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

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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.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

I think the label matters less than whether the design puts some people off playing. Presumably, there's no reason why they can't have sample stat blocks as one option and monster stat blocks as the other.

Since the PHB has animal stat blocks, you don't NEED the MM but all the meaty broken options will be found elsewhere.

Yeah allowing a primal spirit form as an option, amongst others, would allow being a squirrel at low levels, but you can’t turn tiny as a primal spirit until a later level.

 

[Krachek]

That tends to be a combination of lazy developing (ie, they're literally just the same word-for-word as spells) and a lack of differentiated mechanics where its needed.

Combat is the interesting part of these classes mechanically, and so they should be differentiated mechanically if they're not going to have the same "power source" or whatever.

Hence why instead of my Ranger just having Techniques (my more involved version of maneuvers) by another name, they have Strikes which provide AOE power via Exploding Dice mechanics.

But healing really isn't all that interesting. I don't think most people are playing these games to play Fantasy Gaping Wound Simulator. FGWS might be fun with buy in, but thats not what folks looking for a more or less traditional TTRPG are looking for.

Having elaborate and differentiated healing mechanics is nice to have if it helps avoid nerds arguments, but it really doesn't need to be overthought or overengineered, and definitely shouldn't be pushing into the gameplay.

And besides, in 5E we already have an example of supernatural healing coming out of a Martial class via the Fighters Second Wind, which used to just be a standard thing any class could do, magic or not.

Faffing over Poultices resembling Potions or Healing spells is pointless.

We ultimately want balanced features. Explosive dice may look awesome, but It‘s easy to calculate the average damage and align it with a fixe dice or bonus damage. Likewise a fatigue system with multiple recovery rolls can be made to equal a spell slot system on the average. You just make a bell curve centered on the average of the previous system.

All those variant are prefect for home brew and third party tool.
Core rules and classes have to present the framework and make it balance enough to make variant possible and stable.

 

[mamba]

Yeah, no. We have strong evidence of the financial success of 4e. For example how much the D&D Insider subcriptions were raking in (millions even after the launch of 5e) which are easy to estimate due to the fact that the old Gleemax boards had a board for subscribers. 4e was raking in far more money six years after launch than 3.5 was six years after launch (circa 9 million a year with very low overheads).

care to provide a link? From what I saw they had maybe 100k subscribers, enough to be profitable with it, not enough to keep going and trying to find a new audience. I did not say it was not profitable, but sales did drop off a cliff very fast and the essentials line could not save it either.
That is why eg the planned 4e DL never materialized.

There is a reason why they revamped 4e 2 years into it and the whole edition lasted 4 years only, and it is not its overwhelming success

By contrast we have no good evidence for the financial success of 3.0 or 3.5 - and evidence of the financial failure of 2e. The evidence against the financial success of 3.5 is the way that 3.5's shovelware model was not brought forward into 4e or 5e with ludicrous numbers of luxury hardback books printed. Was the 3.5 PHB profitable? Certainly. But the overall product line? How many people bought the 20th Eberron or Forgotten Realms splatbook? Do you think they were all profitable?

no, same as 4e, and the evidence against 4e’s success is pretty much all of it. It jumpstarted Pathfinder, they tried to salvage 4e two years into it (faster than for any other edition) and gave up 4 years into it (again faster than for any other edition), scrapping planned settings like DL altogether. None of this points to a successful edition that just did not meet outsized expectations

Indeed. If you don't look at what people who were part of WotC at the time say and what the actual numbers we have say and instead keep repeating things that fly in the face of the evidence we actually have no wonder it never leads anywhere useful.

yeah, I have seen what they said, it is entirely unconvincing to me (eg that 4e outsold 3e, but that statement was made maybe 2 months into the edition, so tells us nothing except for the initial sales). So unless you have something new I haven’t seen, I stick to my conclusions based on what I do have seen (and the fact that it was killed off so fast).

I said I am not interested in discussing this because it is futile, and not because I am not interested in relevant information. I just doubt you have any I have not heard before

 

[Parmandur]

Crawford again states that druid is the least played class because of complexity.

Btcause of this, I doubt ODnD will get access to all beasts in wildshape as a core rule.

Almost certainly not: they hadn't received any survey feedback when this video was made, so they were juat going off of online discourse. What they have currently, with more forms (like a Tiny Scout form), and a selection of abilities like Pack Tactics, seems like a plausible outcome.

 

[Remathilis]

Complexity is defined as intricate and hard to understand.

Having a lot to potentially read (which Druids do in fact have, as does every other caster) isn't complexity.

You could call it tedium, or as I mentioned inconvenient, but it isn't complex. This is why I take such an issue with people throwing that word around willy nilly.

Complexity can also mean having a lot of potential choices at a given moment, which can lead to choice-paralysis. A druid potentially has access to every beast of a certain CR in the game. The only hard limit is whether a DM allows a certain book access, and the soft limit is whether the DM requires some additional knowledge on the part of the druid. (IE: specific terrains, having seen the beast in gameplay, etc.). Regardless of how WotC solves it, they need to put some stronger cap on how many shapes a druid and use and what those shapes are.

 

[Gorck]

And that's why I suspect the 2024E druid might still use actual animal statblocks and have them in the PHB... but specifically say those are the only statblocks the druid can wildshape into. That way they can still make more beasts to use as enemies in the MM... but don't have to worry about balancing them if a druid was to wildshape into it. The animals listed in the 2014E PHB were actually pretty good with a nice distribution of abilities across the CRs... all they'd need would be to add a few more at higher CRs for higher level druids.

I made this exact same point over in the New Wild Shape thread, but it fell on deaf ears. Limiting Wild Shape to the creatures listed in the back of the PHB would go a long way to fixing broken and/or absurd usage of the ability. And it would alleviate the player from needing to rifle through the MM or any other secondary source books for "optimal" beasts.

 

[Emberashh]

We ultimately want balanced features. Explosive dice may look awesome, but It‘s easy to calculate the average damage and align it with a fixe dice or bonus damage. Likewise a fatigue system with multiple recovery rolls can be made to equal a spell slot system on the average. You just make a bell curve centered on the average of the previous system.

All those variant are prefect for home brew and third party tool.
Core rules and classes have to present the framework and make it balance enough to make variant possible and stable.

Important to note that what I was saying there is in reference to an RPG Im writing, not homebrew for DND.

 

[Remathilis]

I made this exact same point over in the New Wild Shape thread, but it fell on deaf ears. Limiting Wild Shape to the creatures listed in the back of the PHB would go a long way to fixing broken and/or absurd usage of the ability. And it would alleviate to player from needing to rifle through the MM or any other secondary source books for "optimal" beasts.

If that's true, I'd like to see a little more scaling involved. Something akin to "add your prof bonus to attacks or AC" so that there isn't as big a push to move to the best animal form for a given CR.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

Having to learn a spell list and a beast list is most to know compared to any class in the edition. That could be classified as most complex. More than any caster.

Druids being least played means the most sense.

I mean, there was also that poll back in early D&D Next that showed that the druid was less popular than The Class That Must Not Be Named (and, IIRC, it was the least popular class on the list.)

 

[Emberashh]

I mean, there was also that poll back in early D&D Next that showed that the druid was less popular than The Class That Must Not Be Named (and, IIRC, it was the least popular class on the list.)

I think the main reason Im so incredulous towards the idea that Druids are too complex for people is that, in the 5 or so years that I've been playing TTRPGs, most of which was with 5e, I've never actually  seen anyone complain about Druids being too complex.

I have seen complaints about them being variously under or overpowered, which is par for 5e, but never about their supposed complexity.

It feels like this supposition was conjured out of thin air and people are just repeating it as gospel. And that tends to be compounded when I see Crawford saying things like Tiny forms being too strong in combat, which is a completely invented problem even with the template blocks.