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.

 

[Incenjucar]

When D&D becomes a classless, point-buy, skills-based system, you will get your wish.

Previous editions supported more of these archetypes in fewer years.

Edit: I find this fatalism about the limits of 5E design rather disheartening. D&D is so much more flexible than a lot of people seem to think it is, it's just poorly supported in the current edition.

 

[Emberashh]

Sometimes I think people hear stories about the community being shocked and chagrined at certains things and then just take it as gospel despite the context being entirely different.

Like for instance with 4E, which while it never did the gangbusters 5E did, wasn't ever as universally disliked as people would have you believe, and the people constantly coming out of the woodwork singing that editions praises is a testament to that.

Another example is 5Es rather poor DM support. This wasn't actually all that big of a problem in 2014, because it was intended that DMs would already be experienced given 5E was meant to be a return to form, rather than yet another full paradigm shift that had to teach people how to play like 4E had to (whether it did it well or not).

But several years removed, thousands of brand new DMs coming around and the game is scant to support them, and people just aggressively assert that 5E is terrible because it didn't do something it was never intended to do.

So perverse is that assertion that people learn to just not read the DMG because they hear memes going "DMG BAD" and thus they assume it has no useful info.

Its a poorly organized book that doesn't make it clear you're supposed to use the PHB in tandem with it to learn how to DM, but that doesn't make the info it has worthless. So, so, so many problems people have with 5e can be solved by just reading it instead of blindly trusting memes that have been long since removed from their original context.

 

[OB1]

Its a poorly organized book that doesn't make it clear you're supposed to use the PHB in tandem with it to learn how to DM, but that doesn't make the info it has worthless. So, so, so many problems people have with 5e can be solved by just reading it instead of blindly trusting memes that have been long since removed from their original context.

Yes! For 8 years I've been striking down misunderstandings of the DMGs adventuring day guidelines while using what's actually presented in the book to make hundreds of exciting encounters and adventures. The 5e DMG doesn't TELL you how to DM, it teaches you.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

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.

They may "like" it because it's certainly easier to balance, but it both makes the game more complicated and conditional in a frustrating way (a bad thing, for both gameplay and immersion), and only really hits non-casters, when non-casters are already less powerful.

They should look at reverting that change generally. Glad they see the writing on the wall here though.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

The 5e DMG doesn't TELL you how to DM, it teaches you.

I mean the biggest problem with the 5E DMG is that it does neither, not compared literally any other DMG!

 

[Incenjucar]

They may "like" it because it's certainly easier to balance, but it both makes the game more complicated and conditional in a frustrating way (a bad thing, for both gameplay and immersion), and only really hits non-casters, when non-casters are already less powerful.

They should look at reverting that change generally. Glad they see the writing on the wall here though.

The War Caster feat alone...

 

[Remathilis]

Previous editions supported more of these archetypes in fewer years.

Edit: I find this fatalism about the limits of 5E design rather disheartening. D&D is so much more flexible than a lot of people seem to think it is, it's just poorly supported in the current edition.

I think the current 5e system handles things just fine, but classes have their special shticks and drawbacks and when you start removing those, you remove the basis of a class system. The 5e ranger attempt to emulate a whole lot of different wilderness warrior ideas and has grown fat attempting to encapsulate 40 years of D&D rangers and everything they've tried to be: Aragon, druid-warrior, tracker, scout, etc. The D&D ranger doesn't emulate Aragon, Davey Crockett, or anything other than the D&D ranger at this point.

 

[Incenjucar]

I think the current 5e system handles things just fine, but classes have their special shticks and drawbacks and when you start removing those, you remove the basis of a class system. The 5e ranger attempt to emulate a whole lot of different wilderness warrior ideas and has grown fat attempting to encapsulate 40 years of D&D rangers and everything they've tried to be: Aragon, druid-warrior, tracker, scout, etc. The D&D ranger doesn't emulate Aragon, Davey Crockett, or anything other than the D&D ranger at this point.

I find your position confusing considering that 5E is less flexible than previous editions.

Edit: Snipped some grumpiness

 

[Ashrym]

You're going to need a real example of something that is both arbitrary and reasoned simultaneously. Perhaps start by looking up what arbitrary means.

Age of majority would be an example. There are reasons to have age restrictions while people grow into adulthood but the actual ages are arbitrary. It's not like a birthday changes a person outside of regulations related to that birthday.

So I can say the drinking age of 19 is an arbitrary age (that varies depending on where one is) but there is a reason that arbitrary age exists. They align.

The existence of an arbitrary decision doesn't mean there's no reason of outside of that decision. A line just needs to be drawn somewhere sometimes.

We the quiver is obviously a movie thing. LOTR is pre-John Wick so ammo never mattered back then unless drama.

So how big was that quiver in the book during the battles? Are we making assumptions? Legolas and Gimli counting against each other, for example, did demonstrate a lot of arrows being readily available.

When D&D becomes a classless, point-buy, skills-based system, you will get your wish.

I cannot see that happening. Classes are a part of the game identity.

The D&D ranger doesn't emulate Aragon, Davey Crockett, or anything other than the D&D ranger at this point.

I think that's part of the issue. I would use another class to make characters we would consider rangers. But...

Some of them are called rangers in those stories so when we think of someone as a ranger and then we can't make them as a ranger it feels like it's invalidating the concept. It's like "I'm a ranger but I can't be a real ranger because rules so I need to be a fighter pretending to be a ranger".

When we're emotionally invested in the concept we want to play and then that concept is invalidated that can evoke an emotional response.

That's why some classes and names that are common to various books, stories, games, movies, etc have issues. There are a lot of ranger concepts and the core class could be better at covering them.

 

[Maxperson]

Age of majority would be an example. There are reasons to have age restrictions while people grow into adulthood but the actual ages are arbitrary. It's not like a birthday changes a person outside of regulations related to that birthday.

So I can say the drinking age of 19 is an arbitrary age (that varies depending on where one is) but there is a reason that arbitrary age exists. They align.

The existence of an arbitrary decision doesn't mean there's no reason of outside of that decision. A line just needs to be drawn somewhere sometimes.

I disagree that those are arbitrary ages. When dealing with masses of people, not everyone is going to progress at the same rate. The government needs to estimate(reason) where most people will be mature enough for any given restricted item.

Just because the ages vary from region to region, doesn't make ages arbitrary. It just means that the various regions assigned different ages for different reasons, or the estimate for maturity varied a little. Will all people be mature enough to drink at 21? No. Some will be mature enough earlier, and others not mature enough even at 21. It's not about one day(the 21st birthday) making you mature enough. It's about when most people will be mature enough in the government's eyes.

It's not like they flipped a coin or threw darts at a bunch of ages in order to pick the age restriction. It wasn't arbitrary.