I'm willing to bet there are a lot of questions about One D&D, HLC, and the 5e Community Pack. I'm going to answer what I can.
What's One D&D?
Wizards of the Coast announced that the next version of Dungeons and Dragons will be released in 2024, and is currently calling it One D&D. There is a single playtest document available. The new system is planned to be fully backwards-compatible with 5e, but still with major changes.
Will Lone Wolf Development support One D&D?
Nobody but LWD can answer whether they will support One D&D with an official SRD product like they have for 5e. I would put money down that they don't even know the answer to this (yet). We have no idea what kind of SRD, if any, there will be for One D&D. We don't have an exact date (just 2024) for when One D&D will release. We have no idea whether there are even enough of us using Hero Lab for D&D that would provide sufficient potential revenue for LWD to pursue the next edition. And we have no reason to assume they'd make it a Hero Lab Classic system if they did.
For the record, I think LWD should make whatever decision makes the most sense for them as a business. Just like all of us, they've gotta eat. And if there's not enough potential revenue in One D&D, they won't and shouldn't dig in and try to support it. So our next question arises:
Will the 5e Community Pack support One D&D?
Before I answer this question, I need to be clear that I, Fenris447 am not the be-all, end-all of the Community Pack. Everything before Mordenkainen's Tome of Foes is the work of many talented individuals. And everything after it, while spearheaded by me, is built on the backs of both what came before and all of you contributing your ideas, issues, bugs, and opinions. So while I'm very proud of all the work I've done towards the pack, the pack is not mine. So no matter what I decide to do or not do, the pack will always be in the hands of whoever wants to work on it. So then the only question I can actually answer is:
Fenris, will you be supporting One D&D?
The short and painful answer is no. In the 6+ years I've been playing D&D 5th Edition, I've yet to find a better tool than Hero Lab Classic. I can do 95% of what I want to do with items, monsters, races, whatever. It's a phenomenal program and I love it to death.
But One D&D is merely the culmination of an ever-increasing problem with 5e in HLC: how do we make a system do things it was never designed to do? How do we make the Artificer a half-caster that rounds up, rather than down, when determining its number of spell slots based on its total level? How do we give you Tasha's variant features, some of which replace the class or race features that have been baked into those classes/races from the start? How do we give the awesome new Thri-kreen their two secondary arms? For most of these things, we slap together something that just barely works. It doesn't look pretty, it is confusing at first glance, but it does work.
But not everything. I've been working on the Thri-kreen arms since they first appeared in Unearthed Arcana almost a year ago (October 8th, 2021). Short of creating a massively-complicated if-then tree that tries to account for every possible combination of weapons, items, shields (basically anything that can be held) with accompanying error logic, it's basically impossible to program extra arms within the confines of the hard-coded arm and equipment logic. And even if I went down that entire path, it probably still would display errors even if everything was done right. It's just not doable in any real way.
For the things that are implemented, they're still done sub-optimally. Have you noticed just how many extra tabs a character using the books from the last few years has? It feels like every other new subclass, race, etc. needs to have its own configurable. That's not a problem for each feature; it's just what we have to do. But even looking at a level 2 PC I'm playing, I've already got 20 tabs on him. We're accruing, entirely out of necessity, more and more complications to every modern character.
All of this is to say that implementing One D&D, while possible in some ways, is going to be so confusing, messy, and barely functional that it's far beyond what I'm willing to do. If I'm going to basically program the entire PHB from scratch, I'm going to want it to be something anyone could easily load up and use without being utterly confused. And that's just not going to be possible.
Here's a few major issues with implementing One D&D already:
These are just a few examples of HUGE amounts of work, and that's based solely on the first playtest document. We'll also have to make new versions of every class, race, etc. AND modify everything in the system to recognize every version of those things.
It's all just...too much for me. I use HLC because the time spent to program all this is worth it for me, versus the money I'd spend to get that content in another tool. But One D&D will take me over the threshold where it'll require so much time invested that it's just not worth it. To me.
So that's the bad, sad news. I'm not going to pursue One D&D within the 5e Community Pack.
What about the rest of 5e?
The small but good news I do have is that I'm committed to finishing out 5e for the pack, right up until it ends with the launch of One D&D. Like the years past, 2023 will be another year full of great 5e content. And I plan to program it all into the Community Pack before I hang up my hat. And as I said before, I'm not the pack. It doesn't end with me. I'll gladly provide knowledge to anyone that wants to work on it.
TL;DR
What's One D&D?
Wizards of the Coast announced that the next version of Dungeons and Dragons will be released in 2024, and is currently calling it One D&D. There is a single playtest document available. The new system is planned to be fully backwards-compatible with 5e, but still with major changes.
Will Lone Wolf Development support One D&D?
Nobody but LWD can answer whether they will support One D&D with an official SRD product like they have for 5e. I would put money down that they don't even know the answer to this (yet). We have no idea what kind of SRD, if any, there will be for One D&D. We don't have an exact date (just 2024) for when One D&D will release. We have no idea whether there are even enough of us using Hero Lab for D&D that would provide sufficient potential revenue for LWD to pursue the next edition. And we have no reason to assume they'd make it a Hero Lab Classic system if they did.
For the record, I think LWD should make whatever decision makes the most sense for them as a business. Just like all of us, they've gotta eat. And if there's not enough potential revenue in One D&D, they won't and shouldn't dig in and try to support it. So our next question arises:
Will the 5e Community Pack support One D&D?
Before I answer this question, I need to be clear that I, Fenris447 am not the be-all, end-all of the Community Pack. Everything before Mordenkainen's Tome of Foes is the work of many talented individuals. And everything after it, while spearheaded by me, is built on the backs of both what came before and all of you contributing your ideas, issues, bugs, and opinions. So while I'm very proud of all the work I've done towards the pack, the pack is not mine. So no matter what I decide to do or not do, the pack will always be in the hands of whoever wants to work on it. So then the only question I can actually answer is:
Fenris, will you be supporting One D&D?
The short and painful answer is no. In the 6+ years I've been playing D&D 5th Edition, I've yet to find a better tool than Hero Lab Classic. I can do 95% of what I want to do with items, monsters, races, whatever. It's a phenomenal program and I love it to death.
But One D&D is merely the culmination of an ever-increasing problem with 5e in HLC: how do we make a system do things it was never designed to do? How do we make the Artificer a half-caster that rounds up, rather than down, when determining its number of spell slots based on its total level? How do we give you Tasha's variant features, some of which replace the class or race features that have been baked into those classes/races from the start? How do we give the awesome new Thri-kreen their two secondary arms? For most of these things, we slap together something that just barely works. It doesn't look pretty, it is confusing at first glance, but it does work.
But not everything. I've been working on the Thri-kreen arms since they first appeared in Unearthed Arcana almost a year ago (October 8th, 2021). Short of creating a massively-complicated if-then tree that tries to account for every possible combination of weapons, items, shields (basically anything that can be held) with accompanying error logic, it's basically impossible to program extra arms within the confines of the hard-coded arm and equipment logic. And even if I went down that entire path, it probably still would display errors even if everything was done right. It's just not doable in any real way.
For the things that are implemented, they're still done sub-optimally. Have you noticed just how many extra tabs a character using the books from the last few years has? It feels like every other new subclass, race, etc. needs to have its own configurable. That's not a problem for each feature; it's just what we have to do. But even looking at a level 2 PC I'm playing, I've already got 20 tabs on him. We're accruing, entirely out of necessity, more and more complications to every modern character.
All of this is to say that implementing One D&D, while possible in some ways, is going to be so confusing, messy, and barely functional that it's far beyond what I'm willing to do. If I'm going to basically program the entire PHB from scratch, I'm going to want it to be something anyone could easily load up and use without being utterly confused. And that's just not going to be possible.
Here's a few major issues with implementing One D&D already:
- Backgrounds all have a feat. There's nowhere on the background tab to manage feats, and it cannot be added there. So we'd need a new Feats tab and possibly an entirely new, separate version of feats.
- Ability score increases are now completely decoupled from race. That's fine on its own, but how do we dynamically remove or keep them when playing a mix of 5e and One D&D? We'd need code that checks between race, background, and whether each of those is 5e or One. We could separate the systems entirely, but then that defeats the purpose of them being compatible with one another.
- Spell lists will now be broken down by Divine, Primal, etc. We'd have to redo and/or modify every single spell to have new tags that would break things down this way, in addition to the old way. And then write special new code into every single feature that uses those new versions of spell lists to look for them.
These are just a few examples of HUGE amounts of work, and that's based solely on the first playtest document. We'll also have to make new versions of every class, race, etc. AND modify everything in the system to recognize every version of those things.
It's all just...too much for me. I use HLC because the time spent to program all this is worth it for me, versus the money I'd spend to get that content in another tool. But One D&D will take me over the threshold where it'll require so much time invested that it's just not worth it. To me.
So that's the bad, sad news. I'm not going to pursue One D&D within the 5e Community Pack.
What about the rest of 5e?
The small but good news I do have is that I'm committed to finishing out 5e for the pack, right up until it ends with the launch of One D&D. Like the years past, 2023 will be another year full of great 5e content. And I plan to program it all into the Community Pack before I hang up my hat. And as I said before, I'm not the pack. It doesn't end with me. I'll gladly provide knowledge to anyone that wants to work on it.
TL;DR
- I, Fenris447, do not plan on programming One D&D into the 5e Community Pack.
- The Community Pack belongs to the community, so anyone who wants to carry the torch forward is welcome to. I'll assist anyone who wants to do so.
- I'm not abandoning the pack right now; I plan to program the rest of 5e the same as I have since MToF.
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