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.

 

[Undrave]

I've played both versions! Tasha's is mechanically more balanced and effective and the OG one "feels" a bit more like the animal.

It's not like it's impossible to find a best-fit line between the two!

The 4e Beastmaster had unique scaling stat blocks for the animals that didn't just copy a MM block. You could pick one from any of the following category and refluff them as you pleased: bear, boar, cat, lizard, raptor (as in birds of prey), serpent, spider or wolf; with horse and simian added in a Dragon magazine article. You can change it during your career if you want.

You also gain the 'Raise Beast Companion' ritual. It'S a 4 hours ritual, and its price varies depending on your tier (50gp for Heroic, 500gp for Paragon and 5000gp for Epic, which of course can be paid in gathered components).

 

[Mistwell]

Not after all this time. But 100k subscribers at $70/year (the cheapest package as of 2009) is $7 million income per year with pretty low overheads - and that was the sort of numbers that they were pulling in 2014.

That is not in any way a set of confirmed numbers. As you can see from the discussion right here at the time, there were 45K subscribers known from registrations at the WOTC board, and people speculated that was just a fraction of the total. However at the WOTC boards people were able to confirm the WOTC board regs would change as people subscribed - it was likely 100% of the subs.

And then the price was not fixed. First, I believe there had been lifelong subs earlier, and then there were grandfathered packages people had bought. Then some people reported they would cancel and their sub on the boards wouldn't reduce by their cancellation.

And as you can see in that thread, there was reason to believe the overhead was HIGH, not low.

So the answer, from back then, was "We don't know." And unless new data has come out since then that I am not aware of, it remains "We don't know."

 

[Ashrym]

This is starting to look like edition warring. It's not productive.

I thought the 5e ranger worked. For me and how my groups played. The class has roots in shamanistic hunters and in Greek mythology, and not just LotR. The preferred monster wasn't so great but the terrain choices were the terrains within the campaign setting so they applied.

An issue I had with the ranger was that the draw to the class was more about the subclasses because the outlander or custom backgrounds worked to add flavor to rogues, fighters, barbarians, bards and assorted multi-class builds to represent the archetypes in ways that seemed better. A person could build a mechanically reasonable ranger too but they felt a bit clunky.

What I like about updating rangers to expertise is it's a simple mechanic that works. The concept isn't really different but the mechanics feel less awkward.

I do think a spell-less ranger with spellcasting subclasses would be a better way to represent the overall variety of archetypes but apparently I'm also in that minority of opinions.

2 cents

 

[Emberashh]

The class has roots in shamanistic hunters and in Greek mythology, and not just LotR.

Part of the contention is that some, like me, think those things are better represented as their own class, rather than being compressed into the Ranger.

Beastmaster for instance is explicitly its own literary trope, and the source material is deep enough to build out an entire class with. Compressing all of that into a subclass for a Class that also has to support Aragorn, Geralt, and a bunch of others robs both of their potential.

Same goes for Shapeshifters and Druids.

And incidentally, as it happens, both Druids and Rangers tend to suffer because the main creative bodies that pushed them as explicit character concepts never seemed to know what to do with them and still don't, despite the concepts growing beyond just their original material.

I do think a spell-less ranger with spellcasting subclasses would be a better way to represent the overall variety of archetypes but apparently I'm also in that minority of opinions

That was one of my early assessments of the 5E Ranger. It really should have just been a 1/3 caster.

Cause while I don't like the idea as the Ranger always being a spellcaster, Ive also still enjoyed the flavor and potential characters that came out of stuff like Horizon Walker or Gloomstalker, and Drakewarden was the most fun Ive had as a 5E Ranger.

It doesn't have to be an either/or, but it also doesn't have to be a take it or leave it.

 

[Ashrym]

That was one of my early assessments of the 5E Ranger. It really should have just been a 1/3 caster.

Yeah, I don't really understand why we couldn't get that as a common ground version. A non-spellcasting ranger with spellcasting and non-spellcasting subclasses seemed like it should work to cover the class far better.

 

[Incenjucar]

It's just kind of weird not being able to easily roll up a kind of adventurer that actually exists even today.

My father and his father basically ARE non-magical rangers. In his youth my dad would literally get dropped off in the woods alone for the weekend with the expectation he'd have a pile of meat to bring back at the end of it, used hunting dog and horse animal companions, could sew up a dog ear or his own wounds and got in ridiculous fights.

Go back a few generations and that's not even a weird lifestyle.

 

[Maxperson]

At no point have I misunderstood you and sorry, but no, Im not going to "respect" the POV fhat you should just skip mechanics on an arbitrary basis and then blame the game when it breaks down as a result.

I love how you(and many others) just assume that something that they disagree with is arbitrary when it almost surely is not. It isn't as if @Bolares is sitting behind the screen tossing a coin and saying, "Heads we skip this mechanic and tails we don't." If the DM is going to skip a mechanic, and there are times when it is appropriate to do so, he's going to have a reason to skip it. Reason is the polar opposite of arbitrary.

 

[Maxperson]

You're not wrong, but thats how we end up with entire pillars of the game quietly disappearing because they don't support it, and then people don't get why it even exists, so they don't run it, and then they support it even less, creating more people that don't see the point and on and on.

If a pillar is gone, you need a new DM, because there isn't a pillar that can actually disappear.

Combat? That's supported out the yin yang.

Social? If you're talking to NPCs and they're talking back, that's social. You don't actually need support to do that, but support is there.

Exploration? This is the single largest pillar. "We go to the bar." - exploration. "I want to see if there's a magic shop in this city." - exploration. "We need you to go to the Dungeon of Not Quite Doom." - social. "We leave to find the dungeon." - exploration. "What's behind the door?" - exploration. "I search the room." - exploration.

 

[Maxperson]

The idea that wild shape doesn’t add complexity to the Druid because “players know how to read” is…a pretty astonishingly weird take.

I've sworn off playing druids.................multiple times. I have loved playing clerics and wizards since 1e, so complexity doesn't both me. Every 4-5 years I think to myself that I want to play a druid. It doesn't take long for me to remember why I swore them off. Having to track spells and several types of beasts that I might need in an instant notice in the game is more like work than fun. I can do it, but it's not what I want out of the game. Wild shape dials up their complexity by quite a bit.

 

[DEFCON 1]

I've always wondered just what it is about the Scout Rogue that just never seems to be an answer for folks who wanted "spell-less rangers"? I mean they got to have more skills plus Expertise in all the outdoorsy skills that people wanted (on top of the two free expertises of Nature and Survival at level 3), they didn't have the two 1st level Ranger abilities that a lot of people hated because they just removed the possibility of failure during exploration, and they got to jump out of melee range as a Reaction, plus eventually have a higher ground speed. What were they missing from the Scout that they didn't get that they felt like they should have had to be a spell-less ranger (other than not having the class name 'Ranger' itself?)