The closer we get to release, the more I worry that their decision to make this a backwards-compatible revision that also has its own entire set of rules changes, subclasses, magic items, monsters, and adventures is going to leave everyone unhappy.

Ah, I missed the fact that the lvl19 ASI specifically is allowed to break the max of 20. Yeah, that’s a weird interaction. They just need to change it so that it increases both your score and your maximum by +4.

I don’t think what you said would make it work with Giant belts though, they just set your strength to be that number, you’re not supposed to be able to boost beyond that number.

I did some math to see how good Sorcerous Burst is on average, now that it’s a d8. Because these are averages, I’m only looking at additional bonus dice added from the base dice, because the chances of rolling a second round of bonus dice is so minuscule (even at lvl17) that they don’t affect the average damage significantly.

From levels 1-4, you roll 1d8 as a base, which means you have a 12.5% chance to roll one 8 and get a bonus damage dice. Each 1d8 has an average damage of 4.5, so your average damage is 4.5 + (12.5%)(4.5) = 5.06. That’s still less than a Firebolt’s average of 5.5, but you do get to change your damage type every turn AND you’re more likely to do 10 or more damage than a Firebolt (10% chance of 10 damage, vs (12.5%)(87.5%) = 10.9% chance of rolling an 8 and then at least a 2 to deal 10+ damage). At the same time, Sorcerous Burst is much more likely to do negligible damage than a Firebolt. A 5e goblin has 7 HP, for example. If you hit one with Firebolt, you have a 4/10 = 40% chance to deal at least enough damage to kill it with one shot from full health. If you hit one with Sorcerous Burst, however, you have a 2/8 = 25% chance to deal enough damage to kill them.

From levels 5-9, you roll 2d8, which gives you a 21.88% chance of rolling exactly one 8, and a 1.56% chance of rolling two 8s, for a total average damage of 10.13 (vs Firebolt’s 11). At lvl11, the average damage goes to 15.19 (vs 16.5), and at lvl17 it goes to 20.25 (vs 22). So it’s the same pattern at every level: Firebolt does more on average, but Sorcerous Burst has better chance to deal high damage, has a much higher potential damage cap, and its damage can be changed if damage type matters…while it also has a greater chance of doing a small amount of damage. It is, in short, a swingy and unpredictable spell, which is very thematic.

I think Sorcerous Burst is the right pick for a sorcerer looking for a damage-dealing cantrip. It’s not strictly better than Firebolt, and is more likely both to overkill its targets and to not deal enough damage when you need it to, but it’s also more likely to surprise you and deal way more damage than you thought it would. It’s also more likely to be useful as a damage-dealer in more situations, since you can change its damage type.

Oh good, they finally addressed how the “X Savant” (the wizard school discount feature) actually incentivizes you to not take spells of the appropriate school on level-up, and hope you find them as scrolls to copy them later. It actually does what it should do now: give you more spells of a particular school.

Also, Memorize Spell means that the wizard is now not only the best utility caster for rituals, they’re the best utility caster, period. Every weird, niche spell that could be useful but only if you happened to prepare it on the right day is now available to you with just a minute of prep time. That’s simply fantastic, I love it.

I like the idea of Studied Attacks…but at the same time, I don’t like how it makes it impossible to roll your 3-5 attacks at once, because the order of your attacks (and whether you hit or miss with a previous attack) matters.

I’m not sure what you mean by that? You can either use the ASI to get one of those abilities to its pre-capstone max of 20, and then the capstone takes it to 24, or you use the ASI to get a feat.

You say that’s a problem, but it just sounds like you can double up your meme with a greentext

I don’t mind having to make “tough choices” in general, only when the obviously correct choice is boring and the suboptimal one is the cool fun one.

This perfectly sums it up. The problem is that increasing your scores needs to be pretty darn strong, strong enough to compete with a feat…but as you said, it’s usually pretty boring. A couple of +1s certainly add up and make your character more powerful on average, but a feat that grants entirely new functionality just feels so much more impactful and fun.

I would have preferred them to entirely separate stat growth and feat selection, but the OneDnD method of just making most (all?) feats into “half feats” is acceptable as well.

I genuinely hope this results in healthy competition for D&D. That can only result in better content and games for us as players.

Love this classic.

In order for subclasses to feel impactful and varied, they do need to change how you play pretty significantly…but that means they need to have a pretty hefty set of abilities right when you first get the subclass. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that the classes that are the worst offenders as “most abused multiclass dips in 5e” all get their subclasses at levels 1 or 2.

Now that’s just a really cool story that I’ve never heard before, thanks!

Of course it has to be this one first XD

How’s the app working for you? I’m just using the mobile site.

I’m an admin, and this is hugely helpful. I’m at work now but I’ll certainly look into all of this when I get to my desktop at home.

Thank you very much for the run-down! We’re basically trying to inflate the life raft after tossing it over-board here, so this helps a lot.

A shade tree. By which I mean, a tree that continuously spawns Shades.