Second 5th Edition Survey! Plus Results of the First Survey: The Ranger Gets Some Attention!

A new survey is up on the official D&D website. It looks like its covering the classes not in the last survey and the recent Eberron material. WotC also reports on what was learned from the last survey. "For our second survey, we’re focused on the final six classes in the game and the Eberron material that we rolled out in last month’s Unearthed Arcana. If you haven’t looked at that article and want to provide feedback, read it over and come back to the survey later. Even if you don’t have a chance to use the Eberron material in your game, your reactions to it are helpful. You can also skip over the Eberron questions if you don’t want to give feedback on that material."

Here's the overall feedback from the first survey:

"So, what did we learn from our last survey? Let’s take a look at some trends:

To start with, there are a lot of you. We had more people respond to this survey than any of our playtest surveys. A lot of people are into D&D these days!

There are a lot of new players and DMs out there. Welcome to D&D!

You are playing the game in droves. Only about 10 percent of you have read the books without yet playing.

Your campaigns are just getting started. Most of you are playing at 6th level and below.

You love the fifth edition of Dungeons & Dragons, and we’re overjoyed to be able to write that. The overall assessment was incredibly positive, surpassing our results from the playtest by a significant margin."
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The ranger, in particular, is getting some focus:

"To start with, a majority of players and Dungeon Masters are happy with the ranger overall. The game as a whole is grading well, so we don’t want to make a huge, sudden change to that class. But taking a deeper dive into the ranger, we can see that favored enemy and the beast master archetype received the lowest ratings. Our next step is to take a closer look at why that is.

We’ll start with an internal assessment mixed with feedback from our closed circle of testers. From there, we’ll work up some options and present them to you, most likely in the Unearthed Arcana column. That process allows us to determine if the track we’re on answers your concerns with the class.

The critical step is making sure that any changes we make genuinely improve the class. Remember, plenty of people are happy with the ranger, so any changes need to cover a number of options:

People who like the ranger as it is can simply keep playing their current characters.

People who don’t like the ranger should feel as though the new options allow them to play the ranger they want to create.

The new options are exactly that—new choices for ranger players to select from, as opposed to a rewrite of the Player’s Handbook.

DMs should always feel that they can take or leave the new options, just like any other material in the game beyond the Basic Rules."
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Hop on over here to take the new survey!

 

[MoonSong]

I really seized the chance to speak mi mind about the artificer, and the changeling, and the sorcerer. (Back on the forced fluff thing.) I really wish the designers stopped defaulting to wizard each time they are adapting a caster. Wizardness is quite contagious, and only produces watered down versions of once quite good classes.

Metamagic is one of the few perks sorcerers get. Giving it to wizards makes sorcerers inferior in every way. And extra spell slots would be the wizard would dominate every other caster class.

I get your pain, but I can't think of something to give "generalist" that doesn't end up being a watered down specialist or overpowered as heck!

QFT.

 

[Moorcrys]

Doesn't it go away when you rest?

One level per long rest. Or one level removed per casting of greater restoration, a fifth level spell I believe.

They're penalized from the first time they do it. Then they're walking around at disadvantage (at the very least) for all ability checks until they take a long rest or they have a 5th level spell cast on them. No other class ability incurs this level of pain. God forbid they use their class feature twice between long rests...

In play it's a pain. I'm all for players making tough decisions but this is a decidedly unfun decision - don't use it or only under the most dire circumstances. At least it has been in the games I've played or DMed.

Maybe if they got the first berserk rage for free per long rest and then one level per berserk rage after. And berserking doesn't remove levels of exhaustion already incurred for the duration of the rage, which I think it should - they should at least be able to rally for short bursts while they're slowly killing themselves.

My experience with it had been less than satisfactory.

 

[Staffan]

Doesn't it go away when you rest?

Only one level per long rest. I think that's the main complaint about the Berserker - their main ability is one of the few in the game that doesn't fully reset with a long rest.

I think it's better to look at Frenzy as a 1/day ability where you can "borrow" future uses at increasingly steep interest costs.

 

[Blue]

My guess is that they won't actually errata rangers or druids or any other class - they can put out optional rules to replace features without changing the rules in place. If that makes sense. Things change, but only if the group wants to use the optional rules, and thus doesn't invalidate what's written the PHB.

At least that would make the most sense to me, given the way the new edition has been designed.

That makes me kinda sad. Beastmaster just doesn't keep up. Unless the "new option" you give me is "Animal Leader" which is a fixed Beastmaster, by not changing a poor subclass they are forever killing an archetype for many players.

Man up to your mistakes and fix them.

 

[Minigiant]

The more I looked into the Beastmaster the more I realized that it is more conceptually unsatisfying than it is actually weak. I hope they add a way to shift more of a ranger's power into his animal companion so that the beast can feel like it is a contributing part of the character and not a footnote. Perhaps an option to forego spells in favor of a more active animal companion.

I see the same thing. Beastmaster rangers aren't weak, they just don't do what many players want them to do. D&D players want a battle beast. The beastmaster ranger gives you a beast buddy.

To be fair, many players want things which are either broken or don't match 5th edition's design.

I could so a spirit-talker subclass with a spirit beast you can dump spells into to heal or "beast smite". Sacrifice a spell to heal 2d6 damage on the beast or add 2d6 damage to the beast's next attack. A quick and dirty "beast paladin".

 

[Sacrosanct]

To be fair, many players want things which are either broken or don't match 5th edition's design.
.

Ain't this the truth. Wasn't long after the PHB was released when you started seeing all those homebrew warlord "ideas", which were largely the best things from a battlemaster fighter with the healing and buffing capabilities of a cleric.

 

[steeldragons]

To be fair, many players want things which are either broken or don't match 5th edition's design.

QFT.

The entirety of the "problem" with the Beastmaster seems to be people up in arms that you "lose" your action to direct the animal to attack instead. You're not "losing" anything. You are using your action to do something else. That one round you can't do something else. Ergo, it is said, two-weapon fighting is "ruined" because [for that one round] you can't make your second attack. No. Your beast companion that you chose to have will instead be taking a multiattack. How dare they not let me do both!

Or you can't cast a spell. Or you can't whatever else that would mean your Ranger PC is getting extra attack actions, every round, which obviously would put the class' balance askew from almost every other class.

But still, the Beastmaster is "wrong" because it isn't giving people what they want...which is ultimately, if not solely, "powergamey enough" options...like their <insert video game/edition X/game system Y/whatever "proof"/justification they choose to use> "gives" them...so obviously 5e has "taken [something] away from" them.

It's just so much nonsense.

The real kicker to all of this is that neither dual-wielding nor beast companions have any required place in the ranger archetype, but thanks to the Clueless Cult of Drizz'tdom and fostered/reinforced by various media, at this point in the game's history, a ranger without them (at least as options) simply isn't a "real" ranger/is "wrong."

 

[Zaran]

Ain't this the truth. Wasn't long after the PHB was released when you started seeing all those homebrew warlord "ideas", which were largely the best things from a battlemaster fighter with the healing and buffing capabilities of a cleric.

It's because players aren't designers. They are trying to create what they seen in the past and don't understand the balance. This is the main reason why people ask WotC for this stuff. It's not because we hate 5e. We want to see it work better than it does in our eyes.

It always amazes me how people will dog pile on someone who has a criticism about the game and fuss at them to just house rule it to their liking. That's what everyone does but it doesn't change the desire to have the experts do it "right".

 

[steeldragons]

It always amazes me how people will dog pile on someone who has a criticism about the game and fuss at them to just house rule it to their liking. That's what everyone does but it doesn't change the desire to have the experts do it "right".

Once you [and others] understand and accept that the only way for it to be "right" for everyone is to houserule it, you [and others] might enjoy any/all editions of D&D more, I think.

 

[steeldragons]

All that said, I am thrilled they're taking a look at the Ranger and maybe we'll get a spell-less archetype option out of the deal. That's what I'd love to see.