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.

 

[Emberashh]

No one would recommend it to anew player. It's a headache play it straight as a DM.

I have, and Ive never had an issue with Druids.

It is full of eleements you wouldn't get why they exist until you've played D&D for a long time or are from a previous edition.

Such as??

It "requires" 2 books to fully play. And it is hard or clunky to expand narratively via subclasses or cocepts as you have to contend with both spellcasting and wildshape.

That doesn't have anything to do with the class and everything to do with WOTCs weird game design idiosyncrasies. Beasts don't need to be relegated to low CR levels only and the game isn't unbalanced by some low CR beasts having interesting abilities the Druid can use too.

And spellcasting in general is a self-imposed issue because they're letting themselves be to subservient to people who don't actually want the game to be fixed of its most centralized and all encompassing problem. All spellcasting needs to be nerfed for all classes because it is suffocating the entire games design.

 

[Clint_L]

Let's not get carried away. 5+ years? It is a more complicated class for sure, and one I caution new players about, but it is also chosen frequently (almost always by players who identify as female, incidentally, which is interesting; probably something cultural going on), and new players have success with it. It helps that moon druids are super OP at low levels, of course.

In my experience, sorcerer is the hardest class for new players, and then bard. Sorcerers because they have to figure out both spells and the interactions of spells and sorcery points. Bards because it really works best as a support class, which is a difficult concept for new players to grasp. Players get the concept of the druid quickly, the complexity comes from all the wild-shape options. But we play using DnDBeyond, which mitigates a lot of that. Mostly I just tell them, "be a bear for this combat and then when you go home look through your options and make a short list."

 

[Minigiant]

I have, and Ive never had an issue with Druids.

I have twice as a DM and once as a player. All 3 druid players were relatively new and made many errors compared to the other new players. Luckily this causes them to play optimistically and not bust my encounters. Except when the party optimizers offered suggestions. They had to learn spellcasting, whildshaping, and humaniod weapons combat and would always forget parts of at least 1 of the 3.

That's what it was. The DM or the other players constantly reminding the new druid players what they could and could not do.

 

[Emberashh]

That's what it was. The DM or the other players constantly reminding the new druid players what they could and could not do.

That just sounds like the typical struggle of teaching DND to anybody regardless of what class they pick.

 

[Minigiant]

That just sounds like the typical struggle of teaching DND to anybody regardless of what class they pick.

So why is the Druid the least played 5e class for years?

I said its because it has the most info to learn. Crawford said the same. Both DNDBeyond and WOTC says its least played. Less played than 5e ranger, monk, and sorcerer classes well known as weaker.

But many D&D fans say its not complicated nor complex nor is there a lot to learn. But its still the least played. Sure its only 1%. But that's still last pace. Last place behind underpowered, niche, and weakly supported classes. Whereas the Druid is a strong class with many, almost too many, tropes embedded in its core.

Why is the druid least played?

 

[mellored]

It's 2023. Nobody watches westerns anymore. It's not popular.
People like the concept of Cowboys but its not the most popular thing.

That's the Druid problem.

Disagree. Just look at other fantasy games.

World of Warcraft for instance. Druid is 3rd place, behind the ranger(effectively) and paladin. Druids also show up in Diablo 2,3 (witch doctor), and 4.

They are still plenty popular.

Now, if your arguing that druids are overloaded, the I somewhat agree.

Shape shifting, summoning, and nature spells could possibly be 3 different classes (through nature spells kind of fill the same role as a cleric, so maybe 2 classes and a cleric domain)

 

[Emberashh]

So why is the Druid the least played 5e class for years?

Why is being slightly less played than everything else a problem?

I said its because it has the most info to learn. Crawford said the same.

Crawford says a lot of things and much of the community agrees that he's the last person to be going to for opinions on what is and isn't wrong with the game. You should question why you're agreeing with him.

Less played than 5e ranger, monk, and sorcerer classes well known as weaker.

They aren't weaker. Ranger especially, but Monk and Sorcerer aren't weak.

Why is the druid least played?

Again, why does it matter? WOTCs data also asserts to us that the Champion Fighter is the most popular combo in the game. You really need to start examining why you're trusting what WOTC is telling you to think about this.

This again goes back to what I said ages ago about this issue feeling like its the tail wagging the dog.

Prior to WOTCs assertions that Druid is the least played and too complex, I literally never heard of anybody complaining about the Druid on these lines.

This whole issue got conjured out of thin air.

Like, Im a redditor. I can go on r/dndnext, one of the most toxic places that has no qualms about being critical of 5e, right now and run some searches on the Druid.

Every single post I can find that talks about Druid being too complex or not played enough was only posted in the last month.

The sole exception Ive found thusfar is a post from 7 years ago, that ranked the complexity of the PHB classes and did put Druids at the bottom, with, ironically, Land being listed as more complex than Moon.

And in that post, they hold the fact that its a Prepared caster with full access to its entire spell list as being just as much a reason for the complexity as Wild Shape is, if not more so.

But none of this is spun as an actual problem.

Which just emphasizes that even if we must take WOTC at their word that theres totally an issue here that isn't a figment of someones imagination, then it comes down to magic being a massive problem with the games design, that as said earlier, suffocates everything.

Nerf magic into the ground, then work at other aspects if necessary.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Because quite frankly.

The 5e Druid is the worst designed of the 12 5e classes in terms of design for newcomers and for future releases.

The 5e Druid is the "I've been playing D&D for 5+ years" class.

No one would recommend it to a new player. It's a headache play it straight as a DM. It is full of eleements you wouldn't get why they exist until you've played D&D for a long time or are from a previous edition. It "requires" 2 books to fully play. And it is hard or clunky to expand narratively via subclasses or cocepts as you have to contend with both spellcasting and wildshape. And it put additional design restriction of designing new beasts.

As has been said above, I see no good reason that a class can't exist for people who've been playing the game for a while. Not everything has to be built for a hypothetical new player who's coming in cold.

 

[Micah Sweet]

I have twice as a DM and once as a player. All 3 druid players were relatively new and made many errors compared to the other new players. Luckily this causes them to play optimistically and not bust my encounters. Except when the party optimizers offered suggestions. They had to learn spellcasting, whildshaping, and humaniod weapons combat and would always forget parts of at least 1 of the 3.

That's what it was. The DM or the other players constantly reminding the new druid players what they could and could not do.

Party optimizers will always do that, no matter what the newbie plays. If that's a problem, it's a player problem.

 

[Minigiant]

Disagree. Just look at other fantasy games.

World of Warcraft for instance. Druid is 3rd place, behind the ranger(effectively) and paladin. Druids also show up in Diablo 2,3 (witch doctor), and 4.

They are still plenty popular

I didn't say the druid isn't popular in video games. I was saying the Druid, especually the Celtic one, isn't popular in fantasy media as a whole.

Why is being slightly less played than everything else a problem?

Less a problem and more a design flaw.

Crawford says a lot of things and much of the community agrees that he's the last person to be going to for opinions on what is and isn't wrong with the game. You should question why you're agreeing with him.

That's why I used DNDB (before it was purchased) as a source.

Again, why does it matter? WOTCs data also asserts to us that the Champion Fighter is the most popular combo in the game. You really need to start examining why you're trusting what WOTC is telling you to think about this.

This again goes back to what I said ages ago about this issue feeling like its the tail wagging the dog.

Prior to WOTCs assertions that Druid is the least played and too complex, I literally never heard of anybody complaining about the Druid on these lines.

This whole issue got conjured out of thin air.

Like, Im a redditor. I can go on r/dndnext, one of the most toxic places that has no qualms about being critical of 5e, right now and run some searches on the Druid.

Every single post I can find that talks about Druid being too complex or not played enough was only posted in the last month.

When D&D Beyond displayed the class and subclass percentages back in 2017, druid was last.

People speculated why and came up with the same conclusions.

However since druid was the least played class, it didn't dominate conversations. The fighter, rogue, and wizard, the top 3 did.