I want to assume that the lack luster UA is a result of a design team rattled by lay offs and the exit of veteran lead designers. Hopefully this UA suffered from the team being gun shy and afraid to take the daring leap into new territory. I can only imagine how difficult reading commentary can be when people can be so overtly critical and sometimes not constructive.
But this does give me concern. I can't remember a UA with many characters where the entire thing was a miss. And not by a slim margin either.
But I do want to offer something constructive. Don't be afraid to take a leap into new territory. Every class getting teleports and every feature creating temp hp diminishes uniqueness of the other classes. Be willing to go bold. That's what a UA is for. And bold attempts are more encouraging than lackluster attempts.
It's obvious from the videos that the design team clearly cares about these UA subclasses. And I hope they know we see that. But I also hope they can take this and find their footing as this simply feels rudderless with no direction.
I also look at this UA and can't help but feel underwhelmed with all these reheated abilities. I think there's been some neat-ish stuff on offer (I like the reanimator artificer, for instance), but the psion being just another full caster and this crop of uninspired sub classes feels so very safe and downright boring.
With 5.5 being such an incremental evolution, the game really could benefit from some bold swings.
Agreed. I personally don't want the system to become over bloated with rules and mechanics. Though it does feel like the team is either being held back or were not set up for success once their team was dwindled down by departure and lay off.
I also get the reluctance to swing for the fences. These forums and Reddit can be a cess pool. Negativity drives clicks and upvotes. So not wanting to take a chance on a bold move and then be flamed is a real thing. My only advice to that would be. Stay off the forums and only take the advice that comes from the survey. An audit process can weed out the unnecessarily negative surveys.
But, I digress. Something needs to change. This UA was disheartening to say the least. I just hope the surveys give valuable info and they find some way to swing for the fences on the next one.
The wizard subclasses were especially disappointing to me. They were basically copies of each other without anything unique to them. I was hoping for something cool from the transmuter and the necromancer but same ole, couple of extra spells and a free casting of a spell. So much could be done, like at 14 the transmuter could polymorph their stone into a dragon or something similar with additional stats not normally provided with polymorph, additional health, longer duration. Really lean into the school of magic.
Yeah, that's what I am seeing, too much leaning into copies of what other subclasses already have. Temporary hit points, short range teleports, standing up with some healing when reduced to zero.
Give is something NEW. Make the new subclasses fell like new things.
pretty much agree. I'll add I do not know why they keep fighting to bring back the hexblade . The hexblade was a patch for pact of the blade which was already patched and existed pretty much exclusively for a dip. I don't want to say no one, but the vast majority of people who took it had no interest in the sub class or its thematic nature past it made be better as a gish when I wanted to play a bard/paladin etc. Give us one of the sub classes people actually liked for itself not for a dip.
I want to assume that the lack luster UA is a result of a design team rattled by lay offs and the exit of veteran lead designers. Hopefully this UA suffered from the team being gun shy and afraid to take the daring leap into new territory. I can only imagine how difficult reading commentary can be when people can be so overtly critical and sometimes not constructive.
But this does give me concern. I can't remember a UA with many characters where the entire thing was a miss. And not by a slim margin either.
But I do want to offer something constructive. Don't be afraid to take a leap into new territory. Every class getting teleports and every feature creating temp hp diminishes uniqueness of the other classes. Be willing to go bold. That's what a UA is for. And bold attempts are more encouraging than lackluster attempts.
It's obvious from the videos that the design team clearly cares about these UA subclasses. And I hope they know we see that. But I also hope they can take this and find their footing as this simply feels rudderless with no direction.
The UA reanimator was the best I've seen in a long, long while. Thematically and play wise. If they publish it, it will be my go-to Necromancer character. It has more flavour than that poor ua Necro has.
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I want to assume that the lack luster UA is a result of a design team rattled by lay offs and the exit of veteran lead designers. Hopefully this UA suffered from the team being gun shy and afraid to take the daring leap into new territory. I can only imagine how difficult reading commentary can be when people can be so overtly critical and sometimes not constructive.
But this does give me concern. I can't remember a UA with many characters where the entire thing was a miss. And not by a slim margin either.
But I do want to offer something constructive. Don't be afraid to take a leap into new territory. Every class getting teleports and every feature creating temp hp diminishes uniqueness of the other classes. Be willing to go bold. That's what a UA is for. And bold attempts are more encouraging than lackluster attempts.
It's obvious from the videos that the design team clearly cares about these UA subclasses. And I hope they know we see that. But I also hope they can take this and find their footing as this simply feels rudderless with no direction.
Thanks for the reasoned post.
I also look at this UA and can't help but feel underwhelmed with all these reheated abilities. I think there's been some neat-ish stuff on offer (I like the reanimator artificer, for instance), but the psion being just another full caster and this crop of uninspired sub classes feels so very safe and downright boring.
With 5.5 being such an incremental evolution, the game really could benefit from some bold swings.
Agreed. I personally don't want the system to become over bloated with rules and mechanics. Though it does feel like the team is either being held back or were not set up for success once their team was dwindled down by departure and lay off.
I also get the reluctance to swing for the fences. These forums and Reddit can be a cess pool. Negativity drives clicks and upvotes. So not wanting to take a chance on a bold move and then be flamed is a real thing. My only advice to that would be. Stay off the forums and only take the advice that comes from the survey. An audit process can weed out the unnecessarily negative surveys.
But, I digress. Something needs to change. This UA was disheartening to say the least. I just hope the surveys give valuable info and they find some way to swing for the fences on the next one.
The wizard subclasses were especially disappointing to me. They were basically copies of each other without anything unique to them. I was hoping for something cool from the transmuter and the necromancer but same ole, couple of extra spells and a free casting of a spell. So much could be done, like at 14 the transmuter could polymorph their stone into a dragon or something similar with additional stats not normally provided with polymorph, additional health, longer duration. Really lean into the school of magic.
Yeah, that's what I am seeing, too much leaning into copies of what other subclasses already have. Temporary hit points, short range teleports, standing up with some healing when reduced to zero.
Give is something NEW. Make the new subclasses fell like new things.
pretty much agree. I'll add I do not know why they keep fighting to bring back the hexblade . The hexblade was a patch for pact of the blade which was already patched and existed pretty much exclusively for a dip. I don't want to say no one, but the vast majority of people who took it had no interest in the sub class or its thematic nature past it made be better as a gish when I wanted to play a bard/paladin etc. Give us one of the sub classes people actually liked for itself not for a dip.
The UA reanimator was the best I've seen in a long, long while. Thematically and play wise. If they publish it, it will be my go-to Necromancer character. It has more flavour than that poor ua Necro has.