D&D (2024) In Interview with GamesRadar, Chris Perkins Discusses New Books

[Micah Sweet]

The reason 5E has some narrow classes is essentially cowardice.

They were too afraid of being tarred with a 4E brush, so instead of being willing to deviate from how classes traditionally were, several of the classes are basically just "throwbacks" to 3E, and very narrow and odd as a result. Sorcerer, Druid and Ranger are - I'd argue Monk also was. Bard is remarkable in that it is absolutely not a throwback to 3E, but a genuinely bold decision with mostly-novel abilities. And they seem to be much more popular in 5E than previous editions.

If they'd done what they did with the Bard with Druid, Ranger, Sorcerer and Monk, I think we'd be in a much better place. Druid and Ranger might have merged, with a slightly more developed Nature Cleric taking over the "pure caster" Druid, and a Fighter subclass taking over for no-magic Ranger via a subclass (with more skills etc.), and we could have got a class with subclasses that let it end up as focusing on either being a warrior with some nature magic, a partial-shapeshift warrior like a 4E Warden, or a shapeshift-centric character. The class design could have been Warlock-like.

Yeah I don't think his thinking is that advanced. I think he's just making very basic observations of a trite kind. However, we're both reading in from an interview where they didn't drill down on this, so it's hard to really say.

I would argue that bards are popular in 5e because they're the "do everything" class. They're a full caster with skills and fighting ability.

 

[Micah Sweet]

So that is your chance to look out for something different. Something more worth for less money. I guess there is the perfect indie game for you out there.

There is. I play it on the rare occasion I have players who don't want to play WotC 5e. The rest of the time, we play Level Up, the best 5e I know.

 

[Micah Sweet]

It sucks for you that you didn't get the game you want. Personally? I'm glad because as far as I can tell I wouldn't want to play that game and neither would my wife. You can't please everyone and I'm sorry you feel "burned". But millions of people seem to disagree with you, I know I do.

Does it matter how many people agree or disagree with you, in any sense beyond financial?

 

[Staffan]

I see no particular reason to believe that the Next Sorcerer was well received at large,even if some people liked it: that seems to be the most obvious explanation for why it was abandoned entirely.

I'm one of those who didn't like the Next sorcerer, for two main reasons:

1. It was a big departure from the previous sorcerer, turning it from a pure caster to a hybrid that started out as a caster and the more spells they cast the more fighty they got. My thoughts at the time was that this might be a cool idea in itself, but it's not a sorcerer. In hindsight, with the changes to the wizard it might have been the thing the sorcerer needed to get their own niche, but that's not something I saw at the time.

2. It locked the sorcerer into having a draconic background, which is generally not something I'm fond of. I think having sorcerers as the result of supernatural phenomena and weird magic is much more interesting than heritage.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

2. It locked the sorcerer into having a draconic background, which is generally not something I'm fond of. I think having sorcerers as the result of supernatural phenomena and weird magic is much more interesting than heritage.

I doubt that would have been the case if they'd completed development on the class.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

It sucks for you that you didn't get the game you want. Personally? I'm glad because as far as I can tell I wouldn't want to play that game and neither would my wife. You can't please everyone and I'm sorry you feel "burned". But millions of people seem to disagree with you, I know I do.

And, as usual: "You must be wrong and the things you want must be bad, because what we actually got sold."

 

[EzekielRaiden]

I doubt that would have been the case if they'd completed development on the class.

Precisely. I think a huge part of the pushback was simply that people jumped to conclusions and somehow got the idea that the ONE AND ONLY form of Sorcerer would be Draconic. That's...I mean that's so obviously false I don't know how I can explain it. We didn't get Fighter subclasses or Rogue subclasses in the early playtest. Those came later, once the fundamental skeleton was together. Why on Earth would we thus expect the Sorcerer, which only had ten levels, to come out swinging with three or four subclasses too? They were still figuring out what the core of the class would be, but its structure doesn't make sense in the absence of subclass choice.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

I would argue that bards are popular in 5e because they're the "do everything" class. They're a full caster with skills and fighting ability.

Okay? That's genuinely almost nothing like the 3e Bard, which was mostly the "do-nothing" class, as it was a dabbler of all trades, jack of none. Unless you played sillybuggers with the multiclass and PrC systems and cheesed the hell out of Dragonfire Inspiration.

 

[Oofta]

And, as usual: "You must be wrong and the things you want must be bad, because what we actually got sold."

Did I ever say what you want must be bad? I said I don't want the same things you do based on other conversations. Why is it so hard to accept that other people have different preferences and that no game can be for everyone?

 

[EzekielRaiden]

Did I ever say what you want must be bad? I said I don't want the same things you do based on other conversations. Why is it so hard to accept that other people have different preferences and that no game can be for everyone?

If it has nothing to do with "I'm right and you're wrong," why on earth are you constantly making appeals to popularity?