I have not seen the episode or the meme before and I’m confused by your caption. We like 2014 edition better than 2024 edition, right?

13th Age is the real 5e

And dnd 5e is the most aggressively mid RPG ever published

I do not.

Personally, I’ll take 2e, BECMI, or maybe 3.x

5e14 and 5e24 are about even for me. 5e24 does add some nice bits and pieces that I wish were available earlier and it did a really good job of improving Monk, but it also has its own questionable decisions

BX/BECMI is the realest edition imo. But I’ll sit down for some AD&D any day of the week.

I’ve genuinely been looking for a group who wants to run Immortal out of the BECMI set. it’s been tough.

DO YOU HAVE A BONUS ACTION? OH YOU WANNA BUILD CLASS X? WELL ONLY LIKE 20% OF RACES WILL GIVE YOU A GOOD BUILD NOW TOO BAD. DO YOU HAVE A BONUS ACTION? TODAY WE ARE FIGHTING AN INTERESTING MONSTER IT IS INTERESTING BECAUSE IT CAN ATTACK TWICE AND HAS A NICHE ABILITY THAT NEVER GETS TRIGGERED. DO YOU HAVE A BONUS ACTION? OH YOU MOVED? WELL HERE’S AN OPPORTUNITY ATTACK BUT DON’T WORRY YOU CAN AVOID IT BY WASTING LITERALLY YOUR ENTIRE TURN EXCEPT YOU COULD STILL OPEN A DOOR OR DRAW A WEAPON WHICH MAKES TOTAL SENSE I SWEAR THIS ENCOURAGES ACTION RICH COMBAT WE ARE HAVING FUN, DO YOU HAVE A BONUS ACTION?

There’s a French Actual play (Game of Roles) in which they make fun of DnD by overcoming a ranger, in two attempts, before the GM even finished to list all the attacks, bonuses, class details of the ranger. Just to show the complexity.

I do. But there does not seem to be a consensus

There’s not enough change to prefer one over the other, IMO. It’s the same game with a few patch notes and some fanmade mods built into the default experience. Some things were streamlined (potions as bonus action and grapples requiring a saving throw, for example), some things were improved (all classes and subclasses being playable right off the bat without the need of extensive homemade reworks), and most of the game was left as is, for better or for worse.

Some changes are nice, some are arguably worse, balance is still wack, and they did nothing to really tackle any of the problems that afflicted the base game ten years ago - martial/caster disparity, mounted combat being completely broken, no clear indication on the power level or recommended price for magic items, etc…

I disliked 2024 because it tipped the scale even more towards “heroic fantasy”, with players being unfathomably rich and strong enough to fight a small army at lv2 already, but it’s not a problem new to 2024: it was already there in 5e, it was just exacerbated in the new edition.

13th Age and PF2e are the best editions of D&D, depending on whether you’re in the mood for story-forward or crunch-forward gameplay

unfathomably rich

How rich are they expected to be? I’ve noticed that wages seem to have gone up from 3.5, with unskilled labor going from 1sp/day to 2sp/day, and skilled labor going from 3sp/day to 1gp/day. If you wanted to retire (for 50 years) comfortably (2gp/day), you’d need 36,535 gp, which I think is a lot more than a low level adventurer would have.

fight a small army

I’ve heard that so long as the small army has a way to deal damage at all, they’ll dominate even high level enemies. Did they change that? I think the whole idea of adventurers makes a lot more sense if they can’t just send a small army to easily deal with a dragon or whatever else they’re worried about.

I do not understand why we follow WotC’s demands regarding the distinction between 5e and 5.5e.

I felt aggressively bored when reading the comments about the playtest.

Did they improve DM support? Make CR actually work? Is combat more dynamic and faster-paced? Is character creation still a pain in the ass? Did they flesh out non-combat? Do player abilities still tend to solve problems by just turning off parts of the game? Is there a clear vision for what this even is?

Oh look, it’s mostly balance changes to the classes.

I’m not saying they didn’t make some changes to fix my issues. I wouldn’t know either way, since I can’t be bothered to check, since the core audience sure did make it seem like its mostly balance changes to the classes.

What demands are you referring to? I’m out of the loop, haven’t played since before the newer edition came out

WotC demands we refer to the new edition as 5e, leaving us to annotate a year with it, outside of their official denotation.

Fuck it. Its 5.5e, and you can’t tell me otherwise.

Oh, sure. I can get on board with that. 5.5e it is.