So, a new playtest is about to be released. I haven't had a chance to watch the video, but some of the features mentioned in the article sounded interesting. I'm not sure if they're listening to feedback and have abandoned having nat1s or nat20s outside of combat, or if they're just tweaking a different area. Still, I'm curious as to how things will work.
If you're not willing or able to to discuss in good faith, then don't be surprised if I don't respond, there are better things in life for me to do than humour you. This signature is that response.
I've had a chance to watch it now everyone is awake. First off, it's not in response to the feedback of the first playtest - this is just them experimenting, which is fair enough.
It's interesting. The inspiration from rolling a nat1 is a nice touch. Speaking from a game mechanic, it sounds good to me. You get the screw up of getting a nat1, but then you get a nice boost from it. From a fluff PoV, I guess it's failing and then having that resolve to do better. Admittedly, I think this works better with the houserule that nat1s result in an actual negative consequence rather than (current) RAW that it's just a fail like any other, you just autofail.
Class groups are an interesting development, and I can see it working really well from the PoV of the developers. Rather than having to retcon feats etc that are intended to be restricted to certain classes to also fit new classes. Instead, just label them as being available to mages then if you want a new class to have access, then it's likely to anyway. Not perfect by any means, but I can see it being a big help. It does discourage new classes that straddle the borders...but then, it's not like we get new classes very often anyway, so.
Speaking of which, the class groups are Experts (Rangers, Rogues and Bards), Warriors and Priests. They didn't mention what the classes will be. There are some classes that will be obvious, like the Cleric will be Priest and Wizards are Mages, but I'm curious how they'll handle ones like Paladins that are not so neatly classified.
Crawford seemed to imply that the Artificer won't be in the 1D&D PHB, which I'm disappointed in. One of the class' flaws is that because they're not in the core rules, supplements and adventures can't assume that it's available to you, and so there is little incentive to provide new subclasses - why go to the effort of making a new subclass that only (say) half the players can use? So they just chuck in yet another Wizard one or something instead. I was hoping that they'd include Artificers so we're more likely to get subclasses for it. Hopefully I'm just reading too much into his seeming distinction between them.
On a more meta note, it seems to me that we should expect the actual release 1D&D for holiday 2024 (at least). The UA playtests was said to be running for another year and a half, which puts us substantially into 2024. Once that is closed, they'll need to finalise the mechanics and details, get the book edited, approved etc. Then it needs to be printed, distributed and so forth. I was surprised that they would be leaving the feedback open so late.
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If you're not willing or able to to discuss in good faith, then don't be surprised if I don't respond, there are better things in life for me to do than humour you. This signature is that response.
You think they can go from what is effectively Beta to books-on-shelves in three months?
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If you're not willing or able to to discuss in good faith, then don't be surprised if I don't respond, there are better things in life for me to do than humour you. This signature is that response.
If you're not willing or able to to discuss in good faith, then don't be surprised if I don't respond, there are better things in life for me to do than humour you. This signature is that response.
I feel like asking whats the point of the playtest stuff. Most comments/issues/problems get totally ignored with ALL unearthed arcana stuff. Glaringly broken things like silvery bards go live when thousands of people point out how broken it is, and worthless crap like alchemist (sorry but its true) gets published.
How is any of this more than just PR and advertising. They've spent years proving they don't really read the feedback and take it into account.
Plenty of stuff has been completely axed due to playtesting (Strixhaven was a bloodbath), and most other things get toned down in the process. They respond to feedback, just not always the feedback you or I might agree with.
I've not been playing D&D for a long time and rarely paid attention to UA (until 1D&D started), but I've noticed changes to the UA before publication. Heck, there is a ton of UA that never actually makes it to publication.
To be fair, I've noticed that other companies don't pay attention, but WotC seems to, at least a bit. But as SB said, it's not necessarily the feedback that I'd have given that they listened to. Which is fair - there are a lot more players than us. Although, I think they've been too quick to nix things rather than fix them
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If you're not willing or able to to discuss in good faith, then don't be surprised if I don't respond, there are better things in life for me to do than humour you. This signature is that response.
I feel like asking whats the point of the playtest stuff. Most comments/issues/problems get totally ignored with ALL unearthed arcana stuff. Glaringly broken things like silvery bards go live when thousands of people point out how broken it is, and worthless crap like alchemist (sorry but its true) gets published.
How is any of this more than just PR and advertising. They've spent years proving they don't really read the feedback and take it into account.
I get that bashing Wizards is very in vogue, but, perhaps if you wanted to make your first post ever on the forums something yelling at Wizards, it should not be “they never listen to feedback” in a thread that literally says “their video says they listened to the feedback about changes to natural 20s and 1s.” There are plenty of examples of Wizards listening to their UA feedback—to provide yet another example, they scrapped an entire class (Mystic) because its complexity was unpopular.
———
Moving on the the rest of the thread, I cannot give the UA a full read right now (reading long UA pdfs on mobile is awful), but looking forward to diving into it later. I do like the general categories they have added—with the exception of “expertise” which is a bit of a terrible name requiring explanation of what that word was chosen, they do a good job grouping different classes in a way I can tell a new player and the new player would intuitively understand. I know “what class do I want?” is one of the most overwhelming decisions to new players, so anything that makes that decision more organised is good in my book.
I will try to give more in depth thoughts later, once I can give the UA more than a cursory glance.
Sad that dual wielding is actually kind of worse when it needed a boost. It's still objectively worse in terms of action economy and not having a hand free, and now it doesn't even grant an AC bonus in exchange for becoming a half-feat.
Not a big fan of the jump change either. The flat STR score jump distance really streamlined play in a great way and added a bit of oomph to one of the worst stats.
Ranger has completely axed Favored Enemy and Favored Terrain, which I'm sure will upset some people. I would have rather they kept them as ribbons or gave them some real bite.
Magical Secrets also not being able to access all spells hurts, and Lore loses its extra dips.
Overall I disagree with the majority of the changes here I think, despite liking most of what was in the first playtest packet. A lot of organizational stuff that makes design easier at the cost of some player freedoms. Also don't see any effort to fix the out-of-combat utility gap between martials and spellcasters at high levels, which really is a known and glaring issue at this point.
I feel like asking whats the point of the playtest stuff. Most comments/issues/problems get totally ignored with ALL unearthed arcana stuff. Glaringly broken things like silvery bards go live when thousands of people point out how broken it is, and worthless crap like alchemist (sorry but its true) gets published.
How is any of this more than just PR and advertising. They've spent years proving they don't really read the feedback and take it into account.
Did you watch the most recent video by WotC? They acknowledged how some of the poor responses to their last 1DD are reshaping current and future playtest releases. If you mean unhelpful screeching gets ignored, that is likely true. As someone who runs a healthcare program, survey feedback is vital to the success of my program. We generally find survey submissions that are just a platform to register complaints and directionless rants to be less than helpful. The difference in my case is we practically have to beg our patients to fill them out and even then, only about 8% of our patients actually do. WotC is getting a lot of free, easily accessible information to guide them in making a product that will pump the masses for cash. They most certainly take and use that feedback, of that I can promise you.
Also, silvery barbs is hardly broken. The thread asking this very question was pretty evenly split down the middle and most of the comments from those who thought it was broken were those who banned it before even testing it in their games, making the value of their feedback less than useful. The comments from those who actually played it were far more forgiving, ranging from being completely fine to maybe only needing to be bumped a level.
Further, alchemists may be worthless to you, but they have a strong following. Many would be devastated if alchemists were simply removed from the game. I think your comment about how they are worthless is baseless.
You think they can go from what is effectively Beta to books-on-shelves in three months?
I don’t think they will still be in beta three months before Gencon. I know they said another year and a half of play testing but I take those statements with a grain of salt. I think their internal okay testing will be done long before that.
Also, I remember all the “publishing experts” on the message boards around April of 2014 saying there is no way that can hit their rollout timeline at the point. And they did. Don’t know if they are targeting Gencon or not but I suspect it will be around that time.
I feel like asking whats the point of the playtest stuff. Most comments/issues/problems get totally ignored with ALL unearthed arcana stuff. Glaringly broken things like silvery bards go live when thousands of people point out how broken it is, and worthless crap like alchemist (sorry but its true) gets published.
How is any of this more than just PR and advertising. They've spent years proving they don't really read the feedback and take it into account.
There's a big difference between ignoring comments and not doing what people say. They read the comments, digest and think about them, then do what they think is best. Sometimes, that means not doing what the comments say. It doesn't mean the comments were ignored.
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So, a new playtest is about to be released. I haven't had a chance to watch the video, but some of the features mentioned in the article sounded interesting. I'm not sure if they're listening to feedback and have abandoned having nat1s or nat20s outside of combat, or if they're just tweaking a different area. Still, I'm curious as to how things will work.
Any thoughts?
https://www.google.com/amp/s/comicbook.com/gaming/amp/news/dungeons-dragons-unearthed-arcana-expert-class-natural-20-inspiration-rogue-ranger/
If you're not willing or able to to discuss in good faith, then don't be surprised if I don't respond, there are better things in life for me to do than humour you. This signature is that response.
I've had a chance to watch it now everyone is awake. First off, it's not in response to the feedback of the first playtest - this is just them experimenting, which is fair enough.
It's interesting. The inspiration from rolling a nat1 is a nice touch. Speaking from a game mechanic, it sounds good to me. You get the screw up of getting a nat1, but then you get a nice boost from it. From a fluff PoV, I guess it's failing and then having that resolve to do better. Admittedly, I think this works better with the houserule that nat1s result in an actual negative consequence rather than (current) RAW that it's just a fail like any other, you just autofail.
Class groups are an interesting development, and I can see it working really well from the PoV of the developers. Rather than having to retcon feats etc that are intended to be restricted to certain classes to also fit new classes. Instead, just label them as being available to mages then if you want a new class to have access, then it's likely to anyway. Not perfect by any means, but I can see it being a big help. It does discourage new classes that straddle the borders...but then, it's not like we get new classes very often anyway, so.
Speaking of which, the class groups are Experts (Rangers, Rogues and Bards), Warriors and Priests. They didn't mention what the classes will be. There are some classes that will be obvious, like the Cleric will be Priest and Wizards are Mages, but I'm curious how they'll handle ones like Paladins that are not so neatly classified.
Crawford seemed to imply that the Artificer won't be in the 1D&D PHB, which I'm disappointed in. One of the class' flaws is that because they're not in the core rules, supplements and adventures can't assume that it's available to you, and so there is little incentive to provide new subclasses - why go to the effort of making a new subclass that only (say) half the players can use? So they just chuck in yet another Wizard one or something instead. I was hoping that they'd include Artificers so we're more likely to get subclasses for it. Hopefully I'm just reading too much into his seeming distinction between them.
On a more meta note, it seems to me that we should expect the actual release 1D&D for holiday 2024 (at least). The UA playtests was said to be running for another year and a half, which puts us substantially into 2024. Once that is closed, they'll need to finalise the mechanics and details, get the book edited, approved etc. Then it needs to be printed, distributed and so forth. I was surprised that they would be leaving the feedback open so late.
If you're not willing or able to to discuss in good faith, then don't be surprised if I don't respond, there are better things in life for me to do than humour you. This signature is that response.
I suspect that will go for a summer 2024 release. Around GenCon time. With maybe a new starter set in the spring.
You think they can go from what is effectively Beta to books-on-shelves in three months?
If you're not willing or able to to discuss in good faith, then don't be surprised if I don't respond, there are better things in life for me to do than humour you. This signature is that response.
So, while there is no banner, the new playtest is out.
https://www.dndbeyond.com/one-dnd
If you're not willing or able to to discuss in good faith, then don't be surprised if I don't respond, there are better things in life for me to do than humour you. This signature is that response.
I feel like asking whats the point of the playtest stuff. Most comments/issues/problems get totally ignored with ALL unearthed arcana stuff. Glaringly broken things like silvery bards go live when thousands of people point out how broken it is, and worthless crap like alchemist (sorry but its true) gets published.
How is any of this more than just PR and advertising. They've spent years proving they don't really read the feedback and take it into account.
Plenty of stuff has been completely axed due to playtesting (Strixhaven was a bloodbath), and most other things get toned down in the process. They respond to feedback, just not always the feedback you or I might agree with.
My homebrew subclasses (full list here)
(Artificer) Swordmage | Glasswright | (Barbarian) Path of the Savage Embrace
(Bard) College of Dance | (Fighter) Warlord | Cannoneer
(Monk) Way of the Elements | (Ranger) Blade Dancer
(Rogue) DaggerMaster | Inquisitor | (Sorcerer) Riftwalker | Spellfist
(Warlock) The Swarm
I've not been playing D&D for a long time and rarely paid attention to UA (until 1D&D started), but I've noticed changes to the UA before publication. Heck, there is a ton of UA that never actually makes it to publication.
To be fair, I've noticed that other companies don't pay attention, but WotC seems to, at least a bit. But as SB said, it's not necessarily the feedback that I'd have given that they listened to. Which is fair - there are a lot more players than us. Although, I think they've been too quick to nix things rather than fix them
If you're not willing or able to to discuss in good faith, then don't be surprised if I don't respond, there are better things in life for me to do than humour you. This signature is that response.
I get that bashing Wizards is very in vogue, but, perhaps if you wanted to make your first post ever on the forums something yelling at Wizards, it should not be “they never listen to feedback” in a thread that literally says “their video says they listened to the feedback about changes to natural 20s and 1s.” There are plenty of examples of Wizards listening to their UA feedback—to provide yet another example, they scrapped an entire class (Mystic) because its complexity was unpopular.
———
Moving on the the rest of the thread, I cannot give the UA a full read right now (reading long UA pdfs on mobile is awful), but looking forward to diving into it later. I do like the general categories they have added—with the exception of “expertise” which is a bit of a terrible name requiring explanation of what that word was chosen, they do a good job grouping different classes in a way I can tell a new player and the new player would intuitively understand. I know “what class do I want?” is one of the most overwhelming decisions to new players, so anything that makes that decision more organised is good in my book.
I will try to give more in depth thoughts later, once I can give the UA more than a cursory glance.
Sad that dual wielding is actually kind of worse when it needed a boost. It's still objectively worse in terms of action economy and not having a hand free, and now it doesn't even grant an AC bonus in exchange for becoming a half-feat.
Not a big fan of the jump change either. The flat STR score jump distance really streamlined play in a great way and added a bit of oomph to one of the worst stats.
Ranger has completely axed Favored Enemy and Favored Terrain, which I'm sure will upset some people. I would have rather they kept them as ribbons or gave them some real bite.
Magical Secrets also not being able to access all spells hurts, and Lore loses its extra dips.
Overall I disagree with the majority of the changes here I think, despite liking most of what was in the first playtest packet. A lot of organizational stuff that makes design easier at the cost of some player freedoms. Also don't see any effort to fix the out-of-combat utility gap between martials and spellcasters at high levels, which really is a known and glaring issue at this point.
My homebrew subclasses (full list here)
(Artificer) Swordmage | Glasswright | (Barbarian) Path of the Savage Embrace
(Bard) College of Dance | (Fighter) Warlord | Cannoneer
(Monk) Way of the Elements | (Ranger) Blade Dancer
(Rogue) DaggerMaster | Inquisitor | (Sorcerer) Riftwalker | Spellfist
(Warlock) The Swarm
Did you watch the most recent video by WotC? They acknowledged how some of the poor responses to their last 1DD are reshaping current and future playtest releases. If you mean unhelpful screeching gets ignored, that is likely true. As someone who runs a healthcare program, survey feedback is vital to the success of my program. We generally find survey submissions that are just a platform to register complaints and directionless rants to be less than helpful. The difference in my case is we practically have to beg our patients to fill them out and even then, only about 8% of our patients actually do. WotC is getting a lot of free, easily accessible information to guide them in making a product that will pump the masses for cash. They most certainly take and use that feedback, of that I can promise you.
Also, silvery barbs is hardly broken. The thread asking this very question was pretty evenly split down the middle and most of the comments from those who thought it was broken were those who banned it before even testing it in their games, making the value of their feedback less than useful. The comments from those who actually played it were far more forgiving, ranging from being completely fine to maybe only needing to be bumped a level.
Further, alchemists may be worthless to you, but they have a strong following. Many would be devastated if alchemists were simply removed from the game. I think your comment about how they are worthless is baseless.
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I don’t think they will still be in beta three months before Gencon. I know they said another year and a half of play testing but I take those statements with a grain of salt. I think their internal okay testing will be done long before that.
Also, I remember all the “publishing experts” on the message boards around April of 2014 saying there is no way that can hit their rollout timeline at the point. And they did. Don’t know if they are targeting Gencon or not but I suspect it will be around that time.
There's a big difference between ignoring comments and not doing what people say. They read the comments, digest and think about them, then do what they think is best. Sometimes, that means not doing what the comments say. It doesn't mean the comments were ignored.