D&D (2024) D&D Survey Results and The Future of Playtest | Unearthed Arcana


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I'm sorry to see the Ardling go -- I thought it was great.

* It broke free from the Tolkien/Eurocentric mythos, and gave a generalize theriomorphic species that could be mapped onto Egyptian/Iranian/Turkish/Chinese myth, as well as tapping into a number of fantasy worlds.

* The Animal Ancestry gave a choice of 4 movement-related bonuses (three had a small combat bump). One of them -- the Flyer -- gave us a 3.5 version of Feather Fall, which only affects the "caster". It was good, balanced design, giving wide range within a single umbrella.

* The choice of a cantrip is a minor boon used elsewhere. I would have preferred it from the Primal list rather than the Divine list, and for the species to be tied to this plane, rather than Celestial. (It also had proficiency in Perception, which I think should go from all the species that have it - elves, etc.

* It was a simple design, much cleaner than most of the racial designs with fewer bells and whistles, but flexible and would have been a great substitution for the Custom Lineage in Tasha's.
 

I'm more sad about the Ardling just because of how it may affect WotC adding the other planetouched/planar races. Who doesn't want Bariaur, Rogue Modrons, Axani, Cansin, Chaonds, Mechanatrixes, Shyfts, or Zenythris showing up at their tables?
 


Oh thank goodness. I was ardently against it as designed in the playtest, so I think I'll take, like, 5% credit for this.
I liked it, once I realized that you could still do basically a normal 5e jump as part of movement.

Maybe both the auto-clear jump as movement, and the jump action, needed better numbers or something, but I’m kinda disappointed to see it go.
I think they just should have started with Aasimar instead of making the Aardlings, and then they really muddied up the concept of the Aardling with the animal thing. Now while they strongly connected the Aasimar with Angels, I felt that was a mistake too. They should have just had 3 celestial legacies of standard 3 spells for a core PHB Aasimar that are counterparts to the 3 common Tiefling legacies, and then said that there are rarer legacies of Aasimar (the ones in Monsters of the Multiverse) out there.
I really hope they don’t do this. The last thing I want in D&D is even more cosmic symmetry.
 


Aardling is out (Yay!) because it scored badly on the survey and Goliath--with more giant flavor--is in because it did well.

Thats it.
 

There's a couple of things Crawford says that seem implicitly conscious of the past 8 weeks:

  • Giving survey feedback is like writing a letter straight to the design team (responding to the "leaked" accusation that feedback never reaches the designers).
  • We make classes for people who like to play those classes. (Have they ever said this before? I've not heard it, I don't think).
 

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