D&D 5E Battlemaster and Superiority Dice are causing martials to suffer.

[Horwath]

TBH I like the barbarian extra damage damage dice on a crit better... or do you mean to have both?

both would maybe too much.

But I would rather have more crits than more powerful crits. better 2×crit twice, than 3×crit once in 20 rolls.

Extra damage can stay as half-orc/orc exclusive.

 

[Minigiant]

TBH I like the barbarian extra damage damage dice on a crit better... or do you mean to have both?

I'd prefer both. Both Extra Crit Range and Extra Crit Damage on barbarians.

A barbarian cleaving enemies in 2 is a very barbarian thing.

 

[ECMO3]

AUGH! What's the point of a meatshield that can't hold the line? If the DM's good will is the only reason the enemies don't rush past you it's pretty useless!

The point is not everyone wants to play a meatshield fighter who can hold the line. I know I don't. I don't play fighters a lot, but when I do they are generally either using bows of flying around the battlefield delivering strikes to specific enemies. If I want someone to "hold the line" and control, I am probably going to build a wizard or cleric for that, because their spell availability and selection make them better at it. Not saying you can't build a fighter for that, you can, but they are not ideal in that role.

In the end people just do not want that extra baggage on the core fighter and I think that is overwhelming from the play test. It is simple as that, and there are subclasses, feats and other classes for people who do want their fighters doing that.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

TLDR; Battlemasters hogging all of the special techniques martials should just be able to do, and the idea that doing these things cost some weird limit hurts the martial experience overall. Martials should just be able to do these things with attacks/actions themselves being the resource, and they should not have weird limitations

Yeah this is a real issue that's been repeated across multiple different games, and 3E had it in spades, where it turned things into Feats and made everyone completely terrible at them unless they had the Feat (the Feat itself often having weird or very specific pre-reqs, too).

 

[Medic]

Yeah this is a real issue that's been repeated across multiple different games, and 3E had it in spades, where it turned things into Feats and made everyone completely terrible at them unless they had the Feat (the Feat itself often having weird or very specific pre-reqs, too).

Ah, the good ol' "feat tax."

 

[Ruin Explorer]

In the end people just do not want that extra baggage on the core fighter and I think that is overwhelming from the play test. It is simple as that, and there are subclasses, feats and other classes for people who do want their fighters doing that.

I think the big problem is that the same is true of virtually every class, but only Fighters got their core class made ultra-simple because of that.

If every core class was ultra-simple with complexity level being determined by subclass, well, we'd have a bunch of much more consistently designed classes, that's for sure. Instead we have a weird mess where it varies wildly and with no real rhyme or reason.

Further, the DNDNext playtest was 8 years ago in a very different world, and with very different goals to what D&D would have now, in 2022. It was completely grog-centric on every level, whereas it's inevitable that any playtest done now, when there are many times as many people playing D&D, and the overwhelming majority of them are new to D&D with this edition (most new to TT RPGs, too) would have very different results. Especially as the main proponents of Champion Fighters as "vital" and virtually everyone who claims to play one in a serious way is actually a 40-something or 50-something guy who is an extremely experienced player who just wants a specific style of character.

 

[GMforPowergamers]

I think the big problem is that the same is true of virtually every class, but only Fighters got their core class made ultra-simple because of that.

part of the problem is some people just want a name written on the sheet and get mad if it changes... I found it in 4e but I see it in 5e as well.

in 4e fighter were built melee and rangers (spellless at that) were made to be range or melee. So people kept saying they had an archer fighter with a back up set of long sword/short sword but they could not play it in 4e... but when people said "Oh that could be an awesome ranger" they got told "Not a fighter doesn't count"

the problem is if you made a warrior class some people would complain "but it's not a fighter"

I even had a player joke about this in my martial game a few years ago... we used the classes from the middle earth book, and there fighter iscalled warrior and he said "I'm writing fighter"

If every core class was ultra-simple with complexity level being determined by subclass, well, we'd have a bunch of much more consistently designed classes, that's for sure. Instead we have a weird mess where it varies wildly and with no real rhyme or reason.

I think we should have simple and complex skill classes, simple and complex divine/primal casters and simple and complex arcane classes... but I also want simple and complex MARTIAL classes.

Further, the DNDNext playtest was 8 years ago in a very different world, and with very different goals to what D&D would have now, in 2022. It was completely grog-centric on every level, whereas it's inevitable that any playtest done now, when there are many times as many people playing D&D, and the overwhelming majority of them are new to D&D with this edition (most new to TT RPGs, too) would have very different results. Especially as the main proponents of Champion Fighters as "vital" and virtually everyone who claims to play one in a serious way is actually a 40-something or 50-something guy who is an extremely experienced player who just wants a specific style of character.

I just hope we get enough new blood testing and surveying

 

[Ruin Explorer]

I just hope we get enough new blood testing and surveying

I think we will. Also with different people in charge of WotC and D&D, and a very different environment, it seems like the "special thanks"-type testers (who seemed to have been listened to ahead of the actual broad playtesters with DNDNext) will be nowhere near as retrograde. If they even have them this time.

 

[GMforPowergamers]

I think we will. Also with different people in charge of WotC and D&D, and a very different environment, it seems like the "special thanks"-type testers (who seemed to have been listened to ahead of the actual broad playtesters with DNDNext) will be nowhere near as retrograde. If they even have them this time.

yes... I want a bigger pool of in house playtesters... I just fear that we will still (even with more diversity) be people who think like the WotC team. I also want the surveys and this public testing (that I think of more as gaging audience then playtest) to have 15 and 18 year old players that never played a previous edition and players that have only been playing since covid to equal or out number us who played TSR versions

 

[Ruin Explorer]

yes... I want a bigger pool of in house playtesters... I just fear that we will still (even with more diversity) be people who think like the WotC team. I also want the surveys and this public testing (that I think of more as gaging audience then playtest) to have 15 and 18 year old players that never played a previous edition and players that have only been playing since covid to equal or out number us who played TSR versions

Yeah I think the one thing that worries me re: 5E UA/playtesting/etc. generally is that the current process is gathering feedback in a way that's massively more friendly to people aged like 30-50 with a lot of time on their hands than it is to the playerbase in general. Obviously WotC can account for that a bit by weighting opinions to reflect the percentages who actually play the game, but if they have tons of feedback from people over 30 but far less from people under 30 it's going to be less accurate.

Like, can I imagine myself at 16 or 20 having the patience to finish filling in the literally hundreds perhaps even thousands of checkboxes and radio buttons that every single UA asks you to do? Even in a world which required far more patience, as it did back then? I cannot, and I cannot imagine most kids today having that either. Indeed, I can barely hack it at 44 even as someone who does stuff like this as part of his job. I'm often very tempted to just go "Oh who cares!" 1/2-to-3/4s of the way through an endless survey. There are several surveys I just didn't even start because I didn't care enough to press all those buttons!

So I really hope they have some kind of nice surprise in the form of a more modern approach to the survey on the 1st, or that they open up more avenues of feedback.