D&D (2024) Class spell lists and pact magic are back!

These were a good idea; they just chose the stupidest way to implement them. Instead of template by Land/Sea/Air, they should have made template based on what people actually want to use their Wild Shape for: Protector, Predator, Infiltrator, Traveler. With the subclasses getting unique templates or upgrades! But no, they had to go by animal locomotion type!
Not just that. They needed to be modifiable by the druid with abilities chosen rather than mechanically identical.
 

log in or register to remove this ad

Not just that. They needed to be modifiable by the druid with abilities chosen rather than mechanically identical.
Yes, of course, adding stuff like 'swimming' or 'flying' or special attacking moves and different sizes as optional add-ons that unlock as you level would have been good. Do you want to add Flying to your wild shape or do you want to throw more HP on top?

It doesn't take a lot to make your Wild Shapes feel different, really, but you always have to consider how people want to use those forms more than anything else.
 

The playstyle of the warlock changed.

With 2014, you would cast a big spell at the start of battle, and then spam Eldritch blast.

In the playtest, you got a lot of lower level spells. Most of which are not better than Eldritch Blast.

I disagree. My playstyle of warlock did not change because I rely on invocations regardless. Those provide spell like abilities to supplement spells. Eldritch blast does nothing more than damage without investing more invocations that I would rather use elsewhere. I can use a spell or two every encounter an spam eldritch blast under the UA5 packet or 5e.14 so the style doesn't change much.

What changes is the access to higher level spells in the spell table and forces invocations to be spent on mystic arcanum to try to compensate.

I prefer pact magic but could live with it either way, but so far as the actual style the differences seem minor to me.


And LITERALLY, they said it was because wizards complained about not being special enough.

They had the greatest access to their spell list with the ability to swap spells every 10 minutes. They had the ability to create permanent custom spells for the price of gold....

And they weren't special enough. They needed to have access to all the things that the sorcerer (and to a lesser extent the bard and warlock) has been desperately gasping for. This ruins the great spells druids were getting from rangers, the amazing bard changes that I LOVED, the ability to finally use sorcerers to summon things.... All so wizards can look out over the plebes again.

Because I bet you they keep those abilities they gained, on top of getting "their" spell list back.

I'm FURIOUS.

Yeah, I often think the wizard comments and feedback looks more like maintaining status quo than addressing actual issues.

But the bard simply has too many good abilities in the base class for more than a ribbon subclass ability at the end of Paragon; levels 7, 9, 11, and 13 are extra spell levels (so not there), levels 8 and 12 are ASIs (so no, especially not at 8 where they get an extra top level spell. And finally L10 is Magical Secrets - and there would be a deserved riot if that got dropped or kicked back to 14, while it's way too powerful for a non-ribbon subclass ability unless you make the magical secrets the subclass ability. This is the problem with full caster bards - they just try to do too much to pack in everything you might want. Do you want to be the one to tell the bard players they are losing Magical Secrets?

I don't think bards have "too many" good abilities. Expertise and magical secrets both get overrated and they are restricted in other ways (armor, weapons, spell preparation method).

But I agree that magical secrets at 10th level is the equivalent of a subclass ability that's universally applied to all bard subclasses. Expanding the bard spells into other spell lists is a form of customization for the subclass outside of that subclass itself. IME.

I don't see the need to give each class the same number of subclass abilities.

tyranny of a minority

I don't think you understand that term based on your comments, or some other people who use it. I would recommend we stop using it since it's used as a political expression.

right now no one gives me any reason to assume they are. I pointed out specific problems, and either people agree or the answer is ‘WotC has experts, they know what they are doing’, which is not an argument but an appeal to authority.

That's not how appealing to authority works, and if we look at two scenarios of experts using standard methods knowing what they are doing compared to non-experts versus those experts making errors the non-experts are not then we would have to assume the experts are correct until proven otherwise.

well, they got kicked, so you won’t get a reply…

The way I understand it is that if 60% fails, then 40% killed it. 40% is a minority.

That 40% killed nothing. The change after that survey feedback is a new iteration to test ideas. This and the many other comments you've given seem more like attempts to delegitimize any opinion that you personally disagree with because you are in that minority. At least that's how it reads to me.

It is a little weird to say, "A minority killed it" instead of "A majority chose the other one."

Exactly.

As far as I remember the surveys have all asked about my absolute satisfaction about a feature, never if I like A better than B. So WotC has no way of measuring preferences like that in this playtest.

That's what comments are for. I use them. I use them to add comparisons from previous UA's that included classes not in that particular UA as well.

responders don't even need to look at it from a "my guy's a wizard so..." PoV to feel justified in subtracting points from their assessment of classes like sorcerer & bard because giving them so much of the wizard's spell list and ritual casting and all this other stuff....

It's not the wizards' spell list. That's an example of spells being unnecessarily gatekept due to the perception of class entitlement.

It's the arcane spell list that wizards also use under that proposed system. The reality is the wizard is the only class that had that because bards, sorcerers, and warlocks were only capable of the spells they selected until they could level up. The spell selection method creates a subset of arcane spells already and creating a subset of a subset by limiting the spell list and then selecting them serves no real purpose. The limited lists would still include useful spells from the arcane list and those classes would still be limited in spells known from that list. It's a duplication of restrictions.

Wizards already access spells from the spell book instead of spells known like those classes you mentioned. That is flavor and distinction.

Using that spell book to swap out spells gives wizards better access to that arcane list just because of rest mechanics. Using that spell book enables wizards to access rituals better because they don't need to prep those cantrips while the other arcane casters would need to restrict their own choices further by learning spells with the ritual tag.

Memorize spell let's wizards change a single spell prepped as a ritual. Modify spell and create spell allow replacing the spells in the spell book with better versions of the spells that are wizard only. That includes spells that cannot have concentration broken, or cannot be counterspelled, or can be turned into rituals to further expand spells available without preparing them.

In your assessment you are ignoring the fact that bardic knowledge was an iconic ability removed from bards and is now being given a form in both the cleric and wizard. Bards need to spend expertise in several skills to match that or rely on jack-of-all-trades for a version of their own iconic ability given to other classes. In your assessment you are ignoring the fact that bards had bard only spells that were given to wizards moving from 3.x to 5e and the few bard only spells left were given to other classes. You're ignoring the fact that warlock spells were also given to wizards. Warlocks giving their spells to wizards is okay but wizards giving their spells to warlocks is bad? It doesn't make sense to complain about the spells wizards shared while ignoring the spells or abilities that have been shared back.

Wizards were distinct enough.

The polls aren’t on a 1-5 scale. There are 4 options: very satisfied, satisfied, dissatisfied, and very dissatisfied. No neutral option. And it doesn’t matter if you participated in the D&D Next playtest. If you’ve given feedback on any Unearthed Arcana throughout 5e’s run, you’ve seen this before.

Sort of. You just aren't seeing how it's incorporated.

Anyone who takes the time to fill out a survey but doesn't take the time to fill out a particular section is neutral to that section. If they weren't neutral they would take the time to fill out that section along with their other feedback. We can omit answering a particular question that's not tagged mandatory and that would also be an example of a neutral response.

Basing the math on the total number of surveys instead of the total number answered sections would include neutral players in the results that way. I cannot say for sure how WotC is interpreting the data, but I know it's possible to include a neutral response in that way if desired.

Knowing how WotC conducts their polls, I don’t think it’s ever in one’s interest to vote “dissatisfied” on something they want to see improved. Like I said, I think the practical way to engage with these surveys is to vote “very satisfied” if you want something to remain as-is, “satisfied” if you like it but think it needs improvement, and “very dissatisfied” if you don’t like it and don’t want it, with the “dissatisfied” not really having any utility.

But people do. For example, Treantmonk went through a number of features he was "dissatisfied" with because he felt the changes didn't go far enough. For example, he was dissatisfied with Warrior of the Hands Open Hand Technique not because he doesn't feel Monks shouldn't be doing those kinds of things, but because he feels it shouldn't cost a discipline point and require a saving throw to do what weapon mastery is essentially doing for free. But his "dissatisfied" vote gets lumped in with people who hate monks, feel open hand technique is OP, etc etc. In the end, everybody who did not line up behind it ended up in the same pool regardless of why they were dissatisfied and all that does is give WotC plausible deniability to do nothing since "well, we tried something and it failed".

FWIW: I plan to "very dissatisfy" the packet 7 warlock for no other reason than pact magic returning. Let them figure out what that means.

Surveys can be indexed in ways that might not work like you think it might. For example, taking every question and subtracting the totals of very dissatisfied from very satisfied then dividing that total into the total number of surveys creates an index that has incorporated types of responses against each question to create a baseline. That baseline can be used to determine high or low outliers and then pulling raw data on those that include comments allows for parsing commonality in those comments. That can be based on satisfied or dissatisfied or something else in comments if they want.

Trying to guess which answer will give us the outcome that we want is not likely to affect the results unless many people can be convinced to do the same and we also determine or guess what WotC is doing with each answer. If we succeed, however, and gain a better result in our own opinions we risk a lower overall satisfaction later because we influenced the results instead of letting the opinion of the majority play out.

Trying to skew the results in our own personal favor does not make sense when it won't work; or might be irrelevant because the majority already holds similar views; or there is a risk involved in succeeding. We're better off to results do their job and give feedback on our opinions with genuine answers because that's more likely to continue the success of the game and we can change what we don't like at our own tables anyway.

Just a couple thoughts on surveys. :)
 

That's not how appealing to authority works
it kinda does, you do not know who they are or what they would say as an answer, so you pretending you speak for them is a stretch.

If you told me ‘this scientist tells us that …’ that is not an appeal, provided they are talking about their field. Just saying ‘they are pros, they know what they are doing’ does not address any concern directly, it is insufficient to be more than that

That 40% killed nothing. The change after that survey feedback is a new iteration to test ideas
they killed the initial idea… and the new one is diametrically opposed, not an iteration (wildshape templates vs animals, unified subclass progression (that one was killed outright, we are back to where we started), …)
 

The problem with that distinction is that it's applying tags across the entire game -- every single creature and class ability -- in service of a tiny handful of spells and effects (mainly dispel magic and anti-magic field) which care about distinguishing "active magic" from "background magic."

This kind of tail-wagging-the-dog thing showed up a lot in 3E. In each individual case, you could argue it wasn't a huge burden. It's just a two-letter tag on each ability and a few paragraphs in the PHB to describe what they mean, right? But when you piled them all together, you got an incredibly ponderous system.

5E has tried hard to avoid this. When only a couple of spells care about a distinction, it is now their job to define that distinction, and corner cases are left to the DM.
No they also covered if an ability provoked an AoO or not. Extraordinary & supernatural did not while spell like did . Pretty sure there were also some other interactions where ability A could modify activate or trigger in a way related to one of them rather than needing to spell out every individual interaction but none come to mind.
 

The trope of "someone gets magical powers but doesn't understand them" is an old one - and if you want to focus your sorcerer on their domain by picking appropriate spells before getting a bonus to those spells you can. The sorcerer isn't a problem either.
It is a problem because I can't have a sorcerer as the party primary healer from first level anymore.
 




You do realise you can cast the spell from magic initiate using spell slots? So you'd also have your sorcerer slots.

And if the sorcerer slots aren't enough how were you doing it before?
Ok. Forgot about that. Still, what happens at third level when I receive the spell-and spell list- as a class feature? Now I'm stuck with a feat that does nothing?
 

Remove ads

Top