D&D 5E Strixhaven: Curriculum of Chaos No Subclasses Confirmed by James Crawford

[Ruin Explorer]

That's just the entire 5E core philosophy: not releasing options that aren't broadly wanted. Less "lack of bravery," and more "sticking to fundamental principles." I liked the idea, and wished to see more of it, but alas.

The trouble is this is completely false.

Wholly false.

Only options that get playtested even have a chance to be "rejected", and when they are "rejected" or "approved", WotC's reaction is inconsistent. In some cases they vanish never to return, in others, they come back immediately for another playtest, slightly modified, in others still, they go in, regardless of the testing results.

More importantly, a huge bulk of stuff isn't playtested - tons of races and subclasses aren't playtested (and loads of spells, magic items, etc.) - but they go in. Worse, stuff that was playtested, and did well, has even been entirely replaced with trash that wasn't playtested before (for example, the last-minute change to Dragonmarks in Eberron, which was an abysmal change which introduced a ton of problems playtesting would have caught).

So the idea that they're "sticking to principles" is non-viable. It's demonstrably false. Rather they're simply using feedback as justification for some decisions and not others, and in an inconsistent manner.

Personally I won't be buying this or the dragon book to make my point. In fact I won't be buying anything 5E until they start making better decisions. It's possible the "classic settings" will get me back, but only if it's a well-done version of PS or DS, I suspect.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

The trouble is this is completely false.

Wholly false.

Only options that get playtested even have a chance to be "rejected", and when they are "rejected" or "approved", WotC's reaction is inconsistent. In some cases they vanish never to return, in others, they come back immediately for another playtest, slightly modified, in others still, they go in, regardless of the testing results.

More importantly, a huge bulk of stuff isn't playtested - tons of races and subclasses aren't playtested - but they go in. Worse, stuff that was playtested, and did well, has been entirely replaced with trash that wasn't playtested before (for example, the last-minute change to Dragonmarks in Eberron, which was an abysmal change which introduced a ton of problems playtesting would have caught).

So the idea that they're "sticking to principles" is non-viable. It's demonstrably false. Rather they're simply using feedback as justification for some decisions and not others, and in an inconsistent manner.

Personally I won't be buying this or the dragon book to make my point. In fact I won't be buying anything 5E until they start making better decisions. It's possible the "classic settings" will get me back, but only if it's a well-done version of PS or DS, I suspect.

This seems like a fairly major overreaction. The Stryxhaven subclasses really didn't work for a whole raft of different reasons. They could have worked had equivalence been designed into 5e from the start, but it wasn't, and without a time machine there was no way to fix it. Taking a different route was the right decision. Whether or not it was "consistent" is irrelevant. Being consistent all the time is extremely difficult, I damn sure I can't do it.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

This seems like a fairly major overreaction. The Stryxhaven subclasses really didn't work for a whole raft of different reasons. They could have worked had equivalence been designed into 5e from the start, but it wasn't, and without a time machine there was no way to fix it. Taking a different route was the right decision. Whether or not it was "consistent" is irrelevant. Being consistent all the time is extremely difficult, I damn sure I can't do it.

I totally disagree and I feel like you're confused about my reasoning.

If they said "These subclasses didn't work mechanically and we couldn't find a way to make them, sorry!" or something, or even "The playtested feedback was that these classes were unbalanced and we hadn't left ourselves enough time to fix it!" (which is true, the playtest was really what, weeks before they had to make final print decisions?), I could absolutely respect that decision, as the decision of smart or at least honest game designers.

However, they are representing the decision as some moronic "wisdom of the crowd" bollocks.

And @Parmandur is the one representing it as consistent.

It's not even close to consistent. It's utterly inconsistent. You say "it's irrelevant if it's consistent", okay, that's your view, but your argument is with @Parmandur who is the one who claimed it was and that that was a good thing and mattered.

I can respect the decision of game designers. I absolutely don't respect game designers who hide behind terrible metrics invented by their predecessors, which have been completely inconsistently used and applied, and are only ever mentioned when innovative or daring content is in play, and completely ignored at other times (or even actively reversed, in the case of Dragonmarks).

If they want to hide behind that bollocks, they can, and I can say "Okay, I guess I won't buy your material". I was intending to buy both books - I've previously bought every single non-adventure 5E book except Ravnica - but I'm not going to. If they do better in future, I may revise my opinion, though it's unlikely that I'll ever get Strixhaven (I may well end up seeing it of course because I'm in like four DNDBeyond campaigns with full sharing enabled so if any of the other DMs gets it...).

 

[Minigiant]

The reason is that Artificers use Spell Alot, whereas the Myatic did not. People.have told WotC that they don't want new alternate power systems.

Correction.

People didn't want to learn a new power system. Especially the mystic's complicated and unbalanced mess of a power system.

That's the issue. The example given was a mess and too focused on a single lore concept for it. Much like Strixhaven's subclasses.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

However, they are representing the decision as some moronic "wisdom of the crowd" bollocks.

How they sell it is down to the marketing team. The fact is it was unbalanced, overcomplicated (what level do I get that ability at?), and made the setting less customisable. If they want to sell it as "oh look at how we listen to the feedback" that's up to them, but it was never going to make it in. The dubious decision was putting it in front of the public in the first place. I suspect that had more to do with feeling out ideas for 6th edition than something that was ever going to make it into print.

Marketing is all bollocks, always has been and always will be. Expecting it to be anything other is cloudcuckoolanding.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

I definitely agree with the posters who said that if applying the subclasses to the multiple classes was the issue, then they should have just reworked these into traditional single class subclasses. Then we would have still at least gotten something substantial, even if may not have been particularly revolutionary.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

How they sell it is down to the marketing team.

I don't for one heartbeat buy that Crawford put that explanation past the marketing team, or that that's the marketing line, and if you genuinely believe that, rather than are using it as a rhetorical point, that surprises me and diminishes my estimation of your judgement on this kind of issue (which was previously pretty high). If it is rhetoric, fair enough, but I roll my eyes at it. I've worked in marketing (it was horrific lol, like the British The Office meets Mad Men in the dotcom boom), and work closely with marketing at a large corporate firm.

The underlying issue is that they brought it to playtest so late they couldn't make any kind of revision, so have fallen back to, and this is the funniest bit, one that completely destroys @Parmandur's claims of "consistency", replaced it with a bunch of feats that haven't been playtested or acceptance-tested (I say a bunch because that was several pages they need to replace, even if they can reuse some of the flavour text).

I will admit that if the feats are amazing and somehow achieve the same thing, I might consider that okay, but I reaaaaaaaally doubt it.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

I don't for one heartbeat buy that Crawford put that explanation past the marketing team, or that that's the marketing line, and if you genuinely believe that, rather than are using it as a rhetorical point, that surprises me and diminishes my estimation of your judgement on this kind of issue (which was previously pretty high). If it is rhetoric, fair enough, but I roll my eyes at it. I've worked in marketing, and work closely with marketing at a large corporate firm.

The underlying issue is that they brought it to playtest so late they couldn't make any kind of revision, so have fallen back to, and this is the funniest bit, one that completely destroys @Parmandur's claims of "consistency", replaced it with a bunch of feats that haven't been playtested or acceptance-tested (I say a bunch because that was several pages they need to replace, even if they can reuse some of the flavour text).

I will admit that if the feats are amazing and somehow achieve the same thing, I might consider that okay, but I reaaaaaaaally doubt it.

I've also worked in marketing. And if you believe anything a British Public School puts in it's prospectus you need your head examined.

Really, you can tell all the lies you like in marketing, because you know no one believes it anyway, so it's not really dishonest.

5E fans also want subclasses to be usable in as many subclasses as possible, since so many DMs homebrew their own settings. In this case, there was a bit of an uphill climb since the subclasses were so tied to a particular setting

I have no doubt this it true. Because it is bleedin' obvious. They did not need market research to tell them that.

Crawford noted that they were prepared for the fanbase to reject the subclasses and had prepared "contingency plans" in case they didn't work out.

What he isn't saying is the so called "contingency plans" where always Plan A.

We could also see some design elements appear in future D&D products in another capacity.

Now we hear the real reason for the UA.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

I've also worked in marketing. And if you believe anything a British Public School puts in it's prospectus you need your head examined.

Definitely agree lol. I learned that age 10 when I went to look at several public and private schools with my parents - seeing the prospectuses before that vs. the actual schools was an eye-opener. Unfortunately, being 10, I was taken in by the tour of one of them, and totally should have gone to one of the shabbier ones.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

Definitely agree lol. I learned that age 10 when I went to look at several public and private schools with my parents - seeing the prospectuses before that vs. the actual schools was an eye-opener. Unfortunately, being 10, I was taken in by the tour of one of them, and totally should have gone to one of the shabbier ones.

Having also worked at a couple as well as attended one, there really isn't any significant regulation of public schools. Unlike state schools they can get away with pretty much anything.