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

[Marandahir]

I love how a single UA, not even official material, makes people think that this is the new normal. There's no guarantee that the classes in the Strixhaven book will even make it into that book, let alone in the form that they are showing. And, there's no guarantee that any subsequent books will use these mechanics. They might or they might not.

Note, this is different from the lineage changes since that wasn't a mechanics change per se, but, a reaction to other issues outside of the rules of the game.

People tend to forget things like the fact that we've had, what, three different stabs at psionics without a single psionics class becoming official. The UA ranger has never made it into print. Heck, a large swath of stuff in UA doesn't make it into print.

But, yeah, "subclasses are no longer for one class" because of a setting specific book that hasn't even been released yet.

Truth. The thing is, the UA opens the floodgates. If there’s massive rejection of this it won’t happen, but they’re openly testing it. I’m reminded of when they tried out adding Prestige Classes with the Rune Scribe. If I recall correctly, people felt strongly that they didn’t want to give up their class features to access the concept, so it would be better incorporated into a subclass or multiple subclasses (hence we now have various Artificers, Rune Knight Fighters, and Order of Scribe Wizards).

What I took away from that experiment was that people would be happier if the Rune Scribe was like a floating subclass, but that the mechanics of class feature progression was the sticking point for that. This seems to be a partial way around it, and anecdotally I’m hearing a lot of positive feedback.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Source? I've repeatedly suggested this should be done but it definitely was the case in any figures I saw, hence the suggestion. If they've changed that, great, but without a source I 100% do not believe it.

Haven't seen them, don't know.

Source. This definitely was not the case in any of the earlier data dumps. If this is correct there was a more recent one I missed with a new strategy.

I have a question. Do we have any idea what percentage of players actually use D&D Beyond at all? Most of my players don't. If a lot of people are using the actual books instead, wouldn't the data they have be less useful in determining what people want out of D&D?

 

[Micah Sweet]

Of the ten or so official fighter subclasses, like 5 of them have magic, and the 1 of those 5 appeared in core, and 1 of them is in the Wildemount book (how official you want to count this is up to the reader). So, there are still more non-magic fighter subclasses than magic ones. More and more magical? That's a bit of a stretch isn't it? They started out with 1 or 2 magical fighters - Eldritch Knight and Arcane archer out of like 6 fighter subclasses and have added like 2 more since then.

Of the eight rogue subclasses, 3 are distinctly magical.

Barbarians are a bit of an odd duck since they've been a magical fighter class since day 1.

But, again, you keep making this argument that you're needs are not being addressed. The goalposts have shifted rather a lot from your original wish list of armor as DR etc. New weapons? Good grief, there's a shopping list of that stuff on DM's Guild. More than you could possible want.

Again, WotC is being absolutely clear here. They will not produce stuff that makes other books harder to use. Full stop. A book of weapons impacts monsters. It means that every adventure module going forward has to include some of these new weapons. If flails ignore shields, for example, it means that every monster that uses a flail suddenly nerfs my sword and board fighter - a nerf that is most certainly not needed. And, since only a tiny handful of monsters actually use a shield, this will hurt the players far more than grant them any advantage. Players get REALLY shirty when you start having stuff that impacts their careful build creation. I remember using Dragon Heist and doing a Fall Season adventure which meant that outdoor ranged attacks were at disadvantage due to the winds. The players of the archer character lost his naughty word on me for that. Didn't matter that it would only impact a couple of encounters. He went completely orangutan poop.

And you want to add a shopping list of weapon effects that need to be included in every subsequent publication going forward, plus will impact every previous publication? Yeah, good luck with that.

Whiny players have ruined a lot of game design over the years.

 

[Parmandur]

I have a question. Do we have any idea what percentage of players actually use D&D Beyond at all? Most of my players don't. If a lot of people are using the actual books instead, wouldn't the data they have be less useful in determining what people want out of D&D?

We don't, but WotC has some idea. It is millions upon millions of users.

 

[Hussar]

And, frankly, why would someone using D&D Beyond be particularly different from someone using books? When you have a base that large for looking at trends, the extremes get blurred pretty hard. It's not like you get access to every book just because you have a D&D Beyond account. You still need to buy the digital versions of the books you want to use, just like the PnP player.

While I accept that the D&D Beyond stats aren't exactly definitive, they're probably the closest thing we'll ever see to larger trends that aren't simply confirmation bias. If there was a huge push for feats, wouldn't that show up on the millions and millions of played character sheets? And, by "played" I mean that the character sheet has been leveled up at least once. If there was a huge push for more magical fighter classes, wouldn't that be reflected by the subclass choices? When Champion Fighters are the top choice, hands down over any other option, even if they aren't the overall majority choice, doesn't that mean that that's what most people are playing?

 

[Minigiant]

On thing you can notice about the progression of 5e is the use of old settings and MTG settings. And there is an increasing of the magic level of D&D due to it.

MTG has a higher magic level than standard D&D and classic settings have mostly seen their magic emphasized. Soon the 5e standard will look like Eberron. Tasha's Cauldron is filled to the trim with blatantly magical and high fantastical stuff. Now we are getting Strixhaven which is all casters all the time.

 

[ph0rk]

If there was a huge push for feats, wouldn't that show up on the millions and millions of played character sheets? And, by "played" I mean that the character sheet has been leveled up at least once.

Most characters that level up at least once (1->2) are ineligible for feats, so that's padding the denominator.

Stick with 4+ or, as others have mentioned, 8+, as many using pointbuy are highly motivated to take main stat ASIs first.

Of course, there are far fewer characters at that level, but treating them all the same (thus, removing exposure when we already have a well defined way of measuring it) is either naive or disingenuous.

Non- Variant humans or Custom Lineage characters of levels 1, 2, and 3 are not eligible for feats; so they should be thrown out.

 

[Hussar]

sigh

You don't think that people might have already thought of that and accounted for it? When the dev's flat out say that feats aren't used by the majority of players, maybe, just maybe, they looked at basic things like that?

I mean, heck, are the majority of characters on D&D Beyond 1-3rd level? The level 1 characters would automatically be excluded since they talk about characters that have been leveled up at least once. If only there was some sort of reporting going on for the level spread of characters on D&D Beyond. Oh, right, there is:

So, yeah, we'd need to discount about 1/3 of the character sheets from our calculations. My point is, @ph0rk, the information is there, and the work has already been done.

What evidence do you bring to the table that there is this huge plurality of feat users in the game? Are there some groups that use feats? Yup. That's evidenced by the fact that we have gotten new feats. But a majority? That would mean that the majority of groups are barely getting served. I see no evidence of that.

 

[Hussar]

On thing you can notice about the progression of 5e is the use of old settings and MTG settings. And there is an increasing of the magic level of D&D due to it.

MTG has a higher magic level than standard D&D and classic settings have mostly seen their magic emphasized. Soon the 5e standard will look like Eberron. Tasha's Cauldron is filled to the trim with blatantly magical and high fantastical stuff. Now we are getting Strixhaven which is all casters all the time.

Bwuh?

5e has ALWAYS been super high magic. The PHB has what, 6 out of 33 classes that are non-magical? And that same 4:1 ratio is still true in the game 10 years later. Nothing has changed. 5e has always been Potterverse. The 5e standard was Eberron right from the get go.

I would point out though, that Strixhaven is the first of, what, 5 5e settings - FR, Greyhawk, Ravenloft, Wildemount, Eberron that is leaning that hard on being that high of a high magic setting. So, it's not like more traditional settings haven't been done in 5e.

I guess my point is, 1 supplement and 1 setting is not a trend. Come back when it's the next three supplements and we'll talk.

 

[Minigiant]

Bwuh?

5e has ALWAYS been super high magic. The PHB has what, 6 out of 33 classes that are non-magical? And that same 4:1 ratio is still true in the game 10 years later. Nothing has changed. 5e has always been Potterverse. The 5e standard was Eberron right from the get go.

Nah. The base rules of 5e is high magic. However it only really comes in at the start of Tier 2 and is all over post level 10. The street level isn't very magical nor is the noble and paragon side neccesarily.

Magic the Gathering settings are magic at the lowest of the low. Street thugs have magic weapons. Every farming community has a contingency of clerics, druids, and mages boosting crops. Most knights and cavaliers ride magic mounts.

5e wasnt Potterverse. PCs don't every have functioning magic markets by default.. It is becoming Potterverse. You just aren't noticing it

I would point out though, that Strixhaven is the first of, what, 5 5e settings - FR, Greyhawk, Ravenloft, Wildemount, Eberron that is leaning that hard on being that high of a high magic setting. So, it's not like more traditional settings haven't been done in 5e.

I guess my point is, 1 supplement and 1 setting is not a trend. Come back when it's the next three supplements and we'll talk.

Eberron is blatantly high frequency magic.

Ravenloft has an emphasis on magic gifts, the magic of Darklords and the Mist, and new magical horrors.

Theros is a high magic mythic setting.

FR and Wildemount are magic Christmas tree settings and WOTC goes out it's way to promote their magic sides.

And now Strixhaven, a magic school setting.

The only setting that doesn't use magic as it's selling point in 5e is Greyhawk. And it lacks a setting book.

The 5e PHB, MM, and DMG are moderately high magic.

The 5e setting books and rulesbook are range from high magic to super high magic. With the earlier books being more subtle and the later books more overt