D&D 5E 10th 5e Survey

[Tilenas]

So everyone got a working link to the survey on this one? Because I didn't... In fact, the mail didn't have any links whatsoever. Anyone willing to share the link, or is this a personalized affair?

 

[Dausuul]

I did the survey, and I forgot to comment on the ranger. I was going to complain about... well, just about everything. The favored enemy being linked to fighting styles, the return of fighting styles as character-defining, the spells, the lack of any really cool abilities...

There are very few things the current ranger does well, in my opinion.

That said, I had a lot of very nice things to say about the rest of it, particularly the rogue and fighter.

That was pretty much my reaction. Strong approval of the new feat system, praise for the fighter, wild enthusiasm about the rogue, favorable comments on the wizard schools (with a footnote that I do not approve of merging warlocks and psions into the class), some criticism of the monk, and a litany of complaints about the ranger.

 

[Salamandyr]

I did the survey. As these things go, it was surprisingly free of "tell us how wonderful we are", and it had lots of comment sections that allowed me to expand on my thoughts.

As I recall, I commented on the Fighter, the Mage, the Cleric, the Ranger, and the Rogue. I thought the fighter looked good, though I don't like class based combat maneuvers, and prefer those to be part of the combat chapter. I think the mage is great, and I'm happy with the name change, but that evocation spells are currently too weak for both monster hit points and relative to other classes' spells. I preferred the previous playtest's deity mechanic to the Domain mechanic of this package for the cleric, and the rogue has a lot of neat stuff, but is too weak overall, the Ranger should have spells, and they should not be afterthoughts. They need to be things the ranger wants to cast.

And I told them that right now, noncombat action resolution is the worst thing about the game, because the bonus provided by attributes doesn't provide enough of a distribution between "moderately competed (stat 10)" and "best ever (stat 20)" or in between, and their recommended DC's basically have normal characters playing the lottery to succeed at things they should be competent at.

Oh, and I told them they should eliminate the monk, because a guy able to kill things with his bare hands that others need a sword to kill isn't a different class from the fighter, he's a higher level fighter! But I don't think that's going to get much play.

Oh, and humans are too weak.

 

[DEFCON 1]

Exactly. For instance, am I happy with starting hit points? You can only pick a degree of happiness, you can't indicate whether you feel they are too high or too low. If I want less hit points, my answer might lead to the opposite. Their survey is useless.

Yeah, but JRR... you already know you aren't getting what you want, because Next isn't going to be a rule-for-rule recreation of AD&D. So you don't need to fill out your survey anyway.

 

[Dausuul]

And I told them that right now, noncombat action resolution is the worst thing about the game, because the bonus provided by attributes doesn't provide enough of a distribution between "moderately competed (stat 10)" and "best ever (stat 20)" or in between, and their recommended DC's basically have normal characters playing the lottery to succeed at things they should be competent at.

I put it a bit more diplomatically (something about "the size of the d20 overwhelms the attribute bonus by itself"), but this was my take as well. If it were up to me, attribute checks would add the entire attribute, not a calculated mod; so if you have an 18 Strength, your Strength check is 1d20+18. But that would require redesigning the entire game, which has more or less committed to 3E-style attribute mods.

 

[Salamandyr]

Yeah, I started suggesting all sorts of ways that they could fix it, and all of them involved abandoning the d20 "system". And I know they're not going to do that.

One problem I think, is that watching the Slave Lords playthrough, it appears the designers are all "roll a high number" crowd. You know what I mean, the DM just eyeballs everything based on how big a number you rolled. Odds, if you rolled a 3 on the die, no matter what your bonus is, you're going to fail the check. So everything just winds up being "did you roll over a 10 on the die?".

Might as well flip a coin.

 

[Dannager]

Exactly. For instance, am I happy with starting hit points? You can only pick a degree of happiness, you can't indicate whether you feel they are too high or too low. If I want less hit points, my answer might lead to the opposite. Their survey is useless.

A person taking a survey is not in a position to determine the utility value of the survey.

 

[Morrus]

Exactly. For instance, am I happy with starting hit points? You can only pick a degree of happiness, you can't indicate whether you feel they are too high or too low. If I want less hit points, my answer might lead to the opposite. Their survey is useless.

Maybe it isn't trying to get the information you think it's trying to get. Surveys are usually cleverly designed to get specific information which isn't immediately obvious from the questions.

 

[Zaran]

What annoyed me was the fact that the survey didn't ask about the equipment changes. I for one didn't like that they made the Quarterstaff non-finesse again.

 

[ppaladin123]

I am just hoping the paladin gets a choice besides the magic horsey!