D&D (2024) Playtest 6 Survey is Open

[Vael]

WotC have called out several times they've made changes based on survey feedback, so while I'm quite willing to take PR about sales and pricing with a massive grain of salt ... I generally trust what the creatives have said about the game and how they've been developing it. So the 70% threshold seems fair to me.

 

[Chaosmancer]

What I believe is that you are moving the goal posts again. I'm not sure how the 9th level paladin is smiting 16 times with only 9 slots to use.

I never said they smote sixteen times. I said that over sixteen rounds, their smite damage was 29d8 damage.

If I need to break it down for you, it was ten smites (you seem to forget about the level 2 ability that gives an additional free smite of the highest level).

That's 9 smites or 9 rounds. You're almost doubling the number of smites he gets for some odd reason. Also, 16 rounds is 4 of the 6-8 fights. So after that 16 rounds for the monk(9 for the paladin), the monk gets another 12 rounds where the paladin is swinging his blade normally with no smites at all.

Woah, why is the Monk getting an additional 12 rounds of combat when there are only 16 rounds of combat? You don't get to just add more rounds of combat because you feel like it. 16 rounds is 16 rounds. Not 16 rounds for the paladin and 28 rounds for the monk. That's like... my entire point here. Four fights, of four rounds, is perfectly reasonable for an actual day of adventuring, and you don't get to just make up more rounds of combat to stretch things until the Monk is dealing enough damage.

Talk about moving goalposts.

As I said above, the monk needs help but it's not as one sided as you make it out to be.

Well, unlike you I don't assume the paladin is wasting 40% of their damage in overkill, so there is a much bigger gap for the monk to overcome. And also unlike you I don't assume the adventuring day just continually stretches until the monk has made enough attacks to catch up. The day ends when it ends, whether or not the Monk got to deal enough damage.

Those design assumptions do not include getting rid of the adventuring day. They quite literally can't. They would have to redesign the game from the ground up, completely blowing any chance of any backwards compatibility to smithereens. That means that any differences in their design assumptions must still include the adventuring day.

Quote them saying so. Otherwise, it is rather odd how many classes are getting buffs, if the balance assumptions haven't changed.

For the third time. The monk needs help, yes. It's just not as one sided as you are making it out to be.

And you ignoring everything that disagrees with your assertion doesn't make those issues go away. Maybe address my points instead of just blowing past them and not reading what I'm saying?

 

[Maxperson]

Woah, why is the Monk getting an additional 12 rounds of combat when there are only 16 rounds of combat? You don't get to just add more rounds of combat because you feel like it. 16 rounds is 16 rounds. Not 16 rounds for the paladin and 28 rounds for the monk. That's like... my entire point here. Four fights, of four rounds, is perfectly reasonable for an actual day of adventuring, and you don't get to just make up more rounds of combat to stretch things until the Monk is dealing enough damage.

How are there only 16 rounds of combat in 6-8 four round fights? That's 24-32 rounds of combat. Remember, the official game balance is the adventuring day, so this entire discussion about class balance must revolve around that balance.

6-8, so we'll say 7 fights since that's in the middle. Fights average 3-5 rounds, so we say 4 rounds. The fighter is getting I guess 10 smites total for the 28 rounds of combat. The monk gets 28 rounds of his ability. Since the paladin only gets 10(with that 2nd level ability) smites, that's NOT 16 rounds. That's 10 rounds. So the monk gets an additional 18 rounds, not 12.

Well, unlike you I don't assume the paladin is wasting 40% of their damage in overkill, so there is a much bigger gap for the monk to overcome. And also unlike you I don't assume the adventuring day just continually stretches until the monk has made enough attacks to catch up. The day ends when it ends, whether or not the Monk got to deal enough damage.

I never said 40. I said he can't know how many hit points something has left, so there will be overkill and more of it than the monk who doesn't have such a large spike of damage. You simply cannot assume that 100% of the paladin smite damage is going to be useful. If you do, you are automatically incorrect in your assessment.

Quote them saying so. Otherwise, it is rather odd how many classes are getting buffs, if the balance assumptions haven't changed.

Quote them saying that 2024 will be backwards compatible with the 2014 classes? That's common knowledge man. The only way that's possible is if they keep the adventuring day that the entire edition of 5e is balanced around.

If they redesign the game from the ground up in order to get rid of the adventuring day, and the playtest packets show us that the are not doing that, then backwards compatibility isn't possible.

 

[FitzTheRuke]

That's common knowledge man. The only way that's possible is if they keep the adventuring day that the entire edition of 5e is balanced around.

I'm completely with you in the entire thrust of this argument except for this: I don't think that 5e's 6-8 encounter Adventuring Day is so well built-in to the system that it can't be changed and still achieve an acceptable range of backwards-compatibility.

My evidence for my position is:
1) Almost no-one uses 6-8 encounters per day AS IS, and the game still "works" (with warts).
2) They appear to be trying to tweak how resting works.

I think you could try to get the Adventuring Day down to a more reasonable 3-5 EPD by only tweaking how classes work. Would an old class be perfectly balanced for it? No, but not any worse than they already are, when running less than 6 EPD, which MOST TABLES (and most printed adventures) do as it is.

 

[tetrasodium]

I'm completely with you in the entire thrust of this argument except for this: I don't think that 5e's 6-8 encounter Adventuring Day is so well built-in to the system that it can't be changed and still achieve an acceptable range of backwards-compatibility.

My evidence for my position is:
1) Almost no-one uses 6-8 encounters per day AS IS, and the game still "works" (with warts).
2) They appear to be trying to tweak how resting works.

I think you could try to get the Adventuring Day down to a more reasonable 3-5 EPD by only tweaking how classes work. Would an old class be perfectly balanced for it? No, but not any worse than they already are, when running less than 6 EPD, which MOST TABLES (and most printed adventures) do as it is.

I'd add a point 3 as well. Wotc has never really published anything that rose to the extreme meat grinder slog needed for the six to eight medium to hard encounters either. Id be surprised if there was even much across 3pp adventures that do it too because people don't really play that way. They could fix the GiGo math assumptions involved in the six to eight medium to hard combat encounters without downsides.

 

[UngainlyTitan]

I'd add a point 3 as well. Wotc has never really published anything that rose to the extreme meat grinder slog needed for the six to eight medium to hard encounters either. Id be surprised if there was even much across 3pp adventures that do it too because people don't really play that way. They could fix the GiGo math assumptions involved in the six to eight medium to hard combat encounters without downsides.

This really bears more examination. If one looks at the actual tables the XP per day (page 84 DMG) would translate to 3 deadly encounters.
A deadly encounter (by the same logic) is 2 medium encounters or one hard and one easy encounter.
8 hard encounters at level 1 is 600XP (for one adventurer) this is twice the daily XP budget. The party size does not matter for this consideration since the numbers scale with party size.

That is a level 1 hard encounter for a party of 4 is 300XP and 8 of them is 2,400XP as compared to the daily XP budget for a party of 4 is 1,200XP.
6 hard encounters for a party of 4 at level 1 is 1,800XP which still exceeds the daily budget.
The daily XP budget can be meet in 4 hard encounters (or 3 deadly - which matches my experience)
To get 6 to 8 encounters, withing the daily expected budget, one has to go for easier encounters.
1 hard encounter, 2 medium and 5 easy encounters will net the expected daily XP budget and I think that the statement on page 84 of the DMG about 6 to 8 medium to hard encounters needs to be considered in conjunction with the math implied on the Adventuring Day XP table on the same page and the encounter budget implied by the XP Thresholds by Character Level table on the previous page.

 

[tetrasodium]

This really bears more examination. If one looks at the actual tables the XP per day (page 84 DMG) would translate to 3 deadly encounters.
A deadly encounter (by the same logic) is 2 medium encounters or one hard and one easy encounter.
8 hard encounters at level 1 is 600XP (for one adventurer) this is twice the daily XP budget. The party size does not matter for this consideration since the numbers scale with party size.

That is a level 1 hard encounter for a party of 4 is 300XP and 8 of them is 2,400XP as compared to the daily XP budget for a party of 4 is 1,200XP.
6 hard encounters for a party of 4 at level 1 is 1,800XP which still exceeds the daily budget.
The daily XP budget can be meet in 4 hard encounters (or 3 deadly - which matches my experience)
To get 6 to 8 encounters, withing the daily expected budget, one has to go for easier encounters.
1 hard encounter, 2 medium and 5 easy encounters will net the expected daily XP budget and I think that the statement on page 84 of the DMG about 6 to 8 medium to hard encounters needs to be considered in conjunction with the math implied on the Adventuring Day XP table on the same page and the encounter budget implied by the XP Thresholds by Character Level table on the previous page.

It's not really that simple. When you start compressing the adventuring day with more difficult encounters it starts creating new problems as player contributions are dialed up and down considerably based on nothing but their class choice and occasionally build choices. The simplest example of a shift is rage going from some encounters to the most or all encounters.tye whole design around that 6 to 8 is a completely foreseeable disaster and the linked reddit post+thread really goes into detail.

 

[UngainlyTitan]

It's not really that simple. When you start compressing the adventuring day with more difficult encounters it starts creating new problems as player contributions are dialed up and down considerably based on nothing but their class choice and occasionally build choices. The simplest example of a shift is rage going from some encounters to the most or all encounters.tye whole design around that 6 to 8 is a completely foreseeable disaster and the linked reddit post+thread really goes into detail.

I disagree but we have had this out before and we are not going to convince each other.

My contention is that the 6 to 8 encounters is contradicted by the math of the relevant tables that are presented in constructing the adventuring day. I would contend that 6 to 8 encounters are the outer limit of the adventuring day and that nothing significant breaks with fewer encounters or lessor encounters.

 

[MockingBird]

I figured by now at least WotC would have bundled some of these AL modules into a hard back. I've only ever seen a couple and got lost on DMs guild trying to figure out which was which.

 

[FitzTheRuke]

I'd add a point 3 as well. Wotc has never really published anything that rose to the extreme meat grinder slog needed for the six to eight medium to hard encounters either. Id be surprised if there was even much across 3pp adventures that do it too because people don't really play that way. They could fix the GiGo math assumptions involved in the six to eight medium to hard combat encounters without downsides.

Yes! I had 3 when I started typing, and forgot by the time I got to 2. You are right: 3 was that none of the adventures appear to be written that way.