D&D Releases Playtest for Updated Artificer

Wizards of the Coast has dropped a new Unearthed Arcana Playtest for the Artificer, bringing the often neglected 13th Dungeons & Dragons 5E class into alignment with the 2024 rules update. The playtest was released via D&D Beyond today, with feedback launching on December 24th.

The Artificer gains several new abilities, many of which are designed with an eye to making the class more versatile. For instance, players can now craft low-cost items quickly with a revamped Magical Tinkering ability, while Infuse Item ha been changed to Replicate Magic Item and allows players to replicate magic items of certain rarities and item type. Players can also use the Magic Item Tinker ability to convert a Replicated magic item into a spell slot. The capstone Soul of Artifice ability has also received a buff, with the Artificer no needing a Reaction in order to utilize its ability to skip death saving throws and restoring more health as well.

The subclasses were also updated. For example, the Alchemist's Experimental Elixir producing more elixirs and Chemical Mastery getting a big boost with extra damage, resistance, and the ability to cast Tasha's Bubbling Cauldron. The Armorer has a new Dreadnought option and Armor Modifications was replaced with a new ability called Armor Replication. The Artillerist's Eldritch Cannon can switch between various options instead of being set to one option and the Explosive Cannon ability does more damage and only requires a Reaction to use. Finally, the Battle Smith has received minor adjustments to its Steel Defender construct.

Compared to many other class updates in the 2024 Player's Handbook, the Artificer's changes are much less drastic. There are some obvious updates that bring the class in line with the design updates to other classes, but it didn't receive a major rework like several other classes.

 

[I'm A Banana]

What I find darkly amusing about all this is how quick people are to make claims.

WoTC changed their survey method. They said nothing about why they did so. They said nothing about what they are planning going forward. For all we know this survey method is an experiment to see how it works.

And yet, we immediately got people claiming how unethical it is for WoTC to manipulate the data this way. How they clearly don't want real feedback. How this is a result of them firing the people in charge of the data gathering...

With nothing more than the fact that WoTC did change their survey method for this one survey.

Microcosm of the internet (and maybe society at large) these days.

There's little trust, especially in faceless institutions. The assumption is that someone is a position of power is exploiting something. When you can't trust the fundamental claims of a group, then conspiracies flower like springtime.

If you're WotC, you're operating in an environment where a lot of people don't trust your intent, and have some reason to not trust your intent. So of course people are going to assume the worst of any change, regardless of why you actually made that change.

It sucks, but it's a bigger issue than D&D or the Artificer refresh alone. Not much WotC can do about it except live with it as best they're able.

 

[Kurotowa]

If you're WotC, you're operating in an environment where a lot of people don't trust your intent, and have some reason to not trust your intent. So of course people are going to assume the worst of any change, regardless of why you actually made that change.

Not to be too much of a ranty old man, but there's been a serious breakdown in social cohesion that's lead a lot of people to a well founded reflexive assumption of bad faith. Large corporations make bad faith business decisions to gouge their customers while providing worse service. Politicians make bad faith proclamations of principle that never hold up when their own side is under the gun. Anonymous strangers on the Internet make bad faith arguments to troll, or to scam, or just to win a debate.

Assuming bad faith in all cases isn't always warranted, and it definitely isn't conducive to making new friends or having friendly reasonable discussions, but you can at least see why a lot of people have adopted it as a defense mechanism. Even if it can be incredibly frustrating and toxic.

 

[I'm A Banana]

Assuming bad faith in all cases isn't always warranted, and it definitely isn't conducive to making new friends or having friendly reasonable discussions, but you can at least see why a lot of people have adopted it as a defense mechanism. Even if it can be incredibly frustrating and toxic.

WotC is part of a massive, publicly-traded corporation, so anything that cuts costs, appeases investors, or otherwise increases shareholder value is in generally in-play. And it's reasonable to ask (and speculate about) how this change in survey strategy helps them with that.

FWIW, I think that WotC probably has persuasively made the case that these surveys are good for the bottom line in many ways (they're good marketing, and I'd wager they're useful in design, too), and I'd generally trust that WotC is genuinely interested in what they have to say. Not so interested they're going to dramatically change their design goals or product release plans, perhaps, but they want to deliver something that people are excited about and will pay for, and having an engaged fan base is ultimately a big benefit for the bottom line.

This red-yellow-green structure might help them focus more on useful feedback, though, rather than spending a lot of energy reading through feedback that ultimately amounts to "great job" or "this new D&D rule shot my dog and you're all morally abhorrent". Both of which are probably reasonable to try and filter out.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

And it's reasonable to ask (and speculate about) how this change in survey strategy helps them with that.

A simple survey does cut costs. But is nothing evil about not employing a market research company (another faceless corporation) to employ dozens of people to analyse tens of thousands of words of feedback when all you want to know is a simple yes/no.

I’m part Scottish and part Yorkshire. It’s wasting money that I find morally objectionable.

 

[Azzy]

What I find darkly amusing about all this is how quick people are to make claims.

WoTC changed their survey method. They said nothing about why they did so. They said nothing about what they are planning going forward. For all we know this survey method is an experiment to see how it works.

And yet, we immediately got people claiming how unethical it is for WoTC to manipulate the data this way. How they clearly don't want real feedback. How this is a result of them firing the people in charge of the data gathering...

With nothing more than the fact that WoTC did change their survey method for this one survey.

Well, conclusions won't jump to themselves.

 

[UngainlyTitan]

Microcosm of the internet (and maybe society at large) these days.

There's little trust, especially in faceless institutions. The assumption is that someone is a position of power is exploiting something. When you can't trust the fundamental claims of a group, then conspiracies flower like springtime.

If you're WotC, you're operating in an environment where a lot of people don't trust your intent, and have some reason to not trust your intent. So of course people are going to assume the worst of any change, regardless of why you actually made that change.

It sucks, but it's a bigger issue than D&D or the Artificer refresh alone. Not much WotC can do about it except live with it as best they're able.

There is some of that but there also seems to be assumptions made about the purpose of the survey.
There are those that assuem the purpose is evil and then there are those that believe that the survey designers are incompetent.
One gets a lot of "This survey is badly designed, how could they ever expect to learn blab blah... these people are incompetents"
Which might have some merit if imputed aim was what the survey designers were actually after.

 

[UngainlyTitan]

WotC is part of a massive, publicly-traded corporation, so anything that cuts costs, appeases investors, or otherwise increases shareholder value is in generally in-play. And it's reasonable to ask (and speculate about) how this change in survey strategy helps them with that.

FWIW, I think that WotC probably has persuasively made the case that these surveys are good for the bottom line in many ways (they're good marketing, and I'd wager they're useful in design, too), and I'd generally trust that WotC is genuinely interested in what they have to say. Not so interested they're going to dramatically change their design goals or product release plans, perhaps, but they want to deliver something that people are excited about and will pay for, and having an engaged fan base is ultimately a big benefit for the bottom line.

This red-yellow-green structure might help them focus more on useful feedback, though, rather than spending a lot of energy reading through feedback that ultimately amounts to "great job" or "this new D&D rule shot my dog and you're all morally abhorrent". Both of which are probably reasonable to try and filter out.

Oh! i think it will, at the end of the day they want to know "Will this sell" the older structure was for a similar purpose but almost certainly needed more work to parse. It probably gave them a good base line to design the new survey with is much more explicit as to its aims.
A lot of people seemed to be under the impression that our design ideas mattered to the WoTC designers but I am not convinced that this was ever useful. In that, the designers were ever that interested in our ideas and that the crowed ideas ever converged in a way that was useful.

Another thing occurs to me; namely that there are several things in the design of 2024 DD that I, many other here and on YouTube have identified as potentially problematic design choices.
I am not sure that all of these are actually an issue in practise, I simply have not had the time to play with the system to tell.
Another thing that occurs to me is that the red/yellow/green response system will likely see yellow responses where one has an actual strong opinion.
If one is meh but conservative about design then one is likely to vote red, but if one is meh, not conservative and not really care then one is a likely to vote green but one is not convince it is a positive but really care then yellow is the way to vote because there is something to say.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

As someone who does research, you have a vested interest in making it much more complex, and require far more people to analyse the data.

Mod Note:

That’s a very cynical view of research and researchers, bordering on open hostility. Let’s not go further down that path.