D&D 5E Favorite things in the playtest that never made it

[bedir than]

Kind of want to replace the racial weapons with a feat that does similar (especially want this as I start start everyone with a Feat)

 

[Charlaquin]

That is really cool, I'd forgotten about that.

I remembered it cause I played a rogue who had two working eyes but wore an eyepatch so he could switch eyes when he entered somewhere dark to effectively skip the 1 minute adjustment period. I felt really clever for thinking of it, even though I don’t recall it ever actually making a difference. Just a neat roleplaying quirk the feature inspired that I was really disappointed got removed in a later packet.

I also liked a lot of the flavor stuff in general that got dropped, like warlocks gaining physical markers of their pact over time.

Indeed. Unfortunately I think a lot of that stuff didn’t poll well because it was seen as too narrow. There was, after all, a hardcore anti-reskinning movement at the time in backlash to 4e.

The barbarian regen and shared rage abilities seem like a great subclass foundation.

Absolutely!

 

[Charlaquin]

How to integrate the playtest sorcerer into the released sorcerer? Or would the effort not be worth it.

You could probably create a sorcerer subclass that got various buffs when their Sorcery Points are low.

 

[Charlaquin]

One of the play tests encouraged stunts for advantage during combat. Those combats were cool. I don’t remember the mechanics that drove that though.

I’m not sure there were really specific mechanics for it. It was just general DM advice to award advantage for clever tactics.

 

[Shiroiken]

IMO the biggest missed opportunity was the +1 to the primary ability score of a class. This helped every character be good at their primary class (they could have just skipped it the way they did save proficiency in the final version). If I could change only one thing, I would go back and keep this. I have absolutely no idea why this was removed.

Honorable mentions:
I liked the racial weapons providing a damage bonus instead, but I felt it should have been a combination of the two. If you didn't have proficiency, it gave you proficiency. If you had proficiency from any other choice, you got the extra damage. This helped prevent the problem we have now, where it's a useless benefit for many characters (it would have been the same the other way, because without proficiency, you'd never use the weapon anyway).

DC's outside of the +5 was cool (IIRC they used +3), but tbh is easily implemented in 5E anyway.

Interesting
While I believe the current neo-vancian spellcasting was the best choice, I'll admit that I liked the variance in an early playtest. The cleric cast the way they do now, but the wizard was standard vancian, making the two classes very distinct, even when they have overlapping spells.

 

[Gladius Legis]

The various playtest Rangers were, on the whole, MUCH better than the final product both mechanics-wise and flavor-wise.

• Rangers were prepared spellcasters all the way up through the final public playtest (September 2013). So their arbitrary switch-over to a spells-known caster came only after the public playtest process was done. Pretty much everyone agrees at this point the Ranger should've stayed a prepared caster - like they were every single other edition they had spells.
• At various points, Rangers had Expertise, which they really should've kept all along. I think pretty much everyone agrees on this one, too, by now.
• Rangers really were the best at tracking stuff in the August 2013 version. That Track ability worked in all terrains, too.
• In that same August 2013 playtest, Natural Explorer also worked in all terrains.
• Master Stalker (August 2013) was MUCH, MUCH, MUCH better than Vanish. Rangers could just hide straight-up, didn't need an action or even a bonus action. They also stayed hidden through tremorsense and magical detection.
• Rangers had a MUCH better capstone in the last two playtests than their current one. Advantage on all attack rolls and saves in all natural environments beats the hell out of the extremely limited and weak regardless Foe Slayer.
• The August 2013 version had a triple-damage attack vs. a surprised creature at Lv. 18. A little late to be getting such a feature, to be sure, but it could've been expanded on and made a staple of the class with Rangers getting a scaling version of it beginning at lower levels.
• Certain features came a lot earlier in the June 2013 playtest, such as Feral Senses at Lv. 10 instead of 18. That is a decent feature to gain at 10, but is too little too late for 18, giving the impression that WOTC really was throwing crap at the wall and seeing what stuck, then moving the stains around when designing the Ranger.

Indeed, the elements for a much more satisfying Ranger than what we got were there. And none of this would've been out of line against the rest of the PHB content, either.

 

[Undrave]

The willpower sorcerer was awesome, and I'm still a little sad they didn't iterate on it further. The general idea of "gain bonuses as you lose resources" is a mechanic that would be amazing to see developed.

Could still be reused for its own class. Maybe one where your body becomes a conduit for Elemental energies of another plane? That could be neat.

 

[Viking Bastard]

I was fairly active in the first half of the playtest process, and I remember a lot of both positive and negative feelings towards a lot of things, but the memories have become pretty murky.

The Skill Die does live on as the Proficiency Die optional rule, which was a big success for our group during the playtest and we still use.

I feel as there were other instances of things bumping/reducing die sizes, other than just race, and I pretty universally liked those, but I can't remember specifics. I am a sucker for die based mechanics.

They kept totally reworking skills back and forth and I liked some versions better than others. I remember really liking a version that focused more on Lore rather adventuring skills. I was really disappointed in the final version of skills and how they failed at their original mission statement of making skills properly optional. I understand the problem they ran into, but it's my biggest annoyance with 5e to this day.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

I was fairly active in the first half of the playtest process, and I remember a lot of both positive and negative feelings towards a lot of things, but the memories have become pretty murky.

The Skill Die does live on as the Proficiency Die optional rule, which was a big success for our group during the playtest and we still use.

I feel as there were other instances of things bumping/reducing die sizes, other than just race, and I pretty universally liked those, but I can't remember specifics. I am a sucker for die based mechanics.

They kept totally reworking skills back and forth and I liked some versions better than others. I remember really liking a version that focused more on Lore rather adventuring skills. I was really disappointed in the final version of skills and how they failed at their original mission statement of making skills properly optional. I understand the problem they ran into, but it's my biggest annoyance with 5e to this day.

Yeah, I’ve had to work pretty hard to get my group thinking in terms of an attribute, and seeing proficiency as a thing you add to a check if it makes sense. Ie, I let them add prof to a roll if their backstory, race, established areas of intense focus, feel like they’d give proficiency. So, if you’re a sailor, and I’m callin for a check to see how much you know about tides, uoqqwwllz

 

[GlassJaw]

Slight bump, but based on this thread and the recent sorcerer thread, I've been going through the Next playtest again.

Can't believe I missed this but in the final version of the playtest (and from what I can tell, ALL of the playtest packets), Sneak Attack did not require a finesse or ranged weapon! Wow.

So that means throughout the entire playtest it could be used with any weapon and then between the final playtest and the PHB, they added that requirement in.

All the more reason to dump it now.