D&D (2024) New Survey Results | Druid & Paladin | Unearthed Arcana | D&D

WotC has shared a new video going over the survey results following the drud and paladin playtests for One D&D.

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For those who don't have time to watch the video, here are some general notes.

Paladin

• Did extremely well in terms of satisfaction
• All class and subclass features scored 70% or higher - lowest was Divine Smite at 72%
• Got some pushback in written feedback on being able to smite on ranged attacks - class identity concerns, Paladin viewed as melee-centric class, ranged smites might eat into Cleric/Ranger identity too much
• Positive feedback on redesigned smite spells - may become paladin exclusive spells down the road

Druid

• Wild Shape feedback seems to be split - slight majority saying "never want this Wild Shape in print", slight minority saying "this is their favorite version of Wild Shape they've ever seen"
• People love the texture and differences in beast options in '14 Wild Shape, but are open to feature being easier to use (i.e. don't want players to have to weigh the merits of 100+ stat blocks every time they want to use Wild Shape)
• Will have another take on Wild Shape next time Druid appears in Playtest UA
• General concept of Channel Nature seems to have gone over well, but want to see more done with it
• Expected feedback for restoring elemental forms for Moon Druids, but instead found people wanted to lean more into Lunar themes
• Want Moon Druid forms to be more resilient, but still want to reign in power at high levels (frequent/unlimited uses of Wild Shape constantly refreshing HP total)

 

[Gorck]

The overwhelming feedback I got from my players about the beastmaster change to a templated companion in Tasha's was that they hated it. Passionately. They didn't want a magically summoned "beast of the land" or whatever, even though they understood that it was more powerful. They wanted their rangers to have an actual bear, wolf or whatever that they had bonded with and trained. They wanted an animal companion.

Similarly, the issue with templates is that they are a design solution that completely fails to address the roleplay aspect that many druid players love: turning into specific animals.

I think a far better solution would be to aim for a moon druid who can use wild shape like Doric does in the D&D movie. I think that nailed how a lot of players see the class.

The template might be called "Animal of the Land" but the player then gets to determine that they change into a wolf or bear or shrew. Except, now the stats are conveniently there for them to use, rather than needing to flip through the back of the PHB or the MM to find the stats for a wolf or a bear (Black? Brown? Polar?) or manufacture them on the fly for a shrew because a stat block for that particular animal doesn't exist.

It's all about convenience, speed of play, and accessibility for new players. The flavor aspect of describing which animal they Wild Shape into is all up to the player's vast, limitless imagination.

 

[Clint_L]

“As it exists in the game world” isn’t really a thing. How it exists in the game world is malleable.

I mean, good thing they could just keep using normal beasts?

Passionately hating an optional feature in a game is extremely strange, to me.


Eh, people are often wildly unreasonable and selfish. I guess I’m not surprised either that some people go from “that option doesn’t fit my personal view of a Paladin” to “that shouldn’t exist in the game”.

IMO such opinions should, in all contexts in life, be ruthlessly ignored, but oh well.

So is it only unreasonable and selfish when it doesn't coincide with your perspective?

Can we just STOP with impugning the motives, capacities, and character of people who disagree with us? I get that folks are possibly upset that their preferred option was not popular. That is totally valid. That does not make folks who have a different opinions stupid (as implied by another poster), unreasonable, or selfish. They are as entitled to their opinion as anyone else.

In my opinion, impugning the capacities of those who disagree with us makes it very easy to ignore different points of view or consider the possibility that maybe we are wrong. Sometimes people are smart, have all the same facts, and come to a different conclusion for perfectly valid reasons. I don't like the template option, or ranged smite on paladins, but I'm not arguing that those who do are stupid or selfish, or even that I am necessarily right. To some degree, this is going to come down to a question of taste.

Which is why broad consensus is important.

 

[DEFCON 1]

The Wild Shape criticism seems unsurprising to me, but I also think WotC got really skewed results because the version they printed was unplayably awful in terms of power. I'm sure a lot of the reason people didn't like it was because it was so weak. You were basically running around as the Battle Smith Artificer's companion. Of course that's unpopular! It was grade D beef.

On the contrary... I think what they did actually HELPED identify for them what they thought.

The fact that the templates were consider supposedly "so bad" AND YET still got really high marks from a lot of people saying the template idea was a good one... told them all they needed to know about the viability of the template design. If they were really trying to "skew the results" of their own survey... making bad templates would have been done with the purpose to make sure everybody voted "No templates! Use animal blocks like in 2014!"

But that didn't happen. So if the fact that a bad design strategy STILL GARNERED high marks from a lot of players... that tells them that if/when they design a better system it'll get embraced EVEN MORE than it already has.

This is the thing that I shake my head at so many times... when some folks here downvote in the surveys because the thing they were voting on "isn't balanced". Most of these things aren't supposed to be balanced! They tell us this all the time! All they care about is how do we feel about the IDEA, and NOT about the execution of the idea. And while yes, some players seem unable or unwilling to separate the two-- if the mechanical execution sucks then obviously the idea sucks-- many other players seem perfectly willing to see the idea for what it COULD be, and can thus determine for themselves whether that "corrected" idea that will come in the future would be better than what we have now.

The idea with regards to wildshape is "Are you okay with flipping through one or more books finding animal statblocks to use"? And those that aren't don't need to know what the answer/solution is yet and the thing the playtest gives for us to "test" doesn't even have to work very well. All that matters is "No, I want something other than spending 1 to 5 minutes with our eyes buried in books" and thus will respond in the surveys with that answer. And once Jeremy et. al. see how many people agree with that take, THEN they can really start delving into the best way to solve the issue.

 

[Charlaquin]

I suppose I can zero rate any template designs from here on out if not even the bolded part of my comment can be considered. I shouldn't have been so passionate with my post.

Honestly I'm not surprised though, I should have really not bothered posting my opinions here. This section of the forum has grown rather hostile to all sides as of late. I'll bow out, sorry.

Unfortunately, WotC’s approach to gathering open playtest feedback disincentivizes nuance. When the threshold for them to not scrap an idea entirely is 70% approval, and the threshold for them to move forward with an idea exactly as presented or with as few changes as possible is 80%, there’s no sense in giving anything a rating higher than 0 unless you’d be happy with it almost exactly as-written.

 

[Clint_L]

The template might be called "Animal of the Land" but the player then gets to determine that they change into a wolf or bear or shrew. Except, now the stats are conveniently there for them to use, rather than needing to flip through the back of the PHB or the MM to find the stats for a wolf or a bear (Black? Brown? Polar?) or manufacture them on the fly for a shrew because a stat block for that particular animal doesn't exist.

It's all about convenience, speed of play, and accessibility for new players. The flavor aspect of describing which animal they Wild Shape into is all up to the player's vast, limitless imagination.

Yes, this was well understood. It wasn't what they wanted. At all. They wanted to have their character find, befriend, and train a specific animal. The story was very important to them.

I don't think templates are very compelling for a lot of players. I think they feel generic. I think this particular debate might be landing on an RP vs. optimizing fault line that has deep roots in the D&D community, and I think WotC knows this and is going to tread very cautiously going forward as it has the potential to be very divisive, which exactly what OneD&D is intended to avoid.

 

[DEFCON 1]

Unfortunately, WotC’s approach to gathering open playtest feedback disincentivizes nuance. When the threshold for them to not scrap an idea entirely is 70% approval, and the threshold for them to move forward with an idea exactly as presented or with as few changes as possible is 80%, there’s no sense in giving anything a rating higher than 0 unless you’d be happy with it almost exactly as-written.

Heh, well there's a reason for that... too many players means nuance gets divided into such infinitesimally small pieces that you can't find anything meaningful in the nuance. Not unless your intention ends up being just taking one individual person's beliefs and use their opinion as the solution.

Even if 10 people all agree on the same thing... all 10 probably have different nuances on how to accomplish said thing or what parts of the thing to focus on. So no designer could then take all 10 of those nuanced things and create something meaningful out of it. All the designers can do (since they have final say) is to take the broad strokes and then they get to use their nuance to finalize it.

So no... nuance in these surveys is pointless. Broad strokes is all that really matters, UNLESS (general) you happen to think you can make cogent arguments well enough in the written section to direct some of the nuance in a way that you think would ultimately work the best. If you can do that, great... but more often than not even a well-argued point isn't going to turn the aircraft carrier in the water nearly enough to be noticeable.

 

[mellored]

For starters, I would not make these Arcane weapon spells deal anywhere near the extra damage Smite spells are capable of. Because that's the core of the current OneD&D problem with the Cleric out-smiting the Paladin, but spread to Wizards and the like.

Perhaps something like...

Divine Smite.
When you use a Smite spell, such as Scorching Smite, you deal extra radiant damage equal to twice the spell level.

 

[DEFCON 1]

Yes, this was well understood. It wasn't what they wanted. At all. They wanted to have their character find, befriend, and train a specific animal. The story was very important to them.

I don't think templates are very compelling for a lot of players. I think they feel generic. I think this particular debate might be landing on an RP vs. optimizing fault line that has deep roots in the D&D community, and I think WotC knows this and is going to tread very cautiously going forward as it has the potential to be very divisive, which exactly what OneD&D is intended to avoid.

This is all true. And I suspect (just based upon everything that gets said by the people involved) that when it comes to situations like this... ease-of-use and speed-of-use ends up winning out more often than not. Much to the chagrin of those players who want more "tactically interesting" and "in-depth" gameplay.

This is exactly why WotC has given ground to books like Level Up... so that they can take on the burden of being the deeper, more involved gameplay system, while WotC can be the easier gateway into the D&D game.

 

[Remathilis]

Yes, this was well understood. It wasn't what they wanted. At all. They wanted to have their character find, befriend, and train a specific animal. The story was very important to them.

I don't think templates are very compelling for a lot of players. I think they feel generic. I think this particular debate might be landing on an RP vs. optimizing fault line that has deep roots in the D&D community, and I think WotC knows this and is going to tread very cautiously going forward as it has the potential to be very divisive, which exactly what OneD&D is intended to avoid.

But is it worth it when your pet wolf you befriended at level 1 is a liability at level 7? That it lacks the HP and defense to survive, let alone contribute to a fight?

 

[mamba]

This is all true. And I suspect (just based upon everything that gets said by the people involved) that when it comes to situations like this... ease-of-use and speed-of-use ends up winning out more often than not. Much to the chagrin of those players who want more "tactically interesting" and "in-depth" gameplay.

This is exactly why WotC has given ground to books like Level Up... so that they can take on the burden of being the deeper, more involved gameplay system, while WotC can be the easier gateway into the D&D game.

I don’t see ‘pick a statblock and stick with it because it represents an animal’ to have any more tactical or gameplay depth than ‘use a statblock that adjusts with the char level to represent that same animal’

I can see why someone would not want that for RP purposes, but it is pretty much the opposite of a tactical choice / reason to me