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

[Chaosmancer]

So it's your position that they are taking into account the vast majority of gamers that they aren't getting information from, and then using that non-information to modify the large selection bias that they are getting from the passionate players?

How exactly are they accounting for the selection bias with the non-information that they have?

They could use principles from Fermi. Or from the field of Sociology. Or from the Field of Survey Methodology. Again, you seem to want a degree of precision that simply is not needed from studying humans. They don't need to be within 1% of some imaginary objective truth.

Just add it to the rest of the mistakes.

I would if they had made any of those other mistakes.

So either they approve stuff that hits 80% and ignore the outliers or they don't and they lied to us when they said that they approve stuff that hits 80%. Which is it? It can't be both.

They literally can't be doing anything but ignoring them if they have a set percentage that will mean success. It doesn't matter what the outliers think if the non-outliers hit 70%.

What do you mean it can't be both? The two things are not mutually exclusive. You can listen and hear someone's opinion... and not follow it. They aren't ignoring the outliers just because they are following where the majority is pointing. They are listening to the outliers, just not allowing those outliers to dictate everything to their specifications. That isn't ignoring them.

Like, I'm truly trying to understand this. Anything other than tyranny of the minority is ignoring that minority?! That doesn't make any logical sense.

So your counter to the confirmation bias that they have said on video that they engage in is that they suck at confirmation bias?

Or, you know, maybe since they allow their data to surprise them, instead of making it fit their preconcieved notions of what is popular, they aren't engaging in confirmation bias

They argued that dozens of executives whose job it is to know how to read contracts and the highly paid lawyers that drafted those contracts ALL missed that the new OGL would allow them to just steal people's work. Mind you it was instantly apparent to those of us lay people who let out a big outcry.

Either they are that dumb or they lie to us. Either way what they say can't be trusted.

Since when is Crawford an Executive or a Lawyer? The DnD design team has nothing to do with those people. This is completely unrelated to the issue at hand.

You've proven no causation. Nor have they.

Why do they need to prove it to you? There is no possible logical reason for them to lie about it.

The playtest is quite literally the campaign to the next edition. And it has taken 13 months to get to playtest 7. That's more time than candidates spend campaigning.

Right....

Find me a politician who was running for major, federal office, who only makes 7 campaign stops. You can't compare time spent to time spent, the factor is what they spent that time doing. Most Political Campaigns have three to five people making two or three stops daily, for months. Even on the low end that is 180 events.

We've had seven events.

Have you paid attention to the various forums? People talk about the surveys and going over things. The debate happens for a long time and opinions do change.

No, opinions refine. But I have been on the forums. No one's opinions on Weapon Mastery have really changed much since it was introduced. No one is talking about dwarven tremorsense anymore. We've not really discussed the issue with critical hits anymore.

Things settled and became static. We all feel like we have a fairly strong image of what 2024 is going to look like. Which is nothing like a political campaign.

Get any exact approval rating, which is not by the way the average of those who approve vs. disapprove. They are different things, which based on your arguments I don't think you understand. Let me show you the following.

700 people vote very satisfied. 100 vote satisfied. 100 vote unsatisfied. 100 vote very unsatisfied.

That 80% of people approve, but it's not an 80% approval rating because...

100 people vote very satisfied, 700 vote satisfied. 100 vote unsatisfied. 100 vote very unsatisfied. means that even though 80% of people are satisfied, they are far less satisfied than the first set above.

Within each category is a range of percentages. Within each person is a variable amount of personal satisfaction to achieve each category. These things mean that it's impossible for WotC to come up with an 80% approval rating , even if they can say that 80% of people approve at some level.

To further confound things, if they aren't weighting very satisfied and satisfied with different percentages, there's literally no point in offering both of those results. Same with dissatisfied and very dissatisfied. If all they are looking for is 80% of people approve at some level, then a simple binary "Are you satisfied or dissatisfied?" is sufficient.

And all it takes is to... just do some basic effort to show that difference you are talking about. Using my method from before.

700 / 100 / 100 / 100 --> I get ~90% approval

100 / 700 / 100 / 100 ---> I get ~60% approval.

And, exactly as you stated, the second set is far less satisfied than the first set. Now, I'm not saying my method is exactly the same as their method. I'm sure they are using a superior method. But the point is that all this stuff you are griping about is stuff that is known and can be solved. Scientists and mathematicians haven't just thrown their hands up in the air when it comes to studying human beings and declared "It is impossible! There is no objective standard!". They figured out how to get as close as possible.

That would be an example of a poorly worded question.

And yet you seem to think it is the question they should be asking, for some reason.

I don't remember those polls, but they ignored us plenty be releasing a bunch of stuff we never playtested.

Yeah, you clearly don't remember the polls, since they've released literally nothing based on those polls. And there has been very very little since the PHB that has been released without seeing a single public playtest. About the only things were the Green Ronin SCAG... which also did very poorly. Yet more evidence that, maybe, these surveys they've done for Tasha's, Xanathars, Volos, ect ect ect... have been good for the game and made good products.

 

[Ashrym]

Too little pressure, and you won't take a short rest because you can take a long rest instead. Why refresh just some of your abilities when you can refresh all of them?

It's because we still cannot take a long rest whenever we want. We get one in any given 24 hour period so the only thing left is short rests. There should not be an issue with pacing an hour into the day as opposed to a completely new day.

The long rest is representative of the over night sleep. The short rest is representative of preparing a meal, possibly checking on wound, taking a dump in the woods, etc. It's not hard for the DM to tell the party "this looks like a good chance to have a bite to eat and take a break". DM's have the agency in controlling rests in how they are presented.

While crossing a desert over a week, you will need your spell slots for food and water every day, deal with exhaustion every day, all that.

I disagree. We have skills to cover that and a ranger might be in the party. The idea that we need spells to cover that isn't correct. Spells are an additional option to cover that as opposed to being required.

It worked just fine in 4E.

4E used AEDU and not class abilities recovering on a short rest. We cannot just claim 5e would work like it did in 4e given the significant differences in how the classes are designed. It could work with the rule of only having 2 short rests available per long rest, except I don't like limiting the number of short rests that way. I like having the potential to have 3 short rests or more depending on the nature of the adventure.

For example, forcing PC's to use up all of their HD for healing within those 2 rests is likely to leave unspent HD and reduce the effectiveness of that form of healing. Groups that aren't using short rests for healing are wasting a huge resource IMO.

Another example would be fighters. If I'm presenting a long drawn out battle then second wind, action surge, and tactical shift are tied to those short rests and allowing more is useful for those types of days. Fighters can make use of the HD healing I just mentioned. Some subclass features like superiority dice, know your enemy (which can be recharged by superiority dice), or arcane charge (tied to action surge) will also benefit from those extra short rests.

I think limiting the number of short rests can restrict me as a DM.

If a short rest was 5 minutes, you could easily have 12+ short rests during the day and negating the long rest classes. That's the reason why they were set to an hour each.

No. It's easy to limit the number of short rests by claiming only 2 can be used per day. I think this is better as a house rule (or DMG variant rule) than a PHB rule for the reason I just mentioned above.

I don't actually see the benefit of a 5 minute short rest other than a travel-by-montage method of dealing with short rests, however. If we limit the number of short rests 5 minutes vs 20 minutes is largely meaningless. It seems to be short to cater to a 5MWD approach.

Excepting that, in practice, hour long short rests tend to lead to 0 to 1 short rests per adventuring day. And no matter how you cut the math, that isn't equivalent to what long rest classes can put out.

Except that's not my experience in practice. It's usually 1 to 3 short rests. It's easy to take an hour in an urban or wilderness adventure. It's harder in a dungeon but it's easier to justify a spot to eat and rest in a dungeon than it is to finish off the day and then take a long rest.

The issue comes in when the DM and/or players are trying to pace themselves specifically to long rest abilities instead of pacing themselves to include short rests, getting back to a 5MWD approach where both the DM's and players are focusing on the spell casters in a meta-gamey approach instead of narrating a story based on the pace of the plot.

The DM should be controlling the pace and the players should be using resources following that pace. If the DM is doing that to include short rests then the short rests are going to exist regardless of other PC's ignoring that option.

...

Hey. If you think arbitrarily picking a percentage for thousands of people who are thinking about a range of likes and dislikes(percentages other than what was arbitrarily picked), then that's great for you.

Prove that they did. Heck, propose a sound principle they could have used to assign a percentage to the four choices

There isn't one. Quite literally no specific number can be correct, so it's an arbitrary selection by definition. They're picking one wrong number among all wrong numbers.

I've been mostly ignoring the discussion on survey quality after pulling away from it earlier in the thread, but I wanted to point out these comments still come from a position of lack of knowledge. Just because we don't know how or why a percentage is selected doesn't make that selection arbitrary.

Spending page after page of speculation arguing about it when we still don't have that information is wasted time (IMO) and off topic as well. Speculation is not fact and doesn't create some knowledge of the reasoning behind the selected percentage. I saw some fallacy discussion thrown into the mix so I'm pointing out that the speculation is based on the presumption that flaws exist when that presumption excludes any actual knowledge of the methodology, pointing to a fallacy without demonstrating why the fallacy is accurate (such as pointing out the lack of information available in an argument of presumption) can fall under fallacy fallacy (in which the discussed topic hasn't been proven wrong just by pointing out the possibility of a logical fallacy), and Occam's Razor would imply that the survey's are working as intended until data (which you don't have) is presented to prove that they are not.

Who is benefitting and how from the insistence that this flaw exists? It certainly doesn't make any sense that WotC would benefit from using a flawed methodology in the surveys so I'm sure that if you redirected your energy to pointing out whatever flaws you see in the general comment section of those surveys then your energy might be more productive in effecting change than here in this thread.

Just another 2cp. Hope it helps.

 

[Maxperson]

I've been mostly ignoring the discussion on survey quality after pulling away from it earlier in the thread, but I wanted to point out these comments still come from a position of lack of knowledge. Just because we don't know how or why a percentage is selected doesn't make that selection arbitrary.

Spending page after page of speculation arguing about it when we still don't have that information is wasted time (IMO) and off topic as well. Speculation is not fact and doesn't create some knowledge of the reasoning behind the selected percentage. I saw some fallacy discussion thrown into the mix so I'm pointing out that the speculation is based on the presumption that flaws exist when that presumption excludes any actual knowledge of the methodology, pointing to a fallacy without demonstrating why the fallacy is accurate (such as pointing out the lack of information available in an argument of presumption) can fall under fallacy fallacy (in which the discussed topic hasn't been proven wrong just by pointing out the possibility of a logical fallacy), and Occam's Razor would imply that the survey's are working as intended until data (which you don't have) is presented to prove that they are not.

Who is benefitting and how from the insistence that this flaw exists? It certainly doesn't make any sense that WotC would benefit from using a flawed methodology in the surveys so I'm sure that if you redirected your energy to pointing out whatever flaws you see in the general comment section of those surveys then your energy might be more productive in effecting change than here in this thread.

Just another 2cp. Hope it helps.

I've shown how their methodology is flawed. The math doesn't lie.

Since you, myself, @Chaosmancer, and @mamba all have different subjective experiences, on a 1-100 scale we are going to have different numbers that qualify as very satisfied, satisfied, dissatisfied, and very dissatisfied. Compound that by thousands of people and you have a situation where it's impossible for WotC to correctly identify when a vote on a particular item has a 70% satisfaction rating and when an item has 60% satisfaction rating.

Picking a percentage that they know(or at the very least should know) is wrong and assigning it to each of the 4 categories in order to come up with 70% and 60% seems pretty arbitrary to me. Reason says that they shouldn't be using that method since it's guaranteed to be wrong. If they wanted to know whether we voters as a whole were 70% satisfied or 60% satisfied, the should be having us weight things on a scale of 1-100.

The chances that they can get within 1% of the correct number are less than 1%, but I'll leave it at 1% for simplicity's sake. The chances of they being within 5% is greater than 5% since people are unlikely to be satisfied at 5% or dissatisfied at 78%, so they can guess closer at a +/- 5% error rate, but I don't know the exact percentage. However, when they are using specific percentages like 70% and 60% to have an ability succeed or qualify for another incarnation of an ability, even a 5% error rate is way too large.

The best that they can do is to tell us what percentage of people are satisfied vs. what percentage are dissatisfied, which only requires a binary are you satisfied or dissatisfied. Not only that, but it completely ignores everyone who is dissatisfied, but likes the ability enough to want another iteration of the ability to vote on, so none of those people contribute to the 60% number required for WotC to give another iteration of an ability.

Further, I linked the type of poll WotC is using and showed that they are making 3 or 4(I don't remember which and am too tired this early to go check) of the common mistakes companies make that result in outcomes that are wrong.

Now, you are correct that I'm more likely be productive by telling WotC directly about their mistakes, but I enjoy debates here on this forum.

 

[Maxperson]

And all it takes is to... just do some basic effort to show that difference you are talking about. Using my method from before.

700 / 100 / 100 / 100 --> I get ~90% approval

100 / 700 / 100 / 100 ---> I get ~60% approval.

Yes. I understand that assigning arbitrary and incorrect percentages can get you to the numbers you want to achieve. That wasn't what I asked for. I asked you assign the correct numbers and get there. i.e. do the real math.

 

[Mirrorrorrim]

I've shown how their methodology is flawed. The math doesn't lie.

Since you, myself, @Chaosmancer, and @mamba all have different subjective experiences, on a 1-100 scale we are going to have different numbers that qualify as very satisfied, satisfied, dissatisfied, and very dissatisfied. Compound that by thousands of people and you have a situation where it's impossible for WotC to correctly identify when a vote on a particular item has a 70% satisfaction rating and when an item has 60% satisfaction rating.

Picking a percentage that they know(or at the very least should know) is wrong and assigning it to each of the 4 categories in order to come up with 70% and 60% seems pretty arbitrary to me. Reason says that they shouldn't be using that method since it's guaranteed to be wrong. If they wanted to know whether we voters as a whole were 70% satisfied or 60% satisfied, the should be having us weight things on a scale of 1-100.

The chances that they can get within 1% of the correct number are less than 1%, but I'll leave it at 1% for simplicity's sake. The chances of they being within 5% is greater than 5% since people are unlikely to be satisfied at 5% or dissatisfied at 78%, so they can guess closer at a +/- 5% error rate, but I don't know the exact percentage. However, when they are using specific percentages like 70% and 60% to have an ability succeed or qualify for another incarnation of an ability, even a 5% error rate is way too large.

The best that they can do is to tell us what percentage of people are satisfied vs. what percentage are dissatisfied, which only requires a binary are you satisfied or dissatisfied. Not only that, but it completely ignores everyone who is dissatisfied, but likes the ability enough to want another iteration of the ability to vote on, so none of those people contribute to the 60% number required for WotC to give another iteration of an ability.

Further, I linked the type of poll WotC is using and showed that they are making 3 or 4(I don't remember which and am too tired this early to go check) of the common mistakes companies make that result in outcomes that are wrong.

Now, you are correct that I'm more likely be productive by telling WotC directly about their mistakes, but I enjoy debates here on this forum.

All this Rules-Lawyerly mathemagical talk feels little more than words in the wind. Wizards has never said that there is an extremely strict feedback regimen that tied their hands when it came to design. I've paid attention to their communications and I completely understand that they have all the freedom in the world to take ratings, and written feedback, and make decisions based on any of that. If they go another way than what I want, or don't iterate on a design I like (like druid templates), that is their prerogative and I was not misled. I may not like their results at times but it is not a mistake compared to their philosophy. They have a lot to juggle, and only they see the written feedback together in context. Maybe larger numbers of people made some very good written points that warrant not moving forward with designs that had a 70% rating. They've also said that some rules may reappear in the future as other options, even if they don't fit in the 2024 PH. It's fine. They aren't incompetent.

Designing and writing a book is art. The science and math of it matters more in balancing the content within, less the composition of the artwork as a whole.

 

[Baron Opal II]

No. It's easy to limit the number of short rests by claiming only 2 can be used per day. I think this is better as a house rule (or DMG variant rule) than a PHB rule for the reason I just mentioned above.

My contention is primarily the designers designed for 2-3 short rests per long rest. I have no problems with declaring "you can only meaningfully recover your abilities, endurance, whatever a certain number of times per day, and that number is [X]". Or deciding whatever arbitrary time frame fits X mechanically or thematically.

 

[Maxperson]

All this Rules-Lawyerly mathemagical talk feels little more than words in the wind. Wizards has never said that there is an extremely strict feedback regimen that tied their hands when it came to design. I've paid attention to their communications and I completely understand that they have all the freedom in the world to take ratings, and written feedback, and make decisions based on any of that. If they go another way than what I want, or don't iterate on a design I like (like druid templates), that is their prerogative and I was not misled. I may not like their results at times but it is not a mistake compared to their philosophy. They have a lot to juggle, and only they see the written feedback together in context. Maybe larger numbers of people made some very good written points that warrant not moving forward with designs that had a 70% rating. They've also said that some rules may reappear in the future as other options, even if they don't fit in the 2024 PH. It's fine. They aren't incompetent.

Designing and writing a book is art. The science and math of it matters more in balancing the content within, less the composition of the artwork as a whole.

If they aren't beholden to the data, then they should never have said that they approve things that hit 70% approval rating. Doing so leaves them in a bad situation. Either they are changing their minds and ignoring data that they said they use to approve abilities, or they lied to us when they told us that they approve things that hit 70%. Either way they can't be trusted. Better to have just been honest with us from the beginning and said, "Hey, we make our own decisions but we will consider the voting when we do so."

In any case, whether they do their own thing or not, they are still relying on faulty data since their methodology suffers from multiple common mistakes that throw off the results of the kind of survey that they use.

 

[Mirrorrorrim]

If they aren't beholden to the data, then they should never have said that they approve things that hit 70% approval rating. Doing so leaves them in a bad situation. Either they are changing their minds and ignoring data that they said they use to approve abilities, or they lied to us when they told us that they approve things that hit 70%. Either way they can't be trusted. Better to have just been honest with us from the beginning and said, "Hey, we make our own decisions but we will consider the voting when we do so."

In any case, whether they do their own thing or not, they are still relying on faulty data since their methodology suffers from multiple common mistakes that throw off the results of the kind of survey that they use.

Nope, you are holding them to a higher personal standard. They don't work exclusively off of percentages. The percentages are general watermarks to determine the level at how they should consider certain rules objects. They have told us that there can be extentuating circumstances, and that written feedback matters. And they tell us when feedback makes them reconsider design.

From my perspective, they have been honestly working through a playtest with lots of twists and turns and strong opinions. Nothing here is really surprising me even if I'm frustrated. What is it you're trying to accomplish by essentially calling them incompetent liars that can't be trusted? Is it because your preferences are being left behind and you want to paint them as villains? They are leaving behind some of my preferences too. I understand that there are other factors that led to my preferences not being further playtested.

You don't like their chosen methodology. Fine. Relentlessly going after them as incompetent liars? Pretty intense for something that's just like... your opinion, man.

 

[Maxperson]

You don't like their chosen methodology. Fine. Relentlessly going after them as incompetent liars? Pretty intense for something that's just like... your opinion, man.

Yeah, sure. That's what I've been doing.

 

[Chaosmancer]

It's because we still cannot take a long rest whenever we want. We get one in any given 24 hour period so the only thing left is short rests. There should not be an issue with pacing an hour into the day as opposed to a completely new day.

The long rest is representative of the over night sleep. The short rest is representative of preparing a meal, possibly checking on wound, taking a dump in the woods, etc. It's not hard for the DM to tell the party "this looks like a good chance to have a bite to eat and take a break". DM's have the agency in controlling rests in how they are presented.

Well, yes and no.

Intellectually we can imagine that only getting a single long rest in a day presents an issue with "taking a long rest whenever we want". However, if there is nothing to push you forward during a day, it takes equally as much time at the table to rest for an hour, a day, a week, or six months. This is where the idea of the pressures come in. There has to be a reason you cannot stop for the day.

Now, I don't tend to have that problem, because people IRL hate wasting time, and presenting the idea that there is still a whole day left to go, the players will try and fill it. But that requires them focusing more on the RP, than on the mechanics which give them the best chance of success.

4E used AEDU and not class abilities recovering on a short rest. We cannot just claim 5e would work like it did in 4e given the significant differences in how the classes are designed. It could work with the rule of only having 2 short rests available per long rest, except I don't like limiting the number of short rests that way. I like having the potential to have 3 short rests or more depending on the nature of the adventure.

I think there are ways to make it work, but you are correct, it would take more than simply altering the rules. However, I would be remiss to not point out that 5 minute short rests are already a variant rule in the DMG. So, in theory, it can work that way in 5e with little to no issue.

Another example would be fighters. If I'm presenting a long drawn out battle then second wind, action surge, and tactical shift are tied to those short rests and allowing more is useful for those types of days. Fighters can make use of the HD healing I just mentioned. Some subclass features like superiority dice, know your enemy (which can be recharged by superiority dice), or arcane charge (tied to action surge) will also benefit from those extra short rests.

I think limiting the number of short rests can restrict me as a DM.

I do want to have those resources more often to be fair.

Except that's not my experience in practice. It's usually 1 to 3 short rests. It's easy to take an hour in an urban or wilderness adventure. It's harder in a dungeon but it's easier to justify a spot to eat and rest in a dungeon than it is to finish off the day and then take a long rest.

Well, dueling anecdotes. But, I think there is an easier explanation here. See, the few times I've been in a dungeon, we've never short rested OR long rested. It was too long to short rest, and so we simply pushed through until we reached the end of the day.

And the same thing tends to happen with wilderness encounters, because we often don't use random encounters. We often travel and then have one longer "mini dungeon" style encounter. Which doesn't leave time for a short rest, and therefore just ends up being a long rest encounter.

The issue comes in when the DM and/or players are trying to pace themselves specifically to long rest abilities instead of pacing themselves to include short rests, getting back to a 5MWD approach where both the DM's and players are focusing on the spell casters in a meta-gamey approach instead of narrating a story based on the pace of the plot.

The DM should be controlling the pace and the players should be using resources following that pace. If the DM is doing that to include short rests then the short rests are going to exist regardless of other PC's ignoring that option.

I find myself disagreeing, because the pacing is largely controlled by the players unless the DM decides to use force. I once had players who decided to spend an unscripted hour haggling for basic supplies. And other times, I've had players just push to vaguely handwave travel. The DM can attempt to force them to follow their pacing, but that isn't a great way to go about it.

I understand you are talking about things that are slightly different, because the DM does control things like where safe spaces are, and random encounters, but I've often found, if players want to do something... they will do it. I mean, if they decide to leave the dungeon and not press forward, unless you've got an active doomsday plot they are racing to finish.. you can't exactly do anything about that. You can try and instigate consequences, but some things that just... doesn't work for (a tomb filled with undead and traps that the players are attempting to get to the end of)