Well it’s official: Wizards of the Coast, via the D&D Beyond app, have now confirmed that the rules revision published in late 2024 will be referred to as “D&D 5.5e”
I’ve been running with this version of the rules (more or less) since they were published, taking the audacious, questionable path of running both rules sets simultaneously in a campaign that the release bisected. I’ll be honest, that experience made up my mind that GMs need to commit to one or the other for campaigns and adventures. It doesn’t really matter which one, though, and it’s not an immutable choice: that is, you may find yourself switching back and forth, especially if you tend to run a lot of “Limited Run Adventures” (this is how my “home” table now refers to One-Shots, because we never finish in one go).
You may already know that I wrote a whole series of posts detailing (most of) the changes. There are a lot of changes but I’ve generally found that the quantity of individual changes is massive while the quality of those changes breaks down along two major lines:
- No more “contested” rolls
- Limit exposure of “meta” knowledge
What do these look like in practice?
Grapple is the stand-out example. Under the original (5e) rules, the two combatants would roll dice and add their multipliers, whoever had the higher numbers would prevail. With 5.5e, these “roll off” mechanisms are replaced with Saving Throws to resist the attacker’s intended effects. Frankly, this is a better system that reinforces the existing, well-understood Saving Throw d20 test - and I defend that judgement everywhere contested rolls were replaced, not just on grapple.
Spells like Sleep and Color Spray previously tracked their effectiveness against target monsters’ remaining HP. This inadvertently promoted meta-gaming, as astute players might refrain from casting those spells against more powerful foes until they had taken some damage. The 5.5e versions replace the HP-limit with a Saving Throw by the monster which, again, reinforces the existence of the Saving Throw test type.
Creature summoning and some types of shape-shifting replaced player-selected creature stat blocks with system-wide, defined blocks. This closed some exploits that enabled players to select creatures that might be slightly out-of-balance due to the designers prioritizing realism. Generally speaking, I am not overly concerned about this change.
Not everything is uncontroversial, though. Paladins used to be able to deliver a lot of damage on a single turn, thanks to the multi-smite exploit that 5.5e shut off. Ambush tactics were effectively eliminated by the changes to Surprise. Combats largely are taking longer. Mid-combat healing is viable. The new Weapon Masteries are kind of all over the place. Heroic Inspiration is not entirely a discretionary award. Combat encounter design was streamlined a bit, but the new XP thresholds suggest some player-power inflation.
Personally, I’m just not going to get over the way they gutted Surprise. I don’t advocate for a return to the prior system, but that doesn’t mean I’ll ever accept the way they shut down an entire strategy path. Oh well.
So let’s sum it all up, with the power of (more than) a year a hindsight and experience:
The Good
- 5.5e does a good job of consolidating and asserting existing rules within the system.
- Some glaring exploits were carefully, judiciously adjusted
- Balance adjustments make healing viable during combat, improving tactical variety
- The new product features improved representation and cultural sensitivity than D&D ever has
The Bad
- There are more effects - and saves against those effects - popping off during combat, causing combats to bog down and draw out even more than before
- The Surprise mechanic was over-corrected and totally nerfed. Adjustment was needed, but necessarily this adjustment
- Just about every single spell underwent some alteration; while most are minor, textual changes, it does force GMs and spellcasters to carefully review spells they knew by heart for years
The Ugly
- The “5.5e” name is just atrociously bad along multiple dimensions:
- the official designation is so late in coming that players have just been inventing their own (I’m partial to “'24” or “5e '24” myself)
- it seems like a totally different product, undermining the broad compatibility the products actually do share (gah, especially for long-time players that saw the 3 > 3.5 shift)
- it forecloses on the whole “One D&D” promise of an evergreen SRD that will be incrementally improved into the future
- it literally looks like a typo
- there’s no consistent, definitive way to “fall back” to referencing the rules-as-published in 2014, or to discuss the edition overall without ambiguity
- support for third-party, “partnered” content on D&D Beyond using the “base” 5e (told ya’ so!) rules is inexcusably awful