D&D 5E D&D Next playtest post mortem by Mike Mearls and Rodney Thompson. From seven years ago.

[EzekielRaiden]

I'm of the opinion that 4E and 5E have unnecessarily high HP counts. I think that if every PC had hit points within a range of like 20 to 35 for the entirety of their careers it would make creating balanced challenges easier. Granted, this would need to be coupled with reworked rules for hitting 0 HP and dying... but I'd rather that then trying to grind down PCs that have 100 HP or more every fight. But that's just my feeling on the matter and I know is not close to being a widespread opinion.

So, no growth in HP, no growth in damage, no growth in AC, no growth in features, no growth in skills...

It sounds like you want people to play 1st level characters from the word "go" until the campaign ends. What's the point of that?

But my real point is that you can't please everyone. There will always be compromises, there is no one size fits all and there is no such thing as a perfect game.

Come on now. There's a vast gulf between "don't bother giving extra options, you can't make one size fit all" and, y'know, actually offering a spectrum of options.

I think we have a lot of threads about it because a few folks who frequent these boards are aghast that a simpler build is available to appeal to players who want/need that style of play.
If someone wants a warrior class with more flexibility or different flavor, they can choose a monk, ranger, paladin, barbarian, or a subclass like Eldritch Knight. And if that still doesn't work, take a look at a more tactical, crunchy d20 system like Level Up, Pathfinder 1e or 2e, etc.

And for someone who wants "a warrior class with more flexibility or different flavor" and doesn't want to use magic, what are we supposed to do?

It's unfortunate design that they chose to make this be Fighter and only Fighter.

Exactly.

Because of the basic concept.

That's it.

Just like people want a magical warrior type, but don't have it, a lot of other people want a character whose primary deal is that they're a skilled warrior, in armour, probably with a sword of some kind. I will say it seems to rather less popular with younger players than older, in my experience anyway. Whereas say, Rogue is as popular as it ever was.

Yep. Just like how human is almost always the most popular race, whether it's awesome or terrible. Standard human in 5e is weak; not as weak as PHB dragonborn, but it's definitely on the weaker side. And yet IIRC it was always the #1 choice in every data set collected from D&D Beyond and the like. It has literally nothing to do with whether the feature is good or bad, well-made or weak, and everything to do with "human is just broadly appealing, no matter how it's implemented." The aesthetic vastly outweighs the implementation.

Same reason why Blood Elves are one of the most popular Horde races in WoW. They're pretty, but still get to be part of the "savage" Horde.

Spells arnt broken if you forget you have them eighty percent of the time!

Hey, there's a brilliant idea. Just make sure it's far too onerous to actually use any of a class's abilities, and then it's perfectly balanced with the class that doesn't get any abilities to start with! </sarcasm>

Yeah. It's...really frustrating that that seems to have been--and still be--an intentional design choice in D&D.

 

[Parmandur]

Sure, and times change. I just don't expect overall dramatic modifications to the core systems. Even things like making orcs a core race is more of a cosmetic than structural difference. Even if I never allow them as a playable race in my home campaign.

Absolutely, I expect the same.

 

[Parmandur]

this is an odd thing to say when we know races in general and backgrounds in general (linked to this is the feat at 1st level and feats not being optional) and that is just the first test

That's the big test, per Crawford in the video discussing the first packer. Future packets are going to be smaller and more focused, so this one was the big wad. And much of what they putnout here is on the line to be rolled back to 2014, anyways, if that's what feedback says.

 

[Minigiant]

Again, I mentioned this to someone else above, this part changed in the next video and they explain why. They found in actual practice, due to time pressures of combat which were removed in non-combat situations, people liked MORE options during non-combat (which I assume includes more spells even for social situations) than they wanted for combat. They were less satisfied as options increased for combat, and more satisfied as options increased for non-combat. They did listen - it's just that it seems what people stated at first they wanted for non-combat ended up not being what they were satisfied with when it came to actual stuff they put out in the playtest.

I suspect for non-combat, while a spellcaster might spend the resources to do something, the actual play experience concerning the result of that spell was shared by all at the table and not really a spotlight issue on the spellcaster.

I think the last part is the key.

Their data showed that the Wizard's spells were seen as a party resource in nonombat situations.

However once the game was published, many non-spellcaster players realized that the group was always point to the caster's character sheet for resources and options in noncombat situations but never theirs.

And I think that more or less lines up with another thing they mentioned: Playtesters had to constantly relearn the system dueto the big changes. So it is likely that the 100% combat 0% Noncombat classes like fighter and barbarian got playtested long enough in any single form to realize how little they brought in noncombat. There is the other point that every class had noncombat features in the August playtest but didn't in the September one. Which matches to something they also said, the packets were so big that paytesters were zoomed in on the actual changes because it was so big.

 

[Mistwell]

I think the last part is the key.

Their data showed that the Wizard's spells were seen as a party resource in nonombat situations.

However once the game was published, many non-spellcaster players realized that the group was always point to the caster's character sheet for resources and options in noncombat situations but never theirs.

And I think that more or less lines up with another thing they mentioned: Playtesters had to constantly relearn the system dueto the big changes. So it is likely that the 100% combat 0% Noncombat classes like fighter and barbarian got playtested long enough in any single form to realize how little they brought in noncombat. There is the other point that every class had noncombat features in the August playtest but didn't in the September one. Which matches to something they also said, the packets were so big that paytesters were zoomed in on the actual changes because it was so big.

They collected data on each class separately, for non-combat and for combat, over multiple playtests. It was hard to tell but it looked like Rogue was scoring high on both.

 

[Minigiant]

They collected data on each class separately, for non-combat and for combat, over multiple playtests. It was hard to tell but it looked like Rogue was scoring high on both.

I know. My point is that they felt it was fine that the low complexity classes had low noncombat satisfaction because the Fighter player could point to the Wizard's player's or Rogue player's character sheet however because the playtest packets were so big that the playtesters had to relearn rules constantly, they didn't realize that the Wizard and Rogue player never pointed to the Fighter Player's character sheet..

A lot of what Mearls and Thomspon said in this post-mortem hints that a large percentage of playtesters had to constantly retrain themselves to get system mastery over and over with each packet and that many did not. So it is likely they didn't get a lot of feedback from people with high system mastery. They mentioned that they gave out too much information without enough communication a few times.

 

[Parmandur]

I know. My point is that they felt it was fine that the low complexity classes had low noncombat satisfaction because the Fighter player could point to the Wizard's player's or Rogue player's character sheet however because the playtest packets were so big that the playtesters had to relearn rules constantly, they didn't realize that the Wizard and Rogue player never pointed to the Fighter Player's character sheet..

A lot of what Mearls and Thomspon said in this post-mortem hints that a large percentage of playtesters had to constantly retrain themselves to get system mastery over and over with each packet and that many did not. So it is likely they didn't get a lot of feedback from people with high system mastery. They mentioned that they gave out too much information without enough communication a few times.

In practice, players with Fighters can improve solutions in social situations just fine, even without Spells.

 

[Minigiant]

In practice, players with Fighters can improve solutions in social situations just fine, even without Spells.

Not according to Mearls and Thompson's data.
Their data puts them on low noncombat satisfaction (they mention that their charts are off BTW).

 

[Ruin Explorer]

Same reason why Blood Elves are one of the most popular Horde races in WoW. They're pretty, but still get to be part of the "savage" Horde.

WoW is pretty great at disproving the common canard of "Well, it's somewhat popular so it necessarily must be mechanically good/well-designed!". Even when a lot of classes/races have been right at the bottom, even expansion-on-expansion, if they have a popular aesthetic, they keep getting made as new characters, or played as old ones. Whereas if they're mechanically great, whilst it clearly improves their representation by a some percentage, it's not going to make an unpopular race or class, popular. Blood Elves particularly have been mechanically trash for what, six years? Longer? And they're still growing in popularity because of the aesthetic. Which isn't even that great an aesthetic, just a really mainstream one.

It's actually quite similar to 5E in a lot of ways, balance-wise, particularly in that the least-effective classes/specs are about 70% as effective as the most-effective ones, when all is said and done (in combat).

 

[Smackpixi]

WoW is pretty great at disproving the common canard of "Well, it's somewhat popular so it necessarily must be mechanically good/well-designed!". Even when a lot of classes/races have been right at the bottom, even expansion-on-expansion, if they have a popular aesthetic, they keep getting made as new characters, or played as old ones. Whereas if they're mechanically great, whilst it clearly improves their representation by a some percentage, it's not going to make an unpopular race or class, popular. Blood Elves particularly have been mechanically trash for what, six years? Longer? And they're still growing in popularity because of the aesthetic. Which isn't even that great an aesthetic, just a really mainstream one.

It's actually quite similar to 5E in a lot of ways, balance-wise, particularly in that the least-effective classes/specs are about 70% as effective as the most-effective ones, when all is said and done (in combat).

Is it a problem if a race/class is popular, with a high degree of satisfaction, but mechanically weaker than less popular options? Making the cool race/class more mechanically equal will result in it being even more popular and over-represented.