WotC Survey Result: Classes OK, Eberron Needs Work

WotC has posted the latest D&D survey results. The survey covered the character classes not included in the previous survey - the barbarian, bard, monk, paladin, sorcerer, and warlock - and the recent Eberron material. Overall, it reports general satisfaction, with concerns in specific areas. The big ticket issues were sorcerer options, monk Way of the Four Elements opton, and more sweeping issues with the Eberron stuff, icluding the warforged and artificer. Mike Mearls says, but doesn't announce, that "I expect that you’ll see some revisions to the Eberron material before the end of the year."

WotC has posted the latest D&D survey results. The survey covered the character classes not included in the previous survey - the barbarian, bard, monk, paladin, sorcerer, and warlock - and the recent Eberron material. Overall, it reports general satisfaction, with concerns in specific areas. The big ticket issues were sorcerer options, monk Way of the Four Elements opton, and more sweeping issues with the Eberron stuff, icluding the warforged and artificer. Mike Mearls says, but doesn't announce, that "I expect that you’ll see some revisions to the Eberron material before the end of the year."

The survey report is as follows:

Overall, the barbarian, bard, monk, paladin, sorcerer, and warlock all graded very well. The areas of concern were limited to specific areas of the classes.

For instance, we’ve heard consistent feedback that the sorcerer doesn’t offer enough options within the class. Not everyone is excited about the wild mage, thus leaving some players with only the dragon sorcerer as an option. It’s no coincidence that we showed off a favored soul option for the sorcerer in Unearthed Arcana. Plus, we have another sorcerer option on tap for that article series.

We also saw some dissatisfaction with the monk’s Way of the Four Elements option. Feedback indicates that this path focuses too much on adding more ways to spend ki points, rather than giving new options or maneuvers that a monk can use without tapping into that resource. We’re doing some monk design right now that used the Way of the Four Elements as an option, so we’ve shifted that future work in response to that feedback.

Like with the first wave of class feedback, things remain very positive. The issues we’ve seen look like they can be resolved by trending toward what people liked in our future design. Nothing stood out as needing serious changes.

The Eberron material, as you can expect for stuff that is in draft form, needs some more refinement. The changeling will likely have its ability scores and Shapechanger ability tweaked. The shifter scored well, so expect a few shifts there (pardon the pun) but nothing too dramatic.

The warforged had the most interesting feedback. I think we’re going to take a look at presenting a slightly different approach, one that ties back into the original race’s armored body options to make them feel more like innately equipped characters.

The artificer still needs a good amount of work, so that one will go back to the drawing board. I think the class needs a more unique, evocative feature that does a better job of capturing a character who crafts and uses custom items. We played it too conservatively in our initial design.

I expect that you’ll see some revisions to the Eberron material before the end of the year. Unearthed Arcana is proving a useful resource in giving new game content every month while giving us the chance to test drive mechanics.

Thank you all for taking part in these surveys and making our job of producing great RPG content much easier. I’m looking forward to seeing how our work evolves and hope you enjoy the option of weighing in on our work.
 

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I'm A Banana

Potassium-Rich
New survey seems to be about race balance and overall gameplay patterns (how high a level you've reached, which settings you've played, why your campaigns end, etc.). Some of the race match-ups were pretty close, but I pretty much always chose the "always-on" / broader ability over the situational / more limited ability.

Part of the problem with making the Artificer a Wizard archtype is that there really isn't room within the standard form of an arcane tradition to add combat proficiencies, or at least not without either making the Atificer a very powerful class or stripping back what spell focused features the archtype grants.

I don't really agree, and one of my personal pet peeves is when people treat class as equal to an equipment set or a spell list. If you're running around with a hammer and a breastplate and being trained in thieves' tools and casting faerie fire that does not mean you are not a wizard. It also doesn't mean you're not a fighter or a rogue or a ranger or a sorcerer or a warlock or....whatever.

It should not be a big deal to change proficiencies or alter spell lists if necessary without this having to give birth to an entire 20-level class padded with options to fill space rather than get used. Equipment is an aesthetic, spells are tools, and a class is a storyline and these three things should hang together loosely, but not so tightly as to mandate an entirely new class if you're going to change spell lists and/or equipment.

....but like I said, personal pet peeve, so I could drone on...
 
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Am I the only one who thinks the artificer should be a subclass of the bard, not the wizard?

Heavy skill focus. Better armor and weapons. A focus on using magic to affect others.

Okay, the use of Cha rather than Int doesn't fit, nor does much of the flavor. But as a mechanical skeleton, I think it's a better starting point.
 

Rabbitbait

Adventurer
Am I the only one who thinks the artificer should be a subclass of the bard, not the wizard?

Heavy skill focus. Better armor and weapons. A focus on using magic to affect others.

Okay, the use of Cha rather than Int doesn't fit, nor does much of the flavor. But as a mechanical skeleton, I think it's a better starting point.

I agree - Bard is a much better fit. Or rogue maybe. But the jack-of-all-trades aspect of the bard appeals to me more as an artificer concept, you'd just need to strip out some aspects of the bard concept to make it fit.
 

Keith Baker modified the Warlock to remake the artificier and it looks great:

Int instead of charisma,
Spells are cast with his crossbow,
modified spell lists inclusive construct repairing spells.
 

spinozajack

Banned
Banned
Goodness gracious, it sounds like Mike is saying the game won't receive any errata.

Does anyone else but me feel lied to?

The game is great but it's not perfect, and feedback from the masses is not sufficient to say that something ain't broke. Stuff is broke, and they need to fix it. Unless he thinks their product is flawless and they can count on future money from everyone without actually giving any post-launch after-market rules updates. They told us there were would fewer errata, not none.

Not sure if I'm overreacting here, but I hope if he sits back and coasts on the launch success indefinitely that they replace him. Companies that don't fix rules issues eventually lose players, especially when they promise to "fix" future products in the same way. In other words, once they have your cash they deny any responsibility to provide after-market support. Typical.

Survey results are not sufficient to claim that a product has no issues worth fixing. I'm incredulous at this kind of arrogance displayed here.
 

Staffan

Legend
Am I the only one who thinks the artificer should be a subclass of the bard, not the wizard?

Heavy skill focus. Better armor and weapons. A focus on using magic to affect others.

Okay, the use of Cha rather than Int doesn't fit, nor does much of the flavor. But as a mechanical skeleton, I think it's a better starting point.

Plug: I made a draft of a bard-based artificer [url="http://www.enworld.org/forum/rpgdownloads.php?do=download&downloadid=1246]here[/url].

I didn't make it as a subclass of the bard because that would carry too much bard-flavor baggage (inspiring music, instrument proficiencies, stuff like that), so it's more of a reskinned thing.
 

"Reskinned" is definitely how I'd go about it, too. I just don't know if they're open to doing that in official material, or if it's only an option for homebrew stuff.
 

Halivar

First Post
Goodness gracious, it sounds like Mike is saying the game won't receive any errata.

Does anyone else but me feel lied to?

The game is great but it's not perfect, and feedback from the masses is not sufficient to say that something ain't broke. Stuff is broke, and they need to fix it. Unless he thinks their product is flawless and they can count on future money from everyone without actually giving any post-launch after-market rules updates. They told us there were would fewer errata, not none.

Not sure if I'm overreacting here, but I hope if he sits back and coasts on the launch success indefinitely that they replace him. Companies that don't fix rules issues eventually lose players, especially when they promise to "fix" future products in the same way. In other words, once they have your cash they deny any responsibility to provide after-market support. Typical.

Survey results are not sufficient to claim that a product has no issues worth fixing. I'm incredulous at this kind of arrogance displayed here.
I don't think we read the same article. He said, multiple times, that some things need fixing.
 

lkj

Hero
Goodness gracious, it sounds like Mike is saying the game won't receive any errata.

Does anyone else but me feel lied to?

The game is great but it's not perfect, and feedback from the masses is not sufficient to say that something ain't broke. Stuff is broke, and they need to fix it. Unless he thinks their product is flawless and they can count on future money from everyone without actually giving any post-launch after-market rules updates. They told us there were would fewer errata, not none.

Not sure if I'm overreacting here, but I hope if he sits back and coasts on the launch success indefinitely that they replace him. Companies that don't fix rules issues eventually lose players, especially when they promise to "fix" future products in the same way. In other words, once they have your cash they deny any responsibility to provide after-market support. Typical.

Survey results are not sufficient to claim that a product has no issues worth fixing. I'm incredulous at this kind of arrogance displayed here.

I realize you may mean a different thing with errata than they do, but they are definitely going to release errata (barring some unexpected calamity). Jeremy Crawford has said so clearly. He even mentioned in his twitter feed awhile back that he had delayed its release so he could do a more thorough job or some such.

Now, they've also made it clear that errata would be fixes for clarity and for getting obvious mistakes. So, no major class re-writes. And it's been hinted that they are more likely to try to address people's unhappiness with certain class aspects (like types of sorcerers and rangers) by releasing more options rather than re-writing things.

At any rate, I don't feel lied to. I think that using survey data as a guide is smart. I'm sure if there are obviously broken pieces, they'll fix them.

However, I suspect that what WotC considers obviously broken is going to diverge substantially from what various (often conflicting) segments of the messageboard community thinks.

So it goes.

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Leatherhead

Possibly a Idiot.
I must be the only person who likes the Wild Mage.
But even I don't like it for the Spellcasting, just controlling the dice.

It's also nice to see the warforged get potential subraces to go with their custom bodies.
 

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