Is anyone else noticing that no small amount of people complaining that OneD&D won't be changing enough...are the same people who raged over everything OneD&D was planning to change?
If you're talking about me, I fought harder than anyone else on this board in favor of the UA5 warlock. I think - and I said it loudly and repeatedly at the time, as well - that Pact Magic is fundamentallyt flawed and cannot be fixed because of people's unreasonable expectations of what it should be, i.e. full caster progression AND always-maximum spell slots AND short rest recharge, and yet somehow they think there's room to quadruple Pact Magic's spell capacity somehow. We know what full-caster short-rest always-max Pact Magic looks like - there is no fixing it. And I said so, loudly enough to catch significant heat for it.
There are, fundamentally, two camps of people for whom the 1DD playtest is - theoretically - relevant. There's the camp that thinks 5e is more-or-less perfect as is, and only needs the most minor of clean-up passes if even that. Eliminate a few well-known points of ambiguity, correct a few spelling or syntax errors, maaaaaaybe change a term or two - essentially, 'touch up the paint' without making one single substantive change to anything. These are the people that are currently absolutely dominating the entire process and utterly destroying any chance of real change.
The other camp are people who think 5e has a great deal of potential that the 2014 ruleset is most definitively not living up to. 5e is a fixer-upper - it's got a good foundation and it could really be something special, but boy howdy hoo does it need a lot of work to get there. There are areas of 5e that are extremely weak and need substantial redesign, and there are many areas of 5e that could use a lighter touch but are still in need of work. These are the people that wanted a 5.5-esque overhaul, something that really mattered and justified the expense and annoyance of having to buy new books.
The problem is that the first camp - the "5e is perfect!" lot that is currently demonizing and destroying the Fixer-Upper camp - has absolutely no intention of buying the new books. They've openly said so - many of the people on this board who've argued against the changes have stated outright that they will never buy the new books no matter what and there is absolutely nothing Wizards can do to change their mind. Those people do not deserve opinions on the new books. They already have their books, the 2014 edition they think is beautiful and perfect forever. They're actively campaigning to deny the Fixer-Upper people their books, hoping the whole thing gets called off, and the entire time most of them never had any intention of engaging with the process in good faith to begin with. A bunch of angry cranky reactionary grognards are actively blocking the process for everyone else out of sheer spiteful stubborn, and those cranky grognards will not be happy until time and space folds and we all wind up in 1994 again the new books are canceled outright.
It's so far beyond infuriating I had to take over a month off this stupid website just to get a grip on it, and frankly I should probably still be gone. I just got pings from people responding to old posts of mine so I ended up dragged back in. And now the UA5 video confirms that every single thing of worth or value in UA5 has been stripped away. The grognards win.
Again.
I know I didn't always agree with your rhetoric. Still don't always. But ya 100%. If THIS is the direction the new handbook goes.... I am not purchasing it. It doesn't change or fix enough to be worth it, I already have this book. I can fix it better for my game myself or just play a different system if I want.
It is quite possible to believe that 5e has some problems and needs tweaking, and still believe that some of the UA proposals are worse than the status quo.
Falling back on demonizing people who disagree with you is a mark of poor reasoning ability.
It is possible for two reasonable people to look at the same information and reach different opinions. That's life.
If you can't understand that you're probably not one of the reasonable people.
It is quite possible to believe that 5e has some problems and needs tweaking, and still believe that some of the UA proposals are worse than the status quo.
Falling back on demonizing people who disagree with you is a mark of poor reasoning ability.
It is possible for two reasonable people to look at the same information and reach different opinions. That's life.
If you can't understand that you're probably not one of the reasonable people.
I agree with this. Just one thing. The status quo already exists. The 2014 book we all already bought it. If you thought the 2014 was better just use it. People still play 4th and 3.5 and AD&D.
I'm a bit more optimistic than Yurei. Some big swings have stuck, like races, and Weapon Mastery, and hopefully Cunning Strike.
I'm holding out hope that Crawford is right, and they can come up with a version of Pact Magic that will be better than 2014 if not quite as good as Spellcasting would have been.
I think I’m on the middle of your two camps Yurei. I like some of 5E but would like to see some big changes in some areas.
I liked the idea of templates for wildshape but the version they put out was so bad it was as if WotC wanted it to fail so they could say “we tried”. Templates could work they just needed some tweaks and revisions.
I didn’t like the half caster Warlock and I think you are being disingenuous when you say pact magic and long rest mechanics can’t exist together . I think they can and so do others. And we said as much In Warlocks threads.
And I am sad to hear them say UA5 was the end of the experimental phase and where was monk? UA6!
I can understand where the developers are coming from. They tried something new for Wild Shape, then got negative feedback (because it was a poor implementation), then decided to revert. They tried something new for Warlock, got negative feedback, then decided to revert. It is easy to start thinking "big changes upset the player base".
I wonder how this will play out for UA6 Monk that received negligible changes. I could imagine some survey responses approving for various reasons. (Note: I support the right of people to disagree with me.) But I expect the overwhelming response from the UA & Monk dndbeyond forum users (who are not representative of the player base) to be negative. What will the final poll numbers be for UA6 Monk? What lessons will the developers learn from it? Can anyone cast Foresight to find out?
Genuinely, what is the issue people have with 2014 warlock? I have not been following recent events, and I personally like PHB warlock. The lack of abundant spell slots makes me think about resource management much more than a normal caster and it feels like a distinct class with it's own identity. I do agree that warlocks should be able to use any mental stat for spellcasting, but people seem to have other issues with them. I feel as though I am missing something here.
Generally speaking buffs are going to rate better than nerfs, and 1DD warlock felt like a nerf, even though I'm not sure mathematically it was. I expect they'll deal with the short rest problems by putting a daily limit of some sort on spell recovery.
You know, they COULD always just have two flavors of PHB and DMG...
Hell, they could re-release all the previous editions they still hold licensing for and just have them all available, just distinctly designed to visually look distinctly unique, and release modules for people to play them in.
The problem is that a new edition means the old edition goes away.
Now, as for the changes they are making, I'm not a fan. I think they're diluting too much. They talk identity but that doesn't translate. They say simpler, but they make the weapons masters simultaneously a meaningless choice (since you can swap it at a long rest), and an unnecessary extra mechanic. Same goes for the Cunning Strikes, which are novel at first, but overall something that will be ignored as you play the game more and that novelty wears off.
They oversimplified the spell lists. 3 lists is too much of a dumbing down and it kills the class distinctions. You can give specific spells still to classes, it's just ugly.
I want a new edition, but I want the actual mechanics worked on.
I also don't care for the push to have everything online and tied into a subscription. This is becoming a VERY expensive hobby, especially when you go from a book costing $35 to $55 because they refuse to sell hard copy separately. Especially when inflation is high in the US, and a lot of people are stuggling to make ends meet, much less keep up with their favorite hobbies....
Plus, digital/subscriptions, in this day and age, means you only have access to the content for as long as the subscription is up to date. Subscriptions are basically having your info held hostage. I don't like that.
This video was incredibly frustrating to watch, after the UA5 rundown where Crawford was talking about Draconic wings being changed from always on to part of a spell was because they brought it down in level. Draconic wings in the 2014 PHB are a lvl 14 ability, in the UA it's still at level 14. It was aggravating hearing him say they nerfed something for a reason that wasn't true. THAN in this video he's talking about how people didn't like the change, but they had to do it because they dropped the level (WHICH THEY NEVER DID) but going into the next UA they'll put it back to its original higher level. WHAT HIGHER LEVEL JEREMY?? 14 is 14 is 14 is 14!
Than just his sidekick yes man has no clue either just "yep.. yep haha yep" Can somebody PLEASE tell Crawford it's always been 14 and still is 14 for draconic wings
I'm a bit more optimistic than Yurei. Some big swings have stuck, like races, and Weapon Mastery, and hopefully Cunning Strike.
I'm holding out hope that Crawford is right, and they can come up with a version of Pact Magic that will be better than 2014 if not quite as good as Spellcasting would have been.
I have seen several possibilities already mentioned, some from house rules and some from the playtest, and some mentioned in the video. Using soke combination of them should be enough to make the Warlock viable without having to change the short rest to 15 minutes (another common house rule fix).
1 - increase the number of pact slots available. The most common house rule I have seen for single class warlocks (adjust as required for multiclassed ones)is to link it to proficiency bonus. Killing the long slog of "2 spells, no more" from levels 2-10 would go a long ways.
2 - liberate the hex spell from pact magic early, rather than at high levels when it no longer matters. Like the first playtest ranger getting proficiency bonus castings of Hunter's Mark per long rest. But please don't build the class around using it.
3 - more Invocations, and ensure there are ZERO of them that let you cast a spell once per long rest, but with a pact slot. Those should all be changed to allow one free casting, and then use a pact slot if you want to do so again. More invocations was mentioned in the video.
4 - free castings of patron spells, anywhere from one per long rest to one per spell level per long rest, depending on what else is done. This, in the basic level, was in the playtest packet.
5 - a mid level ability to regain a pact slot when initiative is rolled, but don't require the warlock to be out in order to gain any - just don't be at max. At higher levels they could regain 2 instead of just one.
What I don't want to see is the Warlock to have a spell progression just like every other caster - they were unique, and if I wanted to play a Vancian caster I wouldn't be playing a warlock.
The playtest had some good ideas - mating the "you're a fool not to take it" pact invocations directly to the pact was good, but not perfect (the nerfing to ritual casting from Book of the Shadows come right to the front of my mind) but had potential, especially in how it liberated sword warlocks from the Hexblade patron. Changing the worst invocations (cast spell X once per long rest with a pact slot) to something actually useful was a welcome change. The Fiend patron giving a free casting of one of the patron spells per long rest, and adding them all to the prepared list rather than just the class list was also an excellent change. And while I didn't like the execution, having multiple casting stats to choose from was a novel concept - I just didn't like that Charisma was removed entirely from the Tome Warlock, because who enjoys seeing the new rules make a character you loved non-viable?
Whether or not I buy the new books depends on what my gaming group does. If they are willing to change I'll pick them up rather quickly. If they decide that instead they would rather switch to Pathfinder 2 or something else as the main fantasy game, well, then I'll wait a while and eventually pick them up, but at a slower pace.
Genuinely, what is the issue people have with 2014 warlock? I have not been following recent events, and I personally like PHB warlock. The lack of abundant spell slots makes me think about resource management much more than a normal caster and it feels like a distinct class with it's own identity. I do agree that warlocks should be able to use any mental stat for spellcasting, but people seem to have other issues with them. I feel as though I am missing something here.
The biggest problem is the 9 level gap between getting your 2nd spell per long rest and your 3rd. I typically deal with that by taking one of the "touched" feats at level 4 - they give a free casting of a 1st and a 2nd level spell, in addition to adding them to your class list. Also, it might also be based somewhat on your GM - the first time I played a Warlock mine never gave us a short rest in the entire campaign, we either had a 5 minute workday or didn't even have enough time to loot the bodies between encounters, and no in-between of any kind.
Genuinely, what is the issue people have with 2014 warlock? I have not been following recent events, and I personally like PHB warlock. The lack of abundant spell slots makes me think about resource management much more than a normal caster and it feels like a distinct class with it's own identity. I do agree that warlocks should be able to use any mental stat for spellcasting, but people seem to have other issues with them. I feel as though I am missing something here.
The 2014 warlock is cripplingly over-reliant on short rests. It assumes an absolute bare-assed minimum of two short rests a day and prefers six or more, which is BY NO MEANS universal. A very large percentage of tables never short rest at all, which means the 2014 warlock is stuck with two whole entire spell slots per day. Because their leveled spells are so incredibly scarce, many warlock players treat them like precious, irreplaceable resources and hoard them for the right moment, often resulting in warlocks never casting one single leveled spell through the entire adventuring day, many adventuring days in a row. Their "Pact Magic" is so overwhelmingly reliant on short rests that if your table doesn't Short Rest, you don't get to cast spells. Nor is this a "The Internet Says!" thing - Wizards has had data for years now that this is exactly the thing that happens to a great many warlock players.
The warlock being a Charisma-based class is also at odds with its lore and class fantasy of a "seeker of forbidden knowledge"; the warlock is expected to have a very low Intelligence score and a not-much-higher Wisdom score since those stats actively detract from the warlock being A Warlock, which leaves it being Charisma focused and thus vulnerable to The Great Charisma Caster Gang Bang of multiclassing tomcluckery everybody hates. Warlocks that are skilled and knowledgable occultists delving into lore and knowledge mankind should not have are...basically impossible to play, which is incredibly frustrating. They have to be derpy brainless sex pests a'la bards, instead.Z
The Invocation system is also underutilized, and the individual Pact Boons are wildly lopsided; the 2014 PAct of the Blade is a total waste of time. In all seriousness, the entire class is boiled down to "shoot lasers at your enemies, and when not fighting wait for the next fight to start because you have no utility whatsoever and can't get it, either." Wizards tried to fix this, but the entire playerbase rose up and told them they're not allowed to make warlocks better because even though warlocks are in a really bad place right now, they're flavorful and that's all that matters. Same reason why the sorcerer is bad, the ranger is bad, the monk is bad...
The Invocation system is also underutilized, and the individual Pact Boons are wildly lopsided; the 2014 PAct of the Blade is a total waste of time. In all seriousness, the entire class is boiled down to "shoot lasers at your enemies, and when not fighting wait for the next fight to start because you have no utility whatsoever and can't get it, either." Wizards tried to fix this, but the entire playerbase rose up and told them they're not allowed to make warlocks better because even though warlocks are in a really bad place right now, they're flavorful and that's all that matters. Same reason why the sorcerer is bad, the ranger is bad, the monk is bad...
That’s a blatant lie. The playerbase rose up and said “please make them better, just don’t make them half casters.” The fact that you don’t like it just shows you lack the ability to conceive of any other way to make them better. Don’t get butthurt at us because of your own limitations.
If you're talking about me, I fought harder than anyone else on this board in favor of the UA5 warlock. I think - and I said it loudly and repeatedly at the time, as well - that Pact Magic is fundamentallyt flawed and cannot be fixed because of people's unreasonable expectations of what it should be, i.e. full caster progression AND always-maximum spell slots AND short rest recharge, and yet somehow they think there's room to quadruple Pact Magic's spell capacity somehow. We know what full-caster short-rest always-max Pact Magic looks like - there is no fixing it. And I said so, loudly enough to catch significant heat for it.
That’s another blatant lie. Of everything I read that people suggested, people were always willing to give on at least one of those points, usually the short rest dependance and even the always-maximum point too a few times. Nobody suggested keeping everything and still increasing their casting capacity too. Nobody.
I feel like many of the updates had good potential. I would agree many of the new concepts probably needed an additional pass and they could have been amazing. From the sounds of it mostly getting the axe, I will admit to disappointment. Certainly the option for additional spellcasting abilities looked awesome. But if they are abandoning that approach I hope they switch to int. Too many charisma classes, not enough int classes.
I am personally disappointed that they are not trying to improve on the versions and are instead ditching them. That feels like the lazy way out. I was pretty excited about a revamp to the warlock class, and I count myself in the camp of they didn't have enough spell slots for how my groups typically played. You feel you have to hoard your spell slots unless you can do something amazing. Like holding onto those super healing items in video games only to get to the end and have 36 elixirs and you have used a total of 3.
Not sure how I feel about the spell list groupings going away. I felt they were in general going to do a swell job of simplifying some aspects. We're there issues? Yes, but they seemed eminently fixable. Curious what the next wave will look like when feedback on monk and the other classes come back.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
"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."
The 2014 warlock is cripplingly over-reliant on short rests. It assumes an absolute bare-assed minimum of two short rests a day and prefers six or more, which is BY NO MEANS universal.
The 2014 warlock is designed for 2 short rests. It rapidly becomes broken if the number of short rests is either higher or lower than intended.
It is by no means the only class with that problem, but it's the only spellcaster with that problem. The warlock is better balanced against martial classes than other spellcasters, precisely because it has a more similar resource recovery mechanic.
The other problem is that spells simply aren't designed around short rest recovery, which means certain spells that make total sense for warlocks cannot be placed on the warlock list. For example, if animate dead were a warlock spell, it would be entirely practical to maintain a stable of 60 undead at level 5...
I think that the strategy of the design team is that when something does not exceed the minimum acceptance limit (60% I think JC has commented on more than one occasion), instead of rethinking it again, they return to the relative safety of how it was in 2014. That, in the end, what it does is that the changes that were proposed for One D&D have been reduced to a minimum in the last playtest (and it seems that we will continue to see that in the next playtests).
I would prefer a more courageous approach, but I understand why they are being so cowardly. The events of the last year have put WoTC in a delicate situation, and they don't want another disaster like 4e. However, I suspect that if this 5e revised is really going to be so meager in terms of changes, sales are not going to be good. But that will be seen.
Personally I was very hopeful with this playtest process, but now frankly I am very disappointed. My gaming group has been a little 5e fatigued for a while now, and without major changes, it's only going to get worse. Not that it's a big problem anyway, since we play a lot of different TTRPGs. And if we finally stop playing 5e, which is already happening, it won't be a debacle either.
A way could be more aggressive changes, but keeping both version alive, reprinting and in subscription content. So each one could use or combine as want.
Another issue is what seems players don't understand the balance concept, all the classes improves, because they improved that other class, also has to improve my favorite one, when done, the other one argues that as they improved the previous one because argued mine was improved, then my favorite one must be reimproved again, this in an infinite improving loop because my favorite must be the best. Meanwhile the monsters are the same, so how can you balance the challenge as DM? They even wanted to remove the criticals for monsters, giving some new charging feature only to some specific bosses...sorry I am not going to purchase again ALL the monsters books (I have all of them) just because a single feature added to some specific monsters, sorry but no.
What the sub/classes need are fixes, not unlimited improvements breaking the CR. But much arguing goes in the way of "if not better (instead fixed) than previous, go back".
I know I didn't always agree with your rhetoric. Still don't always. But ya 100%. If THIS is the direction the new handbook goes.... I am not purchasing it. It doesn't change or fix enough to be worth it, I already have this book. I can fix it better for my game myself or just play a different system if I want.
It is quite possible to believe that 5e has some problems and needs tweaking, and still believe that some of the UA proposals are worse than the status quo.
Falling back on demonizing people who disagree with you is a mark of poor reasoning ability.
It is possible for two reasonable people to look at the same information and reach different opinions. That's life.
If you can't understand that you're probably not one of the reasonable people.
I agree with this. Just one thing. The status quo already exists. The 2014 book we all already bought it. If you thought the 2014 was better just use it. People still play 4th and 3.5 and AD&D.
I'm a bit more optimistic than Yurei. Some big swings have stuck, like races, and Weapon Mastery, and hopefully Cunning Strike.
I'm holding out hope that Crawford is right, and they can come up with a version of Pact Magic that will be better than 2014 if not quite as good as Spellcasting would have been.
I think I’m on the middle of your two camps Yurei. I like some of 5E but would like to see some big changes in some areas.
I liked the idea of templates for wildshape but the version they put out was so bad it was as if WotC wanted it to fail so they could say “we tried”. Templates could work they just needed some tweaks and revisions.
I didn’t like the half caster Warlock and I think you are being disingenuous when you say pact magic and long rest mechanics can’t exist together . I think they can and so do others. And we said as much In Warlocks threads.
And I am sad to hear them say UA5 was the end of the experimental phase and where was monk? UA6!
There is middle ground that some of us stand on
EZD6 by DM Scotty
https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/397599/EZD6-Core-Rulebook?
Yeah. I really liked this particular change in the UA.
I can understand where the developers are coming from. They tried something new for Wild Shape, then got negative feedback (because it was a poor implementation), then decided to revert. They tried something new for Warlock, got negative feedback, then decided to revert. It is easy to start thinking "big changes upset the player base".
I wonder how this will play out for UA6 Monk that received negligible changes. I could imagine some survey responses approving for various reasons. (Note: I support the right of people to disagree with me.) But I expect the overwhelming response from the UA & Monk dndbeyond forum users (who are not representative of the player base) to be negative. What will the final poll numbers be for UA6 Monk? What lessons will the developers learn from it? Can anyone cast Foresight to find out?
Genuinely, what is the issue people have with 2014 warlock? I have not been following recent events, and I personally like PHB warlock. The lack of abundant spell slots makes me think about resource management much more than a normal caster and it feels like a distinct class with it's own identity. I do agree that warlocks should be able to use any mental stat for spellcasting, but people seem to have other issues with them. I feel as though I am missing something here.
N/A
Generally speaking buffs are going to rate better than nerfs, and 1DD warlock felt like a nerf, even though I'm not sure mathematically it was. I expect they'll deal with the short rest problems by putting a daily limit of some sort on spell recovery.
You know, they COULD always just have two flavors of PHB and DMG...
Hell, they could re-release all the previous editions they still hold licensing for and just have them all available, just distinctly designed to visually look distinctly unique, and release modules for people to play them in.
The problem is that a new edition means the old edition goes away.
Now, as for the changes they are making, I'm not a fan. I think they're diluting too much. They talk identity but that doesn't translate. They say simpler, but they make the weapons masters simultaneously a meaningless choice (since you can swap it at a long rest), and an unnecessary extra mechanic. Same goes for the Cunning Strikes, which are novel at first, but overall something that will be ignored as you play the game more and that novelty wears off.
They oversimplified the spell lists. 3 lists is too much of a dumbing down and it kills the class distinctions. You can give specific spells still to classes, it's just ugly.
I want a new edition, but I want the actual mechanics worked on.
I also don't care for the push to have everything online and tied into a subscription. This is becoming a VERY expensive hobby, especially when you go from a book costing $35 to $55 because they refuse to sell hard copy separately. Especially when inflation is high in the US, and a lot of people are stuggling to make ends meet, much less keep up with their favorite hobbies....
Plus, digital/subscriptions, in this day and age, means you only have access to the content for as long as the subscription is up to date. Subscriptions are basically having your info held hostage. I don't like that.
This video was incredibly frustrating to watch, after the UA5 rundown where Crawford was talking about Draconic wings being changed from always on to part of a spell was because they brought it down in level. Draconic wings in the 2014 PHB are a lvl 14 ability, in the UA it's still at level 14. It was aggravating hearing him say they nerfed something for a reason that wasn't true. THAN in this video he's talking about how people didn't like the change, but they had to do it because they dropped the level (WHICH THEY NEVER DID) but going into the next UA they'll put it back to its original higher level. WHAT HIGHER LEVEL JEREMY?? 14 is 14 is 14 is 14!
Than just his sidekick yes man has no clue either just "yep.. yep haha yep" Can somebody PLEASE tell Crawford it's always been 14 and still is 14 for draconic wings
I have seen several possibilities already mentioned, some from house rules and some from the playtest, and some mentioned in the video. Using soke combination of them should be enough to make the Warlock viable without having to change the short rest to 15 minutes (another common house rule fix).
1 - increase the number of pact slots available. The most common house rule I have seen for single class warlocks (adjust as required for multiclassed ones)is to link it to proficiency bonus. Killing the long slog of "2 spells, no more" from levels 2-10 would go a long ways.
2 - liberate the hex spell from pact magic early, rather than at high levels when it no longer matters. Like the first playtest ranger getting proficiency bonus castings of Hunter's Mark per long rest. But please don't build the class around using it.
3 - more Invocations, and ensure there are ZERO of them that let you cast a spell once per long rest, but with a pact slot. Those should all be changed to allow one free casting, and then use a pact slot if you want to do so again. More invocations was mentioned in the video.
4 - free castings of patron spells, anywhere from one per long rest to one per spell level per long rest, depending on what else is done. This, in the basic level, was in the playtest packet.
5 - a mid level ability to regain a pact slot when initiative is rolled, but don't require the warlock to be out in order to gain any - just don't be at max. At higher levels they could regain 2 instead of just one.
What I don't want to see is the Warlock to have a spell progression just like every other caster - they were unique, and if I wanted to play a Vancian caster I wouldn't be playing a warlock.
The playtest had some good ideas - mating the "you're a fool not to take it" pact invocations directly to the pact was good, but not perfect (the nerfing to ritual casting from Book of the Shadows come right to the front of my mind) but had potential, especially in how it liberated sword warlocks from the Hexblade patron. Changing the worst invocations (cast spell X once per long rest with a pact slot) to something actually useful was a welcome change. The Fiend patron giving a free casting of one of the patron spells per long rest, and adding them all to the prepared list rather than just the class list was also an excellent change. And while I didn't like the execution, having multiple casting stats to choose from was a novel concept - I just didn't like that Charisma was removed entirely from the Tome Warlock, because who enjoys seeing the new rules make a character you loved non-viable?
Whether or not I buy the new books depends on what my gaming group does. If they are willing to change I'll pick them up rather quickly. If they decide that instead they would rather switch to Pathfinder 2 or something else as the main fantasy game, well, then I'll wait a while and eventually pick them up, but at a slower pace.
The biggest problem is the 9 level gap between getting your 2nd spell per long rest and your 3rd. I typically deal with that by taking one of the "touched" feats at level 4 - they give a free casting of a 1st and a 2nd level spell, in addition to adding them to your class list. Also, it might also be based somewhat on your GM - the first time I played a Warlock mine never gave us a short rest in the entire campaign, we either had a 5 minute workday or didn't even have enough time to loot the bodies between encounters, and no in-between of any kind.
The 2014 warlock is cripplingly over-reliant on short rests. It assumes an absolute bare-assed minimum of two short rests a day and prefers six or more, which is BY NO MEANS universal. A very large percentage of tables never short rest at all, which means the 2014 warlock is stuck with two whole entire spell slots per day. Because their leveled spells are so incredibly scarce, many warlock players treat them like precious, irreplaceable resources and hoard them for the right moment, often resulting in warlocks never casting one single leveled spell through the entire adventuring day, many adventuring days in a row. Their "Pact Magic" is so overwhelmingly reliant on short rests that if your table doesn't Short Rest, you don't get to cast spells. Nor is this a "The Internet Says!" thing - Wizards has had data for years now that this is exactly the thing that happens to a great many warlock players.
The warlock being a Charisma-based class is also at odds with its lore and class fantasy of a "seeker of forbidden knowledge"; the warlock is expected to have a very low Intelligence score and a not-much-higher Wisdom score since those stats actively detract from the warlock being A Warlock, which leaves it being Charisma focused and thus vulnerable to The Great Charisma Caster Gang Bang of multiclassing tomcluckery everybody hates. Warlocks that are skilled and knowledgable occultists delving into lore and knowledge mankind should not have are...basically impossible to play, which is incredibly frustrating. They have to be derpy brainless sex pests a'la bards, instead.Z
The Invocation system is also underutilized, and the individual Pact Boons are wildly lopsided; the 2014 PAct of the Blade is a total waste of time. In all seriousness, the entire class is boiled down to "shoot lasers at your enemies, and when not fighting wait for the next fight to start because you have no utility whatsoever and can't get it, either." Wizards tried to fix this, but the entire playerbase rose up and told them they're not allowed to make warlocks better because even though warlocks are in a really bad place right now, they're flavorful and that's all that matters. Same reason why the sorcerer is bad, the ranger is bad, the monk is bad...
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That’s a blatant lie. The playerbase rose up and said “please make them better, just don’t make them half casters.” The fact that you don’t like it just shows you lack the ability to conceive of any other way to make them better. Don’t get butthurt at us because of your own limitations.
That’s another blatant lie. Of everything I read that people suggested, people were always willing to give on at least one of those points, usually the short rest dependance and even the always-maximum point too a few times. Nobody suggested keeping everything and still increasing their casting capacity too. Nobody.
I feel like many of the updates had good potential. I would agree many of the new concepts probably needed an additional pass and they could have been amazing. From the sounds of it mostly getting the axe, I will admit to disappointment. Certainly the option for additional spellcasting abilities looked awesome. But if they are abandoning that approach I hope they switch to int. Too many charisma classes, not enough int classes.
I am personally disappointed that they are not trying to improve on the versions and are instead ditching them. That feels like the lazy way out. I was pretty excited about a revamp to the warlock class, and I count myself in the camp of they didn't have enough spell slots for how my groups typically played. You feel you have to hoard your spell slots unless you can do something amazing. Like holding onto those super healing items in video games only to get to the end and have 36 elixirs and you have used a total of 3.
Not sure how I feel about the spell list groupings going away. I felt they were in general going to do a swell job of simplifying some aspects. We're there issues? Yes, but they seemed eminently fixable. Curious what the next wave will look like when feedback on monk and the other classes come back.
"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."
The 2014 warlock is designed for 2 short rests. It rapidly becomes broken if the number of short rests is either higher or lower than intended.
It is by no means the only class with that problem, but it's the only spellcaster with that problem. The warlock is better balanced against martial classes than other spellcasters, precisely because it has a more similar resource recovery mechanic.
The other problem is that spells simply aren't designed around short rest recovery, which means certain spells that make total sense for warlocks cannot be placed on the warlock list. For example, if animate dead were a warlock spell, it would be entirely practical to maintain a stable of 60 undead at level 5...
I think that the strategy of the design team is that when something does not exceed the minimum acceptance limit (60% I think JC has commented on more than one occasion), instead of rethinking it again, they return to the relative safety of how it was in 2014.
That, in the end, what it does is that the changes that were proposed for One D&D have been reduced to a minimum in the last playtest (and it seems that we will continue to see that in the next playtests).
I would prefer a more courageous approach, but I understand why they are being so cowardly. The events of the last year have put WoTC in a delicate situation, and they don't want another disaster like 4e. However, I suspect that if this 5e revised is really going to be so meager in terms of changes, sales are not going to be good. But that will be seen.
Personally I was very hopeful with this playtest process, but now frankly I am very disappointed. My gaming group has been a little 5e fatigued for a while now, and without major changes, it's only going to get worse. Not that it's a big problem anyway, since we play a lot of different TTRPGs. And if we finally stop playing 5e, which is already happening, it won't be a debacle either.
A way could be more aggressive changes, but keeping both version alive, reprinting and in subscription content. So each one could use or combine as want.
Another issue is what seems players don't understand the balance concept, all the classes improves, because they improved that other class, also has to improve my favorite one, when done, the other one argues that as they improved the previous one because argued mine was improved, then my favorite one must be reimproved again, this in an infinite improving loop because my favorite must be the best. Meanwhile the monsters are the same, so how can you balance the challenge as DM? They even wanted to remove the criticals for monsters, giving some new charging feature only to some specific bosses...sorry I am not going to purchase again ALL the monsters books (I have all of them) just because a single feature added to some specific monsters, sorry but no.
What the sub/classes need are fixes, not unlimited improvements breaking the CR. But much arguing goes in the way of "if not better (instead fixed) than previous, go back".