To what end? The 2014 druid was a mess of "how many hit points can I turn into?" instead of focusing on the utility wild shape can bring. Now all those hit points that weren't really the point of the ability are back to no longer being a consideration.
That was never my experience. Wild Shaping was at least 80% used for exploration instead of combat. Only Moon Druids would focus on using it for combat--which was sort of the point.
Of course, they also got nerfed that they cannot
heal themselves while in wild shape...
The temporary hit points are just a bonus. Adding in that druids no longer get dropped out of wild shape from taking damage exceeding what wild shape provides is an improvement. I don't think druids and wild shape were ever meant to be a big sack if hit points whether real or temporary.
I disagree. The point was if you wild shaped into a squishy spider to explore the bandit hideout, and were squished, you reverted
because your wild shape HP was so low. Having a spider with 50+ hit points is the ridiculous part.
It's also not the only example of adjustments instead of MOAR POWER. ;-)
Adjusting something so it is more useful, etc. is still MOAR POWER.
Bards lost song of rest, which was worth a good amount of healing and strong at low levels. That's less power.
Meh... IME it was an afterthought bard players forgot about as often as they remembered.
Bards lost the application of jack of all trades to ability checks and now it only applies to checks with skill proficiencies in which the bard is not proficient. That's quite significantly less.
And a stupid change to boot! So, now you don't add it to Initiative (no big deal since Initiative is cyclical), but removing it from tool proficiencies, instruments, etc. is moronic, since
that is really what the feature should be used for.
While it's true that magical secrets allows more spells from other lists to be prepared, the 2024 spell prep table gains spells prepared at a slower rate than the 2014 spells known table for bards to limit the number of those high spells more. The end result is gaining 8 spells from 4 class lists instead of 10 spells from all class lists (6 of which are from secrets and 4 from the bard spell list). There aren't enough significant spells from other lists better than bard spells anyway given the limited spells prepped so the distinction in access is minor compared to the slower access to those higher level spells prepped.
If you say so... bards aren't something I've bothered to look at really yet.
Changes to bardic inspiration didn't make it more powerful. It only became less likely to be lost from not being used.
Which makes it more powerful since is it not likely to be lost...
Changes to counter charm didn't make it more powerful. It's just suddenly a situational benefit that might actually get used.
So, more useful... more powerful.
Where the bard did see improvements was in the subclasses that range from minor improvements to major improvements.
So, more "improvements" then...?
Working as intended. It was even one of the things called out in the
preview article and videos (about 1:45 into this one).
Yeah, so they changed something that worked so it wouldn't screw up other changes they made elsewhere instead of just allowing those other changes to be designed to work with something that
already worked. Yeah, great going!
So I think calling it a hidden nerf is overstating things a bit.
OP's words... not mine.
