D&D (2024) WotC On One D&D Playtest Survey Results: Nearly Everything Scored 80%+!

In a 40-minute video, WotC's Jeremy Crawford discussed the survey feedback to the 'Character Origins' playtest document. Over 40,000 engaged with the survey, and 39,000 completed it. I've summarised the content of the video below.

High Scorers

• The highest scoring thing with almost 90% was getting a first level feat in your background. This is an example of an experimental thing -- like advantage and disadvantage in the original 5E playtests.
• Almost everything also scored 80%+.

About The Scoring System

• 70% or higher is their passing grade. In the 70s is a thumbs up but tinkering need. 80% means the community wants exactly that and WotC treads carefully not to change it too much.
• In the 60s it's salvageable but it really needs reworking. Below 60% means that there's a good chance they'll drop it, and in the 40s or below it's gone. Nothing was in the 50s or below.

Low Scorers

Only 3 things dipped into the 60s --

• the d20 Test rule in the Rules Glossary (experimental, no surprise)
• the ardling
• the dragonborn

The next UA had a different version of the d20 Test rule, and they expect a very different score when those survey resuts come in.

It was surprising that the dragonborn scored lower than the ardling. The next UA will include new versions of both. The main complaints were:

• the dragonborn's breath weapon, and confusion between the relationship between that dragonborn and the one in Fizban's Treasury of Dragons.
• the ardling was trying to do too much (aasimar-like and beast-person).

The ardling does not replace the aasimar. The next version will have a clearer identity.

Everything else scored in the 70s or 80s.

Some more scores:

• new human 83%
• dwarf, orc, tiefling, elf tied at 80-81%
• gnome, halfling tied at 78%

Future installments of Unearthed Arcana

• The next one will have new ardling and dragonborn, a surprise 'guest', and a new cleric. It will be a shorter document than the previous ones, and the one after that is bigger again. Various class groups.
• Warrior group digs into something teased in a previous UA sidebar -- new weapon options for certain types of characters. Whole new ways to use weapons.
• New rules on managing your character's home base. A new subsystem. Create bases with NPCs connected with them, implementing downtime rules. They're calling it the "Bastion System".
• There will be a total of 48 subclasses in the playtest process.
• New encounter building rules, monster customization options.
• New versions of things which appear in the playtest after feedback.

Other Notes

• Playtests are a version of something with the assumption that if something isn't in the playtest, it's still in the game (eg eldritch blast has not been removed from the game). The mage Unearthed Arcana will feature that.
• Use an object and other actions are still as defined in the current Player's Handbook. The playtest material is stuff that has changed.
• Thief subclass's cunning action does not interact with use an object; this is intentional. Removed because the original version is a 'Mother may I?" mechanic - something that only works if the DM cooperates with you. In general mechanics which require DM permission are unsatisfying. The use an object action might go away, but that decision will be a made via the playtest process.
• The ranger's 1st-level features also relied too heavily on DM buy-in, also wild magic will be addressed.
• If you have a class feature you should be able to use it in the way you expect.
• If something is removed from the game, they will say so.
• Great Weapon Fighting and Sharpshooter were changed because the penalty to the attack roll was not big enough to justify the damage bonus, plus they want warrior classes to be able to rely on their class features (including new weapon options) for main damage output. They don't want any feats to feel mandatory to deal satisfying damage. Feats which are 'must haves' violate their design goals.
• Light Weapon property amped up by removing the bonus action requirement because requiring light weapon users to use their bonus action meant there were a lot of bad combinations with features and spells which require bonus actions. It felt like a tax on light weapon use.
• Class spell lists are still an open question. Focus on getting used to the three big spell lists. Feedback was that it would be nice to still have a class list to summarize what can be picked from the 'master lists'. For the bard that would be useful, for the cleric and wizard not necessary as they can choose from the whole divine or arcane list.

The playtest process will continue for a year.

 

[Clint_L]

Getting back to the actual video released today, I'm not surprised by the results. Most of the stuff was status quo with minor QoL tweaks, and most folks have been pretty happy with 5e. The desire for feats at level 1, and feats being more accessible in general, tracks: folks have long been critical of the fact that while feats are both fun and provide a good avenue to customization, they are effectively locked behind the ASI barrier for most of the game.

The first proposed changes to critical rolls (1s and 20s) were instantly controversial - we already knew that one was going nowhere. The changes to Dragonbourne didn't address the main issue people had with Dragonbourne; I look forward to seeing the new ideas. And I appreciate that they identified a core problem with Aardlings being that they were perceived as replacing Aasimar (which was completely on WotC; that first iteration was really stepping on the toes of Aasimar design). If they are altered to being more of a straight-up animal/humanoid hybrid they'll probably be less controversial, though they still seem like a bit of a "trying to be everything to everyone" race.

Edit: What I mean by that last point is that they are basically saying "Hey, we've got cat-people and turtle-people and several flavours of bird-people , etc., but if none of that is working for you...why just be an Aardling and be whatever fill-in-the-blank-people you want. Which is flexible, but also going to make it hard to build a cohesive Aardling racial story.

 

[Hussar]

Then they shouldn't just use raw proportions! Standard deviation and central tendency are incredibly important. Distilling that down to "70% positive" is outright deceptive statistics!

You do realize that they aren't talking about their methodology right? They're distilling it down for those of us who aren't statististions and really, really, don't care about the math. Why would you assume that not only are they doing it in-house, but also they should lay every point out in the open so that armchair statisticians should be able to second guess every single thing they say?

FFS, take it at face value. Presume, just for a moment, that a multi-million dollar project that has this enormous load of information, just maybe hires a firm that knows what they're doing?

Why the automatic presumption that they are lying or being deceptive? They're telling you flat out that with certain bands they will react in particular ways. Seems pretty straightforward.

Oh, and, they have to be able to distill that huge amount of information in a couple of months. Yeah, I think I'll settle for taking what they say at pretty much face value thanks. Endlessly kvetching about their methodology when you aren't actually privy to it is a bit too far into conspiracy theory territory for me.

 

[Levistus's_Leviathan]

1) Why do only humans get this trait? do other races not suffer acondroplasia? Will I also get to play a Tiny halfling?

Other D&D races have a bunch of defining characteristics, a lot of them magical. Why can't Humans have the unique trait of the dwarfism mutation.

2) Why is achondroplasia the only disorder being mechanically represented?

Because it doesn't make much of a mechanical difference, is really easy to represent mechanically, and is pretty inoffensive to include.

What if I want my character to have gigantism?

You can. But people with gigantism are only a few feet taller than the average person. So they'd still be Medium and there would be basically no mechanical differences.

Or autism?

No, no, no, no, no. As someone that has been diagnosed with Autism Spectrum Disorder, I do not want WotC or any D&D publisher to touch the condition mechanically with a 10 foot pole. No. There is no good reason to every include mechanics for it, and basically any mechanical representation is doomed to be extremely offensive. No. Just no.

or club foot? or mermaid syndrome?

Because those disorders would actually effect day-to-day life in a D&D world, and there might be magical treatments.

The logical conclusion here is for WotC to crack open Grey's Anatomy and release an entire splatbook statting every single physical deformity, even ones whose sufferers have no business adventuring.

No, it isn't.

3)Why would you accept that human size is one of our most variable characteristics, and thus build in rules for smaller people ... but neglect the single most salient aspects of that size difference, i.e. strength, stride length, manual dexterity, girth?

Because small races don't have much of a mechanical difference from medium ones in D&D 5e. And the community overall doesn't like having negative traits in parts of the game they choose for visual appearance.

4)And ... if we're really going to accept reality enough to argue for separate rules for smaller humans, then why are other ways that humans vary off the table? There's a LOT of variance in humanity, male to female variance alone has hundreds of measurable differences.

Because including one genetic condition is not and should not be a slippery slope that requires you to require all of them.

Having six fingers is actually a dominant gene. Having 5 fingers in the real world was originally a genetic mutation. Why do D&D humans have 5 fingers instead of 6?

5)And, finally a from a different angle, we're taking a broad category that literally treated all humans identically, which is a profoundly inclusive option and choice, and are now subdividing it, creating special category based on size for variability. Do we even want to open that door, given that we already have the most inclusive option on the table?

Including more body types of people in the game is inclusive. Saying all humans are medium is the less inclusive option. Not the reverse.

6) I've heard some people argue humans being able to be Small is actually meant to represent children, which would have it's own problems. For one, the character is basically a child soldier. For another, does this mean orcs are born 5ft tall? And what am I to do when the pervy problem player gets his hands on this?

No. There is nothing in the UA Human that suggests that the "Small Humans" are children. It doesn't bring up any problems related to pedophilia or child soldiers.

And if there's a pedophile at your table, the way to "handle this" is to ban them. Kick them out. Not blame WotC for the player's actions.

This, to me, seems like a bunch of tilting at windmills and slippery slope arguments.

 

[Li Shenron]

Yeah, right...

We are a community where every single day we complain about almost every rules not working, propose house rules endlessly, and then kill each other 's ideas, the amount of naysaying overwhelmingly more than agreements. But almost every proposal WotC brings out, as long as it has the official stamp, we approve with "Bulgarian" majorities.

 

[Levistus's_Leviathan]

As a reference point I wonder what the lowest percent things have gotten on playtests is. I'm betting even the worst things produced end up like 40-50% liked.

If you wanted the answer, you could have watched the video. Or just the first few sections of the original post.

The lowest percent was the d20 Test rules, which was in the 60%. And it was one of the 3 things in that percentage range. Things actually performed way higher that you speculate here.

 

[overgeeked]

Edit: What I mean by that last point is that they are basically saying "Hey, we've got cat-people and turtle-people and several flavours of bird-people , etc., but if none of that is working for you...why just be an Aardling and be whatever fill-in-the-blank-people you want. Which is flexible, but also going to make it hard to build a cohesive Aardling racial story.

I'd rather they go with a non-divine beastfolk option. Or the mongrelfolk...but that would probably need a new name.

 

[Levistus's_Leviathan]

I'd rather they go with a non-divine beastfolk option. Or the mongrelfolk...but that would probably need a new name.

They said in the video that they're going to move away from the "divine" part of the Ardling and more into the "beastfolk" part of them in the UA that's coming out tomorrow. So, it looks like you're probably going to get what you want.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

Oh when you're all new, there's no problem because you don't know when there's a mistake or that your improv is a disaster if repeated.

The issue I am describing was when you mix the old and new.

A new DM can use the DMG for vet players because the vet players will move in way and have expectations that the DMG doesn't tell you.

For example, the master manual is not written using the rules of the dungeon master's guide. So if you run straight MM rules new players won't figure out that the monsters are too easy with all the items you tossed out and the game is too easy but veteran players will realize.

Or for players, the PHB only has few fully noob class/subclass.and none of them teach you the magic or skill system.

I’d classify that as an advice problem, which 5e has a lot of.

Do you really think that they are going through 39000 responses by themselves? That they haven't hired a firm to handle things?

Why would you presume that WotC is doing this 100% in house?

They did say “our staff”, to be fair. Might be temps in house.

Because their surveys remain incredibly badly designed and they use primitive, simplistic metrics like raw proportion of positive response rate without, for instance, trying to capture the strength of the feeling or get anything even remotely more statistically manageable than binary yes/no.

Then they shouldn't just use raw proportions! Standard deviation and central tendency are incredibly important. Distilling that down to "70% positive" is outright deceptive statistics!

I think they probably just don’t feel the need to deep dive on their statistics, and just talk overall satisfaction, rather than boring 90% of video viewers with “this is how we derive the overall satisfaction percentage.”

They have a range of 6 options of satisfaction, and read the written feedback for context on the answers. It’s working for them, so…

Tbh the written feedback only needs to even be there for like half of the respondents, mostly the “I vote this bad because those specific thing, but liked everything else about” type stuff.

The stats just need to indicate whether people generally feel good, bad, or indifferent, about a given thing.

Remember, they aren’t trying to scientifically prove that 5e is cool and good. They’re gauging interest and satisfaction in options for a game they have quite a lot of experience managing and creating new content for.

 

[UngeheuerLich]

Like I said in an earlier thread:


I maintain that the final draft is already written, and that these "survey results" are more about generating buzz and excitement than actually getting feedback. It's a great marketing strategy. (Much better than the "we fixed your game for you, you're welcome" approach they used back in 2008.)

So meh, I'm not surprised that they announced a high-but-plausible result because that is going to generate the strongest favorable reaction. I think they are figuring out how many people still need convincing....not how many changes still need to be made.

Or maybe I'm just really jaded in my old age.

Wow... that is really really sad.

 

[darjr]

You can assert anything you want. Proof matters.