New D&D Survey: What Do you Want From Older Editions?

WotC has just posted this month's D&D feedback survey. This survey asks about content from older editions of D&D, including settings, classes and races. The results will help determine what appears in future Unearthed Arcana columns.

The new survey is here. The results for the last survey have not yet been compiled. However, WotC is reporting that the Waterborne Adventures article scored well, and that feedback on Dragon+ has been "quite positive".

"We also asked about the new options presented in the Waterborne Adventures installment of Unearthed Arcana. Overall, that material scored very well—on a par with material from the Player’s Handbook. Areas where players experienced trouble were confined to specific mechanics. The minotaur race’s horns created a bit of confusion, for example, and its ability score bonuses caused some unhappiness. On a positive note, people really liked the sample bonds and how they helped bring out the minotaur’s unique culture.

The mariner, the swashbuckler, and the storm sorcerer also scored very well. A few of the specific mechanics for those options needed some attention, but overall, players and DMs liked using them.

Finally, we asked a few questions about the Dragon+ app. We really appreciate the feedback as we tailor the app’s content and chart the course for future issues. The overall feedback has been quite positive, and we’re looking at making sure we continue to build on our initial success."

 

[I'm A Banana]

It's redundant in that everyone can heal on their own so the warlord triggering healing is less necessary and pretty much unneeded. If eveyone deals bonus damage when they have advantage it makes sneak attack less impressive.


If you're using gritty realism in your game you probably really, really don't want someone healing via shouting. They're pretty antithetical concepts.

And, again, if the tone of your campaign requires you to expend resources from a healer's kit to heal - applying bandages and poultices and the like - having the warlord able to do the same for free goes against the very tone of the campaign.

Irrelevant. You can use the options together, or not, and since they're both opt-in, you can also choose one or the other. We can leave the decision of whether or not that's a good idea up to individual DMs, since both things are optional add-ons. A new optional add-on is under no requirement to compete with other optional add-ons - they're all optional add-ons.

And the exact same thing would happen if the warlord instead granted temporary hit points preventing the character going down in the first place.

There's a psychology element you're missing that is valuable to some of the warlord players - the ability to get an ally back in after they go down. Temp HP can't do that - they're preventative, not reactive. You could do that with some sort of convoluted boar-like endurance ability, I suppose, but it's just easier to do that with HP recovery since that's what big warlord fans will be used to anyway.

There's nothing in 5e that prevents such a thing, though individual tables may or may not want to use it.

Optional rules, yes. Classes are different. Classes should (mostly) be independent of the house rules.

Every class is optional. And optional rules are also optional - they don't need to be problem-free for all potential classes. It's OK if a warlord feels a little like they're not exactly necessary in a game with the Healing Surge variant.

I disagree. By the definition of replacing "the cleric" it should the warlord also be able to bring someone back from the dead, turn someone back from stone, regrow an arm, or remove a disease? All vital elements of the cleric and the "healer" role. Even the bard and druid get those spells, and the paladin and ranger get most.

It really depends on what you mean by "replacing the cleric."

I'm operating under the interpretation that warlord fans who want their class to "replace the cleric" don't care about raising from the dead or removing petrification or whatever (things the warlord couldn't do in 4e, either; ie "ritual stuff"), but rather want actual HP healing without magic, which is a distinction between the 4e warlord and the 5e archetypes that tread similar territory. It's not impossible in 5e, as an option, to have this.

As you say, it's easy to replace the combat healer role with potions and a feat or two, so if the warlord is to fill the role of replacing the cleric/bard/druid so you don't need anyone close to that class ever they need a way to deal with those conditions.

You don't need anyone of any class do to pretty much anything in 5e - niche protection is a thing of the past. But if you were a fan of the 4e warlord, you might want a class that can restore HP without being magical. That's not an extreme desire, and it's something the mechanics of 5e would have no problem with.

I'm under the impression that there's other things that certain 4e warlord fans want out of a "warlord" that aren't quite available in 5e at the moment, too (including party-affecting abilities and at-will buffing). It's certainly possible to do all those things - and given the scope of those things, it could warrant a class.

 

[Jester David]

But if you were a fan of the 4e warlord, you might want a class that can restore HP without being magical. That's not an extreme desire, and it's something the mechanics of 5e would have no problem with.

I'm under the impression that there's other things that certain 4e warlord fans want out of a "warlord" that aren't quite available in 5e at the moment, too (including party-affecting abilities and at-will buffing). It's certainly possible to do all those things - and given the scope of those things, it could warrant a class.

If you were a fan of the warlord class in 4e you likely want a class that can allow allies to move, grant an attack, manipulate the battlefield, buff your friends, and the like. Healing is waaaaay down on the list. That's like saying you liked the 4e fighter for the ability to mark or the 4e ranger for the ability to deal extra damage. I'm sure someone out there was a huge fan of that extra 1d6 damage, but it's not exactly the main selling feature of the class.

But 5e classes get new abilities pretty sparsely. So healing would come at a cost to those actual warlordy things.

I'd rather have a warlord that was 110% warlord doing warlord things rather than tacking on healing because healing was expected in a previous edition. I'd rather it be different and unique rather than samey.

 

[FormerlyHemlock]

There's a psychology element you're missing that is valuable to some of the warlord players - the ability to get an ally back in after they go down. Temp HP can't do that - they're preventative, not reactive. You could do that with some sort of convoluted boar-like endurance ability, I suppose, but it's just easier to do that with HP recovery since that's what big warlord fans will be used to anyway.

This is a total tangent, but that is one of the things that is great about the Healer feat, especially on a Fast-hands Thief who can do it with Cunning Action. The "get d6+4+HD HP back" is limited to once per short rest, but the "get your ally back up from 0 HP to 1 HP" has no limit of any kind on it.

I'm not a 4E expert in any way, shape or form, but from what I've heard about "warlords" I would tell a player who liked warlord flavor to play a Battlemaster fighter with Commander's Strike, and that at 6th level he gets to heal allies with a medkit as an action. I.e. he gets the Healer feat for his 6th level feature.

 

[Tony Vargas]

Part of the problem is that in 4e, Remove Affliction and Raise Dead were rituals, which meant any spellcaster (or person willing to burn a feat) to could use them

That's not a problem.

In short, you'd still need a BCDP to shore up those two key areas

They are not key areas, they are specific high-level, non-combat spells.

Hmmm... the warlord might be a good candidate to put with the martial adepts (swordsage, crusade, etc) in some Martial Power supplement...

The martial adepts were around for what, a year?

 

[Jester David]

Every class is optional. And optional rules are also optional - they don't need to be problem-free for all potential classes. It's OK if a warlord feels a little like they're not exactly necessary in a game with the Healing Surge variant.

This didn't sit right with me but it took me a while to realize what irked with the statement.

Yes, all classes are optional. If I want a world without monks (being too Eastern or non-European middle ages in theme) then that's fine. But the baseline should be the inclusion of classes.
Optional rules don't take much work and balancing. A dash of fine tuning and playtesting to make sure they're working as intended is all that is required.

House Rule: When you make a weapon attack and tie the AC you score a glancing blow and deal half damage.
Bam. Easy.

A class is bigger. Much bigger. It requires testing across multiple levels (ideally all levels) to not only make sure it's balanced against monsters but with other classes already in play, and that it works without being confusing. It's a LOT of work. For the space they take in a book they require a disproportionate amount of time to test and balance.
That's not something you do for content that many people don't want. The assumption should be people will use it and only a few might omit it. If you're making a class that doesn't fit the baseline of people's games then it's a problem. It's a waste of time that could be spent doing a craptonne of other content.

 

[I'm A Banana]

If you were a fan of the warlord class in 4e you likely want a class that can allow allies to move, grant an attack, manipulate the battlefield, buff your friends, and the like. Healing is waaaaay down on the list. That's like saying you liked the 4e fighter for the ability to mark or the 4e ranger for the ability to deal extra damage. I'm sure someone out there was a huge fan of that extra 1d6 damage, but it's not exactly the main selling feature of the class.

I'm not about to tell someone else why they liked a class. In my - many and extended - convos with folks who are big warlord fans, one of the recurring themes is that they like that warlords can pick somebody up who is down. Healing is the simplest way to do that.

I'd rather have a warlord that was 110% warlord doing warlord things rather than tacking on healing because healing was expected in a previous edition. I'd rather it be different and unique rather than samey.

This isn't an either-or choice. Yeah, it'll take ~3-5 levels for a 5e warlord to have most of the toys her 4e counterpart had. Healing can be part of that ability package. It's not like clerics can't do things besides heal - healing is part of their package.

Yes, all classes are optional. If I want a world without monks (being too Eastern or non-European middle ages in theme) then that's fine. But the baseline should be the inclusion of classes.

The baseline is the inclusion of four classes - Fighter, Cleric, Rogue, and Wizard, each with one subclass. This is the Basic Ruleset that anyone can pick up and run tomorrow. Every class beyond that is not part of the baseline.

Optional rules don't take much work and balancing. A dash of fine tuning and playtesting to make sure they're working as intended is all that is required.

House Rule: When you make a weapon attack and tie the AC you score a glancing blow and deal half damage.
Bam. Easy.

A class is bigger. Much bigger. It requires testing across multiple levels (ideally all levels) to not only make sure it's balanced against monsters but with other classes already in play, and that it works without being confusing. It's a LOT of work. For the space they take in a book they require a disproportionate amount of time to test and balance.
That's not something you do for content that many people don't want. The assumption should be people will use it and only a few might omit it. If you're making a class that doesn't fit the baseline of people's games then it's a problem. It's a waste of time that could be spent doing a craptonne of other content.

It sounds like your position is "not very many people want it, so it shouldn't be done, it'd just waste page count for most people."

But you could say the same thing about most of the classes in the PHB.

I'd trust WotC to have better market research than I did, so if it ever was something they considered (and there's no current sign that it is - it wasn't even an option on the survey), I imagine it'd be something they thought was worth the page count and development dollars. That's not a decision I've got the information to make.

But I do have, I think, enough information to say that I get why some fans of the 4e warlord are exactly enthusiastic about the 5e classes that try to fill that same space, and to say that I imagine it could be something done in 5e, and to say that it could even warrant a new class - huge as it is.

 

[Remathilis]

That's not a problem.

in the 4e context, no it wasn't. More to the point, in 4e those parts of the healer role was disassociated from the leader role. So unless you lacked a ritual caster of any stripe, they were filled. They aren't in 5e.

They are not key areas, they are specific high-level, non-combat spells.

They are part of the whole "healing" shtick. Healing isn't just about hit points. A warlord might be able to recover hp, but if your PC is poisoned, diseased, or blinded, you'll want a BCDP over a warlord.

The martial adepts were around for what, a year?

Their loins spawned the whole idea of 4e martials, so I'd argue at least a few in spirit.

My point: if we want a full on warlord that can match a spellcaster point for point, perhaps something akin to the Martial Adepts might be a way to do it.

 

[Jester David]

I'm not about to tell someone else why they liked a class. In my - many and extended - convos with folks who are big warlord fans, one of the recurring themes is that they like that warlords can pick somebody up who is down. Healing is the simplest way to do that.

Conversely, a LOT of people found the warlords ability to heal problematic and not in fitting with the lore of the class. It's a mechanic that exists for mechanic reasons, not story. It's artificial.

This isn't an either-or choice. Yeah, it'll take ~3-5 levels for a 5e warlord to have most of the toys her 4e counterpart had. Healing can be part of that ability package. It's not like clerics can't do things besides heal - healing is part of their package.

As I said on the other parallel thread on the warlord, healing is an insignificant part of the cleric package. 7/8ths of the cleric domains don't have cure wounds on their domain list and none have healing word. More clerics seem built around the idea of not healing and doing other things than healing.

It sounds like your position is "not very many people want it, so it shouldn't be done, it'd just waste page count for most people."

But you could say the same thing about most of the classes in the PHB.

Yes, I could. Most of those have been around for longer though, so they're mandated. There's a lot of classes that haven't been updated and might have as many fans as the warlord. Do all of them warrant inclusion?

I'd trust WotC to have better market research than I did, so if it ever was something they considered (and there's no current sign that it is - it wasn't even an option on the survey), I imagine it'd be something they thought was worth the page count and development dollars. That's not a decision I've got the information to make.

But I do have, I think, enough information to say that I get why some fans of the 4e warlord are exactly enthusiastic about the 5e classes that try to fill that same space, and to say that I imagine it could be something done in 5e, and to say that it could even warrant a new class - huge as it is.

The problem is the audience is super divided. There are warlord fans who are happy with the battlemaster, warlord fans who are happy refluffing the valour bard, warlord fans who would want a class with no healing, warlord fans that would be okay with temporary hitpoints, and warlord fans that want actual healing.
It's a lot of time and effort to piss off a group of people.

 

[Remathilis]

If you were a fan of the warlord class in 4e you likely want a class that can allow allies to move, grant an attack, manipulate the battlefield, buff your friends, and the like. Healing is waaaaay down on the list. That's like saying you liked the 4e fighter for the ability to mark or the 4e ranger for the ability to deal extra damage. I'm sure someone out there was a huge fan of that extra 1d6 damage, but it's not exactly the main selling feature of the class.

So you'd be cool with a 5e warlord with absolutely no healing ability?

 

[Jester David]

So you'd be cool with a 5e warlord with absolutely no healing ability?

Yes.
I'd be happy with just temporary hit points as they work better with my sense of verisimilitude. And they seem to match the flavour of the ability by allowing the warlord to inspire allies before a battle allowing his friends to fight longer and take more hits, to fight on despite their injuries and not remove them.

Plus, that's what I did for my warlordy fighter subclass.