D&D 5E Survivor: Core Classes There Can Be Only 1.

[Tony Vargas]

Now, I am surprised that the Bard won.

The exercise is really more 'are there 7 alert forumites who hate the same class?' than 'which class is most/least popular?' Probably no one dog-piled the Bard because they never expected it to survive.

That said, I really do like the Bard's gameplay mechanics in 5e. ... That said- I mean, lutes? Lyres? Music dude? Do we kill orcs, or play them delightful selections from the Ye Olde Jukebox? It's a bit of cognitive dissonance, enjoying the gameplay mechanics while disliking the class concept. But that's just me.

Heh. Vicious Mockery was a bright spot for my players in the otherwise dismal first few sessions of HotDQ. The party was two Bards, and all Harpers...

 

[EzekielRaiden]

The exercise is really more 'are there 7 alert forumites who hate the same class?' than 'which class is most/least popular?' Probably no one dog-piled the Bard because they never expected it to survive.

As I've said in the race and alignment threads: this is not a race to the top. This is a race to the bland. The class, race, and alignment that offend people the least are practically guaranteed to be the winners. Which is why we got a Half-Elf Bard (and why Human nearly won), and why we're highly likely though not guaranteed to get NG. People dogpiled the Chaotic alignments early on, and now the Evil ones are following (though LG is currently in bad shape); unless there's a substantial change in the next 24 hours of voting, I'm fairly sure the final showdown will be between Lawful Neutral and Neutral Good. The latter has had no less than 6 people upvote it, because (as of this post) it's currently still at 20, and I know at least two people have down-voted it (I did, and so did Yunru).

I'm tempted to create an inversion of this--a gauntlet-style thing. Start with the races, and remove human because it's already well-known to be the champ. People can promote the thing they like best by +2, and one thing they like least by -1. If something exceeds a total of (say) 50 or 100, it gets removed from the list and put on a "winner's list" in that order. The running ends when the penultimate option passes the finish line.

What do you think? Seems like it would still lead to interesting results, without having the "7 dedicated haters kill it" problem--since all but the last option will, eventually, pass the finish line.

Heh. Vicious Mockery was a bright spot for my players in the otherwise dismal first few sessions of HotDQ. The party was two Bards, and all Harpers...

VM is one of the best things to happen to Bards. It's a pity that many 5e players will think it's something innovated by 5e, rather than a borrowing from 4e. I've seen it happen with other things already.

 

[FormerlyHemlock]

VM is one of the best things to happen to Bards. It's a pity that many 5e players will think it's something innovated by 5e, rather than a borrowing from 4e. I've seen it happen with other things already.

And many other 5E players won't care one way or the other whether it's a 5E innovation or borrowed from 4E or 3.5 or stolen from a fantasy novel or discovered in a Gygaxian time capsule. 5E is its own game, and the provenance of its mechanics is of merely historical interest.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

And many other 5E players won't care one way or the other whether it's a 5E innovation or borrowed from 4E or 3.5 or stolen from a fantasy novel or discovered in a Gygaxian time capsule. 5E is its own game, and the provenance of its mechanics is of merely historical interest.

Discussions I have seen, here and elsewhere--which included you--seem to indicate that the provenance of a concept or mechanic is not only relevant, but often determinative. But that's a debate for a different thread, methinks, so I'll agree not to discuss it any further here.

 

[delericho]

It's ridiculous anyway. Vicious Mockery clearly comes from "Monty Python and the Holy Grail", where the French taunting had a truly devastating effect on party morale.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

As a player of a Half-Elf I take offense to that. Half-Elves won because they're strictly the superior Cha race.

Perhaps. It is a rather neat coincidence that the half-elf is a good choice for the Bard class. I wasn't meaning to besmirch the half-elf with my argument though--it's a problem of the method IMO. I actually really like half-elves; they're probably my third or fourth favorite race in WotC editions, and were my favorite for a good while when I was much younger. Perhaps "race to the bland" was overly harsh--but the core idea holds.

But I think it's fairly inarguable that when just 7 voices can eliminate a pick, even when one person votes in favor of it, that the option that will result is the one that is hated the least, rather than the one that is loved the most. Though it is worthwhile to note that human, half-elf, and dwarf were the most popular races on the recent poll, though completely to my (pleasant!) surprise, Dragonborn have shot from ~9 votes to 18, almost rivalling Dwarf!

Now I really do want to make that "cross the finish line" thread...

Edit:
Also, looks like you're still very new to the board, so have some XP.

 

[Mercule]

As I've said in the race and alignment threads: this is not a race to the top. This is a race to the bland. The class, race, and alignment that offend people the least are practically guaranteed to be the winners.

Um... Welcome to the Internet?

Which is why we got a Half-Elf Bard (and why Human nearly won)

Hey! I actually prefer human.

 

[FormerlyHemlock]

Discussions I have seen, here and elsewhere--which included you--seem to indicate that the provenance of a concept or mechanic is not only relevant, but often determinative. But that's a debate for a different thread, methinks, so I'll agree not to discuss it any further here.

You drew the wrong conclusion about those discussions, then. Objectionable design is objectionable for its own sake, not as a proxy battle over an edition I never really played and don't care much about. E.g. I'm not crazy about the Lucky feat from a design perspective (although as a player it is so, so awesome) because it requires dissociated reasoning, which is not compatible with first-person roleplaying. Because I used the word dissociated, I expect somebody to pop up and tell me that that is a "loaded phrase from the edition wars," and try to defend 4E. But I missed the edition wars completely, having been almost entirely absent from D&D since 1999 or so. The feat is dissociated, as written. (Perhaps it can be re-associated, since it's only a single feat, but as written it is dissociated.) That has consequences, and it is those consequences I am interested in. It is of zero interest to me whether 4E had a similar feat, or even whether it had "feats" at all. I'm only in this forum to discuss 5E.

Provenance doesn't matter, but design does.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

Hey! I actually prefer human.

And I vastly prefer vanilla to chocolate, despite people adamantly insisting that vanilla is the ultimate of blandness.

Some people are always going to like the stuff that's inoffensive. And, in the case of the half-elf, that's essentially guaranteed, since it was the second-most-popular race in the recent poll.

 

[Sacrosanct]

As I've said in the race and alignment threads: this is not a race to the top. This is a race to the bland. The class, race, and alignment that offend people the least are practically guaranteed to be the winners. Which is why we got a Half-Elf Bard (and why Human nearly won), and why we're highly likely though not guaranteed to get NG. People dogpiled the Chaotic alignments early on, and now the Evil ones are following (though LG is currently in bad shape); unless there's a substantial change in the next 24 hours of voting, I'm fairly sure the final showdown will be between Lawful Neutral and Neutral Good. The latter has had no less than 6 people upvote it, because (as of this post) it's currently still at 20, and I know at least two people have down-voted it (I did, and so did Yunru).

um....this doesn't make sense. The voting mechanics had an upvote and to give points to classes/races/etc that you liked. The ones that won are the ones that the most people liked the most. The way the voting mechanics work clearly supports that. Just because you think they are bland, doesn't mean they are. I don't particularly like the bard, but that doesn't mean I think it's bland class that won only because it was the least offensive. Speaking of, your entire premise if flawed by saying the X that won were the least offensive because it's predicated on having every choice being offensive on some level, and people just voted against those they found most offensive. Like choosing the worse of two evils.


Maybe D&D isn't the game for you if you think that way. I sure as heck wouldn't play a game where I had a negative attitude toward every class and race ranging from "somewhat bothers me" to "I hate it". I actually am the opposite of you. I didn't vote up the least offensive and vote down the most offensive. I upvoted the ones I liked the most, and downvoted the ones I liked the least. You're choosing between liver and artichokes, and I'm choosing between strawberry or chocolate ice cream. At least, that's how this statement is coming across.