D&D General The Crab Bucket Fallacy

[MuhVerisimilitude]

Man, I read over that post a couple times and still missed that. I blame the fact that I was out drinking at the time.

My writing tends to be rather chaotic, so I'm sure people miss details. You are excused.

This feature is so good, you wonder if they threw it in just to see if people are paying attention!

I could actually see that being done. You could put in a feature that is terrible for the game, and then filter out testers who respond positively to that feature (since it implies they have no idea what they are doing).

 

[Minigiant]

No. I 100% reject this premise. It is entire speculation on your point. You have no idea what the majority of the 5e community wants. You only know what you want, and you are projecting.

The fact is that fighter is easily the most popular class in 5e as it is. So apparently more people like to play it than like playing any other class. Maybe your dream version of the class would be even more popular. But that is speculation. It also might be much less popular.

Reject all you want.

WOTC stated that the Fighter is most popular (IE most player) but lacks high satisfaction (many fans don't actually like the class).

None of this is my desired. I am repeating WOTC's own data.

WOTC says people play fighter the most but a large chunk of them dislike playing the class.

 

[payn]

Some fans are not worth satisfying.

5E 2024 tagline?

 

[Micah Sweet]

My writing tends to be rather chaotic, so I'm sure people miss details. You are excused.

I could actually see that being done. You could put in a feature that is terrible for the game, and then filter out testers who respond positively to that feature (since it implies they have no idea what they are doing).

WotC isn't nearly clever enough for that.

 

[Tony Vargas]

Fighter was most popular but a loud percentage of the fanbase was unsatisfied with every version of it.

That's why the 2013 playtest fighter was revised from the ground up at least 5 times.

It definitely didn't help that the fighter dissatisfaction faction was further factionalized into the fighter-can't-have-nice-things faction and the fighter-should-be-balanced faction

WOTC says people play fighter the most but a large chunk of them dislike playing the class.

That is exactly what you'd expect from a well-designed trap option.

 

[payn]

Now I want a snickers.

 

[Tony Vargas]

Here's an older Reddit thread with summaries of the rankings. I don't think that will be as useful as the discussion he has about why he made a particular choice. Here's a link for you. There is a mountain of discussion about his ratings on different boards/reddit threads. Hope you find it useful. I don't always agree with what he says, but it always gives me something to think about.

Hm... I suppose it's ironic that the Monk sub-classes fall into the lowest tiers...

 

[Minigiant]

It definitely didn't help that the fighter dissatisfaction faction was further factionalized into the fighter-can't-have-nice-things faction and the fighter-shouldn't-be-balanced faction

Alwayshasbeen.meme

It's like the Wizard spells list and bad spells and op spells.

Fighter class and the Wizard spelllist are both so broad that just because of what they contain they will be heavily used but because of the huge chunk of things it represents there will be a large noticeable percentage of fans who play the classes but be unsatisfied with it.

The classes need to be broken up into smaller more focused classes. But fans resist this and get upset that their "do everything" wizard is a lame necromancer or conjurer.

Well that's because it's got seven other schools of magic attached to it and that keeps the overall numbers down and features/subclasses tame and bland to balance with the rest.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

That's still means 66% of the community wanted something else.

What it means is that there were several options that all had meaningful support, and that’s all it means. It’s not like 66% of folks wanted a single other option. They were split between several options, with no one option being as popular as the one we got.

View attachment 295922

The 2021 champion fighter only had a 54% satisfaction rate as per WOTC. Aand that is with XGTE and TCOE propping it up with bonus options. 46% of their polled fans didn't like it.

Yep, much like the ranger, it was quite popular in spite of being unsatisfactory.

But again this doesn't address that there literally aren't other nonmagical warriors that don't have a strong flavor attached to it in 5e. There are no other official options to go to. It could be jus Extra Attack and nothing else and be popular due to lack of competition in over 50% of nonmagical Archetypes.

Okay

But none of this goes to my point.

Bmy point is there is almost nothing in the fighter that the Average DMcan take away to make space for something you can add in to make a new class without inducing power creep.

Almost every nonofficial warrior that is not based around adjusting the game base paradigm is a OP power creep mess.

This is difficult to parse.

It’s not that hard to make a warrior class. If you’re giving it spendable widgets (like the Battlemaster as a class), model it on the monk or Paladin or ranger. If it doesn’t, use average damage and the DMG for guidance, and get as broad feedback as you can.

Most 3pp/homebrew classes of every type are unbalanced messes.

The fighter got a nice, if not major, boost to the noncombat pillars of play - something it, IMO, needed.


But rather than leaving it there. The wizard, which IMO, didn't need any boost whatever got an even bigger boost outside the combat pillar.

It shows where the designer's minds are at.

I’m not sure what the issue being expressed is.

Why does it matter that the Wizard got a new feature that makes the class not just “spells, the class”?

 

[Vaalingrade]

5E 2024 tagline?

I said 'some', not 'all'.