D&D 5E About to Fill Out the Final Survey - Advocate Your Answers Here!

[DEFCON 1]

I'm a big proponent on Skills granting the proficiency bonus, Tools granting Advantage. Advantage is meant to be granted for situational bonuses when using your abilities... and having the right tool for a job is the most obvious situational bonus there is.

When else are you going to get a situational bonus to climbing that doesn't involve rope or belaying equipment? The most rare chance when there's a magical updraft that some wizard's cast underneath you that helps keep you up against the wall? Please. A Climber's Kit is the only logical situational bonus you'll ever get for climbing, which means that is when you should be granted Advantage. And this goes for all Tools and Kits.

Plus, it means having both the Skill and the Tool are useful to a particular character.

 

[Salamandyr]

When we played 5E a little while ago, the +1 to everything bonus meant most of my players made humans. For the first time. Since 1986. The party was mostly human.

I know! It's great, right?

The best part is that, if you're playing a synergistic race/class combination, the demihuman is still better. At anything other than flexibility, +1 to every stat doesn't actually do that much. The only thing it actually does in play is make the humans tertiary stats marginally better in his tertiary stats than a demihuman, who in trade for that, gets loads of special abilities that synergize directly with the class they're designed to fit with.

Of the main races, humans are the weakest race right now and nobody realizes it! It's great!

 

[Li Shenron]

I am planning to fill out the last survey, and I was hoping people would advocate for their views on answers here. Want a change? Persuade me (and others) to answer the survey that way

I don't think I can persuade you but maybe you already agreed with something but it's slipped out of your mind, so let's try...

1- I would like Humans not to be used as "the race for those who want a simple race", because we already know that the same idea for classes (i.e. "those who want a simple class should play Fighter, therefore let's make the Fighter simple") has always failed. People want to play a class or race because of the general idea (including the tactical/mechanical concept sometimes), but not because "it's simple". That maybe works once per player, after that each race should be interesting on its own.

PROPOSAL: give Humans something different than +1 to all scores, if we want them flexible i.e. "generic" let's give them a pool of things to choose from (feats, skills, proficiencies, traits, even +1 to some stats...), and instead make the current "+1 to all stats" a sort of non-race option for beginners, in the sense that they can get these bonuses instead of getting the bonuses from a race, and then freely say "I'm an Elf" for story purposes.

2- I would like Saving Throws from spells and monsters abilities to have a more even distribution against all 6 ability stats. Currently most spells require a Dex/Con/Wis ST, very few requires Cha/Str ST, and basically no spell require an Int ST.

PROPOSAL: change all Illusion spells ST to Int, all charmes and dominations to Cha, all paralysis-type to Str.

3- I would like the so called apprentice-tier to really represent apprentices. Apprentices do not specialize yet. Subclasses are specializations. Therefore, subclasses should not start at apprentice levels.

PROPOSAL: move the choice of subclass up to 3rd level for all classes (including Cleric's domains). Furthermore, "dipping" into an another class and not be able to pick a specialization too soon makes more sense.

4- I would like subclasses to grant at least ~25% of all the features of a class. Currently some classes have subclasses that grant features only 3 times in the course of 20 levels, and sometimes end granting features at levels as low as 10th. This means that there is very limited "room" to fill with subclasses features, which will make it hard to capture the feel of many subclass concepts, especially later in supplements. Also, not getting anything from subclass after 10th level means it's impossible to design subclasses with signature high-level features for that class.

PROPOSAL: I would like subclasses of all classes to grant features at least at 5 different levels (in the course of 20 levels), starting from 3rd, and the last not earlier than 17th-18th. Move some non-essential features from class to subclass.

 

[Kobold Stew]

I agree with your 1, 2, and 4. I agree with the principal of "3" (that all classes make a significant choice at level 3 -- that's fine), but not the formulation: "apprentice tier" isn't helpful, I think, as a concept to think with. It may have been useful to get the designers (and players) to buy into changes that have been (selectively) implemented, but now it's there, I don't think the language helps anyone.

As an example, let's think about Rangers (something I could have addressed in my earlier post).

Currently, there is a lame choice at level 2, with "favoured enemy": you can do extra damage next turn to the same opponent ("colossus slayer") or extra damage the same turn to a different opponent ("horde breaker"). The options themselves are fine, but I feel the choice is lame because
(a) moving it to third level won't change their impact (it's just filling a dead level, apparently).
(b) it's the only thematically-related ability in the entire path until level 11 (the gains at 7 could be swapped with no discernable impact
(c) everything in the tree is essentially a combat feat-- they've taken away cultural knowledge or languages or anything that might have out-of-combat applicability. All these abilities could as well fit a fighter.
(d) it leaves many Ranger archetypes unaccounted for (see below).

I agree with you that a more diverse tree of options, beginning at level 3, would help make rangers a more appealing option to play.

What sort of diversity? Well... For the testpack in August, I described my concerns with rangers, and suggested three paths they might choose were the spellcaster, the beast master, and the horizon walker. I still think that produces a richer range of characters than what we have here. Sure, let all Rangers have a choice with favoured enemies, but to define the wilderness hunter character a fuller set of abilities, that affect both combat and non-combat situations, would be preferable, IMO.

 

[Kobold Stew]

Just did the survey: here are answers I gave to two questions I wasn't expecting (and didn't know I had a view on)

1. Interaction Rules:
*Insight becomes a very powerful skill.
*"All characters have...": do they? When do they get them? Why is it not part of character creation? It's a good idea, but if you are going to have this it needs to be integrated.

2. Coup de Grace: should also apply to paralyzed and restrained characters.

 

[Squidmaster]

Can someone provide a link to the survey? Wizards has never sent me an email at any of this stuff even though I am signed up correctly, and I figure it is not worth getting into it with them at this point.

 

[Kobold Stew]

They're individualized -- any link can only be used once (and once you start, you need to finish it; you can't come back).

So if you want to give your feedback, you need to contact Wizards support directly.

 

[Kinak]

Can someone provide a link to the survey? Wizards has never sent me an email at any of this stuff even though I am signed up correctly, and I figure it is not worth getting into it with them at this point.

Sent you a PM.

Cheers!
Kinak