I want to like these. however, if you "regain x" regularly then aren't you incentivized to spend x in the encounter? using up all of one's resources in one or two battles goes from being bad play to optimized play (and the re-balancing that would draw out).
Then why do you get multiple uses at all? Why would these abilities instead simply state "[X] times during a combat encounter, you can do [Y]" and not bother tracking uses at all?
The entire point behind having a bank of uses stored up is that you can decide how and when it makes sense to spend those uses. Are you dealing with a minor scuffle with a few mook weenies? Don't bother burning nonrenewable resources. Are you getting hammered hard by an unexpected heavy ambush by powerful bruisers? Time to burn your gas and Elevate Numbers for a bit.
If that's not the gameplay you're hoping for, then there's no reason to track uses at all. Just make all this stuff an Encounter power, a'la 4e, and be done with it. You can use it once an encounter every encounter, no matter how many encounters you have in a day. Simple, easy, clean, done.
If that's not what you want, though? If you want that ability to be more strategic in your resource use and consider the whole day rather than just the fight at hand? Then don't set your class abilities up to explicitly try and force someone to blow their load as soon as possible so they can actually benefit from their class ability. Because if you do, you're gonna get one of two responses: someone doing exactly that, or someone saying "**** this useless feature", ignoring it completely as the useless feature it is, and treating their daily resource cap as a hard limit they cannot fully expend unless they are utterly certain they're not going to need anything more in the tank for the rest of the day since they cannot even slightly rely on regaining more of that resource over the day.
I think those features are not intended for replenish resources. Are high level features which purpose seems to be ensure you have always some of your unique power that makes you stronger, like DP for monk, Rage for Barbarian, SP for Sorcerer, etc. That can suppose a great difference that shows your high level capability.
But they are wrong written, it should be “if you have less than X (what it grants), you start the encounter with X”, it is a non-sense to recover i.e. 4 SP (don’t remember the number) if have 0 but nothing if you have 1. But unless following what is written too strictly I think is obvious how to use it.
This feature is a nice example:
15TH LEVEL: SORCEROUS RESTORATION You regain 4 expended Sorcery Points whenever you roll Initiative or finish a Short Rest.
It should be splitted in 2, one lower level for the Short Rest, and the other at the same level 15th (the high level one) for when initiative roll. Think that I always talk supposing limited resource recovery from SR. The Barbarian has its one at level 17th. I am thinking about a homebrew splitting them and giving the lesser one (the SR one) at half of the level of the original for classes with this kind of feature.
I want to like these. however, if you "regain x" regularly then aren't you incentivized to spend x in the encounter? using up all of one's resources in one or two battles goes from being bad play to optimized play (and the re-balancing that would draw out).
Then why do you get multiple uses at all? Why would these abilities instead simply state "[X] times during a combat encounter, you can do [Y]" and not bother tracking uses at all?
The entire point behind having a bank of uses stored up is that you can decide how and when it makes sense to spend those uses. Are you dealing with a minor scuffle with a few mook weenies? Don't bother burning nonrenewable resources. Are you getting hammered hard by an unexpected heavy ambush by powerful bruisers? Time to burn your gas and Elevate Numbers for a bit.
If that's not the gameplay you're hoping for, then there's no reason to track uses at all. Just make all this stuff an Encounter power, a'la 4e, and be done with it. You can use it once an encounter every encounter, no matter how many encounters you have in a day. Simple, easy, clean, done.
If that's not what you want, though? If you want that ability to be more strategic in your resource use and consider the whole day rather than just the fight at hand? Then don't set your class abilities up to explicitly try and force someone to blow their load as soon as possible so they can actually benefit from their class ability. Because if you do, you're gonna get one of two responses: someone doing exactly that, or someone saying "**** this useless feature", ignoring it completely as the useless feature it is, and treating their daily resource cap as a hard limit they cannot fully expend unless they are utterly certain they're not going to need anything more in the tank for the rest of the day since they cannot even slightly rely on regaining more of that resource over the day.
Do either of those sound like intended behavior?
of those two responses... 1.) i don't care if someone spends all their resources and the rest of their day is a walk of shame. failure should be an option. 2.) however, i do care more about doofs like myself holding on to pact slots through a boss battle just in case there's a bigger boss up next and one after that (you never know!). would refresh upon initiative put a dent in that? likely no, but i'd playtest it given the chance.
for warlock, my preference remains the long-rest/downtime brewed potions that restore full pact slots, the one that dazes the warlock for a minute. keep it for only emergencies or sip it every time someone shouts "all clear! everyone drop your guard, even for a moment!" (again, failure should be an option). i don't know how many potions max or if a lock like that would need fewer max pact slots. doesn't matter till it maters. shrug. for monk, rip off world of warcraft rogues in building combo points and feed a few into defense or save up to pull off a cool finishing move. reliant on hits and crippled by misses? only if devs want it to be.
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unhappy at the way in which we lost individual purchases for one-off subclasses, magic items, and monsters?
tell them you don't like features disappeared quietly in the night: providefeedback!
the resource limit for short rest classes (warlock and monk (plus battlemaster, why not)) seems like it's designed specifically to narrow down how many can be used in one burst rather than how many they have in a day. they just need to drag the "when you roll initiative" refill down to level 5 and test it for those classes. are they balanced around always having one or two slots/points/dice or not? is it fun to always have at least one grenade in every combat?
fix that and then it won't matter how many 15-minute short rests the party takes (during exploration and travel, obvious ticking-clocks are obvious).
"When you have no [X] left, you regain 1 [X] when you roll Initiative" is terrible horrible no-good very bad design. It's only useful if you're grossly wasteful and blow your resources recklessly and without care or forethought - in fact it actively encourages being a profligate waste with your resources since you only benefit from the feature if you blow your load every chance you get regardless of whether it's a good idea or not. It also leaves you out in the cold if you don't roll initiative a dozen times a day and want to use your resources outside of combat to do things like, y'know...avoid unnecessary combat. Or solve noncombat problems. Or do anything but fight, really. IF you get an Initiative recharge, do not make it contingent on burning your resource pool down to nothing - simply regain an expended use, whether you have unexpended uses remaining or not.
I have to agree with you there, Yurei. I actually put in the survey that if they are going to have this type of feature you should get the “X” back wether you have uses or not. The monks 15th level Perfect Discipline feature basically forces you to waste what DP you have, if less than 4, just so this feature kicks in. Just give them the DP. Same fore the other features like these, which typically are high level anyway.
I want to like these. however, if you "regain x" regularly then aren't you incentivized to spend x in the encounter?
Yes.. but that's intended. People should use their abilities. What this means is that you can spend a few in a minor encounter without being worried about crippling yourself later.
I want to like these. however, if you "regain x" regularly then aren't you incentivized to spend x in the encounter?
Yes.. but that's intended. People should use their abilities. What this means is that you can spend a few in a minor encounter without being worried about crippling yourself later.
if the correct way to play becomes launch x high dpr spells every encounter then you'll either have to bring other classes up to parity with that dpr or nerf it until it's another few lances of eldritch blast. either way, yikes.
is there a third path where everyone pats warlock on the back and says "thanks! you saved our healer so many spell slots when you ended the battle quickly! we're definitely not green-eyed with envy!"?
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
unhappy at the way in which we lost individual purchases for one-off subclasses, magic items, and monsters?
tell them you don't like features disappeared quietly in the night: providefeedback!
Which is why spell slots do not, and should not, get the "Roll initiative, regain [X]" treatment. Spells are generally much more powerful than class-specific resources and should be commensurately more rationed and measured.
Which is why spell slots do not, and should not, get the "Roll initiative, regain [X]" treatment.
Eh, it's not per se unreasonable; reducing daily uses of low level spells and instead giving some free casts per encounter wouldn't break the game. For example, instead of a level 9 getting 4/3/3/3/1, give them 2/1/1/1/1, one free level 4 slot, and one free level 2 slot.
The spell slots are balanced for hard battles. If we reduce the number we cut the possibility to save slots to use at the big boss.
I prefer a system like Arcane Recovery, allowing to get some back in a limited way.
Then now the Divine can use Channel Divinity for that (Tasha) available at low level, so the Sorcerer, the new Warlock if based on Long Rest, and etc. should have their one. In the case of Sorcerer is easy just giving some Sorcery Points at SR.
The spell slots are balanced for hard battles. If we reduce the number we cut the possibility to save slots to use at the big boss.
The spell slots are balanced on the assumption of a full day with people not particularly saving their spell slots. This patently absurd assumption plays a major role in the utter brokenness of 5e encounter balance; reduce the slots so people can't nova in the big fights and it wouldn't be necessary to use 300% of the Deadly budget to actually have a difficult fight.
The spell slots are balanced for hard battles. If we reduce the number we cut the possibility to save slots to use at the big boss.
The spell slots are balanced on the assumption of a full day with people not particularly saving their spell slots. This patently absurd assumption plays a major role in the utter brokenness of 5e encounter balance; reduce the slots so people can't nova in the big fights and it wouldn't be necessary to use 300% of the Deadly budget to actually have a difficult fight.
So it's a choice, that's the question. You could use some of them for an easier path, or could save them. The other way forces the tactics, which is not good. Not knowing how or when you are needing to use the spells is part of the spell slots. Getting a few telling the user "hey spend them because you are not going to have more and will be replenished" destroys one of the most interesting parts of being a caster.
And, so only the Paladins and Fighters (and much probably others) have the right to nova? Because cannot think in any single-target spell that could be used multiple times dealing the DPR damage of continual Divine Smiting or multi-attack of the Fighter, specially using Action Surge for an insane damage in a single round.
All the brokenness for all I have read come because the abuse of rest, in this case Long Rest. Because having to use only cantrips in the whole dungeon to have all your slots for the boss is not precisely "nova", well you could nova at boss, compensated by the low profile used in all the previous, looking how the martials nova killing enemies compared with your poor cantrips.
If I'm using a 5th level pact slot I cast Spirit Shroud for the 2d8 radiant damage per hit.
I'm just chiming in with a big HELL YEAH for hexlocks using spirit shroud. If you take the feat or invocation that gives you advantage on concentration checks, it's especially effective.
That would actually be lower DPR:
Blade-Pact + Spirit Shroud = 2 attacks, with 1d8+5+1d6 (lifedrinker) + 2d8 on a hit with 0.65 chance to hit = 28.6 DPR
EB + AB + new Hex (5th level slot) = 3 attacks with 1d10+5 on a hit with 0.65 chance + 3d6 at 0.96 chance = 30.5 DPR
When I talk about using Spirit Shroud it's with the 2014 Warlock Hexblade with Polearm Master.
That's three attacks a turn, adding 2d8 to each hit, at level 9 (although it doesn't add Lifedrinker until level 12).
Sure, the UA PotB Warlock is inferior to any Warlock just using EB, except in a tiny little window between levels 9 and 11 where the PotB Warlock has Lifedrinker and the EB Warlock doesn't have a third ray of EB, but that wasn't what I had in mind.
Spirit Shroud at level 17 is as bad for Warlocks as it is for Paladins. It's a big damage boost at level 9. Not so much 8 levels later.
Frankly the best "melee" UA Warlock is just Pact of the Tome with the Spell Sniper feat. Just shoot things in melee. From level 11 you're exactly as damaging as a Monk not using Flurry of Blows, and when Monk gets the d12 damage dice you're getting your fourth ray, so you come out ahead. Of course, unlike Monk, you can reach out and touch someone at 180 feet. Further if you take the Eldritch Spear invocation (360 feet with Spell Sniper).
Enemies in an area becoming aware of a loud, deeply unstealthy intrusion in their space - remember, we're talking about D&D parties here, no one has EVER successfully snuck into some place without trace in this game unless they were a lone rogue the other players didn't want 'stealing the spotlight' anyways - and deciding to take measures to defeat that intrusion?
Or a random group of third-level chuckle****s being given the truly god-like power to freeze all of Creation at a whim, stopping the clock on EVERYTHING, EVERYWHERE, in a way even the greatest of true deities is not able to fully replicate, so they may freely rest and recover their resources as they wish at any time, no matter how insane the idea of giving up hours and hours of the day might otherwise be?
This is why no one takes your arguments seriously. Sure when aggressively raiding a keep you likely wont get a short rest. But most people are not raiding a keep every adventuring day. I highly doubt even you play the game the way you are arguing.
Not to mention that every party can be stealthy. Focus on dexterity, take stealth proficiency from your background if you're not offered it as a class proficiency, and have a druid around to cast Pass Without Trace. Even a Paladin can be sneaky, either by building a dexterity based Paladin, or by taking 14 dex and medium armor.
A party of sneaky characters, all with musical instrument proficiency, would make for an entertaining band of troubadours.
Not to interrupt the discussion, but I watched Treatmonk's latest video about the playtest results video and it got me thinking about how WotC uses survey results and how we take the survey.
In the video, TM plays a clip from one of the first "results" videos, I think, where Jeremy Crawford lays out how they interpret the results. Less than 60% is pretty much considered too bad to bother with and discarded.
This made me think about how I, and maybe others, have taken the survey. In the Druid/Paladin UA I liked the "idea" of Templates for WS, but the implementation was so bad it was like WotC wanted it to fail. In the survey I put "dissatisfied" (maybe very dissatisfied, I'm not sure) because I really was dissatisfied. And in my comments I put that I liked the idea but it needed work because non-moon druids typically use WS for utility etc, not for combat and the templates lost all of that. But did my "dissatisfied" lead to a result less than 60% and instead of taking a second pass at templates they just figured it scored too low to bother with and reverted to the 2014 way. Even though I wanted a second pass. Would it have been better that I put "Satisfied" but then added my comments? It seems counterintuitive that way, however.
Anyway, it was just my thoughts from watching the video.
I just dont think their surveys allow for accurately making those kinda distinctions. Its similar to the "The average score of barbarian features got a better score than the overall class rating" problem. The surveys simply lack the tools for us to communicate what we mean with our satisfaction ratings, outside of the text feedback option, which I imagine is pretty difficult to go through with some many people responding to the surveys.
LIke you, I rated the wildshape playtest as being bad, because it was really bad.. but that didnt mean I hate the base idea of it, its just that the version they presented was so bad that very dissatisfied was my only real option.
That’s the problem inherent with all surveys. The available answers will always be biased by what the people writing the survey expect to get as feedback. But once a survey goes out, people will inevitably have feedback that doesn’t fit into those parameters. People end up stuck choosing from the answers the survey writers expected to get, and it can never possibly accurately reflect the feedback people actually want to give. The most accurate they could probably get is a “hate it,” “like it,” “love it,” “want to like it but don’t,” “none of the above” system. I guess that’s sorta what they were tryin’a go for with their but they’re “satisfied/dissatisfied” system, but they seem to have just missed the mark on executing it (much like many of the other ideas they seem to have for 1DD). They could adjust their surveys moving forward, but not likely to change their format halfway through the process. Pitty.
5e was and is very successful. But cracks are beginning to show in its armor. WotC needs to find a way to do 3 things: 1) keep the players they already have. 2) bring back into the fold players who may have left for other ttrpg's like Pathfinder or others that are forthcoming, like Daggerheart. And 3) Attract new players- whether completely new, or those that may have been brought in through curiosity after seeing the movie or playing BG3.
BG3 is very successful, but Larian had to change things. Partly to accommodate how video games work, but also partly because some of the 2014 PHB rules and features didn't work very well in the first place. Players who have never played D&D before that come to it from BG3 may be disappointed if they find some of their favorite spells and abilities either don't exist or are functionally bad. So WotC needs to fix spells and abilities and features with these players in mind.
Additionally, several prominent groups (Critical Role, MCDM, Kobold Press, to name a few) have seemingly left D&D behind to create their own ttrpg's. The OGL debacle probably was a catalyst- or at least an accelerant- for this trend. Whatever the reason, there are now more options than ever for ttrpg players. And several of these options have a pretty high profile commercially. WotC needs to "revise" 5e enough to entice players who have left the game to come back and give it another try. The revised 5e for 2024 needs to be different enough from the 2014 version to make former players want to actually try it again. If word gets out that the revised version is basically just the 2014 version, and that not much has significantly changed, then I don't see a large portion of those players returning. They left for a reason. They need a reason to come back.
However, the new version also cannot be so radically divergent from the 2014 version so as to alienate current players who like most of what 5e has to offer. And it cannot become bloated with more complicated rules and systems so as to scare off potential new players. The revised game still needs to "feel" and "flow" like 5e.
Honestly, it's not a needle I would envy trying to thread. But I look forward to seeing whatever solutions that WotC comes up with. Good or bad, it will at least be interesting.
In the video, TM plays a clip from one of the first "results" videos, I think, where Jeremy Crawford lays out how they interpret the results. Less than 60% is pretty much considered too bad to bother with and discarded
So if less than 60% for something that is already wrong, it is better to discard and just continue using the wrong old one? Doesn’t look like a good criteria.
Maybe it should have been would you rather have this new feature vs the old version. Not strictly how much do you like this iteration.
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"Where words fail, swords prevail. Where blood is spilled, my cup is filled" -Cartaphilus
"I have found the answer to the meaning of life. You ask me what the answer is? You already know what the answer to life is. You fear it more than the strike of a viper, the ravages of disease, the ire of a lover. The answer is always death. But death is a gentle mistress with a sweet embrace, and you owe her a debt of restitution. Life is not a gift, it is a loan."
In the video, TM plays a clip from one of the first "results" videos, I think, where Jeremy Crawford lays out how they interpret the results. Less than 60% is pretty much considered too bad to bother with and discarded
So if less than 60% for something that is already wrong, it is better to discard and just continue using the wrong old one? Doesn’t look like a good criteria.
But the old thing sold, right?
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Then why do you get multiple uses at all? Why would these abilities instead simply state "[X] times during a combat encounter, you can do [Y]" and not bother tracking uses at all?
The entire point behind having a bank of uses stored up is that you can decide how and when it makes sense to spend those uses. Are you dealing with a minor scuffle with a few mook weenies? Don't bother burning nonrenewable resources. Are you getting hammered hard by an unexpected heavy ambush by powerful bruisers? Time to burn your gas and Elevate Numbers for a bit.
If that's not the gameplay you're hoping for, then there's no reason to track uses at all. Just make all this stuff an Encounter power, a'la 4e, and be done with it. You can use it once an encounter every encounter, no matter how many encounters you have in a day. Simple, easy, clean, done.
If that's not what you want, though? If you want that ability to be more strategic in your resource use and consider the whole day rather than just the fight at hand? Then don't set your class abilities up to explicitly try and force someone to blow their load as soon as possible so they can actually benefit from their class ability. Because if you do, you're gonna get one of two responses: someone doing exactly that, or someone saying "**** this useless feature", ignoring it completely as the useless feature it is, and treating their daily resource cap as a hard limit they cannot fully expend unless they are utterly certain they're not going to need anything more in the tank for the rest of the day since they cannot even slightly rely on regaining more of that resource over the day.
Do either of those sound like intended behavior?
Please do not contact or message me.
I think those features are not intended for replenish resources. Are high level features which purpose seems to be ensure you have always some of your unique power that makes you stronger, like DP for monk, Rage for Barbarian, SP for Sorcerer, etc. That can suppose a great difference that shows your high level capability.
But they are wrong written, it should be “if you have less than X (what it grants), you start the encounter with X”, it is a non-sense to recover i.e. 4 SP (don’t remember the number) if have 0 but nothing if you have 1. But unless following what is written too strictly I think is obvious how to use it.
This feature is a nice example:
It should be splitted in 2, one lower level for the Short Rest, and the other at the same level 15th (the high level one) for when initiative roll. Think that I always talk supposing limited resource recovery from SR. The Barbarian has its one at level 17th. I am thinking about a homebrew splitting them and giving the lesser one (the SR one) at half of the level of the original for classes with this kind of feature.
of those two responses...
1.) i don't care if someone spends all their resources and the rest of their day is a walk of shame. failure should be an option.
2.) however, i do care more about doofs like myself holding on to pact slots through a boss battle just in case there's a bigger boss up next and one after that (you never know!). would refresh upon initiative put a dent in that? likely no, but i'd playtest it given the chance.
for warlock, my preference remains the long-rest/downtime brewed potions that restore full pact slots, the one that dazes the warlock for a minute. keep it for only emergencies or sip it every time someone shouts "all clear! everyone drop your guard, even for a moment!" (again, failure should be an option). i don't know how many potions max or if a lock like that would need fewer max pact slots. doesn't matter till it maters. shrug. for monk, rip off world of warcraft rogues in building combo points and feed a few into defense or save up to pull off a cool finishing move. reliant on hits and crippled by misses? only if devs want it to be.
unhappy at the way in which we lost individual purchases for one-off subclasses, magic items, and monsters?
tell them you don't like features disappeared quietly in the night: provide feedback!
I have to agree with you there, Yurei. I actually put in the survey that if they are going to have this type of feature you should get the “X” back wether you have uses or not. The monks 15th level Perfect Discipline feature basically forces you to waste what DP you have, if less than 4, just so this feature kicks in. Just give them the DP. Same fore the other features like these, which typically are high level anyway.
EZD6 by DM Scotty
https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/397599/EZD6-Core-Rulebook?
Yes.. but that's intended. People should use their abilities. What this means is that you can spend a few in a minor encounter without being worried about crippling yourself later.
if the correct way to play becomes launch x high dpr spells every encounter then you'll either have to bring other classes up to parity with that dpr or nerf it until it's another few lances of eldritch blast. either way, yikes.
is there a third path where everyone pats warlock on the back and says "thanks! you saved our healer so many spell slots when you ended the battle quickly! we're definitely not green-eyed with envy!"?
unhappy at the way in which we lost individual purchases for one-off subclasses, magic items, and monsters?
tell them you don't like features disappeared quietly in the night: provide feedback!
Which is why spell slots do not, and should not, get the "Roll initiative, regain [X]" treatment. Spells are generally much more powerful than class-specific resources and should be commensurately more rationed and measured.
Please do not contact or message me.
Eh, it's not per se unreasonable; reducing daily uses of low level spells and instead giving some free casts per encounter wouldn't break the game. For example, instead of a level 9 getting 4/3/3/3/1, give them 2/1/1/1/1, one free level 4 slot, and one free level 2 slot.
The spell slots are balanced for hard battles. If we reduce the number we cut the possibility to save slots to use at the big boss.
I prefer a system like Arcane Recovery, allowing to get some back in a limited way.
Then now the Divine can use Channel Divinity for that (Tasha) available at low level, so the Sorcerer, the new Warlock if based on Long Rest, and etc. should have their one. In the case of Sorcerer is easy just giving some Sorcery Points at SR.
The spell slots are balanced on the assumption of a full day with people not particularly saving their spell slots. This patently absurd assumption plays a major role in the utter brokenness of 5e encounter balance; reduce the slots so people can't nova in the big fights and it wouldn't be necessary to use 300% of the Deadly budget to actually have a difficult fight.
So it's a choice, that's the question. You could use some of them for an easier path, or could save them. The other way forces the tactics, which is not good. Not knowing how or when you are needing to use the spells is part of the spell slots. Getting a few telling the user "hey spend them because you are not going to have more and will be replenished" destroys one of the most interesting parts of being a caster.
And, so only the Paladins and Fighters (and much probably others) have the right to nova? Because cannot think in any single-target spell that could be used multiple times dealing the DPR damage of continual Divine Smiting or multi-attack of the Fighter, specially using Action Surge for an insane damage in a single round.
All the brokenness for all I have read come because the abuse of rest, in this case Long Rest. Because having to use only cantrips in the whole dungeon to have all your slots for the boss is not precisely "nova", well you could nova at boss, compensated by the low profile used in all the previous, looking how the martials nova killing enemies compared with your poor cantrips.
When I talk about using Spirit Shroud it's with the 2014 Warlock Hexblade with Polearm Master.
That's three attacks a turn, adding 2d8 to each hit, at level 9 (although it doesn't add Lifedrinker until level 12).
Sure, the UA PotB Warlock is inferior to any Warlock just using EB, except in a tiny little window between levels 9 and 11 where the PotB Warlock has Lifedrinker and the EB Warlock doesn't have a third ray of EB, but that wasn't what I had in mind.
Spirit Shroud at level 17 is as bad for Warlocks as it is for Paladins. It's a big damage boost at level 9. Not so much 8 levels later.
Frankly the best "melee" UA Warlock is just Pact of the Tome with the Spell Sniper feat. Just shoot things in melee. From level 11 you're exactly as damaging as a Monk not using Flurry of Blows, and when Monk gets the d12 damage dice you're getting your fourth ray, so you come out ahead. Of course, unlike Monk, you can reach out and touch someone at 180 feet. Further if you take the Eldritch Spear invocation (360 feet with Spell Sniper).
Not to mention that every party can be stealthy. Focus on dexterity, take stealth proficiency from your background if you're not offered it as a class proficiency, and have a druid around to cast Pass Without Trace. Even a Paladin can be sneaky, either by building a dexterity based Paladin, or by taking 14 dex and medium armor.
A party of sneaky characters, all with musical instrument proficiency, would make for an entertaining band of troubadours.
Not to interrupt the discussion, but I watched Treatmonk's latest video about the playtest results video and it got me thinking about how WotC uses survey results and how we take the survey.
In the video, TM plays a clip from one of the first "results" videos, I think, where Jeremy Crawford lays out how they interpret the results. Less than 60% is pretty much considered too bad to bother with and discarded.
This made me think about how I, and maybe others, have taken the survey. In the Druid/Paladin UA I liked the "idea" of Templates for WS, but the implementation was so bad it was like WotC wanted it to fail. In the survey I put "dissatisfied" (maybe very dissatisfied, I'm not sure) because I really was dissatisfied. And in my comments I put that I liked the idea but it needed work because non-moon druids typically use WS for utility etc, not for combat and the templates lost all of that. But did my "dissatisfied" lead to a result less than 60% and instead of taking a second pass at templates they just figured it scored too low to bother with and reverted to the 2014 way. Even though I wanted a second pass. Would it have been better that I put "Satisfied" but then added my comments? It seems counterintuitive that way, however.
Anyway, it was just my thoughts from watching the video.
EZD6 by DM Scotty
https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/397599/EZD6-Core-Rulebook?
I just dont think their surveys allow for accurately making those kinda distinctions. Its similar to the "The average score of barbarian features got a better score than the overall class rating" problem. The surveys simply lack the tools for us to communicate what we mean with our satisfaction ratings, outside of the text feedback option, which I imagine is pretty difficult to go through with some many people responding to the surveys.
LIke you, I rated the wildshape playtest as being bad, because it was really bad.. but that didnt mean I hate the base idea of it, its just that the version they presented was so bad that very dissatisfied was my only real option.
That’s the problem inherent with all surveys. The available answers will always be biased by what the people writing the survey expect to get as feedback. But once a survey goes out, people will inevitably have feedback that doesn’t fit into those parameters. People end up stuck choosing from the answers the survey writers expected to get, and it can never possibly accurately reflect the feedback people actually want to give. The most accurate they could probably get is a “hate it,” “like it,” “love it,” “want to like it but don’t,” “none of the above” system. I guess that’s sorta what they were tryin’a go for with their but they’re “satisfied/dissatisfied” system, but they seem to have just missed the mark on executing it (much like many of the other ideas they seem to have for 1DD). They could adjust their surveys moving forward, but not likely to change their format halfway through the process. Pitty.
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5e was and is very successful. But cracks are beginning to show in its armor. WotC needs to find a way to do 3 things: 1) keep the players they already have. 2) bring back into the fold players who may have left for other ttrpg's like Pathfinder or others that are forthcoming, like Daggerheart. And 3) Attract new players- whether completely new, or those that may have been brought in through curiosity after seeing the movie or playing BG3.
BG3 is very successful, but Larian had to change things. Partly to accommodate how video games work, but also partly because some of the 2014 PHB rules and features didn't work very well in the first place. Players who have never played D&D before that come to it from BG3 may be disappointed if they find some of their favorite spells and abilities either don't exist or are functionally bad. So WotC needs to fix spells and abilities and features with these players in mind.
Additionally, several prominent groups (Critical Role, MCDM, Kobold Press, to name a few) have seemingly left D&D behind to create their own ttrpg's. The OGL debacle probably was a catalyst- or at least an accelerant- for this trend. Whatever the reason, there are now more options than ever for ttrpg players. And several of these options have a pretty high profile commercially. WotC needs to "revise" 5e enough to entice players who have left the game to come back and give it another try. The revised 5e for 2024 needs to be different enough from the 2014 version to make former players want to actually try it again. If word gets out that the revised version is basically just the 2014 version, and that not much has significantly changed, then I don't see a large portion of those players returning. They left for a reason. They need a reason to come back.
However, the new version also cannot be so radically divergent from the 2014 version so as to alienate current players who like most of what 5e has to offer. And it cannot become bloated with more complicated rules and systems so as to scare off potential new players. The revised game still needs to "feel" and "flow" like 5e.
Honestly, it's not a needle I would envy trying to thread. But I look forward to seeing whatever solutions that WotC comes up with. Good or bad, it will at least be interesting.
So if less than 60% for something that is already wrong, it is better to discard and just continue using the wrong old one? Doesn’t look like a good criteria.
Maybe it should have been would you rather have this new feature vs the old version. Not strictly how much do you like this iteration.
"Where words fail, swords prevail. Where blood is spilled, my cup is filled" -Cartaphilus
"I have found the answer to the meaning of life. You ask me what the answer is? You already know what the answer to life is. You fear it more than the strike of a viper, the ravages of disease, the ire of a lover. The answer is always death. But death is a gentle mistress with a sweet embrace, and you owe her a debt of restitution. Life is not a gift, it is a loan."
But the old thing sold, right?