Official Class/Race Satisfaction Survey

[The-Magic-Sword]

I suspect the designers are in a ... modality ... that they care more about whether the majority of players are satisfied than whether the game is actually balanced or consistent.

If there are some aspects that are off, it seems necessary to inform the larger community about the difficulties, to encourage players to notice and understand the issues, rather than finetune the aspects directly.

I was surprised when WotC announced that the upcoming printing of the core books would even have errata at all.

Since the team is biting the bullet, and publishing core books with errata, I hope they use the opportunity to make some meaningful updates that can help the longterm usefulness of the core rules.

Yeah, and honestly I'm kind of happy they feel that way? Perception of balance is much more important than balance itself, for one thing it'll get you pretty close, but for another it's a lot less neurotic in terms of trying to even identify what perfect parity would look like. This is easily the most balanced and consistent edition of the game we've ever had- I still remember all of the old optimization guides, and the sheer volume of trap options slamming you in the face.

 

[Jester David]

I was surprised when WotC announced that the upcoming printing of the core books would even have errata at all.

Why? They’ve done it twice before with reprints of the PHB. They’re just doing it again, since they’re doing a new print run.

Since the team is biting the bullet, and publishing core books with errata, I hope they use the opportunity to make some meaningful updates that can help the longterm usefulness of the core rules.

I can’t think of many changes that won’t cause more problems and disagreements as people confuse contradictory rules.

 

[Enevhar Aldarion]

I suspect the designers are in a ... modality ... that they care more about whether the majority of players are satisfied than whether the game is actually balanced or consistent.

If there are some aspects that are off, it seems necessary to inform the larger community about the difficulties, to encourage players to notice and understand the issues, rather than finetune the aspects directly.

I was surprised when WotC announced that the upcoming printing of the core books would even have errata at all.

Since the team is biting the bullet, and publishing core books with errata, I hope they use the opportunity to make some meaningful updates that can help the longterm usefulness of the core rules.

Well, you sure have not been paying attention, since there has been errata in every printing of the PHB up to the sixth printing two years ago. No clue if the new PHB printing is the seventh or higher, but it will be the sixth time now that text in the PHB will have been changed. The DMG and MM have had errata included in at least one printing before this one, maybe twice, and a few of the other books have errata as well in newer printings.

 

[The-Magic-Sword]

Personally I hope they decide to tell us a little about the data they receive from this, I would love to see the 'tier list' and the margins between them from a survey with this kind of reach. I wonder if this will lead to them finally settling on a solution for the ranger- is it a question of subclasses needing to be overhauled, or the base chassis, or what.

 

[Enevhar Aldarion]

Paladin VS Wizard was such a hard decision because of this. Nothing has quite as much impact as a Paladin in the first half of the game, but after that point...

Your choices as you go through the six prompts change which pairings you might see. For example, I did not get the paladin vs wizard choice.

 

[ad_hoc]

I listed healing spirit as broken as well. I houserule that the caster needs to use their reaction to trigger the healing. It’s an easy resolution to an incredibly poorly written spell. How did that wording make it past QA???

It uses the same wording as the other spells that operate this way. The difference is that this one heals rather than doing damage so creatures want to run through it.

I suspect the designers are in a ... modality ... that they care more about whether the majority of players are satisfied than whether the game is actually balanced or consistent.

I think it is more that they don't worry so much about rules abuse. When a player at the table took the spell I told her that we should do it 1/round rather than have it so every character can run through it like a sprinkler.

The whole table were surprised that anyone would suggest such a thing since it feels off.

Now, there are some balance problems in XGtE. Hexblade is the worst offender. It is both grossly overpowered and devoid of theme. That said, players who still want the theme of the Great Old One (or whatever) will still be picking that patron so it doesn't really matter. And while it is possible to make a Hexblade that is much better than other Warlocks and casters, most people won't be using it that way so it also doesn't matter. They will be using melee weapons and spending their invocations and spells on buffing their melee attacks.


The game is pretty darn resilient. There are only a few things which really swing things. GWM/SS come to mind there.

The other thing about balancing, is that most people are wrong. For example, most players of the game see the Wild Magic Sorcerer as underpowered, but really, it is much more powerful than the Draconic Sorcerer. Advantage on everything and the vast majority of the consequential effects are positive.

So how do they balance things? People are going to be upset about things. Designing to theme and story first is really the only way to do it. That's why something like Hexblade is so bad.

Personally I hope they decide to tell us a little about the data they receive from this, I would love to see the 'tier list' and the margins between them from a survey with this kind of reach. I wonder if this will lead to them finally settling on a solution for the ranger- is it a question of subclasses needing to be overhauled, or the base chassis, or what.

The problem with this sort of thing is that D&D is not a competitive game and most of its players don't have experience with competitive games.

Even in highly competitive games where the better options can be seen through people winning with them there is disagreement on tiers. In a non-competitive game like D&D options can never be actually tested.

 

[The-Magic-Sword]

Even in highly competitive games where the better options can be seen through people winning with them there is disagreement on tiers. In a non-competitive game like D&D options can never be actually tested.

Well that isn't always the case, we can see what the better options are by seeing which classes contribute or can contribute more to the cooperative effort of solving problems in the course of adventuring. You could mark a handful of areas of the game (the three pillars come to mind) then either test or analyze how each class would across a variety of situations concerning those areas. For the combat portion it might be their damage numbers, ability to take hits, impose control effects and etc, for the exploration purpose it might be their mobility and knowledge gathering being examined, and during sociability we might examine their ability to achieve their goals through interpersonal means.

The tier list doesn't have to be entirely agreed upon, it should be a democratic process- the perception itself is a ranking, an aggregate of rankings represent a democratic collection of an opinion, and the results of that more or less qualify as a community consensus, regardless of individual detractors as their 'vote' would be accounted for in the data.

 

[ad_hoc]

Well that isn't always the case, we can see what the better options are by seeing which classes contribute or can contribute more to the cooperative effort of solving problems in the course of adventuring. You could mark a handful of areas of the game (the three pillars come to mind) then either test or analyze how each class would across a variety of situations concerning those areas. For the combat portion it might be their damage numbers, ability to take hits, impose control effects and etc, for the exploration purpose it might be their mobility and knowledge gathering being examined, and during sociability we might examine their ability to achieve their goals through interpersonal means.

The tier list doesn't have to be entirely agreed upon, it should be a democratic process- the perception itself is a ranking, an aggregate of rankings represent a democratic collection of an opinion, and the results of that more or less qualify as a community consensus, regardless of individual detractors as their 'vote' would be accounted for in the data.

Perception of power is all you can get.

That is valuable but it shouldn't be confused with actual ability.

Worse, most people will not have played most classes, so the perception comes just from what is written on paper.

I know games where options can actually be analyzed as they are competitive in nature. There are some options that are terrible but the general consensus at the non-elite level is that they're great.

I've seen it time and again.

 

[Yaarel]

Unfortunately, it didn't ask what spells/feats we thought were UNDERpowered.

Yeah, no spells are overpowered. But lots of spells are disappointing (to put it politely). Too many underpowered spells disrupt the game, in that what could be interesting concepts prove to be nonviable compared to other options in the same spell slot. It is a similar problem with feats. Too many feats are noncompetitive with other feats.

 

[Yaarel]

There are some spells that are nonbroken yet too powerful for their spell slot, compared to other spells. For example, Bless and Hunters Mark. These should probably become class features for the Cleric and Ranger, respectively, instead of spells, since they dont actually break the game. The problem is they make other spell options less likely, thus discourage a diversity of spells. For some players the pressure to take Bless or Hunters Mark becomes a boring monotony.



The 5e designers worked hard to remove broken spells from the 5e spell list. At the same time, there seems to have been less attention to spells that are subpar. The problem is especially painful at higher spell slots, where viable spell choices are truly disappointing after striving to attain such a high level.



In the future, I want to see a finetuning of the spell list. Often this finetuning is simply changing the level of the spell to a lower level, where it becomes a more competitive choice.

Some spells need rewriting or removal from the spell list. A number of spells from the old schools spell list are now almost useless in 5e, like Identify because now a short rest can identify any magic item, Legend Lore because a history check uncovers the same info and more, Resurrection at slot 7 because now Revivify at slot 3 makes the higher level spells rarely happen, if ever. And so on. Many spells are terrible. The underpowered spells now require the kind of attention that overpowered spells received earlier.