D&D (2024) D&D playtest feed back report, UA8

[Mistwell]

I really believed GenCon would be the date.

But now they're saying they're still deep in development.

Then even 31 December is an incredibly tight deadline.

WOTC hasn't really respected GenCon as their most important convention for a long, long time now.

 

[Mistwell]

No I'm not.

I am absolutely convinced the absolute majority if not all of these people are telling the truth and that they are doing their genuine best.

Your analysis, however, comes across as incredibly superficial since you appear completely oblivious to the fact these are not the people in charge.

But the first order of business is to make something very clear:

I am not alleging they are lying. That you may have convinced yourself I am is something I can't help you with.

No the primary source IS the lead designer. It's him who set up the playtests, him who is running the playtests, him who is managing the playtest feedback employees, and him whose motive would most be in question if the entire purpose of the playtest is to avoid criticism. Hasbro has not, has never, and no source has ever even vaguely implied anyone else orders a playtest be done.

I say you are alleging Jeremy Crawford is lying because there is no available alternative you or anyone else has named. Because what he has said directly contradicts what you claim to be his motive. So either he is lying or you are wrong, even if you want to claim you're not calling him a liar. The only other alternative is you have some knowledge of some other unknown figure behind the scenes in control, which you have failed to mention all these years, and which nobody has ever quoted as saying or implying they ordered a playtest or control it.

There is no unnamed corporate suit behind the playtest. Crawford has repeatedly said he's the man who is in charge of that. They didn't have to run this as a playtest at all, I doubt Hasbro executives even know what a playtest means given that's not their primary business or even secondary business. Crawford is the guy doing it and saying it. It used to be Mearls and Crawford jointly back in 2014, and Mearls even said at the time it was their idea to run a playtest and it's still the same systems in place. If you think there is some other nefarious figure behind the scenes who ordered the playtest, name them and show any scintilla of evidence that's their motive.

 

[tetrasodium]

Not many details...
Just that everything passed.

Guess I'll have to wait for the book, which will be after May.

I disagree, but also agree. More data is more valuable.

However, doing a public playtest is not cheap, and time is limited. Spending the effort to read though all the comments on all the feedback, or spend it playtesting on your own and refining the words.

Would having public feedback on a new Simulacrum spell be useful? Yes.
Would it be worth delaying the books for a month to get? No.

Probably very much not useful on simulacrum & many many other spells. Treantmonk had a video that really nailed the problem with spells timestamped link the other day. It went something like this "While I would love to read through that, one thing I know about the d&d community as a whole... I don't mean everyone, I'm speaking in a general sense. We don't like nerfs. We don't like things that are too powerful being made less powerful & realistically a good number of spells... That's what they are going to have to do. As much as I would enjoy reading through those spells personally, that comes nowhere close to the absolute dread I would have of a public survey for that rebalancing. I have come to a conclusion that our best hope for a better balanced & better designed spell section in the players handbook is for the designers to address each spell case by case & do what they ve to do. Internally playtest them, refine them as necessary & then publish them without public input. There is no way they're going to get everything 100% right; we know that, they know that.... It's not even a reasonable expectation. But I don't believe that a public input would be productive here. I think it would more likely be counter productive.".

 

[CapnZapp]

WOTC hasn't really respected GenCon as their most important convention for a long, long time now.

Okay.

That does not change the fact I expected the new PHB to drop sometime in August or September.

In order to do that, I expected them to shut the door on further tinkering with the material at the end of 2023.

Now that actual development work is still ongoing today in February and it appears likely this work will continue for weeks or even months ahead, the question becomes: will they really manage to release it in 2024 at all, without risking unnecessary mistakes and typos during the final editing passes?

 

[CapnZapp]

I say you are alleging Jeremy Crawford is lying because there is no available alternative you or anyone else has named. Because what he has said directly contradicts what you claim to be his motive. So either he is lying or you are wrong, even if you want to claim you're not calling him a liar.

I understand you can't or won't see any other alternatives. Just be assured that just because you are convinced I am accusing them of lying does not mean I am. And just because you feel I must think they are lying does not mean I am accusing them of lying, and it certainly does not make it alright to claim so on this public forum.

There is absolutely zero reason to treat corporations as persons, and ascribe them human qualities.
And in fact, I wasn't talking about Crawford at all, I was talking about WotC and Hasbro as companies.

Life will hopefully teach you to separate conviction and belief from verifiable truth. Doubling down on accusations you cannot prove will lead you down a bad path, my friend. Now quit accusing me of lying (or that I claim Crawford is) or I'll report you, m'kay? Let's get back to discussing WotC and D&D!

 

[CapnZapp]

Probably very much not useful on simulacrum & many many other spells. Treantmonk had a video that really nailed the problem with spells

Treantmonk is right.

And this certainly does not apply only to spells.

If we wanted the new edition to make fundamental changes to classes and subclasses they should have done the same there. That is, not done a public playtest, and certainly not limit themselves to only changing stuff that gets a massive approval rating.

Like how wonky the six saves feel (even a level 20 character will have naughty word saves that make you feel like a level 1 character), how the unnecessary split between when subclasses start make it impossible to mix and match subclasses between classes, how high level play suffers from there only being one subclass choice and not two, and so on and so on...

By offering the playtest and binding themselves to its results, they have all but assured themselves that they can blame 5.5 not really fixing much on "that's what y'all wanted".

In the end the edition will have changed a myriad small details. This will not actually meaningfully improve the fundamentals of D&D 5. But it will certainly make it pleasingly (for WotC, that is) hard to stick with the 2014 edition.

Remember: the primary goal here wasn't to fix D&D. It was to rejuvenate sales.

That some player will be happy their barbarian can dish out 3 more damage, or whatever, is not evidence to the contrary.

In other words, very much like the approach taken with 3.5.

And more to the point, very unlike the approach taken in the years leading up to the 2014 release of 5E. An edition that really, truly, fundamentally improved the game of D&D.

 

[mamba]

If we wanted the new edition to make fundamental changes to classes and subclasses they should have done the same there. That is, not done a public playtest, and certainly not limit themselves to only changing stuff that gets a massive approval rating.

Like how wonky the six saves feel (even a level 20 character will have naughty word saves that make you feel like a level 1 character), how the unnecessary split between when subclasses start make it impossible to mix and match subclasses between classes, how high level play suffers from there only being one subclass choice and not two, and so on and so on...

and if WotC wanted changes along the lines of what you are describing, the result would not be compatible with 5e.

It is not just the public playtest that prevented such changes.

 

[Hussar]

Most of this isn't any different from how they designed 5e in general though.

All those fixes that @CapnZapp points to that 5e made were generally already made in either late 3.5 or in 4e. As far as core mechanics go, there were very few actual new mechanics for 5e. Just rejiggering what was already there.

 

[CapnZapp]

were generally already made in either late 3.5 or in 4e. As far as core mechanics go, there were very few actual new mechanics for 5e. Just rejiggering what was already there.

This can be read as you short-selling 5E. I hope you didn't mean it that way - 5E was much more that just a rejiggering of what was already there.

Previously the elements didn't come together right. Wizards were quadratic in 3E while fighters were not. For example.

Call it "just rejiggering" all you want; it was with 5E they finally solved most of the fundamental issues of 3E without shucking out the bathwater (as 4E did) - 5E is generally very compatible with how 3E actually played, while 4E was an entirely new way of playing (of organizing encounters, of how adventures were supposed to string along encounters, and so on).

5E is a huge improvement over 3E. It is also significantly less fiddly than 3E. It definitely deserves being successful.

That doesn't mean it is perfect. There are lots of things that needs fixing, but WotC isn't ready to rock the boat.

No matter what WotC tells you, the 2024 edition doesn't even attempt to fix any of the fundamentals. Giving battlemasters a new maneuver here or giving wizards a new spell there... while welcome, it's still easy or superficial tweaks.

While players will definitely feel they are improvements - they also change the game enough to make using 2014 fiddly and wonky. WotC doesn't change all the details just to improve your game, but also to ensure that while they can claim 2024 remains compatible with 2014, it won't be so compatible that people actually stick with their old books.

In other words, exactly what 3.5 accomplished over 3.0: it changed all the details but fixed very little.

 

[Hussar]

This can be read as you short-selling 5E. I hope you didn't mean it that way - 5E was much more that just a rejiggering of what was already there.

Previously the elements didn't come together right. Wizards were quadratic in 3E while fighters were not. For example.

Call it "just rejiggering" all you want; it was with 5E they finally solved most of the fundamental issues of 3E without shucking out the bathwater (as 4E did) - 5E is generally very compatible with how 3E actually played, while 4E was an entirely new way of playing (of organizing encounters, of how adventures were supposed to string along encounters, and so on).
/snip

In other words, exactly what 3.5 accomplished over 3.0: it changed all the details but fixed very little.

It's only "short selling" 5e if you think 4e was a bad game. Which I do not.

We're simply not going to agree on this. I look at 5e and see all the 4e mechanics buried into it. The skill system is lifted almost word for word from 4e. The class balancing was already done for 4e, and just recast in 5e. All they did was take 4e characters, take the most common powers, call them spells and poof, we have 5e. Two step recovery. Encounter vs daily powers. Simplifying effects and streamlining. They simply had to reword things, make sure that it was sufficiently obscured where things were coming from, and thus was created 5e.

I mean, seriously, most of the people who created 4e also created 5e. You really think they completely chucked everything they had developed for the previous five years or so and just went back to 3e, which none of them had had a hand in creating?

To me, 5e is very much 4e. 4e was, to me, not a "new way of playing" at all. It was very close to what I was already doing in 3e, simply codified. But, I know that this is a pointless discussion, so, I'll be bowing out now.