D&D 5E 2017 Class Satisfaction Survey Results

[doctorhook]

I very much agree. The warlock and sorcerer both illustrate the problems that better playtesting would have found. The warlock's way too tied to the short rest mechanic and has a lot of "feat tax" issues vis a vis invocations as well as a dominant strategy (spamming Eldritch Blast) that makes doing other things as a warlock not very cost-effective. Warlock is one of those classes a lot of people take a few levels in just to get EB and then leave. I can think of many ways to make it better, but they didn't support any of them and I think with more playtesting these issues and potential solutions would be more apparent. On the flip side, the sorcerer basically doesn't benefit from short rests and runs out of sorcery points quickly.

I completely agree, especially with the part I've bolded. The Warlock has such interesting flavour that it's maddening to be stuck with the poorly-designed options available in the Player's Handbook.

Similarly, 5E didn't even provide enough spells for non-fire-themed Dragon Sorcerers to be viable (read: there literally aren't enough spells of other elemental types). Additionally, how did a Sorcerer class that doesn't synergize well with the Dragonborn race even make it to publication??

I strongly believe that not all classes received even close to the amount of playtesting required. (The Wizard is awesome! Eight subclasses at launch, all of them cool and unique.) Sorcerers and Warlocks are probably the most egregious examples of inadequate playtesting in 5E, which is a source of immense frustration for me.

 

[UngeheuerLich]

The sorcerer double resistance is about as problematic as double armor proficiency. The extra damage on dragon breath is compensating for the loss.
The warlock has very flavourful options. You don't have to take agonizing blast or even eldritch blast. There is so much more to find if damage is not your only metric.
The ranger is also not bad by default. My dissatisfaction is coming from having had better iterations in the playtest. The current ranger is a berfed variant of the last playtest. He is lacking too much. He is still top damage dealer but there are features that just don't play well together. And features that you get too late. And if you just allow him to be ritual caster he would have a great repertoire of utility spells that make travelling easier.

 

[Leatherhead]

Um... There's something a little hinky about that poll...

The best part about that number: I know for a fact I did not vote for the Monk in that poll, so they can't possibly be at 100.00%.

Anyway, about the topic itself, I stand by the idea that the Sorcerer and the Warlock could have been made into one class somehow, which would solve a lot of problems.

 

[Yunru]

The best part about that number: I know for a fact I did not vote for the Monk in that poll, so they can't possibly be at 100.00%.

Same.

The Sorcerer doesn't need more unique-ness. It just needs what it has to be a bit less stingy (cheaper and/or more known) and for the Wizard to be less "Sacred Cow, give it all the spells!"

 

[Ancalagon]

The best part about that number: I know for a fact I did not vote for the Monk in that poll, so they can't possibly be at 100.00%.

The result used to be 68% of vote cast, not more than the total number of votes... Interestingly, the other numbers add up (as in if it says 15%, it's 15% of the voters etc).... maybe that 68% is a true result? Although yeah, it's hard to trust it given what happened to the poll.

 

[Jay Verkuilen]

I don't think the bottom three are any great surprise.
The Sorcerer fails in a narrative sense to really capture any niche, and mechanically has been compromised by spontaneous casting becoming a universal thing for all Classes.

I've seen a sorcerer in play up through the levels and there are some benefits. The sorcerer is usually tougher than the wizard and is a Charisma caster. But yes without spontaneous casting being a thing they're not nearly as cool. Metamagic helps a good bit, though. More than once I've seen a sorcerer character pull off things that shouldn't work.

The Ranger remains a classic archetype, but the execution was a bit off especially regarding the Beastmaster. I actually think that the companion beast should be a feature of all Rangers, while they could possibly be better differentiated by terrain and quarry if you want to make different sub-classes. In short though, it's all a bit of a mess.

In the game Pillars of Eternity the beast companion is implemented really well. The ranger synergized with it nicely and it was very helpful to the rest of the party without the beast being able to win fights. I get why WotC hates pets but to make the action economy work out they could have keyed it off the ranger's bonus actions or let the ranger give the beast an attack. An alternative would be to burn spell slots to make the beast better. So basically the beast is just a beast unless the ranger really wants to make it nasty. In general pets should work that way. Familiars tend to become progressively less useful at high levels, too, and there are some other examples of that, too, where a power gets introduced and it's impressive but by level+5 it's just meh.

Fighters are still just a bit boring for many, particularly the Champion.

IMO the Champion is a great implementation for the kind of player who doesn't want a lot of fiddly powers to keep track of and just wants to roll dice. That's a win in my view and something that's important to have as options. The Berserker Barbarian, the Thief Rogue, and the Warlock are also good examples of that. One of the real failings of the initial 4E classes was that they forced everyone to be a spellcaster and didn't have a "OK I whack it with my axe!" type class until Essentials. I'm glad 5E put some of those in, though I certainly wish that the Warlock was more than just "I Eldritch Blast it" without feeling like you have to multiclass to get out of that.

The Battle Master is possibly better, but I think that the various manoeuvres could have possibly been done better as Feats again. The Knight - done in the same way as the Purple Knights - would have been a better general archetype. In all though, how often do people actually prefer to play Fighters over Paladins, say, these days? That's the real issue.

Fighters work OK in my experience. They're flexible because of the extra feats, for one. I do wish they had a few more options, such as a way to have a Charisma-benefitting fighter, but by and large it's pretty good.

 

[Sacrosanct]

What draws my attention are the classes with a confluence of very high satisfaction AND very low dissatisfaction – Barbarian, Bard, Cleric, Paladin, Rogue, and Wizard. IMO that should be the sort of reception all classes are designed towards.

I don't see, for example, the rogue or wizard class being "allowed" a different metric than the fighter or sorcerer class. For example, you mention fighter design being more contentious among D&D players and therefor conclude that "it's OK and even impressive" that the designers were able to get as much satisfaction from ENWorlders as they did. I disagree. I'd hold ALL classes to the same bar as Barbarians, Bards, Clerics, Paladins, Rogues, and Wizards.

I disagree, for those two reasons I gave. All of those other classes are much more specific in archetypes they are trying to cover. The fighter has the widest umbrella by far, from the foot soldier, to the mercenary, to the gladiator, to knight, to pretty much every warrior archetype in literature and history. By the very nature of the class, it has to be more generic, and being more generic is what has caused a lot of dissatisfaction among people. It's also the ONLY class in which has to cater to those people who want a very basic vanilla typical adventurer warrior, like in B/X or AD&D.

Because there are two additional requirements that must come into play for the class design, I don't think you can hold it up to the same basic bar as every other class.

 

[Sacrosanct]

Folks, can we please keep the conversation about this thread, and not about the other thread or poll? Talk about that in that thread. This thread is meant to act as a reference for future conversations on this topic, and I wouldn't want it to get convoluted with discussion about an entirely different thread. It would make it harder for people to find relevant conversations. Thanks.

 

[doctorhook]

The sorcerer double resistance is about as problematic as double armor proficiency. The extra damage on dragon breath is compensating for the loss.
The warlock has very flavourful options. You don't have to take agonizing blast or even eldritch blast. There is so much more to find if damage is not your only metric.
The ranger is also not bad by default. My dissatisfaction is coming from having had better iterations in the playtest. The current ranger is a berfed variant of the last playtest. He is lacking too much. He is still top damage dealer but there are features that just don't play well together. And features that you get too late. And if you just allow him to be ritual caster he would have a great repertoire of utility spells that make travelling easier.

If you've enjoyed those classes in play, then that's something that I cannot disagree with you about. That said, I think you apologize too much for the design failures in these three classes.

It seems like an egregious oversight that the Dragon Sorcerer subclass offers redundant features to Dragonborn (who should be their most iconic race): energy resistance doesn't stack, Elemental Affinity doesn't apply to breath weapons, and you don't get an extra language to make up for the fact that you already speak and write Draconic. Furthermore, there still aren't enough spells (especially lightning, acid, and poison spells) to make black, blue, bronze, copper, and green draconic ancestry worthwhile.

Regarding Warlocks, you say that they're much better as long as "damage is not your only metric", which I find fallacious. Obviously damage can't be the only measure of a class, but in D&D it has always been an important one. Agonizing Blast is a constrained choice (i.e.: and "invocation tax"); it's too good to pass up and it's boring as hell. It shouldn't even be an invocation--rather, it should have been built directly into Eldritch Blast (which should be a Warlock feature, not a spell) so that every Warlock could spend their invocation on something more flavourful. Book of Ancient Secrets, Thirsting Blade, and Voice of the Chain Master should each have been a feature of their respective boons. Thief of the Five Fates is a waste of an invocation: cast Bane once per day rather than using Hex? Otherworldly Leap is awful; you've waited until 9th level, and now you can cast Jump on yourself at will... Visions of Distant Realms is a dumb name for a invocation that, at best, lets you see a few miles away.

Regarding the Ranger, I don't think the dissatisfaction comes from it being nerfed from the playtest, because that wouldn't explain why so many people who never saw the playtest still don't like it. My own complaint about the Ranger is how boring it is in 5E; I think Champion Fighters look much more exciting.

 

[Jay Verkuilen]

It seems like an egregious oversight that the Dragon Sorcerer subclass offers redundant features to Dragonborn (who should be their most iconic race)<snip>

Those are very good points. I suspect that the dragonborn were an afterthought.

Regarding Warlocks, you say that they're much better as long as "damage is not your only metric", which I find fallacious. Obviously damage can't be the only measure of a class, but in D&D it has always been an important one.

Certainly, and by making this be a tax they remove the interesting non-combat options.

Agonizing Blast is a constrained choice (i.e.: and "invocation tax"); it's too good to pass up and it's boring as hell. It shouldn't even be an invocation--rather, it should have been built directly into Eldritch Blast (which should be a Warlock feature, not a spell) so that every Warlock could spend their invocation on something more flavourful.

IMO it would be better to have something that boosts cantrips as a class feature, making one of the warlock's big things being good at cantrips (though how that fits with the fluff of the class is anyone's guess). It's not as if you can cast more than one per turn anyway, generally, but if you want, have that boost bind until the start of your next turn. You can use whatever cantrip you like that way. There are a lot of them. One way to get rid of EB would be to make the extra damage granted by warlockness punch through all resistances much in the same way that Force due to Force resistance being quite rare. Warlock/Sorcerer with Quickened Spell is pretty dangerous as long as sorcery points hold out, though.

Book of Ancient Secrets, Thirsting Blade, and Voice of the Chain Master should each have been a feature of their respective boons.

100%.

Thief of the Five Fates is a waste of an invocation: cast Bane once per day rather than using Hex?p

WotC really, really hates debuffs. Bane should be on the Warlock list just as a default, as should several of the other spells granted by those "list expander" invocations, like Polymorph "turned me into a newt... I got better". Or make those give you extra Mystic Arcana so that you have some long rest abilities that can represent a more caster-y warlock that isn't just spamming EB. Those would be pretty cool things to pick up but as it stands they require taking an Invocation and then burning one of your oh-so-rare spell slots, too.

Otherworldly Leap is awful; you've waited until 9th level, and now you can cast Jump on yourself at will...

And probably suck at it because Athletics isn't a trained skill. It's better with some multiclassing though.