GMforPowergamers
Legend
There is a real good reaason to blend the best parts of all 13 edtions of d&d. However they need to listen to the feed back, and they cant ignore the people who are taking the time to playtest.
Playtest Update
- Thread starter Wizards of the Coast
- Start date
CasvalRemDeikun
Adventurer
Can you point to a post from WotC that explicitly states they are deliberately trying to get a bigger sample of 4E players? Because WotC are the ones that are compiling and collecting data through the surveys, not forums. Who gives a flying fart what people on WotC's boards, these boards, or any boards are saying unless it is in the surveys. I think you are confusing what bias actually is. Confirmation bias is where the data compiler (WotC) deliberately ignores data to favor their hypothesis (people want Old School and Old School alone). The thing is, the idea you are putting forth, that the majority of fans taking the surveys, no matter what their proportion, should be taken at a 50% face value, is textbook confirmation bias (among other things). Countering with "But but... their forums have a lot of 4E players on them" shows that you have absolutely no understanding of statistics. Add into that the fact the forums are immaterial when they have said AGAIN AND AGAIN AND AGAIN AND AGAIN that the surveys are their primary(possibly even their ONLY) source of feedback.
Oh, and the bottom line of the idea you are proposing is that it totally invalidates the playtest, since WotC would be better served not even bothering to collect the data in the first place rather than collect it, then ignore it.
CasvalRemDeikun
Adventurer
I never said they were. What I am saying is, deliberately ignoring a sizeable portion of participants of the surveys, regardless of their prefered edition, is very bad methods and invalidates the playtest itself. Again, if they are going to do that, they might as well not do the playtest in the first place.
Increasing monster accuracy will be a nice touch. Hopefully healing adjustments will focus on the Healer specialty and maybe bringing back Second Wind or some Combat Medic functionality. The Wizard definitely needs the 1d6 Hit Die. I like the realization that the Rogue needs more than just Sneak Attack - I'd like to see debuff-based attack riders, personally.
Arcane casting is going to be the toughest nut to crack in all of this, though. I think the issue with Wizard casting is that while Vancian Casting is the traditional wheelhouse of the Wizard, the real fluff key to the Wizard is that he's an academic / scientist of the arcane. He learns spells as he advances through hard work and intellect. That really doesn't have anything to do with whether he casts his spells on a Daily, Encounter, or At-Will basis.
The Sorcerer has innate magic. He's born special. There's a real perception that he didn't earn what he has.
Likewise the Warlock bargained for his power. He's a hacker, a thief, or a struggling pawn of some greater entity.
The real reason that so much of the Magic-User / Wizard is a sacred cow of D&D is because he's the Designated Marty Stew character for Nerds. He's bookish, weak, not particularly social, and get to leverage his intelligence score into phenomenal cosmic power that puts him above all the jocks, rich kids, and religious folks of the world. To some extent, the nerdy 10-year-old kid imagines that if he were to wind up in D&D-land one day he could be a wizard because he's just so damn smart. Putting the Wizard on even footing with the Fighter always frosts some people, but when you force them to stop playing the "Wizard" and move into some other (more vulgar) fluff paradigm in order to use a particular magic system they really want people just go nuclear over it.
In the end, the 5E Wizard is probably going to have his finger in just about every arcane pie in terms of spell access and casting mechanisms in order to keep people happy. Even if you break the casting styles into 3 different academic arcane classes that are otherwise identical you'll spark some sort of awful, blood-letting knife fight between players over which class gets to be the "real Wizard" by getting that class name as opposed to "Magic-User" or "Mage" or whatever.
The Wizard is the biggest Sacred Cow in D&D, period. In fact, it's an elephant-in-the-room-sized Sacred Cow.
- Marty Lund
Arcane casting is going to be the toughest nut to crack in all of this, though. I think the issue with Wizard casting is that while Vancian Casting is the traditional wheelhouse of the Wizard, the real fluff key to the Wizard is that he's an academic / scientist of the arcane. He learns spells as he advances through hard work and intellect. That really doesn't have anything to do with whether he casts his spells on a Daily, Encounter, or At-Will basis.
The Sorcerer has innate magic. He's born special. There's a real perception that he didn't earn what he has.
Likewise the Warlock bargained for his power. He's a hacker, a thief, or a struggling pawn of some greater entity.
The real reason that so much of the Magic-User / Wizard is a sacred cow of D&D is because he's the Designated Marty Stew character for Nerds. He's bookish, weak, not particularly social, and get to leverage his intelligence score into phenomenal cosmic power that puts him above all the jocks, rich kids, and religious folks of the world. To some extent, the nerdy 10-year-old kid imagines that if he were to wind up in D&D-land one day he could be a wizard because he's just so damn smart. Putting the Wizard on even footing with the Fighter always frosts some people, but when you force them to stop playing the "Wizard" and move into some other (more vulgar) fluff paradigm in order to use a particular magic system they really want people just go nuclear over it.
In the end, the 5E Wizard is probably going to have his finger in just about every arcane pie in terms of spell access and casting mechanisms in order to keep people happy. Even if you break the casting styles into 3 different academic arcane classes that are otherwise identical you'll spark some sort of awful, blood-letting knife fight between players over which class gets to be the "real Wizard" by getting that class name as opposed to "Magic-User" or "Mage" or whatever.
The Wizard is the biggest Sacred Cow in D&D, period. In fact, it's an elephant-in-the-room-sized Sacred Cow.
- Marty Lund
Tovec
Explorer
Really not the point of this thread, but I just wanted to add:
Pepsi Challenge - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
As far as the wiz/sorc/warl split. I think that they either need to separate mechanics from the class, so we can have a vancian warlock (preferable) or they need to cut (or fix) the fluff so that I can take the warlock and replace the wizard with him. Either way they need to do NOT what they are doing right now, as I really can't stand either the mechanics provided for the three different classes nor the fluff associated with them.
As for healing; I'm glad they are still talking about it and thinking about it. Healing is the major issue at the heart of pretty much every thread I see. I wouldn't mind if they spent months thinking and working on nothing more than healing, just to make sure they get it right and more importantly give us a lot of options to see which is best.
Lastly, I absolutely agree that there is a testing blindspot as far as the combat superiority dice for fighter. I think that people want more options, that this provides more options and so it is being artificially rated higher than it perhaps should be. I say that primarily because I want more options but I detest the CS dice. And I've seen that this split exists not only here but in the real world and other forums; either you love or hate the mechanic so they need to take another look and hopefully give us more/a different set of options instead of being locked in.
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Here are my thoughts about the 2nd playtest I downloaded.
Fighter - The expertise dice and the fighting style class feature is really good, and my players love it. I also love it. Now, their questions asked during 4e era is now answered, "Why isn't there a bow expert fighter?"
Rogue - I completely agree that Sneak Attack should NOT be the defining point of any rogue.
Cleric - I like how each domain decides a cleric's weapon and armor proficiencies, and yes, more domains mean more ways to play a cleric.
Wizard - No one played this class, I also didn't have the time to thoroughly read it.
Sorcerer - THIS ONE! THIS IS ONE BAD ASS CONCEPT! I really like how 4e defined the bloodline sorcerers, where Pathfinder adopted the idea. But 5e is advancing it one step further! I really like the idea of a Dragon Knight! Sorcerers must be played depending on their bloodline, much like a cleric who can be fully armored or armorless depending on their domains, not just pure caster types. Keep it up WOTC!
Warlock - Eldritch Blast is OP. nuff said.
Human - WHERE IS MY EXTRA SKILL AND FEAT?????
Fighter - The expertise dice and the fighting style class feature is really good, and my players love it. I also love it. Now, their questions asked during 4e era is now answered, "Why isn't there a bow expert fighter?"
Rogue - I completely agree that Sneak Attack should NOT be the defining point of any rogue.
Cleric - I like how each domain decides a cleric's weapon and armor proficiencies, and yes, more domains mean more ways to play a cleric.
Wizard - No one played this class, I also didn't have the time to thoroughly read it.
Sorcerer - THIS ONE! THIS IS ONE BAD ASS CONCEPT! I really like how 4e defined the bloodline sorcerers, where Pathfinder adopted the idea. But 5e is advancing it one step further! I really like the idea of a Dragon Knight! Sorcerers must be played depending on their bloodline, much like a cleric who can be fully armored or armorless depending on their domains, not just pure caster types. Keep it up WOTC!
Warlock - Eldritch Blast is OP. nuff said.
Human - WHERE IS MY EXTRA SKILL AND FEAT?????
Here are my thoughts about the 2nd playtest I downloaded.
Fighter - The expertise dice and the fighting style class feature is really good, and my players love it. I also love it. Now, their questions asked during 4e era is now answered, "Why isn't there a bow expert fighter?"
Rogue - I completely agree that Sneak Attack should NOT be the defining point of any rogue.
Cleric - I like how each domain decides a cleric's weapon and armor proficiencies, and yes, more domains mean more ways to play a cleric.
Wizard - No one played this class, I also didn't have the time to thoroughly read it.
Sorcerer - THIS ONE! THIS IS ONE BAD ASS CONCEPT! I really like how 4e defined the bloodline sorcerers, where Pathfinder adopted the idea. But 5e is advancing it one step further! I really like the idea of a Dragon Knight! Sorcerers must be played depending on their bloodline, much like a cleric who can be fully armored or armorless depending on their domains, not just pure caster types. Keep it up WOTC!
Warlock - Eldritch Blast is OP. nuff said.
Human - WHERE IS MY EXTRA SKILL AND FEAT?????
Fighter - The expertise dice and the fighting style class feature is really good, and my players love it. I also love it. Now, their questions asked during 4e era is now answered, "Why isn't there a bow expert fighter?"
Rogue - I completely agree that Sneak Attack should NOT be the defining point of any rogue.
Cleric - I like how each domain decides a cleric's weapon and armor proficiencies, and yes, more domains mean more ways to play a cleric.
Wizard - No one played this class, I also didn't have the time to thoroughly read it.
Sorcerer - THIS ONE! THIS IS ONE BAD ASS CONCEPT! I really like how 4e defined the bloodline sorcerers, where Pathfinder adopted the idea. But 5e is advancing it one step further! I really like the idea of a Dragon Knight! Sorcerers must be played depending on their bloodline, much like a cleric who can be fully armored or armorless depending on their domains, not just pure caster types. Keep it up WOTC!
Warlock - Eldritch Blast is OP. nuff said.
Human - WHERE IS MY EXTRA SKILL AND FEAT?????
tuxgeo
Adventurer
. . .
WotC is trying to design races that work equally well in campaigns that do use Skills and Feat and in campaigns to do not use Skills and Feats, so the Human race has been given (so far) nothing but Ability Score bonuses -- which are Background/Specialty neutral.
That situation may change as time goes on. I have already posted elsewhere an idea about that: Reduce those blanket Human bonuses to "Two to One and One to Two" -- +2 to one stat and +1 to two other stats -- and compensate for that power reduction by giving a choice of class feature: let the player choose to give his or her PC either a bonus Skill or a bonus Feat or else something akin to 4E Essentials' "Heroic Effort" feature. That way, campaigns that don't use Skills and Feats would still have something for Human characters to put into that same feature slot.
keterys
First Post
Hmm, why do so many people say that eldritch blast is OP? It does 10.5 damage while radiant lance does 8.5 on a better chassis and a fighter with a bow does 12... and the fighter has the best chassis of all for combat (more hp, more damage, more AC, more initiative, more versatility, etc).
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