The next battlefield of the Edition Wars: One D&D

[alhoon]

I was wondering what my dear fraternity brothers think of the upcoming edition of D&D.

Personal opinion: From what I have seen, the 6th edition (One D&D) is playing it safe: it is very close to the 5th edition (D&D next). It will also be made in a way that you can use your 5e material as is with it. I.e. you can play Curse of Strahd from your 5e book without changing a thing, just using the 6e rules.
I am not enthused with most of the changes I have seen so far in 6e but I don't hate them either. Personally I think I will remain in 5e and just borrow a few things from 6e.

[Rebel Mage]

Isn't it more a 5.5e than a 6e? Ah, well, we'll see what happens.

I find that the changes I've seen so far are not the changes I want to see. I do love the feeling of D&D 5e, but I'm thinking of switching to Level Up: Advanced 5e after I'm done with my current campaign(s). This offers the D&D 5e feeling I love, while also giving more options to players, which is part of what I don't like about D&D 5e. (My monk will soon be levelling up to level 13. What do I get? Tongue of Sun and Moon, which is a very flavourful thing but also will likely not see much use? Oh, how wonderful. /s)

[Rock of the Fraternity]

To be succinct: I'm not going to bother with it. I have a lot of books already, and WotC's recent offerings haven't really left me craving more from them.

[alhoon]

WotC's recent offerings haven't really left me craving more from them.

Really? Out of the Abyss is IMO... the best adventure that came out of WotC all things accounted for (feel, art, originality, novelty, cast of characters). Curse of Strahd also has some very good adventures in it for Barovia although the take on the Dark Powers and that temple was not to my liking.

[Rock of the Fraternity]

It is what it is.

[High Priest Mikhal]

To be succinct: I'm not going to bother with it. I have a lot of books already, and WotC's recent offerings haven't really left me craving more from them.

This. I already have all the books I really want and need, aside from 2e Ravenloft books (PDF or hardcopy, IDC). I just don't see the point in spending hundreds of dollars all over again for a game I already know and can run just fine.

[Jester of the FoS]

I'm pretty liberal and a social justice focused individual....

But I've joked that the reason past edition were created was:
0e: Previous edition was not extant enough.
1e: Previous edition was not complete enough.
2e: Previous edition was not organized enough.
3e: Previous edition was not consistent enough.
3.5e: Previous edition was not profitable enough.
4e: Previous edition was not balanced enough.
5e: Previous edition was not popular enough.
5.5e: Previous edition was not woke enough.

A lot of the changes really seemed as focused on making the game more "inoffensive" and removing anything that could be remotely upsetting. I half expect alignment will go away and things like demons and devils being re-named. Again.
Some of the changes I do agree with. Most really. But I still lament what is happening to races and how samey they're becoming.

To me, it really feels like WotC is trying to have their cake and eat it too with this edition change. They're trying desperately to emphasise it's still 5th Edition while making more changes than between 1st and 2nd Edition. Or even more changes than between 3e and 3.5e. To say nothing of most other roleplaying games, where edition changes are largely an errata and reprinting. They're really pushing the idea that things are compatible and you can use old options. But that just seems like marketing spin.
They don't want people to stop buying books for the next 18 months. Or worry that their current library of accessories and adventures is now unusable.

I love 5e. It's my favourite version of the game by a mile. One of my top 5 RPGs. Great system for Ravenloft. But I also don't feel the need to buy the books all over again. There are some okay changes and some neat improvements, but for every change I like there's one I don't like.

Pro
I like Level 1 feats.
I like getting a feat from a background.
Limiting paladin smiting to once/turn is nicely balanced.
Exhaustion feels simpler.
Grappled feels more impactful.
Three focused spell lists make adding new spells easier. And potentially makes the sorcerer more interesting as they might be able to get a different spell list.
They're reorganizing the DMG. Which was, frankly, a mess.
Goliaths being in the PHB. They're a popular race now. It makes sense to "promote" them.
Swapping out cantrips is useful.
Every class getting subclass features at the same level has some neat design possibilities. (Universal subclasses?)
I like Epic Boons as a universal capstone.
Two-weapon fighting doesn't require a bonus action.
The Study action is useful.

Con
Wild shaping in the druid feels too samey. You can turn into a cat or a horse or a deer or a platypus but your statistics are the same. It's just flavour.
Races feel samey. Every race is just a rubber-foreheaded Star Trek alien. Each one gets proficiency in a skill and a feature or two that is equivalent to a feat. Except humans, which get proficiency and a feat. They might as well just make each racial power a "feat" and let you pick and flavour your race however you want.
Bards are still terrible in this edition and still aren't given much that's unique to being a bard. They're still full spellcasters despite there being precious few bard-centric spells above 5th level.
I dislike the penultimate level is always a feat. It's unfortunate that you stop getting unique class features after level 18 and really just encourages people to multiclass dip two levels.
I miss the half- races. Half-elves are my favourite race.

[Speedwagon]

Personally, I got into D&D through 5e and like the streamlined nature of it. While I've also enjoyed Pathfinder 2e, I've found 5e to be a good system to introduce people to, and one that I've run my Ravenloft campaigns in. I'm cautiously optimistic for 5.5e, especially after seeing how the overall community managed to make their voices heard to WotC regarding the OGL stuff as well as regarding the playtests on classes that felt a bit too nerfed in comparison. If anything, I'm just curious on what new material will be released that I might pick up. I liked Keys From the Golden Vault and saw on these forums a few ways to convert them into Ravenloft adventures. I plan to pick up the book on Giants and the Planescape book to see how those will go, and the future adventure module on the Red Wizards and stuff regarding Vecna in the metaplot also intrigues me! But I can also say that my reason for collecting these items is 50% interest and 50% a completionist drive to own all 5e related materials out of habit. Though I will admit, I also don't really like how samey the races/lineages are becoming, but I'm a forever DM so I've always viewed it as a problem that should be addressed but never really affected my games as much as it did my players. A maladjusted view, but it was my view for a while. I guess I'll (personally) just wait until late 2024/mid 2025 to gauge my thoughts on early 5.5e and see how it's going. I really hope to get more adventure modules and content that can be repurposed for my own games, as that's what drives most of my purchases from WotC (and third party publishers). Any Ravenloft modules for 5.5e would be interesting to pick up, especially if it helps flesh out the 5e interpretation beyond the splatbook released in 2021. And, we have the DMsGuild to release new content and that's had some excellent resources (as can be seen in Libertad's Let's Read thread)!


If any of you might be interested in the future of 5.5e or D&D in general, here's a really thorough video by Ted from Nerd Immersion that should give some clarification:

P.S.: Jester, your DMsGuild work has been a life saver on multiple occasions and I'm grateful for having purchased it!

[Mephisto of the FoS]

I haven't played 5e, I haven't even checked the rules to tell you the truth. What I know is that it is simpler than 3/3.5e (which I use in what I write) and that makes it easier for new players to learn to play D&D which is good but since I am really satisfied with the 3/3.5e rules, I don't see the point in learning a new system, especially since me and my old party when we were playing 2e experimented with various homebrewed rules to make the game seem more realistic (like for instance with the Hit Point system which we thought was more similar to a video game than a real battle and constantly tried to make battles more realistic). As I have said many times I haven't played for ages any RPG game but I am for some time now (a few months before covid) thinking of starting a game with some friends who have never played board RPGs. I see the pros in playing 5e but I think it is better to use the ol' 3/3.5 rules as there won't be any problem adjusting to it later, but dive directly into the more complicated system which I like most of all for its diversity and as I already have what I need to play it as well. So as far as the edition wars is concerned I really don't care, I am satisfied with what I use so there is no need for me to try a simpler version.

[alhoon]

@Jester:
I doubt they will get rid of half-elves. There are rules to make them (hybrid human/elf) in the book. I guess they will just add them as an example. HOWEVER: I do dislike how all races are the same, without ability bonuses/penalties. I liked the "Dwarves have more con, less charisma" etc.

[Jester of the FoS]

@Jester:
I doubt they will get rid of half-elves. There are rules to make them (hybrid human/elf) in the book. I guess they will just add them as an example. HOWEVER: I do dislike how all races are the same, without ability bonuses/penalties. I liked the "Dwarves have more con, less charisma" etc.

The rules for half-elves are literally just "pick elf or human. Those are all your statistics, and then pretend you're a half-elf.
Which doesn't feel satisfactory for me. I'm not playing a half-elf. I'm playing a human with fake ears.

As I commented elsewhere, if you reduce races to flavour you could just have racial feats and flavour your PC however you want.
Lucky feat? Hafling. Magic Initiate with hellish rebuke? Tiefling. Magic Initiate with burning hands flavoured as a breath weapon? Dragonborn. Tavern Brawler? Tabaxi. Tough feat? Caliban. Alert feat? Ratfolk.

[High Priest Mikhal]

O.O Well...I guess I won't even be buying the core rulebooks for 6e/5.5/whatever it's called. I'm all for mechanics changes that help make things more consistent and reduce unnecessary complexity (like 2e to 3.x). But make things too simple and I feel like something has all the flavor of ABC gum. I have identical complaints about Skyrim compared to the previous two games but I digress.

[alhoon]

Let's wait and see, because I don't think we are the only ones that will miss the half-elf.

[Pizza]

O.O Well...I guess I won't even be buying the core rulebooks for 6e/5.5/whatever it's called. I'm all for mechanics changes that help make things more consistent and reduce unnecessary complexity (like 2e to 3.x). But make things too simple and I feel like something has all the flavor of ABC gum. I have identical complaints about Skyrim compared to the previous two games but I digress.

Skyrim is a bit better than Oblivion which in some ways seems to have been intentionally ruined just to ruin it instead of trying to appeal to the lowest common denominator. Morrowind is the best by a country mile though.

[Jester of the FoS]

The new update is up: https://media.dndbeyond.com/compendium- ... ytest5.pdf

Like other updates there's good bits and bad bits, and different people will strongly disagree on which is which.
I really dislike the changes to warlocks for example, and find removing the short rest spell progression from them makes them far less interesting.