D&D (2024) Developer Video on Druid/Paladin/Expert Feedback

​

WotC has posted a video discussing initial feedback on the One D&D Druid/Paladin playtest, along with survey results from the Expert playtest. Some highlights for discussion:

Druid: The developers recognize that the template version of wild shape is contentious. If they retain this approach, they would plan to add flexibility to those templates. If they revert to monster stat blocks, they might allow Druids to choose a limited number of options, with a default selection provided.

Paladin: The new version of smite is still intended to work with critical hits. If ranged smite persists, its damage may be adjusted through the internal balance/playtesting process.

Ranger: The updated Ranger scored very well in the playtest. Some players did miss the choice of options in the Hunter subclass.

Bard: All of the Lore Bard's features scored welll, but the overall subclass rating was mediocre. They attribute this to the loss of Additional Magical Secrets, which many saw as the key attraction of this subclass.

Rogue: The change to limit sneak attack to the Rogue's own turn scored poorly. The developers generally like moving actions to a player's own turn to keep the game moving quickly, but in this case, the change doesn't seem to be worth the loss of tactical flexibility.

Feats: With the exception of epic boons, all the feats in the Expert packet scored well. The developers are still loking at written feedback for fine tuning.

Conspicuously not mentioned were the Arcane/Divine/Primal spell lists, which were the focus of a lot of discussion during the Bard playtest.

 

[Parmandur]

It definitely makes getting the books less fun, however. Especially since whatever changes appear in the published books are easily viewable by extensive fan dissection. Why bother buying the books at all when all the mechanical stuff is essentially provided free?

The art. The lore. Monster stat blocks (which are not tested in UA). Maps. UA Mechanics make up a very small percentage of published material.

 

[Micah Sweet]

The art. The lore. Monster stat blocks (which are not tested in UA). Maps. UA Mechanics make up a very small percentage of published material.

But it is the part the bulk of the attention is focused on. For my part, art and lore from WotC holds no interest.

 

[Parmandur]

But it is the part the bulk of the attention is focused on. For my part, art and lore from WotC holds no interest.

It's the part where WotC doesn't want to cause any surprises and keep thi.gs grounded. Making everything mechanical available in draft form for input hasn't hurt their sales, so clearly mechanical surprises are not commercially important.

 

[Micah Sweet]

It's the part where WotC doesn't want to cause any surprises and keep thi.gs grounded. Making everything mechanical available in draft form for input hasn't hurt their sales, so clearly mechanical surprises are not commercially important.

You've made it extremely clear that commercial importance is all that matters.

 

[Parmandur]

You've made it extremely clear that commercial importance is all that matters.

For commercial products, pretty much. That's their reason to exist. Happily for games, making people happy is what leads to commercial success, so WotC puts out products designed to delight. The UA process is to ensure that the mechanics will be well received, but mechanical rules innovations are not the main driver of sales. Delight is, and WotC spreads the possible sources of that around liberally.

 

[FitzTheRuke]

One of the things about the UAs that always bothered me was how there was never anything in the resulting book that we didn't already know about. The UA wasn't always what we got, but it was usually very close, and there were generally no mechanics in the book that weren't previewed months in advance in the UA. It made the mechanical portions of the book (the only parts I cared about towards the end) something of a let down, as there were no surprises except to see if anything they previewed failed to make it in at all.

I get what you mean. The UA process almost sets itself up for disappointment, as they have often cut things that I actually liked, or nerfed parts that I thought worked very well. Rarely, the final version comes out "perfect" - but that's easy to overlook, as you would expect that to be the result of the process. More often you're left with only seeing the parts that come through and still disappoint. And then, because of how the process works, you almost want to shake your fist at the rest of the community and yell, "You don't deserve nice things!" (For having possibly "voted" the good stuff out).

That happened with the D&DNext Playtest too... I mean, people didn't apparently give very good scores to the best Sorcerer in the packets. And so we got what we got.

 

[FitzTheRuke]

No disagreement there, apart from it probably would have to be WotC, the technology was not far enough along when there still was a TSR

Yeah, that's probably true. Both of them dropped the ball there, really. Though I'm always a bit surprised when looking back how late it was that WotC picked up D&D. 1998? I guess that here I went too far the other way.

 

[Micah Sweet]

For commercial products, pretty much. That's their reason to exist. Happily for games, making people happy is what leads to commercial success, so WotC puts out products designed to delight. The UA process is to ensure that the mechanics will be well received, but mechanical rules innovations are not the main driver of sales. Delight is, and WotC spreads the possible sources of that around liberally.

If mechanical rules innovations aren't a main driver, why do so very people put so very much attention on whatever mechanical innovations are present (or not present) in every new product?

 

[Parmandur]

If mechanical rules innovations aren't a main driver, why do so very people put so very much attention on whatever mechanical innovations are present (or not present) in every new product?

Do very many people do so...? Really? It seems that there is a bit of chatter on it, but that rules get less talking tine than lore bits, to be honest.

Rules aren't unimportant, bit making sure that 4 out of 5 people actually want a mechanic is far more important than providing a surprise. People don't all like surprises, especially with mechanics.

 

[Emberashh]

A lot of people tend to speak of the UAs as if they are intractable: "WildShape is like THIS now! And it SUCKS!" As opposed to experimental.

Thats a combination of poorly fostered expectations and an established track record of only "experimenting" once and either shipping it or binning it entirely.

Its not really an experiment if you're not iterating on the design, and you won't get very constructive feedback by being coy about what it is you're doing.

I said it ages ago, but WOTC has a demonstrated record of having little to no conviction in their own game.