We’ve been using the new rules for about three weeks now, ever since the beginning of my Empire of the Ghouls campaign. The physical rulebooks still haven’t arrived in Australia, so I’ve been looking up rules in various compendiums (Roll20, Beyond20) as they become relevant.
Which means that I certainly haven’t read them all yet!
But there are things that come up in play, and then I find it’s changed from the 2014 rules. And some of these changes are really awesome. Others, less so!
Small Creatures move quicker
Two gnomes and a dwarf. And they have a base speed of 30 feet. It’s possible to say that is removing differentiation between the species (and that is certainly something that concerns me), but on the other hand, the joy from the players knowing that they can get into combat is significant.
I have a suspicion I’m very good at putting monsters a multiple of 30 feet away from the players… given all the times the players of dwarves have complained to me that they can’t reach them.
Damaging Cantrips
Speaking of wizards, the evoker’s cantrips are now doing half damage on a miss. I know that this isn’t strictly a new ability – but it starts at 3rd level rather than 6th level. And that makes a difference.
No-one likes the new Backgrounds
More to the point, ability score modifiers tied to backgrounds is somehow even worse than tying them to species. Absolutely incredible!
But I’ve had a couple of players who told me they only had one option for their backgrounds due to the triplets of stat increases being on the wrong ability scores for their chosen class (and subclass). Impressive.
Can’t wait to see the custom background rules – which I think are in the DMG.
More Nuanced Social Rules
I’d heard about the grappling changes. I hadn’t picked up on the changes to the social rules until last session. Basically, there’s a set DC for Deception/Intimidation/Persuasion checks – either 15 or the target’s Intelligence score, whichever is higher. So an Int 24 demon requires a DC 24 to succeed on.
Not only that, but the starting attitude of the creature is important – Hostile is disadvantage on the check, Friendly is advantage on the check.
I really like having these baselines. I’m adding in the old Moldvay initial reaction (attitude) chart, modified as follows, to the random encounters I have:
Roll 2d6:
2: Hostile (Immediate Attack)
3-5: Hostile
6-8: Indifferent
9-11: Friendly
12: Friendly (Enthusiastic, even)
I wonder if there’ll be something similar in the DMG?
Moving Through Allies
Allies don’t count as difficult terrain any more.
My players realised this before me. And, coupled with the greater speed for small creatures, they’ve been really enjoying the extra mobility.
Rituals
Bards can’t cast spells any more as rituals. This annoyed our bard player.
Edit: As it turns out, this isn’t true. All spellcasters can cast ritual spells, as long they have the ritual spell prepared. The rules reference is in the Rules Glossary. But the Wizard class can do it from their spellbook, so they get a reference to ritual spells in their class entry, which then confused us since it used to be part of the Spellcasting feature for some classes.
Resting Out of Sync
Here’s an odd one: Long rests take 8 hours. If there’s an interruption (and these are nicely defined, including “rolling initiative”), then it takes an extra hour to finish.
But after finishing a long rest, you can’t take another one until 16 hours later.
It didn’t take me long to realise that if you get an interruption, everything is out of sync, since there are 24 hours in a day (yes, even in most D&D worlds).
So, if you sleep from 10 pm-6 am, and get interrupted, the next day it’s going to be 11 pm-7 am, with each interruption slowly moving things more out of sync. I expect this particular restriction will be waived by a lot of DMs when appropriate.
Chromatic Orb bounces… possibly
The wizard in my Empire of the Ghouls game took Chromatic Orb. And that spell got a big upgrade over the old version – if you hit with the spell, it’s got a chance of bouncing to another opponent. All you need is a double on one of the damage dice. Which means the chances go up as you upcast it. (And the number of potential targets grows as well).
Of course, she’s yet to get it to work. Most of the time, there have been no doubles. This week, finally doubles appeared! Woo – extra target! Which was promptly missed as the attack dice had other ideas. But lots of fun.
More sessions of D&D 2024 to come – but those a few things that we’ve noted in our early days of play in the edition!
According to the Ritual entry in the rules glossary any spellcaster that has a prepared spell with the ritual tag can cast that spell as a ritual. Bards with Detect Magic as one of their prepared spells can cast it with a spell slot or as a ritual. The “ritual casting” language no longer has to appear in the Spellcasting section of the class.
Thanks! I’ve edited my article to correct it. (Shows how changing the places rules appear can confuse established players!)
I think you’re mistaken about Bards and Rituals. Ritual casting of prepared spells is now part of the base spell-casting rules.
The new Chromatic Orb is nice for Wizards, but it is especially great for Sorcerers. With Innate Sorcery, they can easily get advantage on the attack rolls and thus minimize missing both on the initial cast and on the bounces. With the Empowered Spell metamagic, they can reroll damage dice and thus increase they damage and try to get a bounce to happen at the same time.
Actually, they also changed the ritual adept feature to also affect cantrips that use an attack roll instead of only those that require a saving throw, making the ability much more potent (it now also works with fire bolt).