At D&D Celebration, Wizards of the Coast held a Future of D&D panel discussion with Ray Winninger, Liz Schuh, Jeremy Crawford, and Chris Perkins about new products and changes coming to D&D 5E over the next year and beyond. Among the topics discussed were changes to the way monsters will be presented, balanced, rebalanced around Mordenkainen Presents: Monsters of the Multiverse as well as some hints about how settings will be presented in the future.

One of the big points of emphasis is to make the game simpler for the DM to run, especially when you’re using lots of monsters and trying to remember what they all do in the heat of battle. Are these the right changes to make? Thorin, Tony and Dave break down what we heard (or at least what we think the hints mean) and how it could impact the way we DM. Along the way we talk about monster design, PC-NPC balance, what we struggle with at the table, and changes we’d like to see to D&D 5E.

1:00 Changes to monsters, stat blocks, alignment, and more

2:00 Making alignments “typical”

5:00 Rereleasing classic setting “guides” rather than comprehensive box sets

13:00 Monsters of the Multiverse monster overhaul

19:00 The war priest your players can’t play: Pros and cons of making NPCs more like monsters and less like PCs

35:00 What we think of the new monster stat block layout (and a lot about dragons)

48:00 Missing the Monstrous Compendium and 2E’s design philosophy

54:00 Final Thoughts and some changes we’d like to see in 5E

64:00 Post-script: Which edition is easier to teach, 2E or 5E?