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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Ruin Explorer" data-source="post: 8011787" data-attributes="member: 18">This is semantics of the most pointless kind. I don't even mean that in a mean way, it's just really like the only possible reaction is a shrug. You know what I mean. They certainly couldn't cast as many or as powerful spells as Wizards, Clerics, etc. (esp. as Cleric spells were often lower level to make up for them only having 7 levels of spells).Uh-huh, and a DEX Fighter isn't what these people want. They want something that is much closer to a Ranger. The issue is with Ranger that the design in virtually every edition of D&D has failed to match up with player expectations. It's a class with inherently broad appeal that is inexplicably designed on a very grog-y basis (or simply a weird basis back in 2E), massively narrowing the appeal. Sorcerer in 5E has a similar issue.There's a pretty good/reliable correlation between strong positive and strong negative reactions here and what WotC themselves report. When the responses here are more mixed then we often see WotC reporting something significantly different. Also, with the Next playtest, I don't think they were working on the same basis they are now (i.e. 70% approval etc.), and I don't think anyone from their team has ever suggested that they were. There has never been an explanation given as to why that changed, after such a confident and apparently well-received design (both the Next reddit, which has younger players, and us grogs seemed to broadly like it).I don't think it's really arguable that the current design of Sorcerer is a good one, either (not that you said that, just making a general point). It's adequate, but every 4E and 5E class design is adequate.Yeah, but which playtesters? The broad group, or the smaller hand-picked pool? And was it playtesters at all, or a decision from the development team? I strongly suspect the broad group, whether newer or older, were pretty positive towards that design, because I saw a huge amount of praise for it (like, an unusual amount), and very little criticism (most of which actually boiled down to "But what about other kinds of Sorcerer, what will THEY get?!" rather than actually disliking the design). The hand-picked pool did seem to have a lot more OSR types in it than the broader group would have (from what we know, but I am going on memory), so maybe they objected, but it's hard to see even them insisting on a 3E-style design. So my feeling here is that it's likely the decision to go "full retro" was one made at the top, and that removed stuff like the good Sorcerer. I've said it before but I think it's worth repeating that 5E wasn't designed to be a massive success or be totally awesome, but rather just to re-unify the market that the 4E/PF split had broken up. I suspect if they'd known how extremely popular 5E would get (due to entirely other factors), they'd have gone with less grog-y and more accessible designs for these classes. Fortunately most classes in 5E have inherently accessible designs.</blockquote>

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