D&D (2024) Developer Video on Druid/Paladin/Expert Feedback

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WotC has posted a video discussing initial feedback on the One D&D Druid/Paladin playtest, along with survey results from the Expert playtest. Some highlights for discussion:

Druid: The developers recognize that the template version of wild shape is contentious. If they retain this approach, they would plan to add flexibility to those templates. If they revert to monster stat blocks, they might allow Druids to choose a limited number of options, with a default selection provided.

Paladin: The new version of smite is still intended to work with critical hits. If ranged smite persists, its damage may be adjusted through the internal balance/playtesting process.

Ranger: The updated Ranger scored very well in the playtest. Some players did miss the choice of options in the Hunter subclass.

Bard: All of the Lore Bard's features scored welll, but the overall subclass rating was mediocre. They attribute this to the loss of Additional Magical Secrets, which many saw as the key attraction of this subclass.

Rogue: The change to limit sneak attack to the Rogue's own turn scored poorly. The developers generally like moving actions to a player's own turn to keep the game moving quickly, but in this case, the change doesn't seem to be worth the loss of tactical flexibility.

Feats: With the exception of epic boons, all the feats in the Expert packet scored well. The developers are still loking at written feedback for fine tuning.

Conspicuously not mentioned were the Arcane/Divine/Primal spell lists, which were the focus of a lot of discussion during the Bard playtest.

 

[Minigiant]

yeah, we have no evidence of that and good evidence against it, but I won’t go down this line any further as it never leads anywhere useful

The core point is how much money you make and how much money your company budgets you to make are 2 different things.

You could make 1 mil last year and 2 mil this year but if your bosses expect you to make 3mil, you failed despite doubling sales.

As Crawford said,some things only got one pass in the full 2014 playtest. Somethings got zero. And although 5e made a ton of money and outsold every other edition, there was more money to be made if they playtested some more stuff externally and didn't rely fully on their own biases.

The number 1 core criticism of 5th edition is the designers dumped a whole chunk of their own biases and the biases of other old school gamers into the edition.

 

[mamba]

The core point is how much money you make and how much money your company budgets you to make are 2 different things.

agreed, we still have no evidence it only failed against projections, but as I said, I am not interested in going down that rabbit hole again

The number 1 core criticism of 5th edition is the designers dumped a whole chunk of their own biases and the biases of other old school gamers into the edition.

no idea, as far as I can tell it gets criticized for not doing that enough just as much, maybe more, just by different people

To oversimplify, the 4e crowd thinks it is too oldschool, the OSR crowd thinks it did not go far enough.

 

[TerraDave]

So, the more spelled ranger, most improved class!

 

[Remathilis]

I don't think poultices requires an elaborate crafting system, namely because actual poultices aren't all that complicated to make, but also because poultices really should be distinct from your conventional potions, which should have more substantive mechanics behind them.

For my Ranger, Poultices do more as you move up the ability chain and you eventually get Salves, which are more costly variants that (relative to DND) are basically the equivalent of a lesser restoration spell.

And then with the Herbalist subclass, you get to do more with these than just heal yourself or your friends, such as using them as touch range poisons (which do admittedly cost a ingredient, but still is a far cry from the actual core crafting mechanic), as well as access to even stronger versions.

You're creating the Alchemist problem, so named after the Pathfinder class. The alchemist class has built around creating potions (that could mimic spell effects) and bombs, which were their major attack action. In theory, there should be nothing stopping the alchemist from stockpiling both in their free time, giving them to party members, and using them freely until stock is gone. Spend a week and make 100 bombs, each doing 5d6 damage, and give them to every PC and npc henchman you can find? That's game breaking. It would be the Batman Wizard problem on crack. So Paizo mumbled something about using alchemy on the fly and universal reagents and alchemical magic to justify limiting bombs per day and only being usable by the alchemist (and being a dud in other's hands) and mixing potions on the fly but them having a shelf-life of hours (or until you make a different potion).

Essentially, replace bombs with "arcane bolt" and potions with spells and you see the alchemist was just casting magic under a different name and paint color. There was fundamentally no difference in the "non-spellcasting" alchemist and the wizard as far as functional abilities and limits. Magic under a different name.

All the "nonmagical" rangers I've seen fall under the same problem, more or less. The poultices would essentially be cure wounds spells (or other medical effects) under a different name. A ranger couldn't spend a week making hundreds of the things and using them or selling them. You'd have to start placing limits on how many they can make per day and how long they last and how many they can carry and who is allowed to use or benefit from them. You know, the limitations of spellcasting. This time wrapped in kingsfoil and mint.

(There is also the question of why only rangers know this secret to poultices, and why a druid or witch isn't familiar enough with herbcraft to do the same. Of course, the alchemist answered that by saying alchemy tapped into latent magic in the alchemist, so the ranger could use the same excuse. Poultices are ranger magic. So much for nonmagical).

At the end of the day, the fight over the ranger ends up dividing between three camps: completely nonmagical (effectively being a fighter/rogue hybrid with survival skills), a spellcasting ranger (the ranger more or less since 3e) and a "magical" ranger that does magical things, but doesn't use spells but some system that acts like spells but isn't called that so it's cool.

 

[Umbran]

Mod Note:
Folks,

A few of you are solidly in "uselessly butting heads" territory at this point. We recommend you leave this territory, and find greener pastures.

Please remember - you don't win extra points if you don't get the last word in. Nobody is going to pat you on the back and say, "Good job! You got the last word in an internet argument!"

 

[Emberashh]

The poultices would essentially be cure wounds spells (or other medical effects) under a different name.

The thing is is that at the end of the day when you're proposing a healing ability, magic and non-magic are going to look similar mechanically and you can't really avoid that without just deliberately making one or the other convoluted, or denying the possibility to one. Ie, no healing magic, only real medicine works.

Like, I might decide to say that healing magic doesn't work on an instantaneous heal 3d4. Instead, may be it works by rolling 1d4, and keep rolling a 1d4 everytime you roll a 4, adding the total to the amount healed, but any 1s you roll subtract your last roll and end the attempt.

Or I might make poultices work over time, healing a point every hour, or I might devise some complicated rolling scheme to distinguish it from instantaneous magic.

Thats all kind of a waste of time, and ultimately, I think the importance of different types of healing having diversified mechanics or effects is being overstated. I wouldn't draw an analogy to the Alchemist because its issues lead to the entire playstyle just being a reflavor of another class, whereas Poultices, if you're being reductive, are a reflavor of a healing ability that may or may not have an equivalent in spells.

Plus, the thing about Rangers is that they should be approached from the POV of being uncanny. When Aragorn sticks his ears to the ground and can tell where a group of Uruks are and how many, hes basically doing something that may as well be supernatural to us, but he isn't waving his hands and saying some funny words to do it, and it could plausibly be a learned skill in his world.

That is how a Ranger should be looked at. The supernatural elements should be an extension of otherwise normal skills, and if we understand that, we shouldn't be afraid or concerned with emulating "magic" if we extrapolate this for 20 (or 30 in my case) levels of development.

There is also the question of why only rangers know this secret to poultices,

Funnily enough I had the same question and as far as my game goes that may well change. Particularly because all 4 of my Nature classes, which includes Rangers, Druids, Hedge Mages, and Beastmasters, already share the same core Terrain mechanic, and Id really like to be able to expand on poultices with it.

In that case, Poultices would be a default core to the Ranger, but the other three classes would have the choice of whether or not to take that ability chain.

And this is also growing in my head because I've been putting off wherher or not I want to include healing magic at all. My magic design technically doesn't support it insofar as the lore goes, and inadvertently the classes Ive designated as having a more "Healer" bent, which includes the Ranger, don't actually derive their healing abilities from magic at all.

At most I actually think I might include it as a possibility for Improvised Spells, which is where most utility uses for magic already have to come from, and any more conventional "always works" healing spells would be even more costly and difficult to get a hold of than their utility equivalents.

 

[Kobold Stew]

Where I expected pushback most was on the limited spell list of the bard -- only four schools. I would have thought that was worth a mention. I'm expecting some sort of balancing mechanism for that in the Warlock and/or the Sorcerer, when we see them.

Of course, the limit on Bards was only a soft limit, since they also got a pallet of healing spells, plus magical secrets.

As for Smiting at range, if the concerns are what JC set out here, isn't the answer just to allow smites only within 30'?

 

[mellored]

Or I might make poultices work over time, healing a point every hour, or I might devise some complicated rolling scheme to distinguish it from instantaneous magic.

I always found potions that instantly heal to be odd.

 

[Emberashh]

I always found potions that instantly heal to be odd.

I think it should be a bit of both. A portion applies instantly, but the rest takes time.

Which makes sense given how its ingested. A "real" potion like Nyquil works the same way. You get some relief more or less immediately, but it takes time for it to help you get over the cold.

 

[Incenjucar]

You can get around the stockpiling concern by saying it only works when fresh and customized for a given wound. Some kind of chronomancy could complicate things but at that point Fabricate is still a larger problem.