Quote from Geann >>

Way back when, a guy asked me (slightly paraphrased) if there were any People of Color that attended High School with me.  We were in North Carolina at the time, and this was a significant issue there.  I considered it.  I went to High School in Colorado Springs.  I couldn't remember any People of Color, but I was pretty sure there were some.  I said "All I remember is that I went to High School with normal people."

That's when I started playing roleplaying games, and the game I started with was the first edition of AD&D.  Were we any more "ist" than other folks?  No.  Any less?  Possibly.  People who play roleplaying games tend to be pretty bright, they tend to like fiction of all sorts, and most my friends were heavy readers.  I learned a lot about philosophy from Azimov and Heinlein.  I loved Star Trek, which was notable for pushing "racial" boundaries and had a lot to say about gender roles, national stereotypes, and how ordinary people could do extraordinary things.

When some fool from the press corps shows up for a sound bite, they don't want to hear a rep from WotC give a meaningful comment about how "terrible" D&D is and always has been, they want to hear "Oh yes, it was horrible."  The person actually talking usually adds "but we are working on it all the time." and that part of their sentence will be edited out.

So in a game in which there actually are Races, unlike on Earth, were we have species, the question is, are all Dwarves alike?  Is every one of them dour, gruff, and tactless?  Are they all strong, and tough, live underground and know everything there is to know about stonework, mining and crafting?  Honestly, that would make them pretty dull to me.

From the very beginning of the game, the conceit was that Humans were the most "flexible" of all races, and that's why they were the dominant race for all settings.  The problem has always been that being "flexible" is inferior to being powerful.  All the other races got powers, and Humans were fairly rarely played.  In my years of playing, I have seen very few Human player characters.  Mountain Dwarves and Half-Elves are pretty much the only races that get 4 points worth of scores as a benefit, along with all the other powers they get.  That makes them, along with Drow, the Master Races, and that's horrible.

5th edition Humans come in a version that gets one point to each score, which is trivial and I still don't see any in play, and a Feat at first level plus 2 score points.  I do see some of those now and again, mostly for "power builds" that a lot of people despise.  They still aren't anywhere near as good as a Half-Elf.  Darkvision in and of itself is worthy of a Feat.

There are classes and sub-classes that need work.  I've pondered the issues with many of them.  The idea of giving all Warrior types versions of the Battle Master maneuvers has merit.  Armor needs to do more than just make it harder for the target to get hit.  In the real world, armor also made it more difficult to damage someone who was protected, and for armor to remain useful through the Tiers, it needs to scale in some way.  Currently, Studded Leather Armor (which has never really existed. the real thing was usually called "Cur Bolis") has only one less point of armor class below that of Plate with a character who has a 20 Dex.  Sorcerers could use a few spells for each bloodline that were unique to them, and possibly an slightly expanded spell list over all.  Wizard have too many schools, there are far too many Domains for Divine casters, and the Hexblade clearly needs to be re-tuned or removed.

The rules for resting aren't working.  Short Rests need to be a passive thing, in which all "short rest" abilities are recovered after one hour of downtime no matter what light activity has been going on.  Casting Cantrips isn't strenuous, the very idea that at will abilities are a strain to use is silly.  Simply requiring Concentration for abilities like using Sorcerery points to create Spell slots would solve a lot of nonsense.  The actual relationship between Sleep and Exhaustion needs to be more clearly defined, because Elves don't need to sleep, and yet there is a school of thought that says they never-the-less become exhausted after a while.

I don't expect any of these things to be addressed any time soon.  Not in a "5.5" edition, and probably not all of them in 6th edition.  Also, I've lived to see a lot of changes in American culture in my time, so who knows what standards will be like when 6th edition rolls out.  They may decide to remove all races, cultures, genders, and re-write all the lore.  I note that even now, Alignment is under attack, and there have been so many pages of argument about how to replace it.  It can't be removed, not without doing with 4th edition did, and creating a game that "Just isn't D&D".

I have yet to play in a campaign where there are not 1-2 human characters, this myth that no one plays them is just that. 

Short rest is flawed but good, you can be interrupted which means as a dm my players better be absolutely sure that there is nothing around them when they take that short rest. I have interrupted a number of short rests with encounters because it made no sense not to. 

there are not too many subclasses, choice is good and certainly in my campaigns I limit that choice. I will state up front these races, classes and sub classes are not available to pick at all (I once ran a campaign where there where no clerics because all the gods had been imprisoned) 

Quote from Scarloc_Stormcall >>

I have yet to play in a campaign where there are not 1-2 human characters, this myth that no one plays them is just that.

 That is probably true from your perspective. It doesn't mean that Geann's perspective isn't also true. I can tell you that in most of the games I've run, humans characters are very rare. I've even asked why this is, and the reason I normally get is that my players want to play something exotic... they're humans every other day!

I have to disagree with the people who say an update would be premature. In the WoTC era, 3rd edition lasted 3 years, 3.5 lasted 5 years, 4th was 6 years. Right now we’re 7 years into 5 e. If anything, we’re overdue for a refresh.

I can understand them not wanting to do it, edition wars are ugly, and tend to split the player base. But it would be within historical norms.

Quote from Xalthu >>

I have to disagree with the people who say an update would be premature. In the WoTC era, 3rd edition lasted 3 years, 3.5 lasted 5 years, 4th was 6 years. Right now we’re 7 years into 5 e. If anything, we’re overdue for a refresh.

I can understand them not wanting to do it, edition wars are ugly, and tend to split the player base. But it would be within historical norms.

I think what that logic overlooks is a presumption that a timeline asserts that a given game design has a inevitable shelf life.  "It's been "x years" so there needs be a new edition," basically.  I think there is a more quaiitative assessment of a game to determine if in this case the D&D brand needs a new edition, and I'd contend that the a point of this survey (and maybe subsequent surveys to address some of the other issues highlighted in Geann's post) is to determine whether feedback from the player base indicates the need to take the risks to work a new edition.  Three years, five years, six years, seven years, just is not a pattern from which the future can be predicted.

Fifth Edition has also had a much slower rollout of new books compared to Fourth or Third Editions.  That means that there's a better long term potential to keep producing it so long as it remains popular.  By the end of 3.5 edition it was apparent that they were running out of ideas for new books.

Quote from FossMaNo1 >>

Quote from Scarloc_Stormcall >>

I have yet to play in a campaign where there are not 1-2 human characters, this myth that no one plays them is just that.

 That is probably true from your perspective. It doesn't mean that Geann's perspective isn't also true. I can tell you that in most of the games I've run, humans characters are very rare. I've even asked why this is, and the reason I normally get is that my players want to play something exotic... they're humans every other day!

Going to chime in that I'm running my first game with no humans in the party (half-elf, hobgoblin, tabaxi, tiefling, Dragonborn). It is interesting to negotiate the anthrocentrism though I guess one could say all humanoids or at least most mortal humanoids are sort of anthropomorphic, so maybe just human centric, realizing how a party of that composition may encounter other sentient species in geographies where species difference matters on a different footing ... I don't think this is a problem, but a fun factor to attend to.  But it's a first for me (also accomodating the Dragonborn's lack of darkvision is a fun riff).  As a player I generally defaulted toward humans but it does seem like most of my players want to be something else.

As for Geann's points, this survey is about subclasses, but I think it is reasonable to anticipate this could be just one survey. of many in what could be a complete review of the game system to include "restoring humanity" to a species interesting to play (though really I think variant human and even base human does that just fine).  Does such a review insist upon some new core product replacing the PHB?  Not necessarily, as mentioned, this could simply lead to Caramon's Warchest of We Really Need to Stop Using Everything Because This is the Third Book and We Really aren't Pretending to Be That All Encompassing, Right? which could render Optional Subclass Features (addressable within DDB with toggles ... and maybe gives more impetus to even more granular toggle control to campaign content management by just giving toggles to pretty much any class or species or feat etc in the game ... that would be cool, but would make campaign jumping problematic).

For the survey itself, I'd like to see maneuvers accessible beyond the Battlemaster, maybe confined to the Fighter or maybe more broadly like Fighting Styles through feats.