it almost certainly was boiled down into "half-caster=bad", "mystic arcanum as invocations = bad".
If they're just going to take knee-jerk reactions to a view of feedback that doesn't involve reading it then why ask for detailed feedback in the first place? It's just a waste of everybody's time.
I have always had the suspicion (not to say the certainty) that no one specifically reads the comments. What they do is use big data analysis techniques to account for key concepts. That is, there are not a lot of humans reading all the comments that people write, but rather an AI groups similar concepts and counts them statistically as a whole. And then, yes, that data is analyzed by people.
So, in my opinion, what Agilemind told you makes a lot of sense. That is to say, your opinion, or mine, was subsumed in another bunch of more general concepts (such as: I don't want Mystic Arcanum to be Eldritch Invocation). The details or specific explanations that we could give were lost among the crowd of opinions.
And that's not to say that what counts most is the rating of the feature itself. That is, if you vote down something because, although you think it is a good idea, you think it could be improved, what you are doing is killing it. If something gets a bad score, it won't see the light. And of course WoTC will not receive the input "it can be improved", but rather "I don't like it".
I have always had the suspicion (not to say the certainty) that no one specifically reads the comments.
They claim to have readers, though there's no way they could be doing more than looking for patterns of comments, no-one can remember everything that everyone said.
I have always had the suspicion (not to say the certainty) that no one specifically reads the comments.
They claim to have readers, though there's no way they could be doing more than looking for patterns of comments, no-one can remember everything that everyone said.
Exactly, even if they have people reading them, which I suspect they do (though I doubt they read every comment) they probably randomly sample comments to read, those people are reading thousands of comments in a day, they aren't going to remember specifics, just common themes brought up by multiple people. So detailed comments are just going to get mushed together with vague comments into stuff like:
"The whole unique thing with Warlock is Pact Magic" or "Wizard identity is it's access to the biggest spell list, don't give it to all the other arcane casters." or "Wildshape gives druids too many hit points" or "Getting exhaustion for Frenzy sucks"
I have always had the suspicion (not to say the certainty) that no one specifically reads the comments.
They claim to have readers, though there's no way they could be doing more than looking for patterns of comments, no-one can remember everything that everyone said.
Yes I know. Even Jeremy Crawford said in an interview that he is given a "collection" of the most notable opinions. However, I think that they have outsourced this process. I highly doubt WoTC hired hundreds of people for this. And the third party company that does this will select some messages, I don't doubt it. But they won't do it by reading all the messages. They will do what I said before, which is what companies specializing in data analysis do. Thus, they will choose a series of example opinions from among the most majority opinions and will deliver them, along with their report, to the development team. The thing is that if they didn't do it that way, if they hired people to read the thousands and thousands of opinions, the process would either be very expensive, or they would have semi-slaves working in inhumane conditions.
Yes I know. Even Jeremy Crawford said in an interview that he is given a "collection" of the most notable opinions.
However, I think that they have outsourced this process. I highly doubt WoTC hired hundreds of people for this.
I doubt they need hundreds of people. If we assume a mean survey answer has 250 words of free text, that's 5 million words; at a reasonable skimming rate of 40,000 words per hour, that's about 3 man-weeks.
The half caster warlock was bad because you gave up spell potency to gain spell availability. The Mystic Arcanum invocation returned some potency, but in an extremely limited format. It also took away from your ability to grab other invocations. The flaw is that there was no way to remove Mystic Arcanum from invocations in that format, because at the highest levels of play selecting mostly MA invocations put you on par with full casters. If you are on par with full casters then you shouldn’t have a bunch of other invocations. I think the easiest fix for the half caster version is to make MA invocations make you learn a spell and gain a spell slot of that level so you could use them cast that spell or to upcast another spell. With the at will invocations brought down to appropriate levels like UA7 and the Pacts Boons being invocations it places Warlocks in a place were they must decide how they want to build. I would miss pact magic, but I would be okay with half caster warlock with just this one change.
The only reasonable fix I see for Pact Magic Warlock is invocations that grant low level spell slots. I attempted to just give Warlocks 1/3 Spellcasting on top of Pact Magic and discovered it was too strong if they didn’t give up some invocations for that power gain. Right now I’m playing with adding Spellcasting levels as invocations and it works pretty well and doesn’t break multiclassing.
I really like this idea and think it shows both an appropriate amount of balance and adaptability. Only thing I'd add on is the ability to restore a Mystic Arcanum cast of 5th level or below on a short rest, once per long rest. Slots should prolly equal that of a Wizard at 1/2 level rounded up in spell slots.
I suppose since the developers won't budge on pact magic now the only balanced way to increase casts/day is to instead grant additional lower-level slots as invocations. I figure Pact of the Tome is the starting point, do you have a couple examples for how this progression would go?
The way I proposed handling it is to have an invocation with a 5th level prerequisite that gives you spell slots equal to having 1 Spellcasting feature level(this makes multiclassing simple since you just add the Spellcasting features levels together to determine you spell slots.) So that would be 2 1st level slots. Now the problem is figuring out how many lower level slots should be given after this and at what interval. One way is to allow another invocation at 7th, 9th and 12, 15, and 18 that would increase your Spellcasting level for determining spell slots by 1 each. That’s 6 invocations spent to have spell slots equal to a 1/3 spellcaster on top of your pact magic. It delivers the slots in a not consistent manner. You get 2 1st from the first, but only only 1 1st from the second, then a 1st and 2 2nd from the third and continues this pattern. Another option is to have it take up 3 invocations and each one gives you 2 Spellcasting levels. So the first would be at 7th make giving you 3 1st level slots, the next at 12th giving you another 1st and 3 2nd level slots, the last at 18th giving you 3 3rd level slots. The problem I’m having is that because you still have so many invocations to play with and Pact magic slots the second method is too powerful. Honestly the both are too strong at high level play because it’s simple too many spells with what the Warlock can already do. Now I’m trying out 2 invocations 1 at 7th and one at 15 each giving 2 spellcasting levels each. So 3 1st level slots at 7th the another 1st and 3 2nd level slots at 15th. At first glance this doesn’t feel like enough but it’s a lot for Warlock who has so much other stuff going on as well.
Yes I know. Even Jeremy Crawford said in an interview that he is given a "collection" of the most notable opinions.
However, I think that they have outsourced this process. I highly doubt WoTC hired hundreds of people for this.
I doubt they need hundreds of people. If we assume a mean survey answer has 250 words of free text, that's 5 million words; at a reasonable skimming rate of 40,000 words per hour, that's about 3 man-weeks.
But even assuming WoTC hires people to read this (something I strongly doubt), those people are not the designers themselves. These people will deliver a statistical report in which the peculiarities of each response are lost. So if anyone believes that his wise comments are going to reach the eyes of the design team, I'm sorry to tell him that that's not going to happen.
Regarding crazy new ideas, it doesn't even matter whether they read the comments or not. JC literally said that they won't do any new experimental stuff in the upcoming UAs (source).
it almost certainly was boiled down into "half-caster=bad", "mystic arcanum as invocations = bad".
If they're just going to take knee-jerk reactions to a view of feedback that doesn't involve reading it then why ask for detailed feedback in the first place? It's just a waste of everybody's time.
I have always had the suspicion (not to say the certainty) that no one specifically reads the comments. What they do is use big data analysis techniques to account for key concepts. That is, there are not a lot of humans reading all the comments that people write, but rather an AI groups similar concepts and counts them statistically as a whole. And then, yes, that data is analyzed by people.
So, in my opinion, what Agilemind told you makes a lot of sense. That is to say, your opinion, or mine, was subsumed in another bunch of more general concepts (such as: I don't want Mystic Arcanum to be Eldritch Invocation). The details or specific explanations that we could give were lost among the crowd of opinions.
And that's not to say that what counts most is the rating of the feature itself. That is, if you vote down something because, although you think it is a good idea, you think it could be improved, what you are doing is killing it. If something gets a bad score, it won't see the light. And of course WoTC will not receive the input "it can be improved", but rather "I don't like it".
I will say that from what I saw even the people who liked the half caster Warlock hated the idea of Mystic Arcanum as Invocations. Mostly because they were so much better than anything else that from an optimizers PoV they had effectively boiled down the choices to two: Mystic Arcanum and Wrong. When one option is so much better than everything else it isn't good for the class as a whole.
I will say that from what I saw even the people who liked the half caster Warlock hated the idea of Mystic Arcanum as Invocations. Mostly because they were so much better than anything else that from an optimizers PoV they had effectively boiled down the choices to two: Mystic Arcanum and Wrong. When one option is so much better than everything else it isn't good for the class as a whole.
I agree with that, what I'm not so sure is that people didn't like Mystic Arcanum for that reason. I think it was because they wanted it (we wanted it) for free. For example, right now bladelock is way better than any other warlock option you can think of. I highly doubt you'll see many non-bladelock warlocks. And yet, I haven't seen too many people complaining (I remember one or two people, but that's it).
I will say that from what I saw even the people who liked the half caster Warlock hated the idea of Mystic Arcanum as Invocations. Mostly because they were so much better than anything else that from an optimizers PoV they had effectively boiled down the choices to two: Mystic Arcanum and Wrong. When one option is so much better than everything else it isn't good for the class as a whole.
I agree with that, what I'm not so sure is that people didn't like Mystic Arcanum for that reason. I think it was because they wanted it (we wanted it) for free. For example, right now bladelock is way better than any other warlock option you can think of. I highly doubt you'll see many non-bladelock warlocks. And yet, I haven't seen too many people complaining (I remember one or two people, but that's it).
I think a few more have said it but something universally agreed upon doesn't spur debate. I did bring it up in the survey.
Oh, hmm. I did see posts expressing that view earlier in this thread or others (there are so many spread between so many now, lol). This approach seems to really nickel and dime the cost though, a few spells of 1-3 at those character levels seems so few and at such a low level for the point at which you get 'em, I can't see how they would make a noticeable difference to how the class feels in play. Which I think is the ultimate goal of these changes, to make them feel like the class works as advertised in play. I can't imagine myself remembering that these slots exist in play.
I definitely agree that half-casting plus Pact Slots is way too much. 1/3 casting doesn't seem too much to me (maybe, I'd have to see how that really looks in practice) but only provided that the Warlock can't double dip those 1/3 slots with too many of their most powerful invocations. Like, maybe a Tome version of the Warlock gets 1/3 casting plus slots, a Bladelock gets all the stuff they already get but no option to horn in on Tome's base, and maybe Chain or another Pact gets a third set of interesting abilities that neither pushes them to emulate a warrior class nor a real caster.
Unfortunately the hardest part of balancing the Warlock is right there in its greatest strength as a class; the modularity. If they removed Patron features a had the Warlock choose Blade/Tome/Etc at 3rd level as a subclass it could be perfectly suited. But if we remove Patron choice you're essentially removing one of the most interesting lore features of the game. But if you pair both Patron and Pact you're giving the Warlock not 3-4 subclasses but 6-8 subclasses, half of which have radically different play styles.
Which is why I ultimately think staggering Pact Slots to give our a few more spells split between a range of a few levels is the best choice. The reduced # of 3-5 level spells means they don't exceed the firepower of a full caster, but they also have enough spells over a day to feel like a caster class class.
But reception across the board is out for that idea, or for fixing the short rest problem. Failing homebrew it seems that the Warlock is going to remain a pretty crooked nail.
Oh, hmm. I did see posts expressing that view earlier in this thread or others (there are so many spread between so many now, lol). This approach seems to really nickel and dime the cost though, a few spells of 1-3 at those character levels seems so few and at such a low level for the point at which you get 'em, I can't see how they would make a noticeable difference to how the class feels in play. Which I think is the ultimate goal of these changes, to make them feel like the class works as advertised in play. I can't imagine myself remembering that these slots exist in play.
I definitely agree that half-casting plus Pact Slots is way too much. 1/3 casting doesn't seem too much to me (maybe, I'd have to see how that really looks in practice) but only provided that the Warlock can't double dip those 1/3 slots with too many of their most powerful invocations. Like, maybe a Tome version of the Warlock gets 1/3 casting plus slots, a Bladelock gets all the stuff they already get but no option to horn in on Tome's base, and maybe Chain or another Pact gets a third set of interesting abilities that neither pushes them to emulate a warrior class nor a real caster.
Unfortunately the hardest part of balancing the Warlock is right there in its greatest strength as a class; the modularity. If they removed Patron features a had the Warlock choose Blade/Tome/Etc at 3rd level as a subclass it could be perfectly suited. But if we remove Patron choice you're essentially removing one of the most interesting lore features of the game. But if you pair both Patron and Pact you're giving the Warlock not 3-4 subclasses but 6-8 subclasses, half of which have radically different play styles.
Which is why I ultimately think staggering Pact Slots to give our a few more spells split between a range of a few levels is the best choice. The reduced # of 3-5 level spells means they don't exceed the firepower of a full caster, but they also have enough spells over a day to feel like a caster class class.
But reception across the board is out for that idea, or for fixing the short rest problem. Failing homebrew it seems that the Warlock is going to remain a pretty crooked nail.
I did the 1/3 Caster +Pact Magic thing and it’s still too much because Pact Magic refreshes on a short rest and the increase in the amount of pact magic slots above 11th. I originally ran it with one less PM slot maxing it out at 3, but with that build the problem was too many invocations. So reworked it into invocations to give it cost to gain the slots, but really 1/3 Spellcasting doesn’t scale properly as 6 invocations, as 3 or less invocations it’s too powerful. I’m working out another format to give access to a 3rd and a 4th level spell slot, but I don’t envy real game designers. I’m doing this cause I’m sitting around bored on strike, but they decided do it for a living. Once this strike ends I won’t have time to play around with game design. The reality is that your claim that those 1st and 2 level spells slots wouldn’t matter for your warlock at the levels I have as the invocations prerequisites would mean the warlock is fine compared to the full caster. If the low level slots wouldn’t aid the warlock then they don’t aid the full caster either. At 7th level a Warlock has two 4th level pact slots a Wizard has a 4th and three 3rd level slots. With Magical Cunning a Warlock is guaranteed to get 4 pact slots a day at minimum. If it’s true that lower level spells don’t matter, then the Warlock is superior to the full caster already. I don’t believe this is true. Especially in a game with 1st level Warlock spells like Cause Fear, Charm Person, Expeditious Retreat, Hellish Rebuke, and Hex, even Armor of Agathys would be a decent use of a first level slot at 7th level. Gaining 3 1st level slots at 7th would definitely give the Warlock more casting potential. It makes spells like expeditious retreat something you could actually use on the warlock.
This conversation just gave me a crazy idea that WotC should not do, but would be fun for playtest if we had more time. Instead of there Pact Boons being level one invocations they were level one features that set your path. The path you choose determines your spell casting type and how many invocations you receive. Pact of the Blade- Gives you half caster progression Spellcasting, Medium Armor Training, Shield Training, 8 invocations and access to Mystic Arcanum invocations. Pact of the Chain- Gives you Pact Magic, Magical Cunning, 10 invocations and a Mystic Arcanum feature for 6th- 9th level spells. Pact of the Tome- Gives you full caster progression Spellcasting and 2 Invocations.
Well crap, I thought "closes October 5th" meant until the end of today. This was NOT enough time this time to test, discuss, gather good constructive feedback and respond. Unfortunately I missed it, though I'm not sure they read comments anyway.
Given the Warlock discussions on recent posts here, yes, Warlock is what needed most feedback again. They were getting closer, and the fixes are really within reach:
Mystic Arcanum every spell level, starting at Warlock level 2 and every even level until 10, then as normal. Swap 1 MA out per LR. This gives you low level slots, with a small amount of flexibility -- basically you get a fixed spell similar to slots of 1/1/1/1/1/1/1/1/1 through your career, though I'd give another 6th or below MA at level 19 or 20.
Eldritch Channeling -- ALL Pact Magic slot recharge tied to this, instead of "Magical Cunning" and recharge on SR. Set it up Like Divine Channeling (could call it Eldritch Power or Eldritch Recovery instead),. This is the best recharge mechanic in D&D right now: 2 uses at level 2, up to 4 over career; recharge 1 per SR. Use as a 1 minute ritual to regain 1 Pact Magic Slot. Also could have other uses, like cast Hex directly at highest level, and Eldritch Invocations that give other powers.
Eldritch Invocations -- more of them still, since these are where most of the Warlock flavor and fun happen. Give them out on the same or similar schedule to Spells Prepared.
Simplify Pact Magic -- Balance the above out by making Pact Magic just give 2 slots for the whole career, and recharge with Eldritch Channeling, not on SR on their own.
There need to be some tweaks to several other areas to smooth things out and to avoid multiclass abuse, but these would achieve the major fixes.
Mystic Arcanum every spell level, starting at Warlock level 2 and every even level until 10, then as normal. Swap 1 MA out per LR. This gives you low level slots, with a small amount of flexibility -- basically you get a fixed spell similar to slots of 1/1/1/1/1/1/1/1/1 through your career, though I'd give another 6th or below MA at level 19 or 20.
it almost certainly was boiled down into "half-caster=bad", "mystic arcanum as invocations = bad".
If they're just going to take knee-jerk reactions to a view of feedback that doesn't involve reading it then why ask for detailed feedback in the first place? It's just a waste of everybody's time.
I have always had the suspicion (not to say the certainty) that no one specifically reads the comments. What they do is use big data analysis techniques to account for key concepts. That is, there are not a lot of humans reading all the comments that people write, but rather an AI groups similar concepts and counts them statistically as a whole. And then, yes, that data is analyzed by people.
So, in my opinion, what Agilemind told you makes a lot of sense. That is to say, your opinion, or mine, was subsumed in another bunch of more general concepts (such as: I don't want Mystic Arcanum to be Eldritch Invocation). The details or specific explanations that we could give were lost among the crowd of opinions.
And that's not to say that what counts most is the rating of the feature itself. That is, if you vote down something because, although you think it is a good idea, you think it could be improved, what you are doing is killing it. If something gets a bad score, it won't see the light. And of course WoTC will not receive the input "it can be improved", but rather "I don't like it".
While this is possible, it would mean the entire process is meaningless; because if people start upvoting features they like but want to see improved, WotC will just take that to mean that everybody loves the feature and print it as-is instead of fixing it.
It's a no-win scenario, as any keyword analysis can only tell you so much about what feedback actually says and AI tools for analysis are frankly terrible; it's pretty much pot-luck if it can guess intent or positivity correctly, and that's with a model specifically trained for the domain. But to do that WotC would need to train a model on previous playtest surveys using known values (i.e- human recorded data for the AI to learn from).
Former D&D Beyond Customer of six years: With the axing of piecemeal purchasing, lack of meaningful development, and toxic moderation the site isn't worth paying for anymore. I remain a free user only until my groups are done migrating from DDB, and if necessary D&D, after which I'm done. There are better systems owned by better companies out there.
I have unsubscribed from all topics and will not reply to messages. My homebrew is now 100% unsupported.
One criticism would be I feel like they should not have rolled back some of the things on sorcerer particularly draconic sorcerer.
I thought draconic exhalation was pretty cool it could have maybe been moved up or down depending on how strong it was but I didn't feel like it was needed to get rid of it and replace it with something that it was replacing itself that is widely considered a really unliked feature which is draconic presence which has no right to be the 18th level ability for the subclass. Another thing for the draconic wings ability at 14th level why would you ever make them corporeal and not spectral there's no reason for that also I do not consider that a meaningful 14th level ability it is literally just a fly speed whereas at that level most of your party should have some form of legendary item that easily can facilitate the use of fly in another form I just feel like that's a wasted ability at that level. Maybe something that could offset the cost of that level of ability would be maybe give the player a legendary resistance like the dragon does for the cost of five sorcery points just an idea but I just feel like some of the leveling on these abilities does not make sense to me.
Also on a side note did anyone else not see the aberrant sorcerer in the UA because it's and the clockwork for that matter cuz it said they were in there but I didn't see them
One criticism would be I feel like they should not have rolled back some of the things on sorcerer particularly draconic sorcerer.
I thought draconic exhalation was pretty cool it could have maybe been moved up or down depending on how strong it was but I didn't feel like it was needed to get rid of it and replace it with something that it was replacing itself that is widely considered a really unliked feature which is draconic presence which has no right to be the 18th level ability for the subclass. Another thing for the draconic wings ability at 14th level why would you ever make them corporeal and not spectral there's no reason for that also I do not consider that a meaningful 14th level ability it is literally just a fly speed whereas at that level most of your party should have some form of legendary item that easily can facilitate the use of fly in another form I just feel like that's a wasted ability at that level. Maybe something that could offset the cost of that level of ability would be maybe give the player a legendary resistance like the dragon does for the cost of five sorcery points just an idea but I just feel like some of the leveling on these abilities does not make sense to me.
Also on a side note did anyone else not see the aberrant sorcerer in the UA because it's and the clockwork for that matter cuz it said they were in there but I didn't see them
You use the Tasha’s version’s of those subclasses.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
To post a comment, please login or register a new account.
I have always had the suspicion (not to say the certainty) that no one specifically reads the comments. What they do is use big data analysis techniques to account for key concepts. That is, there are not a lot of humans reading all the comments that people write, but rather an AI groups similar concepts and counts them statistically as a whole. And then, yes, that data is analyzed by people.
So, in my opinion, what Agilemind told you makes a lot of sense. That is to say, your opinion, or mine, was subsumed in another bunch of more general concepts (such as: I don't want Mystic Arcanum to be Eldritch Invocation). The details or specific explanations that we could give were lost among the crowd of opinions.
And that's not to say that what counts most is the rating of the feature itself. That is, if you vote down something because, although you think it is a good idea, you think it could be improved, what you are doing is killing it. If something gets a bad score, it won't see the light. And of course WoTC will not receive the input "it can be improved", but rather "I don't like it".
They claim to have readers, though there's no way they could be doing more than looking for patterns of comments, no-one can remember everything that everyone said.
Exactly, even if they have people reading them, which I suspect they do (though I doubt they read every comment) they probably randomly sample comments to read, those people are reading thousands of comments in a day, they aren't going to remember specifics, just common themes brought up by multiple people. So detailed comments are just going to get mushed together with vague comments into stuff like:
"The whole unique thing with Warlock is Pact Magic" or "Wizard identity is it's access to the biggest spell list, don't give it to all the other arcane casters." or "Wildshape gives druids too many hit points" or "Getting exhaustion for Frenzy sucks"
Yes I know. Even Jeremy Crawford said in an interview that he is given a "collection" of the most notable opinions.
However, I think that they have outsourced this process. I highly doubt WoTC hired hundreds of people for this. And the third party company that does this will select some messages, I don't doubt it. But they won't do it by reading all the messages. They will do what I said before, which is what companies specializing in data analysis do. Thus, they will choose a series of example opinions from among the most majority opinions and will deliver them, along with their report, to the development team.
The thing is that if they didn't do it that way, if they hired people to read the thousands and thousands of opinions, the process would either be very expensive, or they would have semi-slaves working in inhumane conditions.
I doubt they need hundreds of people. If we assume a mean survey answer has 250 words of free text, that's 5 million words; at a reasonable skimming rate of 40,000 words per hour, that's about 3 man-weeks.
The way I proposed handling it is to have an invocation with a 5th level prerequisite that gives you spell slots equal to having 1 Spellcasting feature level(this makes multiclassing simple since you just add the Spellcasting features levels together to determine you spell slots.) So that would be 2 1st level slots. Now the problem is figuring out how many lower level slots should be given after this and at what interval. One way is to allow another invocation at 7th, 9th and 12, 15, and 18 that would increase your Spellcasting level for determining spell slots by 1 each. That’s 6 invocations spent to have spell slots equal to a 1/3 spellcaster on top of your pact magic. It delivers the slots in a not consistent manner. You get 2 1st from the first, but only only 1 1st from the second, then a 1st and 2 2nd from the third and continues this pattern. Another option is to have it take up 3 invocations and each one gives you 2 Spellcasting levels. So the first would be at 7th make giving you 3 1st level slots, the next at 12th giving you another 1st and 3 2nd level slots, the last at 18th giving you 3 3rd level slots.
The problem I’m having is that because you still have so many invocations to play with and Pact magic slots the second method is too powerful. Honestly the both are too strong at high level play because it’s simple too many spells with what the Warlock can already do. Now I’m trying out 2 invocations 1 at 7th and one at 15 each giving 2 spellcasting levels each. So 3 1st level slots at 7th the another 1st and 3 2nd level slots at 15th. At first glance this doesn’t feel like enough but it’s a lot for Warlock who has so much other stuff going on as well.
Those calculations seem very optimistic to me. The average reader is about 200 - 300 words per minute (https://www.researchgate.net/publication/332380784_How_many_words_do_we_read_per_minute_A_review_and_meta-analysis_of_reading_rate). That's about 12,000 - 18,000 words per hour. But also, that average assumes that you are reading straight, without interruptions. These people not only have to read, they have to account.
But even assuming WoTC hires people to read this (something I strongly doubt), those people are not the designers themselves. These people will deliver a statistical report in which the peculiarities of each response are lost. So if anyone believes that his wise comments are going to reach the eyes of the design team, I'm sorry to tell him that that's not going to happen.
Regarding crazy new ideas, it doesn't even matter whether they read the comments or not. JC literally said that they won't do any new experimental stuff in the upcoming UAs (source).
I will say that from what I saw even the people who liked the half caster Warlock hated the idea of Mystic Arcanum as Invocations. Mostly because they were so much better than anything else that from an optimizers PoV they had effectively boiled down the choices to two: Mystic Arcanum and Wrong. When one option is so much better than everything else it isn't good for the class as a whole.
I agree with that, what I'm not so sure is that people didn't like Mystic Arcanum for that reason. I think it was because they wanted it (we wanted it) for free. For example, right now bladelock is way better than any other warlock option you can think of. I highly doubt you'll see many non-bladelock warlocks. And yet, I haven't seen too many people complaining (I remember one or two people, but that's it).
I think a few more have said it but something universally agreed upon doesn't spur debate. I did bring it up in the survey.
Oh, hmm. I did see posts expressing that view earlier in this thread or others (there are so many spread between so many now, lol). This approach seems to really nickel and dime the cost though, a few spells of 1-3 at those character levels seems so few and at such a low level for the point at which you get 'em, I can't see how they would make a noticeable difference to how the class feels in play. Which I think is the ultimate goal of these changes, to make them feel like the class works as advertised in play. I can't imagine myself remembering that these slots exist in play.
I definitely agree that half-casting plus Pact Slots is way too much. 1/3 casting doesn't seem too much to me (maybe, I'd have to see how that really looks in practice) but only provided that the Warlock can't double dip those 1/3 slots with too many of their most powerful invocations. Like, maybe a Tome version of the Warlock gets 1/3 casting plus slots, a Bladelock gets all the stuff they already get but no option to horn in on Tome's base, and maybe Chain or another Pact gets a third set of interesting abilities that neither pushes them to emulate a warrior class nor a real caster.
Unfortunately the hardest part of balancing the Warlock is right there in its greatest strength as a class; the modularity. If they removed Patron features a had the Warlock choose Blade/Tome/Etc at 3rd level as a subclass it could be perfectly suited. But if we remove Patron choice you're essentially removing one of the most interesting lore features of the game. But if you pair both Patron and Pact you're giving the Warlock not 3-4 subclasses but 6-8 subclasses, half of which have radically different play styles.
Which is why I ultimately think staggering Pact Slots to give our a few more spells split between a range of a few levels is the best choice. The reduced # of 3-5 level spells means they don't exceed the firepower of a full caster, but they also have enough spells over a day to feel like a caster class class.
But reception across the board is out for that idea, or for fixing the short rest problem. Failing homebrew it seems that the Warlock is going to remain a pretty crooked nail.
I did the 1/3 Caster +Pact Magic thing and it’s still too much because Pact Magic refreshes on a short rest and the increase in the amount of pact magic slots above 11th. I originally ran it with one less PM slot maxing it out at 3, but with that build the problem was too many invocations. So reworked it into invocations to give it cost to gain the slots, but really 1/3 Spellcasting doesn’t scale properly as 6 invocations, as 3 or less invocations it’s too powerful. I’m working out another format to give access to a 3rd and a 4th level spell slot, but I don’t envy real game designers. I’m doing this cause I’m sitting around bored on strike, but they decided do it for a living. Once this strike ends I won’t have time to play around with game design.
The reality is that your claim that those 1st and 2 level spells slots wouldn’t matter for your warlock at the levels I have as the invocations prerequisites would mean the warlock is fine compared to the full caster. If the low level slots wouldn’t aid the warlock then they don’t aid the full caster either. At 7th level a Warlock has two 4th level pact slots a Wizard has a 4th and three 3rd level slots. With Magical Cunning a Warlock is guaranteed to get 4 pact slots a day at minimum. If it’s true that lower level spells don’t matter, then the Warlock is superior to the full caster already. I don’t believe this is true. Especially in a game with 1st level Warlock spells like Cause Fear, Charm Person, Expeditious Retreat, Hellish Rebuke, and Hex, even Armor of Agathys would be a decent use of a first level slot at 7th level. Gaining 3 1st level slots at 7th would definitely give the Warlock more casting potential. It makes spells like expeditious retreat something you could actually use on the warlock.
This conversation just gave me a crazy idea that WotC should not do, but would be fun for playtest if we had more time. Instead of there Pact Boons being level one invocations they were level one features that set your path. The path you choose determines your spell casting type and how many invocations you receive.
Pact of the Blade- Gives you half caster progression Spellcasting, Medium Armor Training, Shield Training, 8 invocations and access to Mystic Arcanum invocations.
Pact of the Chain- Gives you Pact Magic, Magical Cunning, 10 invocations and a Mystic Arcanum feature for 6th- 9th level spells.
Pact of the Tome- Gives you full caster progression Spellcasting and 2 Invocations.
Well crap, I thought "closes October 5th" meant until the end of today. This was NOT enough time this time to test, discuss, gather good constructive feedback and respond. Unfortunately I missed it, though I'm not sure they read comments anyway.
Given the Warlock discussions on recent posts here, yes, Warlock is what needed most feedback again. They were getting closer, and the fixes are really within reach:
There need to be some tweaks to several other areas to smooth things out and to avoid multiclass abuse, but these would achieve the major fixes.
This would fix so many things.
While this is possible, it would mean the entire process is meaningless; because if people start upvoting features they like but want to see improved, WotC will just take that to mean that everybody loves the feature and print it as-is instead of fixing it.
It's a no-win scenario, as any keyword analysis can only tell you so much about what feedback actually says and AI tools for analysis are frankly terrible; it's pretty much pot-luck if it can guess intent or positivity correctly, and that's with a model specifically trained for the domain. But to do that WotC would need to train a model on previous playtest surveys using known values (i.e- human recorded data for the AI to learn from).
Former D&D Beyond Customer of six years: With the axing of piecemeal purchasing, lack of meaningful development, and toxic moderation the site isn't worth paying for anymore. I remain a free user only until my groups are done migrating from DDB, and if necessary D&D, after which I'm done. There are better systems owned by better companies out there.
I have unsubscribed from all topics and will not reply to messages. My homebrew is now 100% unsupported.
One criticism would be I feel like they should not have rolled back some of the things on sorcerer particularly draconic sorcerer.
I thought draconic exhalation was pretty cool it could have maybe been moved up or down depending on how strong it was but I didn't feel like it was needed to get rid of it and replace it with something that it was replacing itself that is widely considered a really unliked feature which is draconic presence which has no right to be the 18th level ability for the subclass. Another thing for the draconic wings ability at 14th level why would you ever make them corporeal and not spectral there's no reason for that also I do not consider that a meaningful 14th level ability it is literally just a fly speed whereas at that level most of your party should have some form of legendary item that easily can facilitate the use of fly in another form I just feel like that's a wasted ability at that level. Maybe something that could offset the cost of that level of ability would be maybe give the player a legendary resistance like the dragon does for the cost of five sorcery points just an idea but I just feel like some of the leveling on these abilities does not make sense to me.
Also on a side note did anyone else not see the aberrant sorcerer in the UA because it's and the clockwork for that matter cuz it said they were in there but I didn't see them
You use the Tasha’s version’s of those subclasses.