D&D 5E Volo's 5e vs Tasha's 5e where do you see 5e heading?

[ph0rk]

I like the equation!
home brew ==> punishment and slow down
official ==> tactical

It doesn’t matter if it is homebrew or official, if you have spend action economy to switch mundane weapon types at a greater frequency than you do spell damage types, it is a mundane martial penalty.

 

[Hussar]

One thing I think even you must admit is true is that we will see more feats as 5e continues, so by that argument it began flawed and will continue to decline.

Feats are tremendously popular, though, so does the ad populum argument not work also in this case? Many players use it, so it must be good.

Actually no they aren’t. WotC has stated that a very significant portion of tables don’t use feats. This is backed up by DnD Beyond statistics.

If half the tables don’t use feats at all, then adding feat based rules are not really appealing to the majority of the player base.

 

[Cap'n Kobold]

Not sure about "banned," but "not used." Feata are a variant rule module, after all, they are opt-in, not opt-out. I have never played or DMed a 5E game that used them, though there was one game where my brother-in-law, the DM, announced that he allowed them: nobody took one.

I was responding to a claim that WotC have said that the majority of players do not play in games where feats are allowed.

I've seen WotC talk about most players and games not using feats. - I've played in a fair number where nobody chose to take them.
But IME games where feats are actually banned are less than ~20% of the ones I've seen the briefs for. Hence my surprise (and the fact that I obviously missed a tweet or announcement.)

 

[Krachek]

It doesn’t matter if it is homebrew or official, if you have spend action economy to switch mundane weapon types at a greater frequency than you do spell damage types, it is a mundane martial penalty.

You want to add more tactical choice to martial. Choice == Time == slow down.
You want to make some martial choice more useful than other. Less useful == penalty.
I don’t see how we can add tactical choice without having slow down and some sort of penalty for less tactical choice.

 

[Hussar]

Personally I love that switching to blunt arrows is thought to be a viable tactic and adds a good thing to the game. Lol.

 

[Parmandur]

I was responding to a claim that WotC have said that the majority of players do not play in games where feats are allowed.

I've seen WotC talk about most players and games not using feats. - I've played in a fair number where nobody chose to take them.
But IME games where feats are actually banned are less than ~20% of the ones I've seen the briefs for. Hence my surprise (and the fact that I obviously missed a tweet or announcement.)

I mean, fi the DM doesn't think about the module, and none of the players do..."banning" isn't the right word.

 

[Cap'n Kobold]

It was granular when it added all those charts, tables, feats, kits, prcs, and stuff in the past.

Are we still talking about just weapons? If we're bringing feats, subclasses, maneuvers etc into the mix, that changes things significantly.

The page after the first ranger in Strategic Review was a buch of polearms and bonuses.

Yes, and did that table and the bonuses thereof significantly improve the flow of combat or the game as a whole at the majority of tables?

Feints, jabs, combos, counterattacks, bonuses to certain types of armor, zoning, holds, locks, followups, flurries, useful kicks, shield bashes, and punches..

OK. How many of these can only be performed by a specific weapon, and how would you represent them as mechanical rules in the 5e system.

It doesn’t matter if it is homebrew or official, if you have spend action economy to switch mundane weapon types at a greater frequency than you do spell damage types, it is a mundane martial penalty.

But if switching allows you to take advantage of vulnerabilities, or inflict conditions, that is mundane martial benefits.

 

[Parmandur]

Actually no they aren’t. WotC has stated that a very significant portion of tables don’t use feats. This is backed up by DnD Beyond statistics.

If half the tables don’t use feats at all, then adding feat based rules are not really appealing to the majority of the player base.

Based on WotC self-report numbers, which match the latter D&D Beyond data, about a third of players/tables seem to use Feats. So, enough for WotC to give Feats support in books like Xanathar's Guide and Tasaha's every few years.

 

[ph0rk]

But if switching allows you to take advantage of vulnerabilities, or inflict conditions, that is mundane martial benefits.

And that wouldn’t be bad, but a clearly defined design goal ought to be that you can just use whatever and not be mired in material-type resistance hell.

 

[tetrasodium]

I was responding to a claim that WotC have said that the majority of players do not play in games where feats are allowed.

I've seen WotC talk about most players and games not using feats. - I've played in a fair number where nobody chose to take them.
But IME games where feats are actually banned are less than ~20% of the ones I've seen the briefs for. Hence my surprise (and the fact that I obviously missed a tweet or announcement.)

Spoiler: this

no doubt has a significant impact on that "most" too. Teir1 is levels 1-4. Out of the 62.8% of characters n the ddb character database when they did that, only variant human characters were even capable to taking a feat. A hypothetical 100% of the 26.9% of tier2 characters could immediately take a feat as soon as they hit level 5 and even with tier 3/4 added "most" characters would still not be using feats. There are simply not enough variant humans to change that given race percentage breakdowns we know.

In that light, the statement "most games/players don't use feats" falls squarely under Mark Twain's statistics quote for being technically accurate but almost meaningless. Now if Crawford had said that most players/games level 9 or 12 & up don't use feats it would be relevant & interesting given the ease of hitting 20 in a prime stat by then. The fact that it's impossible for most characters in the dataset to even have a feat overrides the value in stating if most of them use feats