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

[Minigiant]

There is a major fallacy often repeated that a company will always address any major issues a noticeable percentage of
their consumers have with the product.

How as a person who worked for major corporations, there are flaws a corporation are willing to accept.

WOTC made 5e combat simplistic for new players to quickly learn it and for veterans to quickly alter it. They more or less accepted that 5e combat is made for newcomers and they except everyone to alter it. 5e combat is meh by design. It's the same reason why 5e is a slog post level 7 or so since they don't care about mid and high level.

This hasn't changed from Volo's to Tasha's. There are only certain types of play the WOTC team wishes to support officially.

 

[Parmandur]

There is a major fallacy often repeated that a company will always address any major issues a noticeable percentage of
their consumers have with the product.

How as a person who worked for major corporations, there are flaws a corporation are willing to accept.

WOTC made 5e combat simplistic for new players to quickly learn it and for veterans to quickly alter it. They more or less accepted that 5e combat is made for newcomers and they except everyone to alter it. 5e combat is meh by design. It's the same reason why 5e is a slog post level 7 or so since they don't care about mid and high level.

This hasn't changed from Volo's to Tasha's. There are only certain types of play the WOTC team wishes to support officially.

I'm hardly a newcomer, and I prefer 5E combat as it comes out of the box to any overly complex alternati. I have zero doubt that if there were a sufficient audience, WotC would have moved to serve that minority, same a with Feat users. This doesn't require a belief in their infallibility.

 

[Hussar]

This hasn't changed from Volo's to Tasha's. There are only certain types of play the WOTC team wishes to support officially.

Now this I agree with. They’ve been pretty up front about it. That’s why I don’t understand why people seem to expect them to act differently.

 

[Parmandur]

Now this I agree with. They’ve been pretty up front about it. That’s why I don’t understand why people seem to expect them to act differently.

I mean, if market demands changes, I'm sure WotC would, too.

 

[Minigiant]

I'm hardly a newcomer, and I prefer 5E combat as it comes out of the box to any overly complex alternati. I have zero doubt that if there were a sufficient audience, WotC would have moved to serve that minority, same a with Feat users. This doesn't require a belief in their infallibility.

The issue is too many are going to the extreme when someone suggests more complex combat. There is a gap between 4e or PF2 and 5e. But framing those 2 as the only options twists the perception of favorability.

Half of the maneuvers in the battlemaster should be default actions a champion, oathbreaker, berserkers, or gloomstalker should be able to do. That's why WOTC did a bandaid feat for it. They should have created an alternate optional system for all classes. Or made a maneuver subclass for the other warriors.

The 5e weapon table is one of the smallest and weakest sets after 5 years.

I don't have you level of confidence in WOTC for adaption in 5e because they refuse to alter the PHB, MM, and DMG outside of glaring text errors. If you aren't willing to change or do introspection outside of real world backlash, then you likely wont adapt.

Now this I agree with. They’ve been pretty up front about it. That’s why I don’t understand why people seem to expect them to act differently.

I don't think anyone expect them to change. That's the main complaint.

I mean, if market demands changes, I'm sure WotC would, too.

WOTC is already attempting "one size fits most" when that hasn't worked for D&D for 3 decades. It would like be far too late when they realize this and will move to 6e instead of adjusting 5e.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

And that’s the way a new edition should be imho. It shouldn’t be creating a new game.

When a game is doing well, I definitely agree, though I would say 3E, 4E and 5E were all "new games" relative to their predecessors.

A 2018 Crawford tweet based on a convenience sample is not very good evidence for a fact.

All WOTC has are convenience samples. By contrast, the majority of online discussion about 5e involves feats. I can make just as strong a claim about the representativeness of that anecdata as WotC can for their convenience samples.


If only a minority used them, why would they keep designing more?

The anecdata in this case is particularly misleading because last I heard (and I'm pretty sure it's the same data), it treated characters who simply didn't have Feats as identical to groups actively not using Feats. There was a big discussion of this at the time. If you look at most of my D&D 5E characters, most of them do not have Feats. Why? Because they're level 1-10 and for most characters in that level range, they are better off with stat boosts. The only one I can think of who definitely does was given a free Feat at L1. But in all the 5E games I've played in Feats are allowed.

A much more interesting study might be solely Fighters above level 8, by which time they can usually be assured to have maxed their main stat. I'd bet they'd have a wildly higher proportion of Feats used than the "general population", and would be more representative of the amount of people who are in games that allow Feats.

Thus unless new information has come to light (which I would be surprised by), it is extremely disingenuous to claim anything beyond "a large minority of D&D Beyond characters have at least one Feat". All these claims that "a minority of groups allow Feats" based on that are not accurate - in fact, I'd say any intelligent person claiming that based on the DNDBeyond figures is making an intentionally deceptive argument in bad faith. All you can talk about based on Beyond is characters, and whether they, at any given time, have Feats or not.

 

[Hussar]

At the end of the day, what difference does it make why so few players use feats? The point is, very few players use feats. Full stop. Examining 8+ level fighters is such a tiny subset of all characters that it's useless. Even though fighters are the most popular class, they still only account for about 10% of characters. Limiting ourselves to 8th level plus makes that number even smaller.

Whoopee, 6% of players use feats regularly. That's what's been said all the way along. There's a solid number of those who use feats, but, it's hardly a large one. So, we get three pages of feats in 6 years. A nice bone for those who use feats, but, not much else. ((And I say this as someone who uses feats and almost never maxes out a main stat - the difference between +4 and +5 doesn't matter in comparison to what a feat can do.))

Getting tied up in knots over whether tables use feats or not doesn't really matter. The upshot is feats aren't being used.

Would I love to see a maneuver set for fighter types? Sure. Is it going to happen? Not a chance. Again, there just isn't the demand for it. FIghters only make up about 10% of all characters, and battlemasters are less than half of that. If there was this big push for maneuvers in combat, wouldn't the Battlemaster be a lot more popular than it is? Battlemasters make up only 2.5% of all characters on D&D Beyond. That's it.

Again, no one is able to provide anything even remotely like evidence to support these claims. At best, we have gut feelings and reading chicken entrails. Meanwhile, the game continues to break every possible record out there.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

At the end of the day, what difference does it make why so few players use feats? The point is, very few players use feats. Full stop. Examining 8+ level fighters is such a tiny subset of all characters that it's useless. Even though fighters are the most popular class, they still only account for about 10% of characters. Limiting ourselves to 8th level plus makes that number even smaller.

Whoopee, 6% of players use feats regularly. That's what's been said all the way along. There's a solid number of those who use feats, but, it's hardly a large one. So, we get three pages of feats in 6 years. A nice bone for those who use feats, but, not much else. ((And I say this as someone who uses feats and almost never maxes out a main stat - the difference between +4 and +5 doesn't matter in comparison to what a feat can do.))

Getting tied up in knots over whether tables use feats or not doesn't really matter. The upshot is feats aren't being used.

Would I love to see a maneuver set for fighter types? Sure. Is it going to happen? Not a chance. Again, there just isn't the demand for it. FIghters only make up about 10% of all characters, and battlemasters are less than half of that. If there was this big push for maneuvers in combat, wouldn't the Battlemaster be a lot more popular than it is? Battlemasters make up only 2.5% of all characters on D&D Beyond. That's it.

Again, no one is able to provide anything even remotely like evidence to support these claims. At best, we have gut feelings and reading chicken entrails. Meanwhile, the game continues to break every possible record out there.

So? And?

The point I'm making is people shouldn't be making false and disingenuous claims.

Unfortunately you decided you needed to add to those, with the bolded bit. That's absolutely not something you can claim based on the DNDBeyond "data". We simply don't know the following:

1) How many people play characters who have at least 1 Feat.

2) How many people play characters who they intend to have at least 1 Feat, as they level.

3) How many groups "allow" Feats.

We just have no idea.

So you claiming "very few players use Feats" is just disingenuous nonsense. It's exactly what you seem to be trying to complain about. We don't know how many DNDBeyond PCs are even actually played. As a bit of anecdata, I can tell you of the 25+ PCs on my account on Beyond, only 5 have ever been played. I know one of my players has far more and only 3 of his have been. As there's no way to tell, we can say whether the ones who actually have Feats are being played or are merely theoretical. Hell, based on DNDBeyond data, we could assume anything from 0% to 100% of groups allowed Feats. But it'd be an assumption, and the bolded text is just an assumption. If you genuinely believe it, you don't understand the data or what it means. If you're using it as a rhetorical talking point, it's disingenuous.

As for "hardly anyone plays Battlemasters", again, we have no idea. We can say what percentage of PCs on DNDBeyond are (or were, at a specific point in history), but are they being played? Not played? It's impossible to say.

You and Parmandur should both stay away from making claims about whether Feats are used or not. The best evidence we have comes from WotC continuing to support them in Tashas and in making the Dark Gifts in Ravenloft swappable for Feats. As Parmandur says, they're significant enough that WotC thinks they're worth space in their books.

Whether the game sells well or not does indeed likely have little to do with the presence or absence of Feats, but I'm not sure if that statement is just boosterism on your part or you think it has some implied meaning.

 

[Minigiant]

If no one uses feats, why does WOTC keep making them and pushing them in UAs?


perhaps people like feats but don't get to use them

 

[Parmandur]

The issue is too many are going to the extreme when someone suggests more complex combat. There is a gap between 4e or PF2 and 5e. But framing those 2 as the only options twists the perception of favorability.

Half of the maneuvers in the battlemaster should be default actions a champion, oathbreaker, berserkers, or gloomstalker should be able to do. That's why WOTC did a bandaid feat for it. They should have created an alternate optional system for all classes. Or made a maneuver subclass for the other warriors.

The 5e weapon table is one of the smallest and weakest sets after 5 years.

I don't have you level of confidence in WOTC for adaption in 5e because they refuse to alter the PHB, MM, and DMG outside of glaring text errors. If you aren't willing to change or do introspection outside of real world backlash, then you likely wont adapt.


I don't think anyone expect them to change. That's the main complaint.


WOTC is already attempting "one size fits most" when that hasn't worked for D&D for 3 decades. It would like be far too late when they realize this and will move to 6e instead of adjusting 5e.

I expect 6E to be the adjustment to 5E .