WotC WotC Winter 2026 D&D Community Survey

[Zardnaar]

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.

I'm talking about in essence a full release then playtest.

Say pdf phb 2014, play test for years or two to iron the bugs out then full release.

A year would have found a lot of issues the fixed in 5.5. Eg certain feats and classes.

Same thing for 5.5 ranger problems were spotted fast.

They wont do that because money. Generally they address previous problems then create new ones. 2E-5.5 at least.

 

[Zardnaar]

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.

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.

You jeep pushing tgat but dont seem to draw the conclusion that was 4Es fault.

3E peopke were enthusiastic leading up to it and post 3E.

4E drove punters straight into the arms of Paizo and 2013 the RPG market was anemic less than 10% of peak 5E size.

4E sold well on release, burned up 3Es good will and promptly dropped. Hell they made the decision to do essentials 2009 one year after release.

You dont even have hard numbers. WotC claimed 4E presales iirc were the best not that it outsold 3E on release.

Its not rocket science.

Mearls has directly contradicted you here on ENworld lol. He was there you weren't.

 

[Zardnaar]

Age matters a lot, depending on age people value your oppinion or not, because you are in the target audience or not.

This. Pretty much everyone here isn't in the target demographic. We're 25% lumped in with the under 18s iirc. So Half that or less.

 

[Zardnaar]

All I can say is D&D is moving in a direction I do not care to follow once again. They lost me during 4E and are again losing me with 5.5.

Seems for one thing they care more about age than whether you play or not - the latter should have been the first question, followed up by WHICH version are you playing? Then WHY that version? I think age should be the least of their concerns, if at all.

They care if you're buying product. They dont care if you're playing older editions.

 

[darjr]

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.

I think your plain wrong. It sold so well from day one that they ran out PHBs and had to stop the printing of the DMG to print more. I think we've been down this road before. At this point you're going to have to substantiate this claim and cite.

 

[Scribe]

Some intern might end up tabulating the comments in the text entry to see why scores ended up high or low.

It won't be an Intern, it will be an AI agent.

 

[Parmandur]

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

Yes, they were in the UA exactly as they ended up in the final rules, well over a year before release?

 

[Tigris]

I think your plain wrong. It sold so well from day one that they ran out PHBs and had to stop the printing of the DMG to print more. I think we've been down this road before. At this point you're going to have to substantiate this claim and cite.

We have the numbers from last year from a WotC talk. D&D in total sold each 29 million in the first and 2nd year of 5E. Which is absolutely god awfull, because 3.5 sold 25 at the end of its life and we know that 3, 3.5 and 4 had way stronger sales in the beginning.


Mike Mearls LITERALLY had to compare the 5e sales with the only year where not a single new D&D product was released to make the numbers look good "we doubled the numbers" yes compared to a year with nothing.


Also what does sound better? "We have to delay DMG because its not ready" or "omg we sold so much more than we estimated that we have to print the other book later"?


Here is the post linked in which the yearly numbers of the sales were given D&D 4E - WotC, DDI, 4E, and Hasbro: Some History


We have the numbers we dont need to believe marketing anymore. Even in the linked interview you can hear that in 2013 WotC was close to losing D&D, so of course they make their Marketing in 2014 sound like 5E is a huge success.


Also Mearls of course want to make it look like his work did well, he is profiting from people thinking that 5E did well from the beginning, that sounds better than "the lead designer of the 2 least successfull half versions of D&D"

 

[Lanefan]

Age matters a lot, depending on age people value your oppinion or not, because you are in the target audience or not.

For something as big-tent as D&D the target audience should be either "everyone" or "every adult".

 

[Zardnaar]

For something as big-tent as D&D the target audience should be either "everyone" or "every adult".

Its not though. Appeal to e eryone often means appealing to no one.

Its aimed at educated middle class adults age 18-mid 30s.
And theyre pushing online hard.