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."

 

[FormerlyHemlock]

Because it was a first draft off the top of my head, and I prefer to err weak and buff things up when messing around with rules.

With an ability like this, you need to compare it not only to the Healer feat, but also to Cure Wounds, Healing Word, and healing potions. 1d6+mod is a pretty hefty heal if you compare it to the other options!

But it's got a major restriction: it's not additive. Cure Wounds can be stacked all day to bring you from zero to full Health; the Healer feat and Stand the Dying can bring you up from zero to one-hit-kill territory. Healer and Stand the Dying (as proposed) are hardly distinguishable from each other except that Healer can also heal you for up to 1d6+24 HP per short rest, and Healer costs 5 sp per usage for medical supplies.

 

[Leif]

Yes, having one network that isn't leftist is a real downer. That it became America's most popular news channel (by far) using this unwanted innovation just added insult to injury.

I can't wait for the unveiling of the new Hilly-Nan channel -- All Hillary Clinton and Nancy Pelosi, 24/7/365. Sign my a$$ UP!


*Ouch!* I'm going to need a medical procedure to remove my tongue from my cheek now. Hmm, have to check into a combo deal for removing my head from my rectum.

As Umbran already addressed - politics and gaming don't mix in this forum. Take it to off-topic. Anyone who re-visits this unfortunate little digression will not have their post preserved. - KM

 

[The_Gneech]

But it's got a major restriction: it's not additive. Cure Wounds can be stacked all day to bring you from zero to full Health; the Healer feat and Stand the Dying can bring you up from zero to one-hit-kill territory. Healer and Stand the Dying (as proposed) are hardly distinguishable from each other except that Healer can also heal you for up to 1d6+24 HP per short rest, and Healer costs 5 sp per usage for medical supplies.

Cure wounds is limited by spell slots available (which is probably in the single digits), and Healer is limited by either the number of kits you have (and dependent on the DM allowing feats). We're talking about a class feature here. If you make it spammable, a party with a warlord never has to be worried about being defeated in combat again, because the WL will just keep propping fallen fighters back up.

Furthermore, having this as a class feature means that you don't need to burn a feat on Healer, thus leaving that slot for something else. Or you can stack it with Healer and do ALL the in-combat rezzing!

-TG

 

[FormerlyHemlock]

Cure wounds is limited by spell slots available (which is probably in the single digits), and Healer is limited by either the number of kits you have (and dependent on the DM allowing feats). We're talking about a class feature here. If you make it spammable, a party with a warlord never has to be worried about being defeated in combat again, because the WL will just keep propping fallen fighters back up.

I haven't found this to be true. Anyone who goes down in melee combat usually (60%?) gets shredded and dies that same turn, typically because they did something insane like charging a cluster of umber hulks[1]. When death saves happen in my game they are more likely to happen at range, because going down at range imposes disadvantage on further attacks (cancelled by being unconscious, but at least it's not advantage) and because hits at range are not auto-crits.

Furthermore, someone can just hold an action to take the PC down again the instant the healer pops him back up (prone).

Apparently I run an unusually-deadly game, judging by polls, but if popup healing is a concern then you have that exact same problem already with Healing Word and the Healer feat. 5 sp per usage for healing kits isn't much of a constraint.

In short, I don't think Stand the Dying (as written) would be overpowered as a class ability. And Healer already is a class ability, fighters can get it as their 6th level ability with the extra feat. I'd expect STD to be roughly comparable.

[1] I could tell you an amusing story about a player whose main PC for a long time was a necromancer. Recently he switched to playing his anti-undead paladin. He told me he wanted to introduce her in the middle of a pitched battle with all of the necromancer's skeletons. (Sibling rivalry--he's pro-undead, she's anti-.) I was like, okay... So next session, she's a guard on the spelljamming ship where the necromancer has left all of his skeletons in an unfriendly self-defense formation, and she tells her fellow guardsmen that she is going to destroy all of those abominations and wants them to help her. The other guards react like she's going to set off a bomb, diving for cover and stuff, but she wades into melee anyway. A two and a half rounds later, she's killed two skeletons and she's dead. The player doesn't even have the excuse of not knowing what he was getting into--these are the EXACT SAME SKELETONS he'd used to slaughter a dozen umber hulks the session before! He should know perfectly well what kind of damage output he was looking at.

 

[I'm A Banana]

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.

Right. Those folks have valor bards and battlemaster fighters and war clerics and the Healer feat and....

And also I haven't heard many people voice a problem with the "spend Hit Dice" idea in 5e from a meat perspective. I'm pretty much as meaty as they come, and I'd probably be kind of OK with it - it's explicitly a more internal reserve of energy than magical healing, and it is something you can do during a short rest anyway.

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.

I'm just saying that a 5e warlord that is meant to satisfy the warlord fans who are not already satisfied will want some healing. It's fine if that's only part of what they can do. But it should be a part of what they do - if it's not, that's not going to satisfy those fans.

It doesn't really matter how much logic goes into that desire. The audience handed you a design goal on a silver platter, either it's worth meeting or it's not.

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.

Again, this is why WotC presumably does market research - they have a better idea of how many people really want it and how many people would be "pissed off" by it. They know better than lil' ol' me if it ever would maybe actually make sense to publish something like that.

I don't think the people who aren't happy with your proposed solutions are being unreasonable or that 5e is somehow incapable of meeting their requests. If allowing an optional class that allows someone to spend HD in combat as a class option is a gamebreaker for someone, I think that person probably needs to not be such a frickin' princess snowflake about their game and should let other folks have fun how they want to.

Really, anyone telling 4e warlord fans they can't have their non-magical healing warlord because someone somewhere might get angry that the game allows their table to do something different is shining up your Fun Police badge so that you can arrest all the people who don't have fun the way you want everyone to have fun. A modular game like 5e don't need that mess.

 

[Jester David]

I can't understand how pretend hit points are more sim-friendly than actual hit points. What does a temp HP even look like if you're using an HP = meat paradigm, anyway?

At any rate, temp HP and actual healing are significantly different, tactically speaking. Temp HP can't get you back up from zero, and are best used before combat even starts. This means they are also easily wasted if you give them to the wrong guy, unlike healing.

If you're dead set against healing 'real' ([emoji38]) hit points, reactive damage mitigation serves a much closer purpose. Or, something like a party pool of temp hp that anyone can draw from.

Temp hit points allow you to call hp meat while adding them as "energy" or the like. It's screwy but less screwy than someone shouting across the battlefield at the rogue who just fell unconscious from a fall into a pit of acid and removing their injuries.

As I say elsewhere, temporary hit points have a number of advantages beyond healing. You don't need to worry about wasting healing by overhealing. You can prevent someone from falling down in the first place, thus negating the need for them to stand up or potentially miss a turn. You can stack temp hp on a character likely to be hit and they can take far more punishment than they could otherwise. You can use the power proactively if you roll a high initiative, rather than having to ready or choose a different action since no one is hurt.
There are differences, but both are strong choices. It's disingenuous to imply a warlord granting temp hp would be less useful than one that heals

 

[Jester David]

And also I haven't heard many people voice a problem with the "spend Hit Dice" idea in 5e from a meat perspective. I'm pretty much as meaty as they come, and I'd probably be kind of OK with it - it's explicitly a more internal reserve of energy than magical healing, and it is something you can do during a short rest anyway.

If you haven't seen people complain then you haven't looked. At launch there was a LOT of people derisively referring to them as 'healing surges redux".
They're odd. They're really odd. But they're there because the majority of people wanted some self healing in the game. So the majority wins and the DM can choose how much a role they play.

Again, this is why WotC presumably does market research - they have a better idea of how many people really want it and how many people would be "pissed off" by it. They know better than lil' ol' me if it ever would maybe actually make sense to publish something like that.

The surveys are the market research. That's it. I don't recall seeing any checkbox of pro/con martial healing.
Secondary feedback would be forums and playtesters, and I doubt very much the opinions here are representative of the general audience. A lot of the warlord stuff here is an evolution of the edition wars. A war by proxy. The average player likely doesn't have an opinion.

I don't think the people who aren't happy with your proposed solutions are being unreasonable or that 5e is somehow incapable of meeting their requests. If allowing an optional class that allows someone to spend HD in combat as a class option is a gamebreaker for someone, I think that person probably needs to not be such a frickin' princess snowflake about their game and should let other folks have fun how they want to.

Except it won't be that optional. Again, the resources required mean they're giving up four or five subclasses in pages and twice that number in okay testing time. Anything that takes that much effort means they want people to actually use it, not turf it because of a flavour problem.
It's a lot if work to satisfy a minority of people, piss off another minority, and generate something the majority of prayers won't look twice at.

Really, anyone telling 4e warlord fans they can't have their non-magical healing warlord because someone somewhere might get angry that the game allows their table to do something different is shining up your Fun Police badge so that you can arrest all the people who don't have fun the way you want everyone to have fun. A modular game like 5e don't need that mess.

Is that any different than saying something isn't a good enough warlord because it can't restore hitpoints?

And it's not just about the fun police, it's about table stability. These arguments we're having here? The one that's derailed two threads this week and derails every thread that begins on the warlord, or hitpoints as meat, or the like. These could happen real time at a game table. These DO happen. That is anti-fun, Mechanics that cause fights and disagreements should be minimized. That includes stuff like wound points, damage on a miss, complicated grappling, and yes, martial healing. There will always be table fights, but WotC doesn't need to arm both sides.

There's lots of 3rd party and homebrew warlords. I'm sure if you looked you could find an awesome one. That might also be a good topic for an En5ider article. But WotC should probably draw the line at the battle master.

 

[Hussar]

I though we already fixed the "across the room " issue. Warlord healing requires line of sight and hearing. If the ally is unconscious, then the warlord needs to be adjacent and only grants 1 hp, same as the feat.

Why isn't this acceptable?

As far as the minority majority thing, well, umm, that cuts a lot of ways. Do you really think the majority of gamers want a full psionics class instead of a Sorcerer subclass? Are you willing to bet money on it? Just how many actual people don't like the Artificer? And how many is good enough?

51% means that almost every table is pissed off given 6 people at the table. How do we avoid the "gnome effect" where even though 90% like the idea, half of the tables out there have a pissed off player?

I would think that like the Psion, presenting multiple options is the way to go.

 

[GobiWon]

I want the halfling art from prior editions of the game...while we're talking about what we want from prior editions of the game.

I second this motion. This might be the most important issue facing the game. Bobble-headed halflings need to be discarded into the dustbin of history. Please make this happen.

 

[GobiWon]

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

You and I both know we are not getting one of those.