1) I'm really, really hoping their solution isn't just "more pact slots per short rest."
From what they've done with Channel Divinity/etc, I suspect 'more initial slots, recover 1 per SR'.
I wouldn't want that either though. That model works fine for a secondary or tertiary resource that the character can live without. But for pact slots it would lead to the same unfun rationing/cantrip battery we see now; it wouldn't solve anything.
1) I'm really, really hoping their solution isn't just "more pact slots per short rest." Not only is that dreadfully unimaginative, it has power implications too. Say you make it PB pact slots per SR, at level 9 that's four 5th-level slots per short rest, i.e. roughly twelve 5th-level slots per day when other full casters are working with 1-2 at most. Sure they'll have no low level slots, but with that many nukes it hardly matters.
2) Whatever they land on, I want it to be multiclass friendly. Warlocks having this weird separate magic progression makes me wonder why they bothered with giving them spell slots at all when they could have just based everything on invocations. This is a big part of why people only dip Warlock before progressing something else; more than a dip is just setting those levels on fire, and the pact slots don't scale.
While I liked pact magic, I felt it almost mandatory for me to multiclass because I wanted to have some low level spell slots for utility like shield and misty step. Using a precious spell slot for those as they grew in power feels really bad. I was looking forward to the new design as it was fixing my biggest gripes. I hope I don't have to return to feeling it necessary to MC so I can play a warlock.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Any time an unfathomably powerful entity sweeps in and offers godlike rewards in return for just a few teensy favors, it’s a scam. Unless it’s me. I’d never lie to you, reader dearest.
Invocations covered part of the utility area, and as for the rest, it’s the trade-off for refreshing the slots on a short rest. If you want typical caster utility, you can play as a typical caster. The point of Pact Magic was that it followed a different core formula for use. I agree that the refresh rate needs rebalanced so it’s not so swingy, but I want Warlock magic to be distinct from typical magic.
Invocations covered part of the utility area, and as for the rest, it’s the trade-off for refreshing the slots on a short rest. If you want typical caster utility, you can play as a typical caster. The point of Pact Magic was that it followed a different core formula for use. I agree that the refresh rate needs rebalanced so it’s not so swingy, but I want Warlock magic to be distinct from typical magic.
But it's not distinct enough if that's their goal and that causes wonkiness in the rest of the system. Look at Coffeelock or Pact Smiting or items that can be recharged with your spell slots like Rod of Absorption etc. Either Pact Slots should interact fully with the rest of the system, or they shouldn't be spell slots at all and become something closer to Mystic Arcanum.
One step forward, 2 steps back. I suspect the 2024 player's book is going to look fairly identical to the 2014 player's book.
Condensed spell lists? Gone. Standardized subclasses? Gone. Class- specific spells? Gone. Warlock fix? Gone. Actual class features for Wizard? Gone. (Though that build a spell can stay dead thank you).
And it really is kind of crazy how high of a bar it is to not completely remove something. 70%? Failure. You would think "Oh, that's good. Just need to figure out what's wrong and tweak it."
This all or nothing philosophy is kind of bizarre. Especially since- as many people in the YouTube comments pointed out- the classes are polling low, but the features are polling high.. which means that the changes are good, but the classes need MORE. not less.
Alas, my optimism for this rework is greatly diminished, which is a shame because I had been so excited after the recent playtests.
And it really is kind of crazy how high of a bar it is to not completely remove something. 70%? Failure. You would think "Oh, that's good. Just need to figure out what's wrong and tweak it."
This all or nothing philosophy is kind of bizarre. Especially since- as many people in the YouTube comments pointed out- the classes are polling low, but the features are polling high.. which means that the changes are good, but the classes need MORE. not less.
Alas, my optimism for this rework is greatly diminished, which is a shame because I had been so excited after the recent playtests.
Definitely agreed here. The bar for acceptance is too high (how often do they really expect a minimum of 80% of tens if not hundreds of thousands of people to agree to any sort of change?) and they are taking the wrong conclusions away from the overall class/individual feature disconnect.
Therein lies the problem with the concept of a spell blade in a game that needs some kind of balance. If you have a power budget of 100 points for each class design, but any major feature of a class is effectively worthless if it's under 50 points of power, you'll never have the 50/50 mix of melee and spells because then both would be too weak. So, you need to choose: mostly magic with a sprinkle of melee or mostly melee with a sprinkle of magic. Could you just say 'eh, this class actually gets 160 power points so they can be pretty good at both'? Sure, but then other players would be justified in asking why that one class gets to contribute more and more often per session on average than other classes do.
This is a gross misunderstanding of the point behind hybrid builds. A hybrid build does, indeed, have a greater total "power budget" than a non-hybrid build because it doesn't get to enjoy the benefits of hyperspecialization. Just like a 14 or a 15 cost more in Point Buy than any number below them and you can actually get a significantly higher total number of points by accepting lower maximum scores, the top end of any given specialization should have increasing costs associated with it because those abilities are generally greater in magnitude than 'lower' abilities and are easier to build for and support. A spellblade that requires two stats (their weapon stat and their caster stat) to work and which get only half of The Majik and half of Teh Fytin' are going to suck ass, yes - because they do not have any of the advantages of hybridization and are stuck with all the disadvantages.
A typical hybrid-class spread is more like the paladin - 60-60, total power budget of 120, and the last 20 points of that budget should be spent on unique things that cannot be done without being a hybrid fusion of two archetypes. They get enough martial strength to actually be useful in a fight, they get enough spellcasting to qualify as spellcasters, and they get ways to make their spells and their sword work together. 100-point Majik people get access to Greater Arcana; 100-point Fytin' people (should) get access to combat stunts and feats beyond the ceiling of the hybrid class, but the hybrid class still needs to be able to hold its own in both areas while benefitting properly from its hybrid status.
Which is why adding three points of power budget to an existing class does not, in fact, make a Spellblade.
One step forward, 2 steps back. I suspect the 2024 player's book is going to look fairly identical to the 2014 player's book.
Condensed spell lists? Gone. Standardized subclasses? Gone. Class- specific spells? Gone. Warlock fix? Gone. Actual class features for Wizard? Gone. (Though that build a spell can stay dead thank you).
And it really is kind of crazy how high of a bar it is to not completely remove something. 70%? Failure. You would think "Oh, that's good. Just need to figure out what's wrong and tweak it."
This all or nothing philosophy is kind of bizarre. Especially since- as many people in the YouTube comments pointed out- the classes are polling low, but the features are polling high.. which means that the changes are good, but the classes need MORE. not less.
Alas, my optimism for this rework is greatly diminished, which is a shame because I had been so excited after the recent playtests.
Not going to lie, I was really excited for the new warlock because, online vitriol aside, it would have been a much better play experience. Oh well, the rest of the rework still looks better than 5.0, so I still see no reason to not change to 5.5.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Any time an unfathomably powerful entity sweeps in and offers godlike rewards in return for just a few teensy favors, it’s a scam. Unless it’s me. I’d never lie to you, reader dearest.
Therein lies the problem with the concept of a spell blade in a game that needs some kind of balance. If you have a power budget of 100 points for each class design, but any major feature of a class is effectively worthless if it's under 50 points of power, you'll never have the 50/50 mix of melee and spells because then both would be too weak.
That indicates that you've incorrectly priced each feature. In any case, the real problem for gish builds is action economy; if you want people to actually mix spells and weapons, you pretty much need to give them a 'cast a spell and make a weapon attack' feature.
Wow did this video just deflate any hype I had for this rewrite. I'm not seeing myself buying this book at the current rate. SO MANY of the cool changes are just getting nixed.
How likely do you guys think us *****ing about Warlock stat changing would bring it back? Like, it was SO COOL! Who DIDN'T love 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 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.
Yikes. We seem to be having completely different experiences here. I frequent these forums and I haven't seen one person complain that fifth edition is perfect. Just because different people want different quantities of changes than you doesn't mean that they want One D&D to be 5e reprinted with 1 or 2 less spelling errors. A lot of people who like the current edition will switch to 1D&D if they feel it's an improved version of the game, but not if a lot of the stuff they like now is completely changed or removed.
That's a valid opinion, and the reason we have surveys is that everyone who theoretically might buy the books - even if they may not end up doing so - gets to provide insights, ideas, feedback, and criticism.
Pick literally any thread about the UA content from the last year. Read it. You'll find people in that thread bellowing that THEY'RE DONE, that the entire 1DD process is an EVIL CORPORATE CASH GRAB, and that they will NEVER BUY WIZARDS PRODUCTS AGAIN. Many of them brag about filling out their surveys with "Extremely Dissatisfied" on every last question no matter what it is and leaving "I WILL NOT FALL FOR YOUR EVIL CASH GRAB" in all the written feedback boxes. You cannot tell me you haven't seen them, they've been everywhere since this started.
I haven't seen them. At all. I've seen people who are extremely negative about the new edition or certain changes, but I haven't seen it anywhere near as much and anywhere near as extreme as the opinion you claim boatloads of people on the boards have. And just to confirm that this is correct, I just searched through close to half a dozen threads and found that the only person with statements like that in your posts is you who has written these statements in quotation marks.
There are inevitably going to be some trolls; Dozens of millions of people play D&D after all. However, this appears to be a complete exaggeration of others' views and the amount of people who have expressed opinions and bragged about doing awful things like this.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
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Wow did this video just deflate any hype I had for this rewrite. I'm not seeing myself buying this book at the current rate. SO MANY of the cool changes are just getting nixed.
How likely do you guys think us *****ing about Warlock stat changing would bring it back? Like, it was SO COOL! Who DIDN'T love it?
I mean, I was pretty ambivalent about it; it was honestly more a boondoggle feature than a significant change for me. You can make arguments for and against any of the mental stats being applicable (does INT fit because there’s an element of independent research to the class, or does it not really work because compared to a Wizard they’re not doing nearly as much personal application, for instance). Plus that’s probably the easiest one to just homebrew if you liked it so much. Having more spell slots available should have been a plus, but as a half caster they still wouldn’t actually have escaped being primarily cantrip spammers, particularly in the levels that see the most play. They’ve said they want to expand Invocations, maybe they can put it in there. The important thing that needs to be addressed is how Warlock spell slots are handled; I admit they need to be less short rest centric as that can be too flaky depending on the DM and/or table. Personally I’m interested to see what they come up with next.
I mean, I was pretty ambivalent about it; it was honestly more a boondoggle feature than a significant change for me. You can make arguments for and against any of the mental stats being applicable (does INT fit because there’s an element of independent research to the class, or does it not really work because compared to a Wizard they’re not doing nearly as much personal application, for instance).
There are currently three hundred and seventeen Charisma-based classes for people who want to be null-IQ sex pests. There is currently ONE class for people who do not think the Intelligence score and characters with the reasoning abilities of a turgid squirrel is actively detrimental to D&D.
Plus that’s probably the easiest one to just homebrew if you liked it so much.
It is essentially impossible to change the spellcasting ability of a spellcaster class in D&D Beyond. You can try and fidget with it in a particular subclass, but it works very poorly and all of your other non-spell features like Agonizing Doink will still reference your Charisma modifier instead of your Intelligence or Wisdom modifiers. Nor can those things be changed at all.
No, it is not "easy" to homebrew a different casting mod on a spellcaster.
I played a hexblade from level 5 to level 17, and it's tremendously effective. But it's also true that you are only going to use your magic for two things: Armor of agathys and Shadow of moil. Anything else is wasting a spell slot.
This is a tremendously silly statement. Spirit shroud is an excellent spell for hexlocks. And once you gain access to 4th or 5th level spells, you can start things off by casting blight first then wading in.
This is disappointing. I liked having three clear spell lists. It explained the flavor of these lists in terms of mechanics and was much easier to understand than every class having different lists that were made up of mostly the same selection of spells just in different quantities. What is the lore explanation for why a Sorcerer can't cast Planar Binding or why a Warlock can't learn Telekinesis if they're all using the same magical source, just by different mechanisms?
It also sucks that this means the new Bard with their "choose your spell list" option is probably gone now. I had ideas in my head for a nature bard that uses Primal magic through song, and now that's dead.
I'm really, really disappointed in Warlocks losing their floating Main Attribute. Warlocks are the ideal class to make multiclass friendly because their core fantasy is something anyone can theoretically do. A wizard who has made a pact with a Great Old One for magical secrets from beyond the veil of Creation is an incredibly thematic concept that cannot be made mechanically viable currently. Same with a druid who has made a pact with an Archfey to safeguard the local forest. Nah, these super thematic multiclass concepts cannot be done, but paladins making pacts with evil creatures from the Shadowfell? That's the best mechanical combo in the game!
Im really happy to see class spell lists returning. This means that we are no longer forced to have class specific spells appear as class features. The "You get hex" "You get hunters mark" "You get Volley" are probably some of the least exciting features in the entire playtest.
Generally positive stuff in this video.. My two main negatives is that it sounds like weapon mastery will be more or less it when it comes to making martials more interesting, which is a real shame. Hopefully the positive response to cunning strike will give them the courage to be less conservative with that kinda stuff.
The other one is that I really liked warlocks being able to pick their spell casting modifier, it was an interesting idea and im honestly surprised that it didnt get to stick around.
Edit: It kinda worries me that they dont seem to have any way of understanding the feedback of "I like this, but its not enough". Several times he mentions that some classes got overall worse feedback than the individual features put together.. I would probably rate most barbarian and fighter features favorably, but as classes they are still mechanically far less interesting than Id want them to be.
This is a tremendously silly statement. Spirit shroud is an excellent spell for hexlocks. And once you gain access to 4th or 5th level spells, you can start things off by casting blight first then wading in.
Why on earth would anyone (hexlock or otherwise) cast blight?
I mean, I was pretty ambivalent about it; it was honestly more a boondoggle feature than a significant change for me. You can make arguments for and against any of the mental stats being applicable (does INT fit because there’s an element of independent research to the class, or does it not really work because compared to a Wizard they’re not doing nearly as much personal application, for instance). Plus that’s probably the easiest one to just homebrew if you liked it so much. Having more spell slots available should have been a plus, but as a half caster they still wouldn’t actually have escaped being primarily cantrip spammers, particularly in the levels that see the most play. They’ve said they want to expand Invocations, maybe they can put it in there. The important thing that needs to be addressed is how Warlock spell slots are handled; I admit they need to be less short rest centric as that can be too flaky depending on the DM and/or table. Personally I’m interested to see what they come up with next.
Thing about Homebrew is that your DM needs to let you. One could argue that a 'good' DM would, but it's not always an option. I don't agree that it was a boondoggle, but whether or not it was doesn't really change the fact that it was a cool change.
As for the spellslots themselves, I don't really care either way as long as they get rid of the short rest bullshit. Also, they better not return us to the crap spell list we got in 2014. 90% of the good spells on it didn't even upcast. Like, what?
I played a hexblade from level 5 to level 17, and it's tremendously effective. But it's also true that you are only going to use your magic for two things: Armor of agathys and Shadow of moil. Anything else is wasting a spell slot.
This is a tremendously silly statement. Spirit shroud is an excellent spell for hexlocks. And once you gain access to 4th or 5th level spells, you can start things off by casting blight first then wading in.
I wouldn't want that either though. That model works fine for a secondary or tertiary resource that the character can live without. But for pact slots it would lead to the same unfun rationing/cantrip battery we see now; it wouldn't solve anything.
While I liked pact magic, I felt it almost mandatory for me to multiclass because I wanted to have some low level spell slots for utility like shield and misty step. Using a precious spell slot for those as they grew in power feels really bad. I was looking forward to the new design as it was fixing my biggest gripes. I hope I don't have to return to feeling it necessary to MC so I can play a warlock.
Any time an unfathomably powerful entity sweeps in and offers godlike rewards in return for just a few teensy favors, it’s a scam. Unless it’s me. I’d never lie to you, reader dearest.
Tasha
Invocations covered part of the utility area, and as for the rest, it’s the trade-off for refreshing the slots on a short rest. If you want typical caster utility, you can play as a typical caster. The point of Pact Magic was that it followed a different core formula for use. I agree that the refresh rate needs rebalanced so it’s not so swingy, but I want Warlock magic to be distinct from typical magic.
But it's not distinct enough if that's their goal and that causes wonkiness in the rest of the system. Look at Coffeelock or Pact Smiting or items that can be recharged with your spell slots like Rod of Absorption etc. Either Pact Slots should interact fully with the rest of the system, or they shouldn't be spell slots at all and become something closer to Mystic Arcanum.
One step forward, 2 steps back. I suspect the 2024 player's book is going to look fairly identical to the 2014 player's book.
Condensed spell lists? Gone. Standardized subclasses? Gone. Class- specific spells? Gone. Warlock fix? Gone. Actual class features for Wizard? Gone. (Though that build a spell can stay dead thank you).
And it really is kind of crazy how high of a bar it is to not completely remove something. 70%? Failure. You would think "Oh, that's good. Just need to figure out what's wrong and tweak it."
This all or nothing philosophy is kind of bizarre. Especially since- as many people in the YouTube comments pointed out- the classes are polling low, but the features are polling high.. which means that the changes are good, but the classes need MORE. not less.
Alas, my optimism for this rework is greatly diminished, which is a shame because I had been so excited after the recent playtests.
I don't actually think they showed their hand on this one way or the other.
Definitely agreed here. The bar for acceptance is too high (how often do they really expect a minimum of 80% of tens if not hundreds of thousands of people to agree to any sort of change?) and they are taking the wrong conclusions away from the overall class/individual feature disconnect.
This is a gross misunderstanding of the point behind hybrid builds. A hybrid build does, indeed, have a greater total "power budget" than a non-hybrid build because it doesn't get to enjoy the benefits of hyperspecialization. Just like a 14 or a 15 cost more in Point Buy than any number below them and you can actually get a significantly higher total number of points by accepting lower maximum scores, the top end of any given specialization should have increasing costs associated with it because those abilities are generally greater in magnitude than 'lower' abilities and are easier to build for and support. A spellblade that requires two stats (their weapon stat and their caster stat) to work and which get only half of The Majik and half of Teh Fytin' are going to suck ass, yes - because they do not have any of the advantages of hybridization and are stuck with all the disadvantages.
A typical hybrid-class spread is more like the paladin - 60-60, total power budget of 120, and the last 20 points of that budget should be spent on unique things that cannot be done without being a hybrid fusion of two archetypes. They get enough martial strength to actually be useful in a fight, they get enough spellcasting to qualify as spellcasters, and they get ways to make their spells and their sword work together. 100-point Majik people get access to Greater Arcana; 100-point Fytin' people (should) get access to combat stunts and feats beyond the ceiling of the hybrid class, but the hybrid class still needs to be able to hold its own in both areas while benefitting properly from its hybrid status.
Which is why adding three points of power budget to an existing class does not, in fact, make a Spellblade.
Please do not contact or message me.
Not going to lie, I was really excited for the new warlock because, online vitriol aside, it would have been a much better play experience. Oh well, the rest of the rework still looks better than 5.0, so I still see no reason to not change to 5.5.
Any time an unfathomably powerful entity sweeps in and offers godlike rewards in return for just a few teensy favors, it’s a scam. Unless it’s me. I’d never lie to you, reader dearest.
Tasha
That indicates that you've incorrectly priced each feature. In any case, the real problem for gish builds is action economy; if you want people to actually mix spells and weapons, you pretty much need to give them a 'cast a spell and make a weapon attack' feature.
Wow did this video just deflate any hype I had for this rewrite. I'm not seeing myself buying this book at the current rate. SO MANY of the cool changes are just getting nixed.
How likely do you guys think us *****ing about Warlock stat changing would bring it back? Like, it was SO COOL! Who DIDN'T love it?
Yikes. We seem to be having completely different experiences here. I frequent these forums and I haven't seen one person complain that fifth edition is perfect. Just because different people want different quantities of changes than you doesn't mean that they want One D&D to be 5e reprinted with 1 or 2 less spelling errors. A lot of people who like the current edition will switch to 1D&D if they feel it's an improved version of the game, but not if a lot of the stuff they like now is completely changed or removed.
That's a valid opinion, and the reason we have surveys is that everyone who theoretically might buy the books - even if they may not end up doing so - gets to provide insights, ideas, feedback, and criticism.
I haven't seen them. At all. I've seen people who are extremely negative about the new edition or certain changes, but I haven't seen it anywhere near as much and anywhere near as extreme as the opinion you claim boatloads of people on the boards have. And just to confirm that this is correct, I just searched through close to half a dozen threads and found that the only person with statements like that in your posts is you who has written these statements in quotation marks.
There are inevitably going to be some trolls; Dozens of millions of people play D&D after all. However, this appears to be a complete exaggeration of others' views and the amount of people who have expressed opinions and bragged about doing awful things like this.
BoringBard's long and tedious posts somehow manage to enrapture audiences. How? Because he used Charm Person, the #1 bard spell!
He/him pronouns. Call me Bard. PROUD NERD!
Ever wanted to talk about your parties' worst mistakes? Do so HERE. What's your favorite class, why? Share & explain
HERE.I mean, I was pretty ambivalent about it; it was honestly more a boondoggle feature than a significant change for me. You can make arguments for and against any of the mental stats being applicable (does INT fit because there’s an element of independent research to the class, or does it not really work because compared to a Wizard they’re not doing nearly as much personal application, for instance). Plus that’s probably the easiest one to just homebrew if you liked it so much. Having more spell slots available should have been a plus, but as a half caster they still wouldn’t actually have escaped being primarily cantrip spammers, particularly in the levels that see the most play. They’ve said they want to expand Invocations, maybe they can put it in there. The important thing that needs to be addressed is how Warlock spell slots are handled; I admit they need to be less short rest centric as that can be too flaky depending on the DM and/or table. Personally I’m interested to see what they come up with next.
There are currently three hundred and seventeen Charisma-based classes for people who want to be null-IQ sex pests. There is currently ONE class for people who do not think the Intelligence score and characters with the reasoning abilities of a turgid squirrel is actively detrimental to D&D.
It is essentially impossible to change the spellcasting ability of a spellcaster class in D&D Beyond. You can try and fidget with it in a particular subclass, but it works very poorly and all of your other non-spell features like Agonizing Doink will still reference your Charisma modifier instead of your Intelligence or Wisdom modifiers. Nor can those things be changed at all.
No, it is not "easy" to homebrew a different casting mod on a spellcaster.
Please do not contact or message me.
This is a tremendously silly statement. Spirit shroud is an excellent spell for hexlocks. And once you gain access to 4th or 5th level spells, you can start things off by casting blight first then wading in.
This is disappointing. I liked having three clear spell lists. It explained the flavor of these lists in terms of mechanics and was much easier to understand than every class having different lists that were made up of mostly the same selection of spells just in different quantities. What is the lore explanation for why a Sorcerer can't cast Planar Binding or why a Warlock can't learn Telekinesis if they're all using the same magical source, just by different mechanisms?
It also sucks that this means the new Bard with their "choose your spell list" option is probably gone now. I had ideas in my head for a nature bard that uses Primal magic through song, and now that's dead.
I'm really, really disappointed in Warlocks losing their floating Main Attribute. Warlocks are the ideal class to make multiclass friendly because their core fantasy is something anyone can theoretically do. A wizard who has made a pact with a Great Old One for magical secrets from beyond the veil of Creation is an incredibly thematic concept that cannot be made mechanically viable currently. Same with a druid who has made a pact with an Archfey to safeguard the local forest. Nah, these super thematic multiclass concepts cannot be done, but paladins making pacts with evil creatures from the Shadowfell? That's the best mechanical combo in the game!
Im really happy to see class spell lists returning. This means that we are no longer forced to have class specific spells appear as class features. The "You get hex" "You get hunters mark" "You get Volley" are probably some of the least exciting features in the entire playtest.
Generally positive stuff in this video.. My two main negatives is that it sounds like weapon mastery will be more or less it when it comes to making martials more interesting, which is a real shame. Hopefully the positive response to cunning strike will give them the courage to be less conservative with that kinda stuff.
The other one is that I really liked warlocks being able to pick their spell casting modifier, it was an interesting idea and im honestly surprised that it didnt get to stick around.
Edit: It kinda worries me that they dont seem to have any way of understanding the feedback of "I like this, but its not enough". Several times he mentions that some classes got overall worse feedback than the individual features put together.. I would probably rate most barbarian and fighter features favorably, but as classes they are still mechanically far less interesting than Id want them to be.
Why on earth would anyone (hexlock or otherwise) cast blight?
Thing about Homebrew is that your DM needs to let you. One could argue that a 'good' DM would, but it's not always an option. I don't agree that it was a boondoggle, but whether or not it was doesn't really change the fact that it was a cool change.
As for the spellslots themselves, I don't really care either way as long as they get rid of the short rest bullshit. Also, they better not return us to the crap spell list we got in 2014. 90% of the good spells on it didn't even upcast. Like, what?
Why Blight when you can Eldritch Smite?
Did I miss them explaining why they skipped from Fighter to Sorcerer and didn't talk about Monks, Paladins, Rangers, or Rogues?
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This was the survey results for LAST survey, not this one.