D&D 5E What To Do With Racial ASIs?

[Charlaquin]

D&D Beyond controls for builds not being used, and controlled that way has a sample size of tens of Millions of characters.

Even granted maximum pessimism about Beyond's data, and we assumed that all D&D Beyond character builds were tests, it would remain significant that 3 out of 5 of the tens of Millions of such builds didn't bother with Feats still.

Also, like... I don’t think the “most of them were probably test builds” argument really helps the case against most players not using Feats. 5e is not so complex that a test build is necessary if you aren't planning to use Feats. I would imagine, then, that most test builds would have them.

 

[Chaosmancer]

It really seems to come back to this instinctive distrust and suspicion of anything even remotely smelling of "corporate".

Which hey, that is a good instinct. But, if they are all lying to you about everything, and the only data they have is obviously false and twisted to their lies, and you aren't willing to shell out the $10,000 to hire a different corporation who won't lie to you about the "truth"....

Well, then stop asking for evidence, because no one has it and no one ever will.

 

[Maxperson]

First, D&D Beyond was not written by, nor is it owned by, WotC or Hasbro.

Aside from that point, that's quite an accusation you just made. Any evidence?

In the absence of that, I'll assume that people who are smart enough to write D&D Beyond are smart enough to scrub their own data. And that you are stating blatant, data-less conjecture as some kind of established fact.

No matter who made it, their numbers are complete bupkis. They've designed their platform to be irrelevant when predicting what percentage of users use feats. A huge number can't even use feats.

 

[Guest 6801328]

No matter who made it, their numbers are complete bupkis. They've designed their platform to be irrelevant when predicting what percentage of users use feats. A huge number can't even use feats.

That's bordering on paranoid.

 

[Guest 6801328]

It really seems to come back to this instinctive distrust and suspicion of anything even remotely smelling of "corporate".

Which hey, that is a good instinct. But, if they are all lying to you about everything, and the only data they have is obviously false and twisted to their lies, and you aren't willing to shell out the $10,000 to hire a different corporation who won't lie to you about the "truth"....

Well, then stop asking for evidence, because no one has it and no one ever will.

No kidding. I mean, healthy skepticism is fine, but "That data comes from a corporation, so I'm going to utterly reject it and instead rely on my gut feel" is just nutty. (And I can barely restrain myself from launching into an entirely relevant political diatribe.)

 

[Maxperson]

That's bordering on paranoid.

Dude. They've made it so that NONE of the base accounts matter for determining who uses feats. None. By giving one single feat to select from, they've guaranteed that all feat users will simply select no feats and then add them later. Your dogmatic faith in WotC does you credit, I suppose.

 

[Maxperson]

No kidding. I mean, healthy skepticism is fine, but "That data comes from a corporation, so I'm going to utterly reject it and instead rely on my gut feel" is just nutty. (And I can barely restrain myself from launching into an entirely relevant political diatribe.)

This I'm sure refers to your Strawman of my argument. Are you even capable of stating my argument as I put it forth and responding to it without a fallacy? The sheer number of fallacies you use in your responses to me shows that you don't have faith in your position. If your position was strong enough to counter mine, you wouldn't need these fallacies.

 

[Myrdin Potter]

Maxperson is using the common rhetorical trick of stating a truth that is fairly accepted - in this case don’t trust everything a corporate spokesperson says at face value - and then extrapolating it to a specific incidence - in this case the statements by WoTC and D&D Beyond (fandom.com) - and saying that a = b.

This is obviously incorrect.

The logical basis he derives as proof is the some people at WoTC have an agenda against feats because they add bloat. This is an assumption of intent without basis in fact. The general rule that mods seem to have here is that you should take people posting in good faith unless there is proof they are operating otherwise.

He further tries to discredit the D&D Beyond data by using the SRD only approach when DMs can share their books with players (12 or more) and many people buy at least the PHB on D&
D Beyond (really cheap with the coupon from the Essentials Set, for example).

He finally threatens to report to the mods people that laugh at his logic train when a very valid assumption is that he is trying to be funny.

Plus, this whole discussion is a sidetrack from the thread itself.

I will take it at face value that he has strong feelings on feats and is expressing himself from an emotional base. My normal conclusion would be trolling, but if I instead go the nicer way, there is no way to actually have a further discussion with him on the topic as he is arguing from emotion and rejecting counter arguments from an emotional stand.

Feats are really tricky to design and lead to many rules questions. I can fully see many people not using them as they are optional and I can actually believe that WoTC is being careful about them. That is a logical conclusion. Not the seemingly paranoid imaginings beimg presented.

BTW - corporate spokespeople almost always speak the literal truth with what they say.

 

[Parmandur]

Um, not really. A huge number(possibly most) of the users use the base program, which is why the leading subclasses were primarily what the base program offers. So you have huge number of their users who are UNABLE to use feats, which skews the results terribly.

They've basically designed a system to skew the results in favor of their narrative.

They have over the past couple years released stats for various buckets, including stats for all-in users. People who have literally paid for everything still favor the basic Subclass options, non-variant Humans, and don't use Feats.

 

[Parmandur]

No kidding. I mean, healthy skepticism is fine, but "That data comes from a corporation, so I'm going to utterly reject it and instead rely on my gut feel" is just nutty. (And I can barely restrain myself from launching into an entirely relevant political diatribe.)

One of the many things that amaze me about these discussions is the (arrogant?) assumption that the people releasing D&D Beyond data are idiots and haven't done even the simplest, most obvious data scrubbing.

Inconvenient facts must be discredited! Corporate lies!