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?

 

[Pauln6]

That's likely the idea...but then Stealth could simply be one of their class skills. It makes sense for a Barbarian hunter to stalk their prey silently. Other class skill lists were tweaked, so it's not an unreasonable addition.

It creates the disconnection when Stealth is not something their class training could involve...but becomes something they get good at just by Being Angry.

I can definitely remember Wolverine going feral and using purely animal instincts to stalk and track. Maybe the issue is thinking of this in terms of numbers on the page rather than just a way to give a bonus to certain skills in line with a cinemtac/literary concept?

 

[Clint_L]

This is why the description of Rage in the PHB is so at pains to redefine it in a way that separates it from anger. It can be angry, but it doesn;t have to be. Which is confusing, but I'm pretty sure "I would like to rage!" is so iconic that they didn't want to lose it. Even if it means confusion for players.

Fortuntately, monks were't particularly attached to "I would like to Ki!"

 

[FitzTheRuke]

This is why the description of Rage in the PHB is so at pains to redefine it in a way that separates it from anger. It can be angry, but it doesn;t have to be. Which is confusing, but I'm pretty sure "I would like to rage!" is so iconic that they didn't want to lose it. Even if it means confusion for players.

Fortuntately, monks were't particularly attached to "I would like to Ki!"

It's my experience that every keyword in D&D is only a "best fit" placeholder. As you say, a rage is anger only some of the time. Damage is damage only some of the time. Same for healing, being hit or missed, on and on.

They're all examples of possible fiction, with whatever actually happens remaining up to whatever the table prefers.

 

[Not a Decepticon]

So I'm going to point out that seven people thumbs-up'd this post before I reply to it. Seven people.

Part of the reason I decided to not bother continuing with this was, to be frank, there's a very real tendency for 2024 fans to be dismissive towards people who criticize the revised rules. There was one post earlier in this thread, when raising a particular point toward one class that made little sense (the Barbarian having restrictions on their Weapon Mastery options when no other class with the feature does) and one response to this was "I don't mind".

It wasn't an argument to justify the design choice or disagree with the criticism, it was simply..."this isn't a problem because I don't care". And that's pretty much a big problem when you go to critiquing 2024 design choices, because there's very many that negatively impact other players' characters, builds, and thus game experience...and that many people simply go "I don't mind, it doesn't bother me".

And why am I bringing this up in response to your post? The tendency for 2024 fans to be dismissive, belligerent, degrading of dissenting opinions on the revision?

Between the three class critiques I did, I used the word "lazy" to describe all of two features. (To note: giving the Barbarian a 17th-level feature that gives "use the options you already had but two of them" for Brutal Strikes, and giving the Cleric Wish as their 20th-level feature.)

So in large part, there is no real reason to take the time to analyze and critique the 2024 classes when many responses will already be coming in with a refusal to seriously consider any of the points made...and then get their pats on the back, affirmation, encouragement from like-minded people from such a (dare I say it?) lazy take on the thread.

I want to point out that I merely commented that I disagree with broad complaint that a power creep is not good game design, since power creep was what the Monk class needed and even after being power crept it merely closed the gap between it and Fighter, Rogue and Barbarian. I was going to directly quote the complaint OP made in original post, but that text was replaced by...calling everyone who likes 2024 changes a jackass.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

I want to point out that I merely commented that I disagree with broad complaint that a power creep is not good game design, since power creep was what the Monk class needed and even after being power crept it merely closed the gap between it and Fighter, Rogue and Barbarian. I was going to directly quote the complaint OP made in original post, but that text was replaced by...calling everyone who likes 2024 changes a jackass.

Well, I would say that usually when "power creep" is used as a game design term, it's very specifically in a negative sense.

Mostly because it's usually used in reference to the whole of the game. Moreover, when it is used, it's usually only within a single game's scope. E.g. in MOBAs like League of Legends, it's generally expected that new champions (playable characters) are going to be stupidly overpowered, because Riot Games wants to make money, and they get money when people spend cash to buy a champion while it's still new. It's rare--not impossible, but rare--for new champions to be noticeably weaker than average, but most cases aren't like that.

Most cases, the new hotness is in fact some amount of power creep--because it's pushing the (if you'll allow a mixed metaphor) Overton window of character power further toward the high-power end. In LoL's case, usually what happens is, a character debuts OP, gets nerfed a few weeks later, gets de-nerfed a few weeks after that, gets re-nerfed but to a lesser degree, and finally settles down into somewhere more or less normal. This helps forestall long-term power creep--but it's not impossible. For example, although I wasn't playing at the time, there was apparently a period of LoL's lifespan where "assassin" characters, aka glass cannon types who need to be careful lest they get obliterated before they can obliterate their enemies, were almost as good at tanking as actual tanky characters. So...I mean what's the point of playing a beefy character like Malphite, Garen, or Sion when you could instead play an almost-as-beefy Katarina (the stereotypical Stripper Ninja) or the like?

Particularly in long-form video games, "power creep" almost always means that late-era stuff outclasses early-era stuff to a severe degree. Each individual step wasn't big, hence the "creep", but the cumulative effect is to leave early options blown away by later ones. That....doesn't realy apply to 5.5e, because it's a new game. Yes, you can choose to play 5.0 options in 5.5e, but you do so at your own risk, and the books kinda tell you that. Hence, in this context, calling it "power creep" is basically only saying "more options got stronger than got weaker with this update", but...that was specifically the intent? It's not like Wizards was concealing the fact that they were addressing balance issues in 5.0. That's one of the biggest reasons 5.5e got made in the first place.