@@TreantmonksTemple One question that I didn't notice if it was answered was related to the increased number of options for feats- They may have increased the number of feats available to choose from but did they also increase the number of feat slots available to characters? It doesn't mean much to increase the available feats you can choose from if they don't also increase the number of times you get to make those choices. I'm not sure if you can say anything regarding that but I'd be interested in the answer if you can.
@@TreantmonksTemplein all seriousness, I think you are the most thoughtful voice in the community. And it seems obvious to me that folks at WoTC are listening already. As a customer, I would really benefit from your formal and consistent review of their language.
Even if they will never admit it, someone on the WotC Dev Team has been keeping a close eye on Chris' thoughts and ideas through the entire play test process. I can't count how many of Chris' "prophecies" have come true!
I instantly could hear it in his voice. It feels like it went "*hurredly sits down* OK IM HERE.... uh... hit record... OK HELLO IM REACTING..." Obviously it isnt yelling, im using caps to represent the feeling that is strongly visable.
I’m so glad they gave you a copy of the player’s handbook early. It is much more friendly to creators and will help them get early buzz going with higher quality videos and not just quick reactions. I’m glad they are finally working more closely with you guys.
11:00 Incorporating Common Houserules into the core rules was a major part of the development decision when the original AD&D was being reimagined 2.0. Numerous panels online with the surviving designers during that era constantly state that. It is core to the evolution of the game throughout its entire history.
I'm so glad you have a full advance copy! The nuanced analysis of different features and mechanics you do is incredible, but it takes time! Giving you the time you need will hopefully mean you can temper peoples instant reactions with your own videos
The tap dance between reacting and not sharing NDA content is impressive! Great video and can't wait for the unrestricted videos that are on their way!
Breaking news: A new interview video with JC just came out focusing on backgrounds, and he said what you couldn't: The 2024 PHB does not support mixing-and-matching to create your own backgrounds. But he also said that the 2024 DMG will contain guidelines for something like that. He was vague on the latter, so we'll see just how flexible it ends up being.
So in order to open up more avenues to create the character fantasy you want they removed the ability to make the character fantasy you want? Sounds about right with WotC just removing stuff they don’t like, like player agency, because it doesn’t make them money.
Yeah I suspected as much because it sounded weird when he was raving about how much more choice you got..... But another way of wording what he was saying was "you are restricted to which backgrounds you can choose (and I'm guessing which feats you can get) to backgrounds that support the stat's you need boosted"
@@AtelierGodRestrictions create gameplay as much as free choice does. They rolled back the absolute freedom, my assumption is to provide a more guided character creation and limit power combos.
I'm guessing it's a business decision. With custom backgrounds the default there is little reason to care about the official backgrounds. Now people might buy a new book to get a new cool background that offers a new feat. I'm not happy I don't like ANY of the official backgrounds they all need at least a skill change and the feats are lackluster.
Finally Wotc is interacting with you. By far best insight on mechanics and how they all interact with each other. Hopefully they start taking your advice on future updates to things
I am absolutely thrilled that they've recognized your content and channel and provided you with a review copy. This is great for you and your channel. 💯💯💯
There's no actual play video where we could see TM so clearly running calculations about the next optimized action so clearly as seeing TM evaluating on the spot what he could say without breaking his NDA at every step of this reaction. Pretty excited for the 2024 PHB. I'll get my hands in a copy as soon as it is available in Brazil.
I'm so glad to hear you got the early copy. Your feedback was always on point, can imagine it's going to be invaluable. 50:11 ART! I love that gnome Rosie the Riveter in the upper right corner.
@@GLORPDORP I do think there’s some merit to having slight restrictions, since they can help get creative juices flowing and sometimes building a character sub-optimally can be narratively interesting, but for an advanced player or a character whose origin doesn’t fall under the options presented, a custom background is necessary imo and if it’s not presented, I’m sure it will be easy enough to create.
@@pederw4900 I half agree with that. Having a background feat that's probably not meant for your character has the potential to be sub-optimal in an interesting way, but there's nothing interesting about being behind the mathematical assumptions that the system is making about your character. There's a reason that they changed racial ASIs to allow them to apply to any attribute of your choosing, and it seems like they forgot it.
@@quintec45anything that’s in the DMG might as well not exist for players, players won’t know it exists and therefore be forced into playing what the cookie cutter characters WotC thinks are supposed to be played.
A note about the rigidity of backgrounds: The Custom Background option IS in the DMG. Odd choice to not put it in the PHB, but it is in fact in the game, so we can have our way with a custom background with all of our builds in the future.
In very excited that you have an advance copy!!! That helps SO much with helping us understand things, where they're coming from, and allows you to make better shaped content once it does fully release. Exceptionally pleased they brought you in in some small way to assist in being a creator
Thank you for the video. I always appreciate getting your reactions as they discuss matters like this and am glad to hear they gave you a preview copy. You deserve and have earned the respect they are showing you.
Maybe I'm the only one, but I'm hoping the Poisoner feat was included as one of the Tasha's Feats to get some revisions. I suspect Telekinetic made it, given the presence of so many Psionic subclasses.
I can see them leaking the PDF a week or some days in advance for hype. Sidenote but people don't realize how 9/10 leaks games have happened by the hands of the company itself to generate hype between hardcore fans who will talk about anything they can get their hands on
I don't think that this will happen. A lot of companies actually add really tiny watermarks on each PDF (and send it to different external parties). Thus a leak can come back to you.
As someone who has helped a lot of new really casual players get into the game, having nice art for every class and I believe every subclass is something that is really important for casual players A lot of new people will simply flip through the pages, see art of something that looks really cool and say ‘I wanna play that’s
Cris, they really should have hired you as an external consultant (I don't know if you'd accept, but they clearly need the help). In Brazil there was a popular meme of Wood Woodpecker holding a "You haven't done more than your obligation" sign. There's kind of what I feel about WOTC so far. Concisely organization, incorporating (some) players feedback (which they're actually blessed to have plenty) and including specialist in playability of their own game (like yourself, D4, PackTactics etc.) is actually trivial for what I consider to justify a reviewed edition.
They talked about how Backgrounds now have real utility both in combat and out-of-combat situations (actual glimpse at 14:18). From what's been portraited by Crawford, you get +3 ASI improvements based on your background and a 1st-level Feat, as well as the given skill/tool proficiencies, and starting equipment. What I wonder is how these new ASI improvements stack with ASI Racial Bonuses, which are a +2 or +3 to characters in 2014 rules. Are you effectively adding +6 to your ability score with your race and background? And how will races that pick their Feats like Custom Lineage and Variant Human work with the new rules, if at all?
They don’t, they replace them. It’s like when they had Tasha’s free ASI distribution. Also “variant” human is now the regular human, they have more skills and a free inspiration a day feature alongside 1 Origin feat (no 4 level feats) This means they have 2 Origin feats.
So many things/questions. How have they changed or not changed Monk since last we seen them? Both the Aberrant Mind, and the Clockwork Soul sorcerers are included in the PHB, are they going to retain their additional spell lists? Are the other sorcerers going to get additional spells as lists as well or perhaps the other way around? I really wish the PHB would be out sooner but I understand that things take time. Take care all.
I REAALLLLY liked this video. Thanks for putting in the time to affirm how this lines up with our play test investment. I am looking forward to your upcoming related videos.
Again, an outsanding video. Thank you Chris for your constant and rigourous work. About backgrounds, I'd speculate you cannot build your own background and decide your stat bonuses anymore.
Yeah I was also about to post a comment to speculate about what they didn't change. Was invisibility changed in the playtest? Is that on the table to be refined?
Firstly, I am so glad that you got an advanced copy, well deserved in my opinion. However, I do hope one of the things they "missed" is a re-vamping of the shield spell, as I have always thought the spell was just fine as is. Also, I hope that spells like Bigby's Hand, and Telekinesis are kept vs checks as that clearly separates them from most other spells. Obviously, I am so excited to see, and hear what's upcoming, and again I think its highly fortunate that you are going to be among the individuals providing advanced information even if I disagree (very rarely) with your take.
I'm guessing they didn't change the god awful exhaustion rules? (Blink twice if I'm spot on )😉 Still quite excited overall. Martials just feel more varied and there's more non-damage ways to interact which I appreciate a ton.
48:07 "There was something you could do (with backgrounds) in the playtest you can no longer do in the official PHB" Is it customizing your background? It was in the playtest, but Jeremy said in the "New Feats | Backgrounds | Species | 2024 Player's Handbook | D&D" video that is now in the DMG.
I think it was missed in this reaction but they do kinda awkwardly state how ability score asignment works now, being offered 3 stats and being given 3 points to spread across at least 2 of the 3 stats, they present it as "woah look at all this choice!" ignoring that it is a restriction over the completely free asignment tasha's allowed, it's a much better designed restriction than the 2014 racial stats, but I'll have to wait and see exactly how the stat spreads work to decide if I am going to enforce this or just keep letting my players put their stats anywhere.
Does anyone remember what prediction he is talking about at 20:42? I don't remember, and obviously he can't say, but if we figured it out in comments, that would be okay...
One thing I'm hoping for Wizards is something beyond just expertise in a INT skill and the Memorize Spell feature (which I do enjoy). Modify Spell seemed so awesome and I'm sad it was removed in Playtest 7. Beyond flavor, every Wizard that casts Fireball or something is going to be exactly the same with no tangible differences between 2 mages that could have very very different backgrounds and goals besides one Fireball being Red and another being Green with a Skull shape. I'm also sad it seems like most of the Wizard's Subclasses aren't here, probably because they wanted to stop some classes from having an overwhelming number of subclasses compared to others like in the 2014 book.
Glad to know I'm not the only one who doesn't care much for the art. The art in the book is gonna be great I'm sure, but art is not content I'm excited for.
Glad they realized you should have an advanced copy. Can’t wait to see your content on the NEW version. ( I am guessing they are not officially letting you make backgrounds. And that sucks and not calling it the 5.0 Gold Edition or 5.5 is 💯 going to cause confusion outside of the D&D circles - most stupid leadership over there)
I was so confused, it took 50 minutes through of the video to realize I'd misread the title and you weren't going to talk about any changes to the Reaction rules.
I want to see a martial vs caster disparity discussion based on multiclassing and them moving so many subclass features further back in level (which I think hurts martial classes more than casters)
Great overview, thank you. From the sound of it I would supect that certain backgrounds give specific boni to certain attributes and you can't choose freely where you want to place them anymore - which would really suck.
They probably also felt a tension between getting new players up to speed quickly, versus giving experienced players a bunch of Lego pieces to make whatever they want. Good catch @quintec45
What are you talking about it’s them who gets a cut from him, I’m certain they wrote something into the NDA that basically sold his channel to them indefinitely.
@@AtelierGod You don't think Chris of all people would have been able to tell if something like that was in the NDA, he's probably already optimizing his content releases to fully maximize what the NDA allows, and based on historical context I bet they left big gaping loopholes in it that he could drive a convoy through.
At the front end, given how some of the playtest material was, I'm still hoping/wishing they do some fine-tuning based on input from people like you, to make the difference between a working machine and well-oiled machine.
This also begs the question from an optimization standpoint, now that this competes with the SS/ XBE etc builds.... will the Tasha's gloomstalker still dominate that playstyle? Is this version truly superior in terms of optimization in ALL cases?
I can see if a character is holding a potion in hand, drinking it should be a bonus action. However, fishing a bottle out of your belt pouch in the middle of melee while an orc swings an axe at you should take a Use Object action (I allow and will still allow drinking the potion as part of this action). I also maximize the values of healing potions rather than have players roll.
The characters ALL appear to be more powerful now, especially with the options to customise more than previously had been possible. Even with fewer number of subclasses and species . . . more options now appear to be available to explore and to create.
I'm excited to hear there are "new" new things we don't know about yet! Part of the fun for me is exploring the new stuff, so it would have felt anticlimactic if they just printed the playtest stuff and that was it.
I love that Treantmonk does this. I much prefer to have someone who is analyzing it from consumer point of view talking about it instead of someone literally trying to sell the book.
I appreciate the qualifications about "not totally new" stuff. I still think it's really good for the game, though. I helped a new player get into the game recently. Telling him to buy 3 books (as a PLAYER) and two more (as a DM) was a rough sell.
I'm curious if we're going to see play beyond tier 2 actually work. I personally prefer higher level play, but the game just breaks down a lot after a certain point. As a DM, I have to fix and adjust a lot more than I should need to in order to make those later tiers fun for everyone, myself included.
So, question: Could I play, say, a Grave Cleric (porting across the powers, abilities, and proficiencies from Xanathar's) with the 2024 Cleric Template?
I'm afraid of the final background rules, does this mean that backgrounds are not full customizable anymore? I am still able to choose any proficiency, Ability Score and feat freely?
[12:20] Educated guess: Stealth and surprise rules... XD I love to play rogues and I hate those rules amd the discussions they instigate. I saw the expression on your face andf imidiatly got the impression, it has to be that. So cough twice if I'm right. ;)
I'm just glad that after 10 years, they are like, You know some stuff in 4e worked, and we can bring it back now, it's been long enough, after we were so adverse to including it in 5e for fear of alienating more fans / fans more. Oh dnd. That's what you sound like, when I see these little mechanical choices made, I think about this.
