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I've looked at a lot of different perspectives, and I think the invisible condition works, because in the case of an enemy that has been captured and is unable to alert its allies, it no longer counts as an enemy. I think it also makes sense that if you're hiding and you're not in clear line of sight of your allies, they shouldn't be able to see you either. Three quarters cover doesn't make sense, I think that was a gimme to give more benefit to stealth builds. The big change was that now in 2024 creatures don't have 360⁰ line of sight, so they have to be looking in your direction. I agree, they could've worded it better though, and it took me a while to understand it.

How you get the quest cold weather killer is bonkers. Some guys just like “hey! Random adventurer. I’ve taken it into my hands to track down a murderer. I know exactly who he is. In fact I followed him for 10 days then came back here to seek out a random group of people like yourselves to track him down! If you’re curious I also know all of his motivations. Good luck.”

I agree. Taking away saving-throw based attacks also takes away fun/agency with defensive abilities/stats from the players.

We've been looking to swap our campaigns into 2024 and I ruled that if you break the two conditions heavily obscured or three quarters cover you are no longer hidden. To the argument that coming out of cover to attack would then negate the advantage I would say first it's a game and we don't have to try and use realism when feels like you're just trying to make an argument to invalidate this and second arrow slits and other cover has been used throughout history with ranged weapons and that seems very plausable

Super helpful!

That statblock seems to be closer to 4E than 5E because they're moving away from the use of natural language in the attacks' descriptions.

This is what happens when WotC didn't bother playtesting monsters from the new MM because they were in a rush to get the books (at least two of three of the core books out by 2024).

Have you ever seen an actual wolf? I don’t think you would debate this if you stood next to one. Every new rule in this book makes the game more complicated and slower to play, that’s a good reason to skip it altogether. It is a fantasy game, let some fantastic elements exist.

The pseudrodragon example is even funnier because theres a warlock invocation printed in the 2024 books that sets your familiar's save DC to your own, covering that low save dc weakness you mentioned. And regardless of whether or not the sting was meant to "count" as an attack or not, your familiar can do it every round in either interpretation: on its own if it doesnt count, or via your invocations if it does count. The enemies could kill the familiar, but it just takes one magic action and no spell slot to bring it back, and thats an attack aimed at nobody elsein the party, and heck maybe you can put temp hp on it so it can eat more attacks. Still a 10 gp incense cost though, i guess you burn it *really* fast as part of that action.

This is giving "lets get rid of all the modifiers and replace them with advantage/disadvantage to break character sizes, sunlight sensitivity, skill checks, and two weapon fighting all at once" vibes.

I approve of the change. The players in my group have far to many ways to make every saving throw thrown at them. The Bard in the group alone can negate most of the saves. I had already been baking in effects without saves as part of a creatures ability perks. I would not do that to lower level characters though.

The attacks still have to hit. Considering the benefit of spending the combat I think this is a good thing.

My design philosophy is large creatures and up should be able to knock smaller creatures prone easily depending on the creature, giants especially should have an easy time overpowering smaller targets but i can understand the frustration with getting knocked prone with no save.

what is strange is that they banned performing Magic with the Figther's Action surge. You were already restricted to only casting 1 Spell per turn, meaning that the Action Surge could only be used for Cantrips. This is WotC admitting that a Figther without Action Surge should do less damage than a Cantrip.

I’ll weigh in on the topic against my better judgment. I’m well aware that players are heroes and they should win at least 75% of the time. But I also think most tables have skewed this intended statistic to well over 98%. Why? Probably because many players build characters with specific builds in mind all the way to cap (or the cap of the adventure) before the first session is even played. They’ve basically written most of their characters stories before they’ve encountered their first enemy. And so the investment can grow exponentially, leaving them very angry if their character dies. And no DM wants angry players (rightly or wrongly). And so over time, running away/retreating has disappeared and “if you put a monster in front of us, we may be able to kill it” has taken over. I think this trend is unhealthy for the overall game. It’s hard to feel heroic when you’ve never been knocked down. But that’s quite subjective I guess (despite it being a major part of the heroes journey). If a player can instantly succeed on putting conditions on enemies (just look at grapple or these “monster stat blocks” which I believe are actually stat blocks for wild shapes/familiars/summons/companions FOR players); then monsters should be able to as well. We need to bring back a bit of struggle to the game, instead of it constantly being developed 100% in a player facing fashion. The DM is a player as well. “It’s not fair that a character can get a condition without any say in the matter!”… I agree. It’s no more fun on the DM side as well. And my voice in the conversation matters as well. Now, if it were me developing the game, I’d remove the poisoned condition and just have the attack do poison damage directly instead. I’d remove the incapacitated condition because it’s fundamentally unconscious without the death saves, and I’d remove paralyzed since it’s basically restrained without the incapacitated condition (or at least very close). Then I’d build the system to be more modular. If you want to play non-typical fantasy characters holding hands while skipping through an adventure to get mayonnaise from the market before the big feast (where failure and death is never an option); then so be it. But add modular design options for more brutal combat where we move the success rate back down to 75% and retreat is always a reasonable reaction. It’s the best of both worlds. And remember, you don’t start out as heroes day 1. You’re simply a more rare “commoner” with special traits. Your experience changes you; at least they should. So building a full character before session 1 is stupid. You aren’t there to build a story, you’re there to hijack one into supporting decisions you made months/years ago. It’s why they should’ve rebalanced the power gains from level 1-10 and spread them out a bit more from 1-20 instead. They should’ve also addressed multiclassing more, making it more of an investment. Instead of a leveled fighter taking a level in bard all of a sudden when never saying a word during a session, no interest in writing poems, dancing, or singing…. Nope! Did it for the mechanical gains yo! That’s all well and good if the game is designed around modularity and making meaningful choices. But as it stands all the arguments I’m hearing/seeing are “it doesn’t make sense I can be knocked prone when I’m such a strength focused character”… well it doesn’t make sense to make half the choices many builds do purely for “mechanical reasons” and does nothing to serve the story being told. But ok.

There is a middle ground. "If the attack succeeded by 5 or more, the opponent becomes prone." or "If the attack also exceeds the opponent's passive athletics score, the opponent becomes prone." In this case, not all attacks do this and the player's abilities have some determination on whether they are affected.

The verisimilitude is on point. Wolves are pack hunters that specialize in taking down prey and mauling it to death. They weigh 50 to 180 lbs (average 115). They are always going to try to put you on your back so they can rip out your throat. This approach to creature design is simple and elegant but may not be appropriate for more complex creatures.

The need for condition immunities will appear if they have auto-debilitating statuses afflicting the players without counterplay. Now I'm ALL for having an immunity to the Prone Condition while Raging as a Barbarian. Seen a player have that in my game, all smiles and feels very in character.

This is the Designers binary thinking. They should have made the extra effect apply if you beat the AC by a certain amount.

I think you are missing the actual design intent. It’s pretty simple. You either roll an attack or they roll a save, not both. So with the wolf, it already rolled an attack and hit. There is no need for a save also. With Sting there is a save, no need for an attack. One or the other for monsters moves the game along much faster. So if you want the wolf to have a saving throw just remove the attack roll.

D&D 2024, is pure woke shit. Dont buy a broken system, from a company, who dosent give a shit about you😮

i mean, i think it save a lot of time on rolling, also make pets stronger, but yeah they need to undress how to save yourself from enemy effects

Someone's never watched cop k9 videos. A dog on a person's arm is pretty much a garaunteed grounding. So much for not being real 😂

The only problem is out of the casters Druid was nerfed the hardest. They can’t summon dragons anymore . This one of the few unique things they get. I’m ok with nerf to it but ya have to give them something else

Honestly, I like these changes. Hopefully they can rein in the superhero feeling PCs had in 2014 5e for a more grounded experience where the world is dangerous again.

I REALLY hope this isn’t going to be how all monsters are made from now on. Monsters landing automatic Topples is going to make mince meat out of any front liners.

I guess one thing here, is that Giant Spider (created by the Giant Insect spell) already got a Web that restrained (reduced speed to 0) on an attack (no save).

Another reason why they did this was to increase power of monsters, since pc’s have gotten a power upgrade. the dow side is the short sightedness of these upgrades that you poinnted out… oooh wotc :(

It’s a good example you give. The barbarian attacking recklessly will be getting ragdolled by quite a few monsters despite having good str con and dex saves. As a PC, I would like to roll a saving throw to have a chance to resist conditions, otherwise I would feel cheated, just as an attack should have to hit my AC

Yeah, I read this early and I was freaking out about this. Pack of Wolves riddle just got much more dangerous. Pack tactics, and instant prone. You probably can't out run them. You need a fog spell or something. At CR 1/4 - and I would assume that a group of 4 players against 7-10 Wolves is definitely going to kill at least one of them with these new stats. That's assuming the high armor fighter gets prone and they focus one player down and try to drag his carcas away and let the other players leave with their lives so the Wolves can eat. Maybe since the Wolves are all clustered around the dead fighter, you can hit them with the (new version of the...) sleep spell and recover the fighter's body. That's a hard lesson at level 1 or 2.

I think it’s to erase pointless dc 12 and 13 saves, even on your worst save it’ll rarely effect you

Why aren't you playing PF2e?

To me this is just weapons masteries for monsters. PC have alot of attack abilities that have riders that don't have an extra save, not too different for monsters to have it too.

The lack of attention to detail is is stunning

I think the removing of saves when a monster makes an attack was done to effectively give monsters weapon mastery equivalents.

They are WIZARDS of the coast not fighters of the coast

To me, it's also a usability issue; because the rules tell players that if they want to do something they need to roll a check and if they are targeted by something they can roll a save to avoid it, not being allowed a save to avoid something will cause dissonance

Your philosophy can be based on either fun or skin color, not both.

What's weird is Topple. How often do you fight wolves? Like twice a campaign maybe? How often do your PCs attack? Every single fight. Why "fix" the one that comes up so much more rarely?

I think I’d just modify stat blocks to add saves when they maintain verisimilitude

🥳🫂👍🏿 I’m calling it 5.5

I had 0 issues with the 2014 stealth rules themselves, just they way they were presented by being scattered in various places in the book (the invisible condition was dumb though, that you still got the benefits even when seen). These new rules though... What the hell... Huge step backwards.

What they need to do is just add a ring that lets you borrow points from one ability to bolster another but make it require attunement. That way someone who realy want to play against type doesn't feel gimped. A gentleman whos name escapes me recently pointed out that the d20 system also has inherent weakness that make your ability score less relevant than the chaos of the die roll. Now i know the chaos is part of the fun plus the d20 is iconic, but it might be worth it to investigate using multiple smaller dice for more consistent numbers, while still haveing some room for unpredictability.

I know it’s a controversial stance but if you don’t allow multiclassing the need for nearly every house rule on spells just goes away. I introduced this ban 2 years ago when I began my new homebrew campaign and it has been liberating for me as a DM who does not like the optimising style of play. It has made it so easy to balance encounters to the difficulty I desire that I can’t see me ever going back even if multiclassing stops being optional in the new PHB.

From the team that brought us silvery barbs; more broken untested amateur-hour homebrew.

is that not a contradiction? Three-Quarters cover means at least three-quarters of you is behind the cover. If you are fully behind the cover you are fully behind the cover. This means that if you have Three-Quarters cover you can see the enemy and enemy can see you. So by contradiction you can't hide behind Three-Quarters cover becasue enemies can see you? So them saying you can't does not work becasue they see you?

Great job highlighting the issues left unaddressed by WotC! For anyone who haven't already done so, it's worth checking out Level Up Advanced 5e's spells as fixes for all of the problems in both the 2014 and 2024 PHB. EN Publishing took the time to address issues (e.g., Tiny Hut has a 200 GP cost). A5e also does a more interesting twist with backgrounds by dividing them among heritage (species/race), culture, and background (prior profession) - with interesting abilities tied to each choice. My table has been loving the switch - especially with PDFs of the Adventurer's Guide (and all the other books) available at $27 per book.

Another channel that's just negativity and hostility. What is it with you guys, fostering anger and divisiveness in the community just to get YT $$$ and views for yourselves. It's hypocritical and not good for the hobby

The only monster I have seen is the Dire wolf which has been nerfed to hell and back, losing almost half its hitpoints and it special ability with keen hearing and smell for perception. This seems very weird as the player power creep is quite big and would have expected monsters to follow suit, not get worse.

You can never push anyone more than once in a combat round, regardless of number of creatures taking actions. The action represents what is possible to do... during the entire round. So any action is technically not fully completed until the end of the round. Everyone doesn't get their own 6 second time bubble to act in. Why do so many of you youtube people think this how the game works? Never has, never will, and stop telling people it is.