D&D (2024) New Survey Results | Druid & Paladin | Unearthed Arcana | D&D

WotC has shared a new video going over the survey results following the drud and paladin playtests for One D&D.

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For those who don't have time to watch the video, here are some general notes.

Paladin

• Did extremely well in terms of satisfaction
• All class and subclass features scored 70% or higher - lowest was Divine Smite at 72%
• Got some pushback in written feedback on being able to smite on ranged attacks - class identity concerns, Paladin viewed as melee-centric class, ranged smites might eat into Cleric/Ranger identity too much
• Positive feedback on redesigned smite spells - may become paladin exclusive spells down the road

Druid

• Wild Shape feedback seems to be split - slight majority saying "never want this Wild Shape in print", slight minority saying "this is their favorite version of Wild Shape they've ever seen"
• People love the texture and differences in beast options in '14 Wild Shape, but are open to feature being easier to use (i.e. don't want players to have to weigh the merits of 100+ stat blocks every time they want to use Wild Shape)
• Will have another take on Wild Shape next time Druid appears in Playtest UA
• General concept of Channel Nature seems to have gone over well, but want to see more done with it
• Expected feedback for restoring elemental forms for Moon Druids, but instead found people wanted to lean more into Lunar themes
• Want Moon Druid forms to be more resilient, but still want to reign in power at high levels (frequent/unlimited uses of Wild Shape constantly refreshing HP total)

 

[doctorbadwolf]

I don't recall your specific system, but in my opinion if you are shifting into an animal, you should be shifting into that specific animal as it exists in the game world, not a player-generated template that the player then slaps a name on...if they even bother. Definitely not some hybrid creature.

“As it exists in the game world” isn’t really a thing. How it exists in the game world is malleable.

The overwhelming feedback I got from my players about the beastmaster change to a templated companion in Tasha's was that they hated it. Passionately. They didn't want a magically summoned "beast of the land" or whatever, even though they understood that it was more powerful. They wanted their rangers to have an actual bear, wolf or whatever that they had bonded with and trained. They wanted an animal companion.

I mean, good thing they could just keep using normal beasts?

Passionately hating an optional feature in a game is extremely strange, to me.

Anyway, according to the video the next iteration of druid will be something very different, so I look forward to seeing what is next.

Paladin went over positively - no surprise there, nor that allowing smite at range was the one feature that didn't sell. I don't think anyone is shocked. What I am seeing so far is that there is not an appetite from the wider player base for big changes. When they basically just take a class and make some tweaks and quality of life improvements, most folks are happy. This does not surprise me - the whole reason why OneD&D is keeping the 5e chassis is that it has been broadly popular.

Eh, people are often wildly unreasonable and selfish. I guess I’m not surprised either that some people go from “that option doesn’t fit my personal view of a Paladin” to “that shouldn’t exist in the game”.

IMO such opinions should, in all contexts in life, be ruthlessly ignored, but oh well.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

Anyway any wildshape solution that doesn’t give me ease of scaling so my wolf Druid can wolf it up from level 2 or whatever to level 20, along with either THP, healing, or ditching the Spellcasting restriction*, is going to get the entire feature set 0-rated by me.

*if the animal form isn’t significantly tougher, doesn’t help you stay alive more easily, there is no reason to not allow it to cast spells while wildshaped.

 

[DEFCON 1]

I saw a LOT of players who wanted nothing to do with templates. I think it is wishful thinking to interpret these results as “templates, but with a few more knobs,” instead of “we like being able to shift into specific beasts and want nothing to do with templates.”

I think the core conceit of wild shape that people like is being able to shift into animals.

My comments about the templates were from the perspective of Jeremy and the designers at WotC, not some of the fans. In fact I said specifically that many of the players were the ones who wanted to use actual animal statblocks in order to have all the special abilities at their disposal, which is why the next step for Jeremy et. al. was probably going to be them iterating on the statblock format by adding in these special abilities to be allowed to be taken as part of the template statblock idea.

Some players yes, want to use actual animal statblocks. Some players don't. So WotC's next act is to find a way to split the difference.

 

[UngainlyTitan]

I don't recall your specific system, but in my opinion if you are shifting into an animal, you should be shifting into that specific animal as it exists in the game world, not a player-generated template that the player then slaps a name on...if they even bother. Definitely not some hybrid creature.

The overwhelming feedback I got from my players about the beastmaster change to a templated companion in Tasha's was that they hated it. Passionately. They didn't want a magically summoned "beast of the land" or whatever, even though they understood that it was more powerful. They wanted their rangers to have an actual bear, wolf or whatever that they had bonded with and trained. They wanted an animal companion.

Similarly, the issue with templates is that they are a design solution that completely fails to address the roleplay aspect that many druid players love: turning into specific animals.

I think a far better solution would be to aim for a moon druid who can use wild shape like Doric does in the D&D movie. I think that nailed how a lot of players see the class.

Anyway, according to the video the next iteration of druid will be something very different, so I look forward to seeing what is next.

Paladin went over positively - no surprise there, nor that allowing smite at range was the one feature that didn't sell. I don't think anyone is shocked. What I am seeing so far is that there is not an appetite from the wider player base for big changes. When they basically just take a class and make some tweaks and quality of life improvements, most folks are happy. This does not surprise me - the whole reason why OneD&D is keeping the 5e chassis is that it has been broadly popular.

So I think the next iterations of druid and warlock will be a lot closer to the 2014 versions.

All statblocks are game constructions. Do you not do reskinning?

 

[DEFCON 1]

Similarly, the issue with templates is that they are a design solution that completely fails to address the roleplay aspect that many druid players love: turning into specific animals.

Well, this is going to end up being just a difference of opinion on what each player's belief of what their imagination in the world could/should be.

From your and your players perspective... an animal isn't "real" unless you use an actual statblock that has the name of the animal written at the top. Which is cool. That's your feelings and there's nothing wrong about them. Perfectly valid way to play. But for other people, they are perfectly okay writing in the name of the animal at the top of the stablock themselves rather than having WotC do it.

I happen to fall into the latter group... because I acknowledge that pretty much all animal statblocks (and quite frankly a lot of monster statblocks too) are all basically the same, with the only difference being one animal's attack bonus being like a +3 while another's is +4. 6 ability scores all around the same 8-13 grouping, a melee mouth attack and a melee hand attack, bth of which do a die of damage plus a couple points. There's really no distinctive differences except for perhaps if it happens to have a special ability. So for those people... any differentiation of them comes from the imaginations of the DM and the mind's eye of the players as they have to visualize X animal in front of them, rather than Y animal.

I mean, if you can remove the names of the animals from the tops of their statblocks and when shown to various people they wouldn't even begin to identify which blocks go to which animals because they are all kind of the same... it shows us that specific animal statblocks are not necessary for many people's ability to play into the fantasy. Wildshaping into a wolf becomes a thing because the player and the table visualize and imagine the player's character AS a wolf as they describe what their druid is doing, rather than because they have the wolf statblock in front of them. For a lot of people, they don't even NEED a statblock at all to be able to roleplay as a wolf, they just do it.

Now one way isn't inherently better than the other. It's all going to come down to preferences. But for the designers, they are going to have to just do some counting of heads to see which preferences are more dominant-- especially when coupled with attitudes regarding ease-of-use, balance, and speed. Which means one of the sides will end up disappointed.

But at least for the fans of the 2014 wildshape, they can easily port those rules into their 2024 game if they end up wanting to and it ultimately becomes necessary should the template format go forward. There's no reason not to.

 

[Remathilis]

I don't recall your specific system, but in my opinion if you are shifting into an animal, you should be shifting into that specific animal as it exists in the game world, not a player-generated template that the player then slaps a name on...if they even bother. Definitely not some hybrid creature.

The overwhelming feedback I got from my players about the beastmaster change to a templated companion in Tasha's was that they hated it. Passionately. They didn't want a magically summoned "beast of the land" or whatever, even though they understood that it was more powerful. They wanted their rangers to have an actual bear, wolf or whatever that they had bonded with and trained. They wanted an animal companion.

Similarly, the issue with templates is that they are a design solution that completely fails to address the roleplay aspect that many druid players love: turning into specific animals.

I think a far better solution would be to aim for a moon druid who can use wild shape like Doric does in the D&D movie. I think that nailed how a lot of players see the class.

Anyway, according to the video the next iteration of druid will be something very different, so I look forward to seeing what is next.

Paladin went over positively - no surprise there, nor that allowing smite at range was the one feature that didn't sell. I don't think anyone is shocked. What I am seeing so far is that there is not an appetite from the wider player base for big changes. When they basically just take a class and make some tweaks and quality of life improvements, most folks are happy. This does not surprise me - the whole reason why OneD&D is keeping the 5e chassis is that it has been broadly popular.

So I think the next iterations of druid and warlock will be a lot closer to the 2014 versions.

Of course, the problem is that most animals are designed to be challenges to PCs at a given level, not balanced to be equal to PCs across a career. The moon druid shows that perfectly; a CR 1 creature is simply more powerful than most level 2 PCs but drops off by mid levels unless the druid has a steady range of fantastical or megafauna to select from. Unless your goal is to spend one using the animal to soak monster attacks, the ranger and her pet wolf or the druid who turns into a bear becomes the ranger with her pet raptor and the druid who turns into a wooly mammoth.

Personally, I'd like never to need to touch the MM to play my character. Not for summons, spells or class features. As a DM, I hate playing gatekeeper on what kind of creatures live in a place just to keep them in check. Players who pour though D&D Beyond asking for obscure fey to conjure or gazer familiars. They can use the Tasha summon spells and template pets and shapes.

 

[Neonchameleon]

I don't recall your specific system, but in my opinion if you are shifting into an animal, you should be shifting into that specific animal as it exists in the game world, not a player-generated template that the player then slaps a name on...if they even bother. Definitely not some hybrid creature.

And my opinion is that even if you shift into the shape of an animal you don't automatically gain its life and combat experience, or its knowledge of how to move this body in specific. You quite simply are a hybrid character because you are still fundamentally you with your life experience, you knowledge, and a lack of its life experience and its knowledge. If you were to drop me into the body of a gorilla I would not be able to lift things that gorilla could because I simply don't have the practice knowing how to use its leverage.

If you are shifting into an animal's body you still fundamentally remain you. And shouldn't just replace your stats (not even your physical ones) with its. As such a template makes at least as much sense to me as grabbing the statblock.

 

[Chaosmancer]

One who fails at producing a useful shapeshifter & fails at producing a useful shapeshifted spellcaster despite an ability to cast an extremely limited selection of spells while shapeshifted.

Failure of execution is not a lack of an idea. I don't know why I need to keep repeating this. "they failed to execute the concept" does not mean "no concept existed". You even admit they had a shapeshifter who could cast spells while shaeshifted. The only problem was it wasn't powerful enough to work in melee combat. So... there was the niche they were aiming for, and they conceptually got there, the numbers need adjusting.

Sharon's pie timer might be a thing but it's absolutely the sort of thing that a company of wotc's size should not overlook before serving it up in a playtest document. Even a casual glance can recognize that cooking a pie at 707 degrees without needing a crowd of taste testers to rate the char.

When writing an essay, it is often recommended to take 24 to 48 hours not looking at or thinking about the paper, before editing it. Because your mind will fill in what you intended instead of what you wrote.

For a second example, myself and many others who play the new edition of Sentinels of the Multiverse often get tripped up. Because we played the old version so many times, that we know what we expect cards to do, and do not always remember that those cards changed.

There is no reason to declare incompetence or malicious intent, when we only saw one version with fresh eyes, and not the entire process and every iteration. It is possible that this was the 32nd design change they made to the druid, and was the best version out of all their ideas. This was a design that failed on the numbers, we don't need to say the ideas in it were bad, or that WoTC was poisoning the well, or that they are incapable of playtesting.

 

[Bacon Bits]

I generally agree with the survey results.

Paladin's divine smite's low rating I assume is related to the fact that it's limited to once per turn now. There's always extremely vocal people insisting that nothing ever be nerfed, but it's really not how anything works. I still maintain that change should've been errata or play recommendation in about 2016.

Ranged smite... I'd be less skeptical about adding it if (a) Dex wasn't so overrepresented and (b) ranged weapons have little to no drawback, especially with the new Sharpshooter. 5e D&D has a general problem that it's rarely beneficial to be in melee. I think ranged smite with no particular drawbacks is perfectly balanced and a cool theme. I don't think it's a good design if it can keep up with melee. I'd be happier if it dropped a die of damage.

The Wild Shape criticism seems unsurprising to me, but I also think WotC got really skewed results because the version they printed was unplayably awful in terms of power. I'm sure a lot of the reason people didn't like it was because it was so weak. You were basically running around as the Battle Smith Artificer's companion. Of course that's unpopular! It was grade D beef.

WotC really seems to struggle with the design of polymorph effects. They keep treating it like it's indistinguishable from a summon spell. No, WotC. When you summon a creature, you still get to keep all your actions in later rounds. Summon is action positive. When you polymorph, you replace all your actions. It's action neutral if not action negative. Especially because you can't cast any spells! Yes, the fact that polymorphing allows you to travel or infiltrate is good, but (a) that's not really a combat ability which you want Wild Shape to be and (b) summoned creatures can often act as mounts or can carry PCs.

That said, I genuinely believe that fixed stats are the only way Polymorph and Summon can be balanced. Yes, I think it's really cool if you use the base creature's abilities, but a lot of people really like doing it that way simply because they know it's imbalanced. That's not fair, and doesn't justify the design. It's impossible to balance using MM creatures because that's not what CR means. It doesn't work, and in the worst cases it limits monster design. If they really want this to work, then they would need to assign a polymorph rank and a summon rank so that you can use that instead of CR. I think that's too much effort.

I think that having elemental forms is a really good theme for a Druid, but I also think that Circle of the Moon being the subclass for it makes no sense. It should probably be renamed Circle of the Elemental or Circle of the Guardian. I also think the elemental modifications presented were not particularly exciting.

 

[Gladius Legis]

I'm not saying your idea is wrong, but I'm just curious how you'd differentiate "smiting" from other spells that deal extra damage with riders when you use a weapon attack.

For starters, I would not make these Arcane weapon spells deal anywhere near the extra damage Smite spells are capable of. Because that's the core of the current OneD&D problem with the Cleric out-smiting the Paladin, but spread to Wizards and the like. Instead, I would steer these Arcane weapon spells more toward CC effects, while only dealing one extra die of damage.