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

[Haplo781]

You and I clearly don't agree on what constitutes punishment, much less "big punishment". The fairly low increases in AC mean that being a point or two down in attacks isn't a huge problem.

Try playing literally any class without your starting +2 ASI and let me know how trivial the difference is.

 

[Ancalagon]

Ironically, 3.5 Warforged Warlocks were fun and popular flavor.

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ROBO was an autognome - the UA version (barely changed in publication). I normally don't like using UA material in play, but it fit my concept so well and the design was so good that I went ahead (with permission of the DM, of course).

... to be honest, I wanted ROBO to be an artificer, but we already had an artificer in the party so... pew pew warlock it was! I made him fathomless, but instead of the sea it was the void of space he was adapted to.

 

[billd91]

Try playing literally any class without your starting +2 ASI and let me know how trivial the difference is.

I have literally never had a problem with it. Playing cross archetype with racial based ASIs going to something else never bothered me.
The difference is minor, and well-within tolerable levels.

 

[Ancalagon]

You and I clearly don't agree on what constitutes punishment, much less "big punishment". The fairly low increases in AC mean that being a point or two down in attacks isn't a huge problem.

It's a rough trade-off to make.

I once had a "not optimised" fighter - a rune knight that was dex build, shield and board, and with "wasted" feats like lucky or ritual caster. He had started as a psi warrior, died, "rebuild" as a rune knight but remained his "sage" outlook.

It certainly made the character more broad and more interesting, but only because we didn't have a wizard (which made the ritual casting more valuable) and, more importantly, this was a "two tanks" party so I could "afford" not to be optimized. (another factor was the strenght of the rune knight subclass).

In general, what I'm trying to say is that giving up some points on say constitution to increase something like charisma or intelligence, feels like you are losing more than you are gaining - a little bit of breath and versatility for a meaningful reduction in combat capacity.

The monk has this problem too. Because it has more "extra" abilities (speed etc), it has to be weaker in combat than the fighter - and not the fighter as its best, but the "sword and shield no feats" fighter. Once again, a more versatile and broad character, but with meaningful reduction in combat capacity.

 

[Charlaquin]

I have literally never had a problem with it. Playing cross archetype with racial based ASIs going to something else never bothered me.
The difference is minor, and well-within tolerable levels.

Tolerable levels is subjective. The point is, people want to be able to play the concepts that interest them without being at a disadvantage compared to people who played more “traditional” concepts.

 

[Ancalagon]

Tolerable levels is subjective. The point is, people want to be able to play the concepts that interest them without being at a disadvantage compared to people who played more “traditional” concepts.

it's a hard line to parse though. If character A is just as good as character B in combat but much more versatile... why play B?

but perhaps we are getting off topic

 

[Charlaquin]

it's a hard line to parse though. If character A is just as good as character B in combat but much more versatile... why play B?

but perhaps we are getting off topic

Is a charismatic fighter significantly more versatile than a strong fighter? If so, seems like a problem that could do with addressing. Perhaps strength is lacking in versatility.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

But again, what I was actually talking about was the post that said "actual worthwhile surveys rather than useless push-polls." I was literally repeating their words.

I mean, you call a spade a spade.

There was literally a poll they conducted at one point during the D&D Next playtest where all of the answers were some flavor of "yes." I am not joking. The most negative you were allowed to be was something like "it's cool but not my style." You literally could not choose an option that didn't approve of the thing being discussed. Of course, because it was a poll conducted on the old Wizards website, it no longer exists now, so I cannot actually give you a link for it (I mean maybe I could but I don't feel like potentially-fruitlessly digging through the Internet Archive to find a link.)

But it definitely existed, and caused some ruffled feathers, to say the least, amongst folks who weren't happy with whatever the poll was about.

WotC, during the entire time they were doing the D&D Next playtest, conducted shoddy surveys that were very clearly biased toward the answers they expected.

 

[glass]

Why do people insist that WOTC doesn't know what they're doing?

Because we have seen the polls. More to the point, people who do that kind of survey for a living have seen the polls, and said they're naughty word.

please quote where I said incompetent or worthless?

You may not have, but I did say "worthless". I did not say "incompetent", but it was kinda implied. And I will say it explicitly now: Whoever came up with the polls during the DDN playtest was incompetent when it came to designing playtest polls.

That is not to say they did not have competencies in other areas; just that they were lacking in this particular one.

 

[DEFCON 1]

Tolerable levels is subjective. The point is, people want to be able to play the concepts that interest them without being at a disadvantage compared to people who played more “traditional” concepts.

it's a hard line to parse though. If character A is just as good as character B in combat but much more versatile... why play B?

Is a charismatic fighter significantly more versatile than a strong fighter? If so, seems like a problem that could do with addressing. Perhaps strength is lacking in versatility.

I would presume based upon the three posts you both made that Ancalagon was under the impression that in order for a person to play a fighter that "interested" them that was not at a disadvantage against a traditional fighter meant that both fighters had equal levels of standard fighter abilities (STR, DEX, CON) while the "interesting" fighter also had a high CHA (or whatever it was that made it "interesting".) And in that regard... then yes, if the "interesting" fighter was equal to a traditional fighter and got to raise a mental stat really high... then there would be no reason to play a traditional fighter.

But that's just not doable. If you take Standard or Point Buy into account when creating your PC... you can't give a fighter a high mental stat while also being equal in physical stats. You have to sacrifice at least one of the physical stats by a point or two in order to bump your mental one.

Although really... how big of a sacrifice are we talking here? If you wanted to make a charismatic fighter and even with using Standard Array (15, 14, 13, 12, 10, 8)... you put put your +1 in STR and your +2 in CHA and you can get a PC that is STR 16 / DEX 13 / CON 14 / INT 8 / WIS 10 / CHA 14. There is absolutely nothing wrong with this character. Unless of course the player is going to complain about being a point or two lower on WIS saves than they might otherwise want to be. But that's then the player putting game mechanics ahead of character concept-- wanting their cake and eating it too. But in that regard that's just too bad... there's no requirement that says every PC is to be fully up on all possible defenses against all possible attacks while also having their creative "interesting" abilities as well.

You want a charismatic fighter... you might have to be less intelligent and/or be 5 or 10% worse on WIS saves than your traditional fighter build might be. Or maybe have your WIS boosted too, but have no DEX. It's all choices. But there's no fighter out there that will be strong, charismatic, and have really good DEX / CON / WIS saves... unless the DM has PCs roll for ability scores and the player lucks out.