D&D (2024) Fighter (Playtest 7)

[Mistwell]

The problem is that the game community doesn't want to let go of its broken or abusable options, despite some things needing reigning in for the health of the game. So far, the only two times I've seen designers fight back against the communities' desires are on Wild Shape Temp HP and on Twin Spell. And you know what? I don't trust them to hold the line on that, let alone fix something like Shield or Simulacrum.

Popularity is important, but WotC needs to remember that what's right isn't always popular and what's popular isn't always right.

You keep asserting the community votes against fixing commonly abusable elements of the game without any evidence to back that up. They fixed a ton of the abusable feats and the community approved of those changes. They've fixed some notable class and subclass abuses and the community for the most part approved of those changes. They tested a more abusable set of wizard abilities and the community rejected them for being overpowered. If they test a better shield and simulacrum spell (and they should) I suspect the community will approve. All evidence seems contrary to your assumption the community doesn't let go of abusable and broken options.

 

[Parmandur]

then why are you saying that it is not 'design by committee' if everything popular makes it in and everything slightly less popular is thrown out...

That's not what design by committee means: that's designing around user needs and input. There is a difference: 4E and the back and forth in small board rooms about what the designers felt was best is design by committee. Getting user data and designing for that is actually focused and goal oriented.

 

[Parmandur]

Not always if you are looking for innovation rather than incremental progress. The vast majority of people were very happy with their Blackberries in 2005. No one was really asking for an iphone and I don't think think these kind of popularity surveys would have got them there.

Perhaps the majority can't even imagine the iphone of D&D. Doesn't mean they wouldn't clamor for it if it's built.

WorC approach to design is far more like Google or Apple.

 

[Azzy]

So... wait. Does the Brawler's Improvised Weapons only do d4's (1-handed) and d6's (2-handed)? Because, yeah, that sucks. It's not even as good as their Unarmed Strike (which is really weird).

I'm hoping that this is an oversight and that the Brawler's improvised weapons are supposed to do the same damage as their unarmed attacks.

 

[Azzy]

Unsurprisingly, the Eldritch Knight is still lackluster.

 

[Parmandur]

I'm hoping that this is an oversight and that the Brawler's improvised weapons are supposed to do the same damage as their unarmed attacks.

It's already possible to get d8 or d12 with improvised weaponm

 

[Remathilis]

Man, people here seem to love to turn to food metaphors. I've never once seen it be helpful for a conversation, and that one fits the pattern of being unhelpful for anyone to understand the topic or draw better conclusions from it. How about we use D&D examples rather than metaphors. It tends to work better.

To show the whole is less than the sum of its parts, you have to, yah know, show it. You can't just assert it and then declare it so. They've designed the game by community feedback, their primary competition has designed their game by community feedback, many industries have designed their products by community feedback, and empirical data shows that designing things by obtaining feedback from the community of your consumers tends to work well to benefit that community of consumers in liking the end product. If you disagree, you will need some sort of evidence beyond your gut instincts which disdain other people's gut instincts.

Sure. Flex.

It's a simple weapon mastery that took a very underutilized property and gave it wider application. But all people saw was one die higher and flipped. "It's not powerful enough. It should be upgraded by two dice higher!" "It's not abusable in a white room combo that involves drawing, attacking with, and then dropping multiple weapons!" "It's too boring and only for 00bs". So does WotC fix it? No. They take it away. Now there is no simple weapon mastery ability that you can put on your character sheet and not think about." Gg community.

Another? They balanced divine smite by making it the spell it should have been in 2014. It's mathematically the same amount of damage and opened the other smite spells into viability. But people whined that "I can't smite in a silence spell" and back to the 2014 smite we'll go.

Treeanmmonk (your friend and mine) showed that there is remarkably little DPS drop off between the packet 5 warlock spellcasting and pact magic. But people whined they can't potentially cast six 5th level spells in a day and we're back to the pact.

And the buzz is already against counterspell and bear totem damage reduction because they were too good. But if you can't shut down Venca with a third level spell slot or become resistant to everything, you're not playing D&D.

Time and again I've seen reasonable ideas shot down because somebody looked at the PDF instead of, ya know, making a character and playing a minute with it.

And I'm proud they caught the disaster that was the wizard Create Spell. Not every idea WotC has put out is good and sometimes it's so bad that even the gut instinct people pause.

 

[Neonchameleon]

The problem is that the game community doesn't want to let go of its broken or abusable options, despite some things needing reigning in for the health of the game.

First taking out the single best designed and most distinctive spellcaster in the game and replacing it with a half-arsed generic half caster would not have been good for the health of the game. Variety is good.

Second I don't think I've seen any pushback against the nerfing of the abusable parts of GWM or one handed PAM - and the only bitching about the reigning in of the abusable part of sharpshooter I've seen is that the replacement ability doesn't quite fit and overlaps with Crossbow Expert.

Thirdly I don't think I've ever seen anyone try to preserve the single level dips. That the warlock got reverted from the catastrophically bad half caster doesn't mean anyone complained about Eldritch Blast being made to scale with warlock level. Just that the whole thing was badly enough received that they had little choice other than to nuke it from orbit.

Fourthly, who was trying to defend the old Moon Druid's ridiculous thp at low levels even if they wanted and got some? Or Spell Mastery being applied to Shield or Absorb Elements.

The community has however seriously complained about new broken stuff being added.

So far, the only two times I've seen designers fight back against the communities' desires are on Wild Shape Temp HP and on Twin Spell. And you know what? I don't trust them to hold the line on that, let alone fix something like Shield or Simulacrum.

They also tried to hold the line on Flex...

The thing about this is that so far the community has normally been more right than the designers. I mean it wasn't the community that tried to give the wizard a spell to remove restrictions on spells. And even when I've agreed with the designers in theory the community can only give feedback on the implementation. I liked Aardling 1.0 for a certain type of player (and it needed design notes to that effect) - but 2.0 was just bad. I wanted template wild shape but the version offered for playtesting was just bad.

Popularity is important, but WotC needs to remember that what's right isn't always popular and what's popular isn't always right.

And what's unpopular isn't always right either.

Also part of the point of a class based game is so you can target different audiences and different play experiences at the same time. Groups when kept independent generally average at better judgement than a few individuals. But the thing looking at popularity is likely to do is (as with the Aardling 1.0) have people look at something not appealing to them and downvote it for being an outlier. What needs to be resisted from this crowd based feedback is a desire for homogenisation. The other casualty has been Flex not being replaced - there needs to be a simple nothing-to-track mastery.

Fortunately the needed resistance to homogenisation seems to be happening. The homogenised warlock and homogenised spell lists have both been dropped into the trash where they belong. And the bard is going back to being something approaching a bard not a D&D frankenclass.

Edit: And Smite is back to something simple to use and not homogenised another generic and faffy spell; the other smites should move this way.

 

[Azzy]

It's already possible to get d8 or d12 with improvised weaponm

If the DM feels like it. It would be far better to codify things so that the ability is reliable.

 

[Neonchameleon]

Treeanmmonk (your friend and mine) showed that there is remarkably little DPS drop off between the packet 5 warlock spellcasting and pact magic. But people whined they can't potentially cast six 5th level spells in a day and we're back to the pact.

What Treantmonk mostly showed is that he is a mediocre analyst who gets known by grinding and producing videos for beginners rather than for quality.

If you have ever tried to optimize for an MMO raid, a MOBA, or other sort of competitive gaming you know that both DPS and burst damage are important, with burst being frequently more important than DPS because the best control condition is dead and if you burst your target down to zero it doesn't have time to do things like heal.

A champion fighter is a DPR class. A wizard is a burst class, able to shut things down hard but with very low DPR (technically it's more hard cc burst rather than actual burst damage). And a warlock is a hybrid. They have two shots in their locker of burst, and then mediocre dpr that doesn't keep up with primary weapon users, partly due to fighting styles, partly due to feats, and partly due to magic weapons.

By removing Pact Magic and replacing it with generic cookie cutter half casting almost all the burst was removed from the warlock. No more Hunger of Hadar as a twisted fireball at level 5. No more Banishment for a looo g time. The warlock's burst was destroyed. The half-arsed half caster has all the burst of a ranger (or artificer).

With their burst destroyed the DPR needed to go significantly up to compensate. If the warlock only matched the ranger at casting then Eldritch Blast needed to be improved to match a ranger with archery fighting style, sharpshooter, and a magic bow (all while adventures are much more generous with bows than pact implements).

So after shredding the warlock's burst was the DPR increased to give the warlock a new role and rhythm? As you say Treantmonk showed that there was an actual drop off in DPR as well as the burst being destroyed.

And Treantmonk, being a thoroughly mediocre analyst, competent to run numbers but with no real depth to his understanding or ability to look at the whole picture then claimed that this was fine because he only looked at one piece of the puzzle. And others quote this as showing something other than the shortcomings of Treantmonk as an analyst.

Time and again I've seen reasonable ideas shot down because somebody looked at the PDF instead of, ya know, making a character and playing a minute with it.

And time and again I've seen bad ideas pumped up for the same reason and good things attacked for being different.