WotC Survey Result: Classes OK, Eberron Needs Work

WotC has posted the latest D&D survey results. The survey covered the character classes not included in the previous survey - the barbarian, bard, monk, paladin, sorcerer, and warlock - and the recent Eberron material. Overall, it reports general satisfaction, with concerns in specific areas. The big ticket issues were sorcerer options, monk Way of the Four Elements opton, and more sweeping issues with the Eberron stuff, icluding the warforged and artificer. Mike Mearls says, but doesn't announce, that "I expect that you’ll see some revisions to the Eberron material before the end of the year."

The survey report is as follows:

Overall, the barbarian, bard, monk, paladin, sorcerer, and warlock all graded very well. The areas of concern were limited to specific areas of the classes.

For instance, we’ve heard consistent feedback that the sorcerer doesn’t offer enough options within the class. Not everyone is excited about the wild mage, thus leaving some players with only the dragon sorcerer as an option. It’s no coincidence that we showed off a favored soul option for the sorcerer in Unearthed Arcana. Plus, we have another sorcerer option on tap for that article series.

We also saw some dissatisfaction with the monk’s Way of the Four Elements option. Feedback indicates that this path focuses too much on adding more ways to spend ki points, rather than giving new options or maneuvers that a monk can use without tapping into that resource. We’re doing some monk design right now that used the Way of the Four Elements as an option, so we’ve shifted that future work in response to that feedback.

Like with the first wave of class feedback, things remain very positive. The issues we’ve seen look like they can be resolved by trending toward what people liked in our future design. Nothing stood out as needing serious changes.

The Eberron material, as you can expect for stuff that is in draft form, needs some more refinement. The changeling will likely have its ability scores and Shapechanger ability tweaked. The shifter scored well, so expect a few shifts there (pardon the pun) but nothing too dramatic.

The warforged had the most interesting feedback. I think we’re going to take a look at presenting a slightly different approach, one that ties back into the original race’s armored body options to make them feel more like innately equipped characters.

The artificer still needs a good amount of work, so that one will go back to the drawing board. I think the class needs a more unique, evocative feature that does a better job of capturing a character who crafts and uses custom items. We played it too conservatively in our initial design.

I expect that you’ll see some revisions to the Eberron material before the end of the year. Unearthed Arcana is proving a useful resource in giving new game content every month while giving us the chance to test drive mechanics.

Thank you all for taking part in these surveys and making our job of producing great RPG content much easier. I’m looking forward to seeing how our work evolves and hope you enjoy the option of weighing in on our work.

 

[Celtavian]

This is a side track, but...

...for NPC clerics, perhaps.

...for PC clerics, absolutely not.

Having Clerics being "vastly different" based on what god they serve only leads to god cherrypicking. And that, in my opinion, is far worse.

Even in 3rd edition, where it arguably matters little which god you choose, the Forgotten Realms gods were seen as a menu, where you would pick an alignment and then choose the best combination of favored weapon and domain ability for that alignment, with little regard to the actual deity.

This is because D&D offers so many deities that differs so little. (Meaning, there are always a dozen deities that work for any given character concept).

In your home-brew campaign world, perhaps, where you have a dozen gods total, tops, then perhaps your wish would work.

But not in the popular settings with 100+ gods.

Balance trumping creativity is not what I prefer.

You are right that power gamers would parse the deities looking for the best option. That would be annoying. It's too bad the foibles of humans require too much focus on balance to prevent exploitation putting a damper on creativity. It would take too much work to make that many specialty priests balanced with creative options. Then again the FR has way too many gods. They could cut that list by 75% and not miss many of them.

 

[Celtavian]

The Beastmaster isn't too far away from being a good option. I was calculating some of the damage output of the Beastmaster. It isn't nearly as bad as it appears at first glance. The problem is the lack of balance with the pet options. The best pet is a wolf or a giant bat. The wolf doesn't seem to bad.

The mismanagement of bonus actions with the class caused problems. If you allow the pet to attack independently allowing the ranger to give it an extra attack as a bonus action, I think you would fix the class and keep it balanced.

 

[Ahrimon]

I wish I hadn't missed this survey. I would have told them that I think the blade pact warlock needs some love. I don't think that it is underpowered, just that there isn't enough incentive to be in melee over ranged. Melee is almost always deadlier than ranged so there should be something to the class to give it the incentive to be in melee over eldritch bolt spam from a range. The essentials hex blade, the inspiration for the blade pact imo, had some nice weapon using powers that could make some nice invocations. Something to make wading into the melee worthwhile.

 

[Greg K]

This is a side track, but...

...for NPC clerics, perhaps.

...for PC clerics, absolutely not.

Having Clerics being "vastly different" based on what god they serve only leads to god cherrypicking. And that, in my opinion, is far worse.

That it is worse for PCs is just that-- your opinion.

Even in 3rd edition, where it arguably matters little which god you choose, the Forgotten Realms gods were seen as a menu, where you would pick an alignment and then choose the best combination of favored weapon and domain ability for that alignment, with little regard to the actual deity.

This is because D&D offers so many deities that differs so little. (Meaning, there are always a dozen deities that work for any given character concept).

In your home-brew campaign world, perhaps, where you have a dozen gods total, tops, then perhaps your wish would work.

But not in the popular settings with 100+ gods.

For you, that might be true. For myself and people I know, it is not true.

However, it is possible to give the tools for and to support differentiation. The nice thing about 2e Priests of specific mythoi (which was in the 2e PHB so not all PHB classes were covered in the 5e PHB, imo) was that clerics did not have access to all spells. Their spell list consisted of only a small selection of shared spells plus spells from their deity's major and minor spheres (spheres are similar in to 3e domains). Plus other class abilities differed by deity. It allowed for a lot more differentiation between clerics of deities.

My preferred edition of D&D as a DM is 3e with the caveat that it is based upon the inclusion of several DMG options, Unearthed Arcana options, and third party support (out of the box, I think 5e is a better base and I would, probably, have fewer house rules as a whole). However, in my opinion, 3e' cleric class sucked in comparison 2e priests of specific mythoi/ Complete Priest's Handbook specialty priests Part of the problem is access to all (or nearly all cleric spells) on the class list. Balance issues with the 3e cleric aside, 5e's cleric with its broad domains and who spells are handled sucks even worse, in my opinion .

The saving grace for 3e's clerics were UA's Spontaneous Divine casting variant, the DMG variant: tailored spell list (in theory), and the UA cloistered cleric variant. Spontaneous Divine severely cut back on spells known by the cleric. The DMG variant: tailored spell lists by deity. The problem with the 3e tailored spell list is that, unlike 2e's cleric spells which were broken down by spheres, 3e places the burden on the DMG and, really, offers no starting point beyond tailor the list to domains. The easiest application is to use the domain spells granted by the deity and come up with a handful of shared cleric spells regardless of deity. The tailored spell list also works great for determining which spells the Spontaneous Divine caster knows. Finally, the cloistered cleric was also helpful as a means for building non-martial clerics.

As for players cherry picking individual parts, the solution is not to let them do it. In my opinion, players should not be choosing the abilities granted by the deities. The deities of the setting are a setting/campaign level decision and, as such, so are the class abilities and spells of their clerics. Therefore, they should be part of the campaign designed by DMs or, for published campaigns, the designers. As such, I want more flexibility in the class and DM tools to help build and tailor class the cleric class to mechanically differentiate clerics of deities.

A good supplement Deities and Demigods supplement focused upon deities from both popular real world pantheons and published settings (possibly a separate one for the Realms) and the abilities and priesthoods of their clerics could, potentiallly, fix your issue with clerics being to samey while at the same time providing homebrew DMs more tools and flexibility (including less broad domains).

 

[Greg K]

Balance trumping creativity is not what I prefer.

You are right that power gamers would parse the deities looking for the best option. That would be annoying.

My favorite solution is not to play with such players and to let them find another table. It saves each of us aggravation and what will not be a good experience for the other.

It would take too much work to make that many specialty priests balanced with creative options. Then again the FR has way too many gods. They could cut that list by 75% and not miss many of them.

Forgotten Realms is a big mess between TSR, the novels, and WOTC's handling. Back in the day, many of the deities were based upon real world religions which could be addressed a good Deities and Demigods supplements. The major Realms unique deities and their clerics could be handled in Deities and Demigods or a FR specific supplement (some of the lesser known ones), but yeah many could just be removed.

 

[Celtavian]

My favorite solution is not to play with such players and to let them find another table. It saves each of us aggravation and what will not be a good experience for the other.



Forgotten Realms is a big mess between novels dating back to TSR, the novels, and WOTC's handling. Back in the day, many of the deities were based upon real world religions which could be addressed a good Deities and Demigods supplements. The major Realms unique deities and their clerics could be handled in Deities and Demigods or a FR specific supplement (some of the lesser known ones), but yeah many could just be removed.

Glad to see another fan of unique clerics. 2E Faiths and Avatars will always be one of my favorite D&D books. The amount of material in that book was amazing. It had equal parts useful fluff and crunch. I wish someone would pull that book out at WotC and update the crunch for 5E while keeping most of the fluff.

 

[Greg K]

What's wrong with the monk?

From my perspective, the same thing that was wrong with the monk in 3e. Several things carried over from earlier editions and some introduced in 3e should have, in my opinion, been handled with a PrC in 3e and a subclass in 5e. I am looking at things like Tongue of the Sun and Moon, Empty Body, Timeless Body and Perfect Self are a specific type of monk, but not appropriate for monks in many Hong Kong action flicks of the 70's and 80's. Yet they are annoyingly hard-coded abilities.

 

[redrick]

One thing I haven't seen upthread about the idea of an artificer as a new class, vs a subclass of something else, is that subclasses are specifically meant to be additive, and are almost always chosen several sessions after character creation. That last part is my favorite thing about subclasses, as opposed to class kits from AD&D 2e. Sure, you can create your level 1 rogue knowing you plan to play an assassin (and folks who are big into optimization will definitely want to plan ahead), but you can also just create your level 1 rogue, see how it feels to play it, and then wait until level 3 to pick a subclass. I love the delayed decision making.

So a majorly separate subclass, which involved replacing parent class features with new subclass features, wouldn't work nearly as well, and it would be very strange for your level 3 wizard to suddenly say, "ok, now I'm an artificer, so I suddenly get all these new abilities and proficiencies, lose some of my other abilities, and play totally differently!"

(Compare to the eldritch knight. Our eldritch knight still plays more less like a fighter, except he can cast the shield spell and use fire bolt cantrips at range instead of trying to fire a short bow. But, most of the time, he hits things with his great-sword.)

I hate the "thing x is more powerful than thing y" parts of these surveys, but, whatever. Happy to see that wizards is still releasing them and asking for feedback, and I like the responses that I've seen to the feedback.

I don't think Wizards would go to the trouble of collecting and processing these surveys every few months if they didn't plan to, at some point, use that information to sell us something new, but, who knows. Maybe the player engagement and modest online support with UA and campaign rules supplement PDFs are enough for them.

 

[ad_hoc]

From my perspective, the same thing that was wrong with the monk in 3e. Several things carried over from earlier editions and some introduced in 3e should have, in my opinion, been handled with a PrC in 3e and a subclass in 5e. I am looking at things like Tongue of the Sun and Moon, Empty Body, Timeless Body and Perfect Self are a specific type of monk, but not appropriate for monks in many Hong Kong action flicks of the 70's and 80's. Yet they are annoyingly hard-coded abilities.

Kung fu action flicks don't usually get to that power level.

I do disagree with you about Timeless Body. That is a common trope in kung fu movies.

 

[tuxgeo]

< snip > Cleric is boring, but not weak. They've almost always been that way save for in 2E when Faiths and Avatars made them highly interesting and unique by way of specialty priests. I've always felt clerics needed to be written with a specific god in mind. The generic cleric one size fits all domains makes them uninteresting. Clerics should be as different as the religions they represent. . . .

That's the way I'm leaning, too.

If WotC were to add a new cleric variant (I cannot honestly call this a subclass) having a restricted spell list that is only about one-third to one-half as large as the spell list for the standard cleric, but which automatically gains new spells based on deity at defined variant-cleric levels, and which has its choice of domains limited to the domains that its chosen deity offers, then I think that would give the game a much greater variety of clerics having different feels in play.

I'm thinking that the variant cleric should have access by default to all of the generic Cantrips except "Sacred Flame"; but there should also be almost as wide a variety of additional attack cantrips as there are 4E 1st-level At-Will attack spells, and the variant clerics should get one attack cantrip based on chosen Domain:
• Tempest clerics could get something like 4E's "Singing Strike," dealing thunder damage;
• Life clerics could get something like 4E's "Sacred Flame," which differs from the 5E version by buffing allies;
• Light clerics could get the generic 5E cleric's "Sacred Flame" (straight radiant damage);
• Clerics of Courage (if we get additional Domains) or War (Torm?) could get something courage-based like 4E's "Gaze of Defiance"; etc.