WotC WotC Winter 2026 D&D Community Survey

[Zaukrie]

A lot of hot takes in this thread are 180 degrees from what I think..... Not surprising.

 

[cranberry]

I told them everything they didn't want to hear. I doubt they'll care.

Which is fine, because I don't either.

 

[Charlaquin]

Did anyone else only get 5 or 6 questions? Very short survey.

Completely assumes we're all playing the current edition, too. I honestly answered that I'd played D&D within the last week but it sure wasn't 5e!

Yes, it was very short

 

[Lanefan]

I mean just speaking personally... if you were to put myself and @Lanefan together in a room to help the team "fix" D&D... we'd absolutely kill each other. We wouldn't agree on a gosh-darned thing and they'd throw us out of the room for arguing continuously and wasting everyone's time, LOL!

Sign me up. Sounds like fun!

 

[sevenbastard]

Thos is why you cant have a robust playtest. You would need to complete an edition, mass playtest for a year or two and then release it. But that year or two playtest would kill enthusiasm.

Did the D&D Next playtest kill enthusiasm for 5e? They did the playtest in early 2012 and the PHB came out in August of 2014.

A 5e to 5.5e playtest could have done the same thing and probably would have built more goodwill and solved some of the wrinkles.

 

[Tigris]

See, it's hot takes like this one why I put zero faith in the D&D Community for playtesting anything. Even a rudimentary reading of the 24 PHB would show how the Dance Bard is the weakest bard subclass and barely does what a monk does in its sleep. It's DPS is too low to be a martial, lacks any sort of usable defense in melee, and if you are falling back on your magic to fill the gap then you already lost because you would get more out of a lore or glamour bard. You don't even get a real 2nd attack unless you are burning bardic inspiration (and your best use of it doesn't trigger you 2nd attack) and you are MAD as hell because you need Charisma for spells and Dex for combat and can't even benefit from True Strike.

Dance Bard only works when you multiclass it with monk and realize you are going to be a weak combatant and mediocre caster. Which is on point for bard.

Well I would argue this also has to do with what people value. And that what people express as vibes may not always be as well formulated.

I think the "they do stuff similar like monks, so monks are less unique" part of the dancer is something one can understand. I agree the dancer bard will not play like a monk overall, and if you want to play it like a monk it is weak, but it does have overlap with the monk making them less unique.


And about what people value: I think many people, me included, see the dance bard not as weak, because we value other strengths, and DO NOT want to play it as a martial DPS. For me the dance bard has several nice parts:

• You start with +1 AC at level 3, get +2 AC at level 4 and +3 AC at level 8 (and maybe more if you get ever a tome of charisma), and you normally want Dex anyway (16 start) for AC so I dont see the class too MAD
• You get an unarmed weapon attack for free, by things you do anyway. So its just free potential damage on top, while for other subclasses you need to sacrifice ressources to get any bonus out of it.
• You can grabble for free. And since its a saving throw, its just -2 lower at max than for another character.
• You can grabble your allies and they can just choose to fail the saving throw. So if you start before the fighter, and the enemy is too far away, you can grabble the fighter, dance with him some squares, and let them go, so the fighter got some free extra movement.
• Initiative buff for everyone is considered really strong, so a good use of the ressource.
• You can actually spam your ressources (including low level spells) if you want to get some extra oomph out of an encounter. You can use as a bonus action and as an action an unarmed attack (and a grapple), so up to 2 extra attacks (in addition to your normal casting) per turn + you also grant allies some movement.

Did the D&D Next playtest kill enthusiasm for 5e? They did the playtest in early 2012 and the PHB came out in August of 2014.

Well I would say so many people were really dissapointed with the changes made after the playtest and this showed.

In the first 2 years 5E was the worst selling WotC D&D edition ever. Only Critical Role and Stranger things saved 5Es numbers. We often forget this when looking at 5Es success it had years after.

 

[sevenbastard]

I mean...it did, though?

Did anyone outside of WOTC playtesters see the stealth rules before the books were released? Internal playtest and public playtest are very different things.

 

[Saracenus]

I did my part and took the survey. I used bullet points in the free form section and got 9 or 10 ideas out to them.

My main push was provide rules and tools options (and support for them in D&D Beyond) so I and my players can play the D&D we want to play. RAW is great for Organized Play but for all the talk about "the game is yours, play it your way" There is remarkably little support beyond combat (a perenial problem for all versions of D&D).

The other half of that is make the Ui/Ux and the backend of D&D Beyond support the rules published and our homebrew as well. As I pointed out balance is all well and fine but what would destroy someones elses campaign might be correct (and/or necissary) in the game I and my players am running.

I am not as chapped as some here about WotC (Hasbro is a different story) but I put my feelings for the company in the neutral mid-range.

 

[Brendan Byrd]

Trust?

Captain Dylan Hunt: “I trust Tyr to be Tyr".

 

[Lanefan]

D&D is notoriously hard to playtest for. A video game can offer a slice of concept as a beta to let the devs get feedback on what they are looking for specifically (lag, design issues, balance problems). D&D can't. Some people will white room design. Some will min max. Some will roll up a character and play. And what gets played, the DM involved and the other players all factor.

Playtest should include stress test, meaning the bolded is exactly what you want people to do: try to break the system. If they succeed, then there's a design flaw somewhere that you need to fix or a loophole you need to plug.