D&D (2024) What does Backward compatibility mean to you?

[Micah Sweet]

And, lo and behold...it has worked. Thatwhy they are keeping with the same essential system after 10 years and for the foreseeable future.

How many people have to complain about something before you can reasonably say a significant percentage of users don't think it's worked?

 

[Maxperson]

All of those Feat effects are nice, amd as I said they are at least equivalent. But all Feat abilities are more situational and specific than bumping again attribute, which is always handy, repeatedly. Beng 5% better in one's weak spots is very nice. I've rolled all odd numbers for abilities and played a standard Human: getting +6 to attributes was much nicer than a Feat, and came up literally all the time.

Yes. Corner cases like rolling 6 odds numbers will bump a normal human up and if I did that, or even 5 stats, I'd consider playing one. Short of that, though, a feat is better.

Also, feats are not quite as situational as you make them out to be. They are used quite often, and are more often useful than the +1. When a use for a feat comes up, it is almost always successful or has great impact on the roll. The +1 is rarely useful as it only helps 1 time out of 20 on average. That means that you need to encounter 20x more situations that rely on say con or int, than the feat does in order to equal the feat. That virtually never happens. I also haven't even mentioned the feats that give you +1 to a stat. Those modify that odd stat and give you the +1 AND a feat that is more useful than the +1 it gave or you got from being normal human.

 

[Parmandur]

How many people have to complain about something before you can reasonably say a significant percentage of users don't think it's worked?

I dunno, about a million, two million? Which is way more than even signed up for the DndNext Subreddit or any other discussion forum. The proof is in the play, and in sales.

I work in customer support, and know from the numbers that even 98% satisfaction can mean a lot of grouchy noises. Bit that noise is not necessarily representative of any broad disasfaction.

 

[Parmandur]

Yes. Corner cases like rolling 6 odds numbers will bump a normal human up and if I did that, or even 5 stats, I'd consider playing one. Short of that, though, a feat is better.

Also, feats are not quite as situational as you make them out to be. They are used quite often, and are more often useful than the +1. When a use for a feat comes up, it is almost always successful or has great impact on the roll. The +1 is rarely useful as it only helps 1 time out of 20 on average. That means that you need to encounter 20x more situations that rely on say con or int, than the feat does in order to equal the feat. That virtually never happens. I also haven't even mentioned the feats that give you +1 to a stat. Those modify that odd stat and give you the +1 AND a feat that is more useful than the +1 it gave or you got from being normal human.

The + 1 Feats are half Feats, they give an ability that is only worth half an ASI.

I have never seen any reason to believe that the balance is off: that's why more people choose ASIs.

 

[Maxperson]

But the math only cares about damage, attack bonus, hit points, and AC, unfortunately. That's WotC's idea of "combat balance". From what I understand, they've basically told us that themselves.

That's not relevant. Feats are useful in and out of combat and hitting one more time out of 20 swings isn't as good as the Luck feat, Great Weapon Master, Alert, etc. The game exists outside of combat, so the players have to weigh combat things AND out of combat things to see which is better.

 

[Maxperson]

The + 1 Feats are half Feats, they give an ability that is only worth half an ASI.

No. They give an ability that's supposedly only worth half an ASI. WotC is as good at balancing feats as they are at CR.

 

[Parmandur]

No. They give an ability that's supposedly only worth half an ASI. WotC is as good at balancing feats as they are at CR.

CR was an impossible ask from the beginning, and their balance there is actually better when you realize that the players are, by statistical design, the House...and the House always wins in the long run. But it has to feel swingy to keep the gamble exciting.

But with Feats I haven't seen any compelling evidence that the balance is anything other than tight.

 

[Micah Sweet]

I dunno, about a million, two million? Which is way more than even signed up for the DndNext Subreddit or any other discussion forum. The proof is in the play, and in sales.

I work in customer support, and know from the numbers that even 98% satisfaction can mean a lot of grouchy noises. Bit that noise is not necessarily representative of any broad disasfaction.

By that metric, I'm not even sure that any complaints about 5e are valid. Is that why you seem to be in favor of everything WotC does?

 

[Micah Sweet]

CR was an impossible ask from the beginning, and their balance there is actually better when you realize that the players are, by statistical design, the House...and the House always wins in the long run. But it has to feel swingy to keep the gamble exciting.

But with Feats I haven't seen any compelling evidence that the balance is anything other than tight.

Then why are they removing DM-side crits, which explicitly makes combat less swingy?

 

[Yaarel]

Then that wasn't backwards compatible.

Still not backwards compatible.

If it was backwards compatible, you would not have needed to find a tool or move anything. The new Windows version would have just done everything for you and all you would have needed to do was to run the app. Backwards compatibility is a goal of a lot of programs that fail to achieve it.

The app did eventually work "as is". The problem was getting it into the new operating system.