bedir than
Full Moon Storyteller
Barely in time for Christmas. That'd be an unforced error.
PAX West, right in their home town has things hit the shelves in time for shopping season.
D&D (2024) D&D playtest feed back report, UA8
PAX West, right in their home town has things hit the shelves in time for shopping season.
Mirrorrorrim
Hero
I agree. But I am still disappointed with the Base Druid and Moon Druid, because I want wildshape to easily allow any beast form from a diverse fantasy world, scalable for effectiveness, without having to access the Monster Manual. Am I expecting too much from wildshape? Should it be so limited because it is tied to a full caster class?
Anyone here think the UA8 Druid gets 5 stars, with not being able to be effective at high levels in a preferred form like a wolf (because the high CR beasts are extremely limited in number and theme)? And being limited to forms in the PH appendix that won't have stats for wolverines or moosen or hiphoppopotami or other cool beasts? There are so many cool animals/beasts that can't even fit in the Monster Manual.
If this is what we get, I guess we just have to stick with reskinning (which is little different than templates, imo) or making things up as we go again.
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Quickleaf
Legend
I'm excited for them, and I love Jeremy and Todd's enthusiasm, but man their playtesting priorities seem bizarre to me. All the points they keep congratulating themselves for, are the very points that have me raising my eyebrow.
We have a public playtest...of exclusively player-facing content...so the only metric of monsters/challenges for us to compare this player content to...is the old stuff we have.
And then... we're informed they are changing some things in their monster/challenge design... and they are exclusively internally testing their new monsters and encounter building... why on earth? EDIT: "exclusively" is my own cynical take, not verbatim.
Then the questions that are NOT asked during their playtest feedback process are enormous. It's this very very pigeonholed process (yes, I gave that feedback on Playtest Packets 1-6, got too tired to keep saying the same thing when 7-8 came out).
For example...they talk about honoring the history of D&D on its 50th anniversary...and we still have low level spells like Goodberry or the heavily powered-up 5e Leomund's Tiny Hut that are radically disruptive to exploration styles of play which were historically a big part of D&D. Did we ever get playtest material addressing these spells? No. Did we ever get playtest material reimagining the scant exploration rules for a modern audience? No.
It's absolutely mind boggling to me. Please, someone help me understand?
We have a public playtest...of exclusively player-facing content...so the only metric of monsters/challenges for us to compare this player content to...is the old stuff we have.
And then... we're informed they are changing some things in their monster/challenge design... and they are exclusively internally testing their new monsters and encounter building... why on earth? EDIT: "exclusively" is my own cynical take, not verbatim.
Then the questions that are NOT asked during their playtest feedback process are enormous. It's this very very pigeonholed process (yes, I gave that feedback on Playtest Packets 1-6, got too tired to keep saying the same thing when 7-8 came out).
For example...they talk about honoring the history of D&D on its 50th anniversary...and we still have low level spells like Goodberry or the heavily powered-up 5e Leomund's Tiny Hut that are radically disruptive to exploration styles of play which were historically a big part of D&D. Did we ever get playtest material addressing these spells? No. Did we ever get playtest material reimagining the scant exploration rules for a modern audience? No.
It's absolutely mind boggling to me. Please, someone help me understand?
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fluffybunbunkittens
Hero
Well, yes. Anything on top of full casting should be just a ribbon...
I do wish the Druid class wasn't forced to pull double-duty like that, just because of tradition. Or we at least got bolder subclasses that turn you into a half-caster but make the shapeshift go wild. Or that the Wild Shape entry at least covered such basic questions as 'is turning into a mouse just an auto-win at stealth rolls?' without forcing every GM to separately decide whether their world's guards routinely chase mice.
Ralif Redhammer
Legend
I want to make a Kung-Fu: The Legend Continues joke here, but one escapes me.
Seriously, it's good to know that the May release date is not happening. That helps me plan my next games'/campaigns' timelines better.
Kurotowa
Legend
Don't think of UA as a true playtest. That's what their internal tests are for, with controls and full information and detailed feedback. UA is a glorified customer survey to get the temperature of the player base and see if they're going in the right direction. So they only put stuff in UA that they feel they can get useful information about.
Are they going to nerf a bunch of the over performing spells? That's gonna be hella unpopular, even if it's necessary, so they're not going to UA test it. Are they still making significant iterations on the encounter design tool based on internal testing? Then there's no reason to put it out for a UA popularity poll when it's still that unfinished, because any feedback would already be outdated by the time it was processed.
bedir than
Full Moon Storyteller
Did they say exclusively, or just that's what they've done so far?
darjr
I crit!
Good point.
darjr
I crit!
I dint think it’s absolutely internal. And internal could mean non-public, or non WotC folks under NDA.
Quickleaf
Legend
I mean, man I was hoping to be shown the err of my perspective... But it is nice to see I'm not the only one with a deeply cynical view of this process.
