D&D 5E (2024) A critical analysis of 2024's revised classes

[mamba]

Yet for some things they literally only tried one single time and then completely gave up for public playtest, meaning you had half-baked (sub)classes that needed fixing in 5.5e

they had the same approach in the 2024 UAs, did not like that then either

 

[mamba]

I can't think of anything that transformed from bad to good given enough time. If people disliked something once, they continued to dislike it.

if that is due to there being next to nothing rather than to it being over a decade ago, I find that an interesting factoid. I would have thought refining / tweaking things could improve things, but this sounds like you are better off trying a new approach altogether and see how people like that one while iterating looks like a lost cause

 

[EzekielRaiden]

if that is due to there being next to nothing rather than to it being over a decade ago, I find that an interesting factoid. I would have thought refining / tweaking things could improve things, but this sounds like you are better off trying a new approach altogether and see how people like that one while iterating looks like a lost cause

I mean, there's also the question of whether the poll was actually representative, or whether it was full of partisans.

Given how radically D&D has grown and such in the past ten years? We have plenty of reason to believe that that sample is, at absolute bare minimum, very much non-representative now. And there were plenty of reasons to question whether it was representative back during the "D&D Next" playtest.

It's not like the surveys conducted at the time were super well-constructed to begin with. (I still vividly remember the poll, conducted on a long-since-deleted Wizards community page, where every answer was some form of 'yes'.)

 

[mamba]

I mean, there's also the question of whether the poll was actually representative, or whether it was full of partisans.

Given how radically D&D has grown and such in the past ten years? We have plenty of reason to believe that that sample is, at absolute bare minimum, very much non-representative now.

doesn’t really matter for this imo, I would expect to find the same pattern in the 2024 UA. None of the ideas that were not just slight tweaks to something we already have survived either, all the actual changes were culled halfway through the playtest

 

[EzekielRaiden]

doesn’t really matter for this imo, I would expect to find the same pattern in the 2024 UA. None of the ideas that were not just slight tweaks to something we already have survived either, all the actual changes were culled halfway through the playtest

All that tells me is people will prefer the devil they know always and forever, no matter what.

"...accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed."

Plus, there have been plenty of things they did propose that were quite popular...but which would have required them to do something like errata the PHB, which they're afraid to do. So instead of listening to the tidal wave of "if you do this for Storm Sorcerer, you have to do the same for Dragon and Chaos (etc.)!", what did they do? They avoided doing the thing because....it would be overpowered compared to the existing Sorcerer. Yeah. They literally chose not to fix something people directly asked them for, and instead nerfed all future Sorcerer subclasses to suck as much as the original PHB ones, until we finally got 5.5e, when they could justify adding that feature to the subclasses.

So...maybe we should be careful drawing over-broad conclusions?