D&D (2024) WotC On One D&D Playtest Survey Results: Nearly Everything Scored 80%+!

In a 40-minute video, WotC's Jeremy Crawford discussed the survey feedback to the 'Character Origins' playtest document. Over 40,000 engaged with the survey, and 39,000 completed it. I've summarised the content of the video below.

High Scorers

• The highest scoring thing with almost 90% was getting a first level feat in your background. This is an example of an experimental thing -- like advantage and disadvantage in the original 5E playtests.
• Almost everything also scored 80%+.

About The Scoring System

• 70% or higher is their passing grade. In the 70s is a thumbs up but tinkering need. 80% means the community wants exactly that and WotC treads carefully not to change it too much.
• In the 60s it's salvageable but it really needs reworking. Below 60% means that there's a good chance they'll drop it, and in the 40s or below it's gone. Nothing was in the 50s or below.

Low Scorers

Only 3 things dipped into the 60s --

• the d20 Test rule in the Rules Glossary (experimental, no surprise)
• the ardling
• the dragonborn

The next UA had a different version of the d20 Test rule, and they expect a very different score when those survey resuts come in.

It was surprising that the dragonborn scored lower than the ardling. The next UA will include new versions of both. The main complaints were:

• the dragonborn's breath weapon, and confusion between the relationship between that dragonborn and the one in Fizban's Treasury of Dragons.
• the ardling was trying to do too much (aasimar-like and beast-person).

The ardling does not replace the aasimar. The next version will have a clearer identity.

Everything else scored in the 70s or 80s.

Some more scores:

• new human 83%
• dwarf, orc, tiefling, elf tied at 80-81%
• gnome, halfling tied at 78%

Future installments of Unearthed Arcana

• The next one will have new ardling and dragonborn, a surprise 'guest', and a new cleric. It will be a shorter document than the previous ones, and the one after that is bigger again. Various class groups.
• Warrior group digs into something teased in a previous UA sidebar -- new weapon options for certain types of characters. Whole new ways to use weapons.
• New rules on managing your character's home base. A new subsystem. Create bases with NPCs connected with them, implementing downtime rules. They're calling it the "Bastion System".
• There will be a total of 48 subclasses in the playtest process.
• New encounter building rules, monster customization options.
• New versions of things which appear in the playtest after feedback.

Other Notes

• Playtests are a version of something with the assumption that if something isn't in the playtest, it's still in the game (eg eldritch blast has not been removed from the game). The mage Unearthed Arcana will feature that.
• Use an object and other actions are still as defined in the current Player's Handbook. The playtest material is stuff that has changed.
• Thief subclass's cunning action does not interact with use an object; this is intentional. Removed because the original version is a 'Mother may I?" mechanic - something that only works if the DM cooperates with you. In general mechanics which require DM permission are unsatisfying. The use an object action might go away, but that decision will be a made via the playtest process.
• The ranger's 1st-level features also relied too heavily on DM buy-in, also wild magic will be addressed.
• If you have a class feature you should be able to use it in the way you expect.
• If something is removed from the game, they will say so.
• Great Weapon Fighting and Sharpshooter were changed because the penalty to the attack roll was not big enough to justify the damage bonus, plus they want warrior classes to be able to rely on their class features (including new weapon options) for main damage output. They don't want any feats to feel mandatory to deal satisfying damage. Feats which are 'must haves' violate their design goals.
• Light Weapon property amped up by removing the bonus action requirement because requiring light weapon users to use their bonus action meant there were a lot of bad combinations with features and spells which require bonus actions. It felt like a tax on light weapon use.
• Class spell lists are still an open question. Focus on getting used to the three big spell lists. Feedback was that it would be nice to still have a class list to summarize what can be picked from the 'master lists'. For the bard that would be useful, for the cleric and wizard not necessary as they can choose from the whole divine or arcane list.

The playtest process will continue for a year.

 

[Remathilis]

Maybe people simply prefer usable content over inspiring content.

after four elf types with unique racial traits, the 1D elf combined the three subraces into "lineages" which only differ by the free spells known is a regression. Worse, the wood elf became another spellcasting elf type rather than a more physical one. Ideally, I'd like to see three unique sets of racial traits. If that's not doable, then (sigh) combine the wood and high elf and keep drow unique separate.

I think like the dragonborn, the PHB version is a step backwards from unique racial traits to generic in the name of space. Former elf (and gnome) subraces sometimes being separate races and sometimes being lineages is inconsistent and confusing design. Pick a lane and make former subraces lineages (elf, gnome), separate races (deep gnome, astral elf), or get rid of them (dwarf, halfling).

 

[kenmarable]

You do realize that they aren't talking about their methodology right? They're distilling it down for those of us who aren't statististions and really, really, don't care about the math. Why would you assume that not only are they doing it in-house, but also they should lay every point out in the open so that armchair statisticians should be able to second guess every single thing they say?

FFS, take it at face value. Presume, just for a moment, that a multi-million dollar project that has this enormous load of information, just maybe hires a firm that knows what they're doing?

Why the automatic presumption that they are lying or being deceptive? They're telling you flat out that with certain bands they will react in particular ways. Seems pretty straightforward.

Oh, and, they have to be able to distill that huge amount of information in a couple of months. Yeah, I think I'll settle for taking what they say at pretty much face value thanks. Endlessly kvetching about their methodology when you aren't actually privy to it is a bit too far into conspiracy theory territory for me.

Are you saying that just maybe a short marketing video might not get into the nuanced minutia of their weeks and weeks of data analysis??? gasp

Yeah, after seeing so many posts claim that survey was clearly poorly designed and ambiguous because it didn't ask all sorts of questions that it did in fact ask, it's hard to take many of these criticisms seriously.

 

[Aldarc]

after four elf types with unique racial traits, the 1D elf combined the three subraces into "lineages" which only differ by the free spells known is a regression. Worse, the wood elf became another spellcasting elf type rather than a more physical one. Ideally, I'd like to see three unique sets of racial traits. If that's not doable, then (sigh) combine the wood and high elf and keep drow unique separate.

I think like the dragonborn, the PHB version is a step backwards from unique racial traits to generic in the name of space. Former elf (and gnome) subraces sometimes being separate races and sometimes being lineages is inconsistent and confusing design. Pick a lane and make former subraces lineages (elf, gnome), separate races (deep gnome, astral elf), or get rid of them (dwarf, halfling).

To be clear, I am not disagreeing with you.

 

[wicked cool]

I wonder how much of the cake is already baked and the survey is just bs.

It’s a month from 2023 and the book is due in 2024

I’m going to be cynical and say 99% of the books are written in some sort of draft and at some point soon it has to go to editing and then printing company etc.

There are other 2023 books that also have to be edited etc with due dates ( if a book is pushed back it’s probably due to shipping delays and not actual deadlines. These deadlines are usually hard and fast and unlike a video game you don’t have the luxury of a day 1 patch

I personally hadn’t heard of an ardling prior to the play test survey etc so where was the clamoring for this spiritual race of all animal heads as a CORE race

I I I I as I can’t speak for anyone else believe this is a money grab and the backwards compatible will be an excuse and it’s going to be a requirement for when you play a sanctioned game

Am I the only 1 who sees the future
2025 Tasha’s 1 d&d cauldron blah blah to fix errors from one d&d

One d&d new starter set
One d&d curse of strahd reprint
Hey wizkids we are throwing you a bone. We are changing giants to gargantuan and changing large sizes etc-they did this last edition

It’s capitalism. Hasbro owns wotc . Hasbro is a publicly traded company and one d&d helps them so you really need at some point to dump 5e. Please don’t argue that wotc presidents don’t answer to Hasbro. They all fall under the Hasbro bottom line.

 

[Reynard]

Yes, the backward compatibility does not extend to the 2014 PHB, except for those elements that are unchanged.

And yet so many people assert so emphatically that it will.

 

[Snarf Zagyg]

I guess I'm having difficulty engaging with these playtests because they're all looking at player options - which I don't think need much work in 5e. Where 5e doesn't work for me is DM-facing: the challenge ratings and encounter design, the lack of meaningful treasure distribution rules, generic monster design.
To me, the single most important thing player-focused change they can make is to the Action Economy. The bonus action has to go. I still have players every session confuse that actions can't be traded for other actions, that bonus action spells can only be cast alongside a cantrip, that the game hits a brick wall regularly when players pause to search their options for a bonus action (that they probably don't have).

Weird. I almost never play (and almost always DM), but I have noticed that, if anything, the problem with players and the action economy is the exact opposite.

You only get one bonus action. So I've seen all sorts of permutations of either players assuming that they can tack on multiple bonus actions in a round (just generally, as a rider on an extra attack, etc.), or players frustrated that they have a class/build that "eats up" the bonus action economy- in other words, they have too many choices for bonus actions each round.

 

[Micah Sweet]

With respect, the internet also tells us that the world is flat, the moon landing was a hoax and my people have space lasers that control Hollywood or something(I really didn't pay much attention to what we are supposed to have done with them). I need more than the internet as cited proof.

Proof of fact (any fact)? No, of course not. Proof of human behavior? Yes, I think so.

 

[GMforPowergamers]

Why would they make major changes to the most popular TTRPG ever released? It's too bad that it doesn't work for you, but it seems to work for a while lot of folks. It works for me and my players. It works for my Thursday group I play in.

what edition change isn't that exactly?

 

[Blue]

That is not the backward compatibility they promised in the UA material.
From the FAQ



Yes, the backward compatibility does not extend to the 2014 PHB, except for those elements that are unchanged.
My belief, so far, is that the 2014 PHB classes will be usable with the new material (if elements like the level 1 feat support is added) but the 2014 feat system will be completely replaced by the new version.

This was a reply to a post that explicitly called out that Wizards doesn't get to define backwards compatibility and then claim "we hit the target". Backwards compatibility has a reasonable, common usage meaning - putting up a narrower one does not make them right nor make it backwards compatible.

 

[DEFCON 1]

Yeah, it's interesting the 5E design team defaulted to "aura would have to scale up" instead of "aura doesn't scale up, sorry".

Kobold Press's take on centaurs also has them Large size, but with a Medium-size torso for armor/weapon purposes. MCDM also provided somewhat more complicated rules for Tiny and Large PCs in an issue of Arcadia.

Seems to me that the game is working as intended then.

The whole point of having an Open Game is so that other companies can make the rules that WotC chooses not to. So we don't NEED WotC to create rules for Large PCs when other companies have already made those rules for us instead. If Arcadia has rules for Tiny and Large PCs... then use 'em! That's what they're there for!

What is this issue so many people have about using products that don't have the WotC logo on the front? Why does that bug people so much? And don't any of (general) you tell me it's "Oh, well it's because we know the rules have been fully tested if WotC produced them!" Baloney! I can't go three threads down these boards without people complaining about the rules WotC have made or are offering up, saying they stink or are unbalanced or don't work. So no... no one can sit here with a straight face and claim on the one hand that WotC's rules suck, while on the other say they can't use 3rd Party rules for stuff they want, they need WotC to make them to make sure they've been playtested effectively.

WotC does not... and quite frankly cannot and should not... produce rules for every single facet of the game. Especially if those rules are going to require massive amounts of jerry-rigging to the base rules to get them into even a semblance of workability and balance (like trying to incorporate the Large PC option into the game that doesn't overshadow every other PC.) That's what all the other companies making 5E products are there for-- to pick up the mantles that WotC leave for them. Do them the courtesy of not dismissing them out of hand because it's not like you were going to like what WotC made anyways were they to do it.