply not possible or had significant penalties (low activation percent) to attempt to use.
A 2d8 damahe reduction basicalky makes you 90% immune to minor cold damage. With resistance you will always take at least 1 damage
I think the periapt of wound closure is overall a nerf, as by not stabilising you automatically, it means any death saving throws fails caused by damage don't automatically reset. It will make a person dying in the middle of a fight a lot easier to be finished off by an enemy
"Unharmed by temperatures as low as -50" seems to imply unharmed by any temperature above that, even extremely hot ones, which has to be an unintentional consequence... That one sounds like a classic of WotC publishing something without taking a really close look at it
What a surprise. The more they try to fix things, the more they break it.
I'm almost positive that reductions are applied after resistances, so the ring of warmth, when you have resistance, means Cold damage is reduced by half, and then the ring of warmth reduces that by a further 2d8. Which is massive. So now you have a scenario where you could save against a Cone of Cold (36 damage average reduced to 18), resist cold damage (18 reduced to 9), and then reduce 9 damage by 2d8.
Edit: per the rules (p28 Order of Application in 2024 and p 197 Damage Resistance and vulnerabilities in 2014) its the opposite. Cold damage would be reduced by 2d8, and then resistance would cut it in half.
That will raise the what comes first question.
@@Ahglock 2024 PHB p28 Order of Application (2014 PHB p.197 Damage Resistance and Vulnerabilities). I was wrong its the other way around. "bonuses, penalties, or multipliers are applied first, then resistance, than vulnerability. For example If a creature is resistant to all damage, vulnerable to fire, and in a magical aura that reduces damage by 5. If it takes 28 fire damage, the damage is first reduced by 5 (23), then halved for the creature's resistance (11), and then doubled for it's vulnerability (22)"
I feel like the Ioun Stone of Greater Absorption should recharge in some way. Even if it was something like it regains 1d20 levels to absorb per year or something really limited and slow like that, at least it wouldn't be burnt out garbage.
14 good changes and 7 bad? That’s what we call in math a net positive babyy!
And even then the Wand, boots and cloak don’t even seem that bad. And the Staff is understandable. Those are like, neutral.
I think I would make a few homebrew changes for the winged boots and cloak of invisibility in my campaigns. I would change it to 15 minutes per charge, give them 4x the listed charges, and they can expend one or more charges at a time. They can turn them on or off as a bonus action during the 15 minutes.
The reduction of 2d8 with ring of warmth now stacks with ring of cold resistance. So you would have resistance and whatever remaining damage you take would be reduced by 2d8. Or at least that's how I think it would work.
They changed in in this version so that all damage is taken off and resistance is applied last. There is no free lunch any more.
I really like the change to the mariner's armor. Had a Cleric player nearly die during an underwater combat when they were dropped to 0 right before their turn. They had water breathing cast on the whole party, but the player crit failed their first death save while they floated away from their group faster than any of the rest could swim. The Wizard had to abandon their plans to misty step after them to stop their assent so the Bard could get close enough to heal them. Even then, they only survived because they made the second death save.
Oh man.... they removed Sword of Sharpness' ability to lop off limbs? Guess Im gonna have to customize that weapon all the way through now. lol
Interesting to hear that glaives are available as swords now, they were always basically slashing swords on sticks, but now weapons that are "sword of ___" can be that. I love glaives, so this feels great to me.
Regarding the ioun stones, yes people could always attack or steal magic items you are holding or wearing.
That's why spells such as fireball soecify they don't affect worn items.
24:45 Interestingly, that means RAW a level 13+ Thief Rogue can't use all of their attunements slots on Ioun Stones, since the stones have a built in limit of 3, even though thieves gain a 4th attunement slot at level 13.
Thank god they nerfed winged boots, it was SO abused by my players
The reason the Ioun Stones had that weird clause is a holdover from 3rd edition where they didn't take up a 'magic item slot' on the character (you could only wear one pair of gloves, one cloak etc.), so you just threw them up and they orbited around. However with 5th edition they made the stones require Attunement and limited characters to 3 attuned items...which completely nullified the one reason you wanted to use the Ioun stone, so removing all of it just brings them inline with how they *should* have functioned in 5th edition anyway.
One note on the periapt of wound closure, with it turning low rolls into 10s, if you have some kind of negative modifier (bane, exhaustion, etc) you can still fail death saves with it now, but thats generally pretty rare.
That armor of invulnerability is a huge nerf to the item. Previously, it gave you resistance to a whole load of stuff like dragon breaths and most of the spell-like abilities creatures got in the recent publications.
Well we don't know if Dragons have magical breath weapons in 2024
Say you are fighting an ice devil that deals an extra 10 cold dmg each time it lands a hit. If you have cold resistance, you'll still take 5 cold dmg/atk.
The new ring of warmth has an excellent chance of reducing dmg below 5, and it can even negate the dmg completely with a decent roll.
The same is true if you atk someone that has the cold version of fire shield.
Also, two instances of cold resistance won't stack, but there is nothing in the rules preventing you stacking cold resistance *and* reducing the dmg by 2d8.
The new ring of warmth is cool af. It's no longer overtuned for an uncommon item available to low-level characters, and it remains useful at higher levels.
The worst part about Ioun Stones in 2014 is that a single Fireball could destroy all of them. It's a 3rd level spell that basically every arcane caster has. It's dumb.
I like the change to ring of warmth. There are so many ways to get resistances in 5e, so a bonus that can stack with resistance will always be prefered.
It also makes sense in roleplay. It makes it so small amounts of cold damage (9 on average) don't affect you at all, but massively chilling effects largely still overwhelm it.
The question of "what is considered magical" was answered years ago in Sage Advice along with the reprints and errata for the MM.
I always found it strange that the hammer of thunderbolts has a 20 foot normal throw distance but creates a 30 foot stun AoE. You have to throw it at the long range to avoid potentially stunning yourself.
I think if you want Ioun Stones to all be on one attunement, you *gotta* keep the rules for snatching destroying them, keeps things interesting and means players will use them. I've played with Ioun stones in Pathfinder, and it was always a possibility I might lose them somehow, though the stones were far more accessible than they have seemed in 5e.
Honestly, the boots and the cloak are really good changes. Before, they were basically infinite and required clunky tracking. Now, they aren't endless, and you can track them easier, and there's no shenanigans and headaches with discussions about "well, I wanna fly for 1 minute, then land, then x then fly for another minute". Those are all awesome changes.
The change to Staff of the Woodlin is a good change.
Ring of Warmth - Uncommon
Ring of Cold Resistance - Rare.
So removing the Cold Resistance is perfectly understanable.
The old Horn of Valhalla just makes me smile. In our current game the DM let us have the Bronze and MAN did that item PUT IN WORK! I think he sighed internally when my character, the only one that could use it, finally got killed off and the body was taken.
14 Berserkers all attacking is just amazing! Who cares if they attack and kill or fireball a bunch. If the other side killed a couple berserkers in two or three rounds. It’d still be worth it because they are focused fly swatting instead of me or my buddies.
The Ring of Warmth can have both effects, just increase it to a rare item. The same can be done with any magic item. If you make 2 common effects equal an uncommon item, 2 uncommon effects equal a rare item and so on. A rare item could have 4 common effects. If you're concerned about game balance then you can make it so that you need to expend charges to use specific effects or not all effects can be active at the same time. The books are just one source for ideas to create what ever you want to.
For the ring of warmth the protection for items is important when you talk about potions who could freeze in sub temperatures.
Lollipops of healing
I think for the cloak I'd house rule that you get the charge for the full hour, and can pull the hood up or down as many times as you like during the hour (like, the clock doesn't stop when you drop invis, but if you need to drop invis for some reason you don't loose the rest of your time, you can still pop it back up as long as you're still in the hour) otherwise I'm fine with the new version
The actual problem with wand fo magic missiles is that they are an uncommon item that doesn't need attunement. It means a high level rogue could just have a bag of 20 wands and fire them at max power twice per turn
We know from the 2024 PHB that drinking healing potions is now a BA. Does that apply to other potions as well?
Good or bad seems to be VERY subjective. Really depends on the DM and group and possibly the campaign.
Ring of warmth now STACKS with resistance to cold damage though, which is kind of neat. Also, there's no infinite cold, so it just protects you down to absolute zero (-460 °F).
I dunno. Maybe in dnd verse below 0K is possible, because magic. What that would mean physics wise is another matter altogether.
For the hammer of thunderbolts, everyone I've talked to about it says that since the text about throwing it comes after the giants bane part, that meant that the hammer of thunderbolts itself basically boiled down into a +1 maul that has 2 quests built in. Did I miss a compendium update?
Ring of Warmth can protect you from Absolute Zero (with a range of 0⁰ F & below), but water will still freeze at 32⁰ F.
I just want the degrees in celsius - I'm clueless about the fahrenheit scale.
@@sortehuse 0⁰ C is the freezing point of water. (32⁰F)
100⁰ C is the boiling point of water. (212⁰F)
The calculation from C⁰ --> F⁰ is:
9/5 +32 or x1.8 +32 degrees.
F⁰ --> C⁰ is 5/9 -32.
Absolute Zero is -273⁰C. (-457⁰F)
The Ring of Warmth will keep you feeling no colder than -17.7⁰C. (0⁰F)
@@xiongrayAdmittedly, 0 FAHRENHEIT still feels pretty damned cold.
It's an obvious typo. It should say 0 C. I'm shocked at how much archaic non-metric ( last major country to not convert at this point - yay 'Merica! ) is still written into the entire system.
@@plektosgaming It's not a typo, this is intentional and what it shoul be. It would make no sense for it to function at 0 C.
Nice work. This type of vid helps alot when changing from 2014 to 2024 as you may not even have notice the change like with the wands.
That Vicious Weapon looks... vicious
Yeah, that change worried me a little. Lol
In 3.5 it would also do damage to the weilder as well, so overall I think this pretty good.
Going to be honest. Every change you listed I 100% support and is good for the game. Especially the winged boots. A single uncommon item should not have given a player near endless flight with zero downsides, especially because it makes all the other similar items look bad I comparison. Like at least a broom can be targeted or a player can be knocked off of. It's good for the health of the game.
You mean making the players weaker so the DM doesn't have to do as much work? Meh. Have fun with your "perfectly balanced game" I guess.
As DM, I see all these changes as additional options when choosing a particular magic item as reward, I can choose the 2014 or 2024 version. In D&D Beyond, I can even create a homebrew copy of a 2014 item (rather than toggling Legacy content) if I want to use that item, perhaps changing its Rarity and name. e.g. Alustriel's Winged Boots, Very Rare (2014 version).
The wand of magic missle in the hands of thief Rouge can still dispell its charge count and actually would shoot an extra missle as upposed to a straight up up cast magic missle
Ring of Warmth would stack with Cold Resistance. For example, you're taking half damage because of species, then 2d8 from that, which is potentially quite nice if you have Resistance already.
25:55
IMO, the appropriate nerf would be obly spells of 7th level and lower, but once you use it 3-5 times it goes innert until dawn.
The Ioun stones specifics is because of Thieves subclass, where you can attune to more than 3 items :P
0 degrees farenheit is not infinitely cold. Also you almost understood the ring of warmth. Resistance is easy to come by and doesn't stack. Flat damage reduction is great. Heavy Armor Master is a really good feat that can give you a damage reduction of 3. The ring gives you 2-16. There's a reason they don't put many of those effects in the game.
Hey Ted thx for covering this.
I don't have the dmg yet but them capping uncommon items upcast max 3rd level and rare items upcast mex 5th level makes perfect sense if very rare caps at 7th and legendary 9th.
I won't know if I'm right until I see it... perhaps you can verify I'm intuiting this correctly?
FYI - Your the DM you can change any properties on a Magic Item you don't like. It is your table do what you want. I would ignore for example the new Wand of Magic missle wording and keep the old.
I prefer the ring of warmths 2d8
My players all have a really easy way to grab cold resist
So cold resist ring does nothing for them
I get why the horn of valhalla was nerfed but it's very much a tactical decision to use when it has a cooldown time of a full week. Keeping players busy means there's less use of it overall when they aren't just taking down time and skipping through the days. The times I've used it were pivotal and made the difference between victory and a TPK. Most of the berserkers also went down fighting with glory since it was tier 3 play. I thought the item was fair as is. If the new berserker stat block is better, that lessens the blow of losing more of them per usage of the horn but I don't think we'll know until the MM is out.
Ring of warmth in the new style now makes you immune to ticking cold damage below 3 and is better than resistance for ticking cold damage below 9 per instance (such as moving through squares that inflict cold damage, magical environments that do cold damage per round or per minute, etc). On the downside, you can now suffer hypothermia while wearing the Ring of warmth, so long as the temperature is above 1 farenheight
I absolutely love the new Ring of Warmth. You can get Cold resistance in so many ways, but a further damage decrease that STACKS with cold resistance? Where can you get that? That ring is a great item when you're often getting hit by Cold damage.
I actually ended up liking all of theother "bad" changes too.
Ring of warmth changed because it was an uncommon item that functioned explicitly better than a ring of cold resistance which is a RARE item. Now you can attune to both!
Love changes to elemental rings.
The ‘debuffed’ items are all objectively great changes for game balance. Effectively Infinite flight and invis is unbalanced in general.
I understand the Staff of Woodlands nerf. Pass without Trace is effectively aoe Invisibility 30 ft radius now.
They improved several magic weapon types to deal bonus dice. I predicted this change because they hard-nerfed GWM and Sharpshooter, and nerfed nearly all class abilities to adding bonus dice once per round. Lowering average character dpr by 30-40 by tier 2 meant they HAD to add in other options for added damage.
Simple reason fire gets immunity to fire is because you're getting movement through your element without damage to you, hence swim speed and breathing water or fly speed or traveling through stone or driving through fire without being burned. Now granted it should have said it in more of a precise manner so that it doesn't have these questions and that the immunity to fire is only when traveling through it but they assumed that it would be obvious.
For the ring of warmth did you say 0 degrees Fahrenheit and below? Freezing starts at 32 degrees and below... So do you think this was a typo and they meant 0 degrees Celsius?
18:38 About to start DMing my first campain - Icewind Dale: Rime of the Frost maiden!! (Avg ambient temperature -49 F) This will be a great ring to possibly award to my players :D
Also, ted, question - how do magic weapons deal damage? Do they have options to switch damage types? I know they wanted to move away from the "magical vs nonmagical" damage thing, but, now, if weapons just function the same, just having a bit different effects, then martials are royally screwed if they meet a creature with resistance/immunity, since, if I recall correctly, only Monk and like 1 paladin subclass can switch damage types. Meaning, yeah, weapons are stronger, but then you have the big problem of the resistances/immunities.
There doesn't seem to be magicsl vs. Nonmagical, at least from what we've seen class wise/weapon wise. It seems they do a different damage type, even for spells. For example, Hunter's Mark does Force damage instead of the same damage as the weapon.
Monks can choose to do force damage instead of just having magical unarmed strikes, etc
The ring of warmth is a strait buff for what it was meant for. You take cold damage from exposure to cold below freezing. Iirc the amount you took was 2 damage per round or something. Now you don’t take the damage. However you still take damage for weather between freezing and 1 degree, which is odd.
The damage is reduced from the total, before resistances are applied. You are still taking 1 damage, on average, as it's really shaving off 7 from the total. The rest gets through. 3D4 is about as low as ice damage spells/effects go except at very low levels/cantrips. On average, you will take 8 damage ( 7.5 rounded up ) - with 2D6 ( 7 average ) from the ring. Leaving 1 that gets through. Reduced to 1 with the second ring ( 0.5 rounded up ). For most spells and effects at moderate levels, though - it barely does anything. 35 cold damage average 10d6) from a breath weapon attack minus 7.. it helps, but 22 is still getting through. The changes to having all effects now applied before resistances ( and vulnerabilities after that, as the final step/insult ) balances out much of the previous shenanigans of many OP character and munchkin builds. There is no immunity for most things, and 1/2 damage and then reduced further - simply isn't a thing any more. (good change, IMO)
Ring of Cold resistance is rare. Ring of Warmth is uncommon. They nerfed Ring of Warmth to fit better with its rarity.
Wand of magic missile. As u said everyone (including me) shoots all charges off at once.
So it seems like a needed nerf. If everyone does something maybe it's not super to work that way
So the way I read from the 2014 DMG is that casting spells from items is imperceptible since they don't require any components V, S or M and the trigger for Counterspell is "which you take when you see a creature within 60 feet of yourself casting a spell with Verbal, Somatic, or Material components" in 2024 but you still couldn't really see a creature cast a spell in 2014 because there was no visible evidence of it. Therefore I have always ruled you can't counterspell spells from items. Has that changed in the new DMG?
about the Ring of Warmth, I'd say the reduction to damage is probably about the rarity
I like the idea of even some nonmagical items like armor reducing damage by 2 or 3 like in BG3
this ring, being a magical item but of low power, it can protect you against cold damage, but not as much as a rare item that gives you cold resistance
the weird thing about this is that, whenever taking cold damage, you might get more out of a 2d8 reduction that resistance, unless you take a very high amount of damage like a white dragon's cold breath
The armor of resistance is a bit of a nerf. With the 2014 version it made you resistant/immune to dragon breath weapons and most dragons didnt have magic natural weapons. Although still works against terrasqes
If the Sword of Wounding prevents all healing for the next hour and not just healing the damage dealt by the sword that's a pretty big deal - everyone else in your party is also dealing damage. Also, tracking the damage from the sword separately if you're fighting something that can heal itself has got to be annoying.
With the Ring of Warmth being an uncommon item, and rings of resistance being rare, I suspect that some of these changes are attempts to bring items in-line with their rarity.
I like changes to Wand of Magic Missile, Boots of Flying and Cloak of Invisibility. It was 3 items that seemed unbalanced to me, so I would never give them to my players. Now are the chances of them being used in my campaign much higher 🙂
I didn't get the answer to what I really wanted to know: Are all potions a bonus action to use now, or is it only healing potions?
As for the destroy ioun stone, its stated several times magic items unless stated otherwise, are no more durable than a regular variant.
Does the new book contain the Amulet of the Planes? Its always been very strong but they really nerfed the Planeshift spell so reasoned the item might have been nerfed or removed too.
I think it's weird that Ioun Stones require attunement at all... Their *thing* in 3.5 was not using a slot...
I've taken the attunement out in my game... Adding a limit of 3 makes sense with that change.
Definitely think as a player winged boots nerf was needed for simplification because it was a headache tracking time/recovery if you werent using it for a specified time as in travel and such. Now the charges make it super simple. Yeah its kind of a nerf but i think it works out better.
Ring of warmth was intentionally made weaker because it’s the uncommon version of the ring of cold resistance which is rare. In 2014 they did they both gave you resistance to cold and yet warmth was uncommon and ring of resistance was rare. There was no reason to get the rare version.
Making an item more or less powerful isn't a good or bad change. Making an item more fun and/or more balanced is a good change.
Ok so some thoughts here and they may be a bit out of order from the video more just making sure it wasn't covered later kind of thing
Ring of warmth: Ok it is a nerf but hear me out, it is uncommon and is strictly better than the rare ring of resistance, that should be enough on its own to give a reason for it to lose resistance and get something potentially worse but still beneficial.
Vicious and wounding: I am kind of torn on this, ya they are easier to use and more commonly useful but it feels like a stealth nerf to flame tongue, vicious doesn't need attunement and doesn't have a resistance while wounding still gets a bit of an edge as the anti heal is (at least IMO) better than 40 feet of light with the added bonus of not taking a bonus action to turn on or off. Granted I haven't seen if flame tongue was changed or improved but ya I hope so or else this feels kinda bad for that item.
Wand of magic missle: People can complain about the nerf but honestly it is a good thing Imo like others have said nova damage felt great for a player but also sucked to make a meaningful encounter a lot of the time. The wand meant you always had to keep in mind that 8d4+8 damage would be dealt first round to anything remotely seen as the scariest thing that day.
Marniers: I have seen the edge case you were asking about, a player went down and before one of the healers could pick them back up with a spell they had floated out of range which sucked.
Cloak of Invisiblity: While it is similar to magic missile (and the winged boots were the same as MM so didn't include it) honestly this needed the nerf, it was just too easy to spam it on and off when needed to essentially get near permanent invisibility when it mattered.