D&D (2024) Class spell lists and pact magic are back!

[Charlaquin]

I think you guys have changed my mind. Templates and unique abilities don't need to be in a book at all, because either one can be added on the fly, as-needed.

To borrow an example from my home game: If I need a troll that fights with a ship anchor and chain, and uses it like a giant grappling hook to snare/capsize the escaping lifeboats of sinking ships, I don't need full stats for a "Harbor Troll" from a book. I don't need to create and apply a "Harbor Monster" template, either. I can just make something up in the moment and run with it.

While this is true, it’s important to note that a “Harbor Troll” stat block could still be valuable for a DM, if it were to be included in like a nautical-themed supplement book or adventure module or something. It merely existing might inspire a DM to use such a monster in their game when they might not otherwise have thought to do so, or save a DM who specifically wants to use such a monster the trouble of making it up themselves. This is the kind of thing I’d say falls under “inessential, but nice to have.”

 

[mamba]

It's not a mistake, that's a year of playtesting. How many years do you think they should spend playtesting for something out in 2024?

First of all I would change the entire approach of testing…. pretty much everything they do. Have a full set of rules, iterate, have a less insane polling approach.

Second, double the time, I assume the 50th anniversary did not exactly sneak up on you

 

[mellored]

The ones liking the Warlock they way it is won’t want the change, and those that never liked it will not get any change because of that. A self-fulfilling prophecy of stagnation

The playstyle of the warlock changed.

With 2014, you would cast a big spell at the start of battle, and then spam Eldritch blast.

In the playtest, you got a lot of lower level spells. Most of which are not better than Eldritch Blast.

 

[Remathilis]

That doesn’t seem suspicious to me at all. All else being equal, people tend to favor familiar options over new ones. A change being additive like weapon mastery, or perceived as a needed fix like species ability score adjustments tip the balance in favor of that change, but other changes have to overcome that bias towards the familiar. Also, you seem to be overlooking changes that did overcome that familiarity bias, such as subclasses starting at 3rd level for all classes, all feats being “half feats”, and a bunch of spell and rules glossary changes.

Did subclasses starting at third level really poll well? I saw a LOT of resistance to it in terms of clerics/sorcs/warlocks, equally as much as something like wild shape or pact magic. It seems odd that people would go "I dislike getting my subclass features at a fixed rate, but please, have all subclasses start at the same level".

I think the "third level subclass" is something that was going to happen regardless of what it polled. We already know there are some things (wild shape's temp hp, twin spell) that are on the dev teams list regardless. (Another example would be racial ASI: I don't think the post-Tasha ASI could poll low enough for them to go back to fixed racial ASI).

As for the rest, I think its a wash. Nobody is horribly bothered by the Magic Action, not compared to changing a class feature. And I'm not sure at this point any of the spell changes we've seen will survive. Guidance, Barkskin, Find Familiar and Resistance haven't seen a revision. Is that because they were accepted, or is it because they polled 60% and we're getting some version of the 2014 spell back? We don't know.

Literally they have been saying all along that this is not a new edition, they just want to bring the existing rules up to date with more recent designs, and that they would start with the most experimental changes and weed out whatever doesn’t excite people. This is beyond tinfoil, this is straight up refusing to believe them when they explicitly told you what their goals were and what process they would use to achieve those goals, and then inventing an ulterior motive when they do exactly what they said they would do.

It just blows my mind NOTHING other than weapon mastery managed to excite people. And I do wonder how (after 6 packets with universal spell lists) they finally said, "oh golly gee, people don't like these!" SIX PACKETS! Did everyone finally wake up on packet 5 and say "you know what, I do not want these" or did WotC say "hmm... Maybe this change is more of a hassle than it's worth. Let's go back to the 2014 lists , it will be easier for backwards compatibility"?

 

[Charlaquin]

First of all I would change the entire approach of testing…. pretty much everything they do. Have a full set of rules, iterate, have a less insane polling approach.

Second, double the time, I assume the 50th anniversary did not exactly sneak up on you

I did much prefer the vertical slices of the D&D Next playtest over the individual classes and rules glossary items of this playtest. I don’t think the approval thresholds are fundamentally a bad idea, I just think they’re too high. It to have a minimum approval requirement for a design to be considered worth publishing, a range below that requirement where a design is considered worth iterating on to try and bring it up to that minimum, and a floor below which an idea is considered unsalvageable. But I’d probably lower those thresholds. Maybe like 75% as the requirement for publication, below 51% as the “toss it out” bar, and 51-74 as the “worth iterating on” range.

 

[mamba]

done nothing. It was a theoretical argument to demonstrate his ranting is not done in isolation, but that he might not be considering the views of others. It was not a real life statement on an actual survey result.

the problem with theoretical statements like this is that if they are not true, then I cannot actually have ignored them, because these conditions do not exist in the first place.

I did consider the percentages we actually had, they were mentioned in my answer…

 

[mamba]

The playstyle of the warlock changed.

With 2014, you would cast a big spell at the start of battle, and then spam Eldritch blast.

In the playtest, you got a lot of lower level spells. Most of which are not better than Eldritch Blast.

I am aware, I am not sure how that relates to anything. People voted however they voted, their rationale is as inscrutable as WotC reactions to our votes…

 

[DammitVictor]

7-8 out of 10 people have resisted every proposed change that wasn't strictly addictive (like adding weapon mastery or adding cunning strike) or errata (fixing berserker or beastmaster). That is an AMAZING track record. You'd have thought at least one of those larger redesigns would have been popular. But no. People preferred the old subclass progression. The old spell lists. The old wild shape. The old pact magic. The old level 20 capstone. The old bardic inspiration. The old paladin smite. Etc. Etc. That is a tremendous win ratio for the 2014 PHB.

That's the bitter irony of convincing your entire customer base that you're selling them the greatest product ever made: you make it very difficult to sell them anything else. This is the biggest thing that bit them in the ass moving from Three to Four, including their misguided marketing, and that's the biggest reason so much of Fifth Edition is just rehashed Third Edition. Now... they're trying to convince a lot of the same people, and a lot of new people whose first and only roleplaying game was Fifth Edition, that the handful of arbitrary changes they're proposing are going to be even better.

Especially when-- from my perspective as a very former member of that customer base-- those changes mostly seem to add up to taking the worst parts of the game and making them worse.

 

[Charlaquin]

Did subclasses starting at third level really poll well? I saw a LOT of resistance to it in terms of clerics/sorcs/warlocks, equally as much as something like wild shape or pact magic. It seems odd that people would go "I dislike getting my subclass features at a fixed rate, but please, have all subclasses start at the same level".

I think the "third level subclass" is something that was going to happen regardless of what it polled. We already know there are some things (wild shape's temp hp, twin spell) that are on the dev teams list regardless. (Another example would be racial ASI: I don't think the post-Tasha ASI could poll low enough for them to go back to fixed racial ASI).

I think either is possible. Obviously we can’t know without access to the data, but I see no reason to think WotC is just lying about it.

It just blows my mind NOTHING other than weapon mastery managed to excite people.

That’s not true though. A lot of classes and subclasses have seen significant increases in poll ratings. The whole origins system seems to have passed, with only, like, Ardlings getting thrown out from those first couple packets. We’ll have to wait and see how people respond to Cunning Strike, but I will be amazed if it doesn’t get very high ratings.

And I do wonder how (after 6 packets with universal spell lists) they finally said, "oh golly gee, people don't like these!" SIX PACKETS! Did everyone finally wake up on packet 5 and say "you know what, I do not want these" or did WotC say "hmm... Maybe this change is more of a hassle than it's worth. Let's go back to the 2014 lists , it will be easier for backwards compatibility"?

Packet 7 will be the first one published after data had come in from all spellcasting classes under the shared spell list model. Presumably, they wanted to see how people responded to all the classes with that model before making any decisions about whether or not to keep it.

 

[Charlaquin]

I am aware, I am not sure how that relates to anything. People voted however they voted, their rationale is as inscrutable as WotC reactions to our votes…

I mean, there are plenty of people here who voted against the warlock spellcasting changes and would be happy to explain their reasoning. I myself have already done so, at length, shortly after packet 5 first dropped.