D&D (2024) It feels so much like the D&D Next playtest did

[FitzTheRuke]

Why is that? Grognards have been defined to include pretty much all older gamers who are fans of early TSR games. Of which I am one. Just because others insist on using it as a pejorative against others, doesn't mean it actually is one. Your post is reading like someone would never willingly admit to being one, reaffirming that it's a bad thing to be one. I don't know if that's your intent, but if so, it sort of reinforces my point.

As an aside, I don't think I'm a huge fan of the idea that the offended is in the wrong for being offended (including "why would you be one of those people?"), rather than the person doing the offending generalizations.

No, you're right. I've only ever heard it used in a way that suggested that the word's very meaning was not speaking of old-school gamers, but intolerant, gatekeepering old-school gamers. I had no idea that anyone thought of it as referring only to the former. (Earlier, it struck me as if someone spoke badly of a "neck-beard" and I got offended because I have a beard, so therefore they must be talking about me!)

I stand corrected! You are a grognard! And that is okay! Good even!

I wouldn't say that I ever think that the offended is wrong for being offended! Not at all! No - it's that, while being offended, if you lash out at those who offended you (or worse, innocent bystanders) than how are you better than the first guy? (I am not saying that you did this, only that I felt you were in danger of coming close to it, hence my original comment.)

At any rate, as I said in the post that started this exchange - you were certainly right. (And now that I have more context for your feelings on the subject, likely justified).

 

[darjr]

Yes. Always have been. Don’t let people convince you otherwise.

Edit:
They are all fully viable playtests. Always have been. Real tests that do cause changes.

Ok I think I originally said the opposite of what I meant with how I quoted the previous message.

I think there is a real culture of play testing at WotC D&D that was instilled since the beginning of 5e.

I think this playtest has more at stake, it seems too.

 

[MoonSong]

This is not a very accurate summary. The warlock and the sorcerer that everyone likes showed up pretty early on in the playtest, and the Warlock in the PHB is really, really similar to the playtest Warlock. You can also see a lot of the PHB sorcerer’s DNA in the playtest sorcerer, but it lost its Gish elements and the concept of gaining more benefits as their Willpower (basically sorcery points) ran out. Which were the elements people pointed to as being cool, but not feeling very Sorcerer-like. And, yes, there was a brief period during the playtest where they experimented with the idea of having a Mage base class with Wizard, Sorcerer, and Warlock (and Psion) as subclasses, but that was very quickly shot down.

Mearls teased a single Magic-User class as soon as they took warlock and sorcerer off the playtest.

Dungeons & Dragons Roleplaying Game Official Home Page - Article (This Week in D&D)

web.archive.org

There is a chance that, based on your feedback, we might introduce an overall class category called magic-user that features wizard, sorcerer, and other options as choices beneath it. The nice thing about this approach is that we can create rules and flavor text that refer to magic-users as a group and that also allow individual campaigns to map that to the general category of character.

It wasn't a brief period, it was the intention all along. They kept moving forward until feedback late in the playtest forced them to backtrack.

 

[Mind of tempest]

Mearls teased a single Magic-User class as soon as they took warlock and sorcerer off the playtest.

Dungeons & Dragons Roleplaying Game Official Home Page - Article (This Week in D&D)

web.archive.org

It wasn't a brief period, it was the intention all along. They kept moving forward until feedback late in the playtest forced them to backtrack.

that sound in hindsight nuts

 

[Charlaquin]

Mearls teased a single Magic-User class as soon as they took warlock and sorcerer off the playtest.

Dungeons & Dragons Roleplaying Game Official Home Page - Article (This Week in D&D)

web.archive.org

It wasn't a brief period, it was the intention all along. They kept moving forward until feedback late in the playtest forced them to backtrack.

It’s possible I’m misremembering how long Mage as a parent class to Wizard went on in the playtest; I’ll double check my old files when I get home. But moreover, this article confirms exactly what I’ve been saying happened to the sorcerer.

After looking at feedback on the sorcerer, I would not be surprised if we renamed the class, tweaked its flavor a bit, and brought a true warrior/mage class to the core of the game. A lot of people like the sorcerer, but a number of people commented that it made translating existing sorcerer characters difficult. Since our goal is to make conversion as easy as possible, that's a powerful argument for treating the concept we presented as a new class.

Exactly as I said. People liked the sorcerer, but didn’t like it as the sorcerer. They felt it was a cool design on its own, but was too different from previous iterations of the sorcerer and should be spun off into its own arcane gish class. But, as we all know, that never ended up happening.

 

[Charlaquin]

that sound in hindsight nuts

You’ve got to remember, they were promising a sort of build-your-own edition, where tables would be able to pick and choose rules modules to make the game feel the way they wanted it to. In that context, feedback like “this new sorcerer seems cool, but it’ll be too hard to port my 3.5 sorcerer to” made sense. Also, focusing on nailing the core 4 races and classes made sense, because in theory those would be the universal mechanics, whereas the rest would ostensibly be optional plug-ins.

 

[MoonSong]

It’s possible I’m misremembering how long Mage as a parent class to Wizard went on in the playtest; I’ll double check my old files when I get home. But moreover, this article confirms exactly what I’ve been saying happened to the sorcerer.

In the actual playtest documents, it lasted a short time -If I remember well, two packages-, but the design work seems to have emerged very early on. As early as the third package.

The problem wasn't so much as the reception to the sorcerer, as the reception to the wizard floundering. In the hands of a good optimizer, and in the right context, pure vancian casting is powerful, but not very desirable. And at the time the premise was -one casting system, one class- with wizard getting stuck with pure vancian. Once the spellpoint using sorcerer emerged, people started demanding their wizard be allowed to use spellpoints too and their satisfaction with the wizard plummeted. This meant designers went all hands on deck with the wizard and put sorcerer in the back burner instead of iterating on the design to get to a compromise.

 

[Charlaquin]

In the actual playtest documents, it lasted a short time -If I remember well, two packages-, but the design work seems to have emerged very early on. As early as the third package.

Sure, but the design didn’t last long because nobody liked it. (Actually I think I was kinda into it at the time, because I was on the modularity hype train and I thought having the core 4 as the base classes with the other classes being subclasses of the core 4 was a good idea. Under the assumption that subclasses would be a great deal more mechanically significant than they ended up being. It’s probably for the best that I was in the minority on that).

The problem wasn't so much as the reception to the sorcerer, as the reception to the wizard floundering. In the hands of a good optimizer, and in the right context, pure vancian casting is powerful, but not very desirable. And at the time the premise was -one casting system, one class- with wizard getting stuck with pure vancian. Once the spellpoint using sorcerer emerged, people started demanding their wizard be allowed to use spellpoints too and their satisfaction with the wizard plummeted. This meant designers went all hands on deck with the wizard and put sorcerer in the back burner instead of iterating on the design to get to a compromise.

This reads like speculation on your part. What the article says is that the reception to the sorcerer and warlock was generally positive, but that feedback indicated that people wanted a unified casting system instead of each caster class having its own, and that people said the sorcerer would be difficult to convert existing characters to. You can actually see how that feedback directly lead to the sorcerer and warlock we ended up getting in the PHB. The warlock is fundamentally almost the same, with “patron favors” changed to a special kind of spell slot to tie in with the unified casting system. And the 5e draconic sorcerer does have some of the same abilities as the playtest sorcerer. What changed is that the sorcerer uses the unified casting system with sorcery points as a bonus instead of being the only way they cast, the subclass abilities being always-on instead of turning on as you sorcery point pool depletes, and worse weapon proficiencies. That all seems like direct responses to what the article says the feedback was.

Did the overall satisfaction with the Wizard drop when the sorcerer and warlock showed up? Yes. Is that why they decided to refocus on the core 4? Probably, at least in part. Was the satisfaction drop because wizard fans got jealous of the other class’ casting systems? Maybe; it at least seems like reasonable speculation. Is any of the above the reason the sorcerer changed the way it did? I don’t know, but it seems like a bit of a stretch to me.

 

[MoonSong]

Sure, but the design didn’t last long because nobody liked it. (Actually I think I was kinda into it at the time, because I was on the modularity hype train and I thought having the core 4 as the base classes with the other classes being subclasses of the core 4 was a good idea. Under the assumption that subclasses would be a great deal more mechanically significant than they ended up being. It’s probably for the best that I was in the minority on that).

This reads like speculation on your part. What the article says is that the reception to the sorcerer and warlock was generally positive, but that feedback indicated that people wanted a unified casting system instead of each caster class having its own, and that people said the sorcerer would be difficult to convert existing characters to. You can actually see how that feedback directly lead to the sorcerer and warlock we ended up getting in the PHB. The warlock is fundamentally almost the same, with “patron favors” changed to a special kind of spell slot to tie in with the unified casting system. And the 5e draconic sorcerer does have some of the same abilities as the playtest sorcerer. What changed is that the sorcerer uses the unified casting system with sorcery points as a bonus instead of being the only way they cast, the subclass abilities being always-on instead of turning on as you sorcery point pool depletes, and worse weapon proficiencies. That all seems like direct responses to what the article says the feedback was.

Did the overall satisfaction with the Wizard drop when the sorcerer and warlock showed up? Yes. Is that why they decided to refocus on the core 4? Probably, at least in part. Was the satisfaction drop because wizard fans got jealous of the other class’ casting systems? Maybe; it at least seems like reasonable speculation. Is any of the above the reason the sorcerer changed the way it did? I don’t know, but it seems like a bit of a stretch to me.

Mearls said basically that in a different article. Something like "We will retire warlcok and sorcerer until we get wizard well". I've closed wayback machine already, and I don't feel like browsing the L&L archive again, I'll look for it tomorrow.

 

[Charlaquin]

Mearls said basically that in a different article. Something like "We will retire warlcok and sorcerer until we get wizard well". I've closed wayback machine already, and I don't feel like browsing the L&L archive again, I'll look for it tomorrow.

I mean, he said it in the article you linked. I don’t think that means their work on the Wizard was what resulted in the changes to the sorcerer from the playtest though.