Overall, I like the changes in the 2 UAs we've gotten so far. But one thing I wish wizards would give us is some explanation about why they want to make certain changes.
Here are some areas where we do know why a change has been made:
In general they've said they want more options/less restrictions (character creation, feats becoming a first-class feature).
They want it to be backwards compatible with existing 5e books.
They want it to be forward compatible with future books (arcane/divine/primal spell lists, expert/warrior/etc. class categorization)
They have some ideas they want to test (D20 auto-success/fail, crit rules, heroic inspiration).
They have some new rules to clarify things people already do in games (grappling, influence, jumping, etc).
However, there are also some areas in the latest UA where they haven't really given us an explanation at all:
Rogue sneak attack restrictions
Bardic inspiration pacing (fewer uses at low levels), and removal of level 6 magical secrets from lore bard.
Reduction/change in power for some feats.
I think in general these probably fall under *balance changes*, but wizards hasn't actually said they want to rebalance the game, or (assuming a rebalance is what they want) what they are hoping to achieve with a different balance.
In the videos that were released alongside the UA, these changes were glossed over for the most part. But the designers had to know people would notice them. Why not get ahead and say "Fans may have noticed X feature is gone/different. That's because we felt like Y was more emblematic of the class, and we also found that some players were frustrated that this class seemed to be doing more than others between levels 2-5."
Pure Speculation:
Do they want to make it easier to create a viable character even if it's not optimal?
Do they want low levels to remain less powerful for longer?
Is that an across-the-board philosophy, or just specifically the bard and rogue?
Is this an attempt to move games out of the 1st-8th level range that most groups experience?
Do they think these changes will have a positive impact in other areas (CR becoming more meaningful)?
We can make some educated guesses about these design choices, but it's all speculation until wizards tells us the *why*. And until they do, I expect every UA will have people angry or confused about X feature being changed/removed. (Even with an explanation, people will complain, but at least it will be limited to a specific justification and not open to 100 different interpretations.)
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Final thoughts: Overall, I've been enjoying the changes in these UAs and I think they've had some really good ideas (and good justifications for most of those ideas). And I think speculation can be fun too! But it would do the community some good, and allow us to provide more focused feedback, if wizards would give us that bigger picture view about their design goals for all of the changes.
Why do we need transparency? Like... this is a SURVEY. The whole point is to throw things at the wall (us) and see what sticks. This is not the final version, so they're free to test out what works and what doesn't.
And that's exactly what's going on here. Their reason for doing things is finding the answer to this question : "What do people think if we do this?"
While I’m not sure that we need all the design transparency that the OP request, some more information would be useful in evaluating features.
A popularity contest of features is a bad way to design a game, so some insight might actually help to show why we’re getting what we are and what our expectations should align with.
Why do we need transparency? Like... this is a SURVEY. The whole point is to throw things at the wall (us) and see what sticks. This is not the final version, so they're free to test out what works and what doesn't.
And that's exactly what's going on here. Their reason for doing things is finding the answer to this question : "What do people think if we do this?"
Surely they have expectations and desires for how these changes might affect play patterns.
My point is that they've already told us their reasoning for almost everything except the balance changes. Why not be more explicit and tell us what they want from these changes?
The feedback I've seen around these changes so far seems to just be "I don't like that X is weaker." Without knowing how they're going to change the other classes, my feedback for the bard and rogue is going to be negative. If they are going to completely rebalance low levels for all classes, then I might be totally fine with these changes.
However, there are also some areas in the latest UA where they haven't really given us an explanation at all:
Rogue sneak attack restrictions
Bardic inspiration pacing (fewer uses at low levels), and removal of level 6 magical secrets from lore bard.
Reduction/change in power for some feats.
I think in general these probably fall under *balance changes*, but wizards hasn't actually said they want to rebalance the game, or (assuming a rebalance is what they want) what they are hoping to achieve with a different balance.
off hand I would say every one of these is closing an obvious unintended loophole in the original.
The bard changes are not closing any loopholes, they’re just straight reductions in power from the previous *intended* design.
I think you could make that case for a lot of these other changes though. If that’s their intention, why not just say so?
Here’s an example of why I think this ambiguity is bad for feedback:
The sneak attack loophole could be fixed without burdening it with this UA’s additional restrictions. Just add a line about “You may not use sneak attack again in this way until the start of your next turn or until you roll initiative.” Are they just trying to prevent potential wording mistakes like they made in the 5e rules, or are the UA sneak attack restrictions truly how they want the feature to work? Who knows? In the first case, I agree with the intent and disagree with the implementation. In the latter case (and the absence of intent), I just have to say “it’s bad”.
Bard changes aren't a reduction in power. For the most part, it's lateral. BI uses? Down over maximized CHA, up for gish types, so a wash. Reaction over bonus action? QoL change, but not stronger nor weaker.
Prepared spells? Stronger. Song of Restoration + BI heals vs Song of Rest? Play style change, stronger in some ways, weaker in others. Same with new spell list - terrible for flavor but not weaker.
Jack of all trades later, but Expertise earlier. More subclass levels, stronger. One less magic secrets trait, but each is stronger to make up for it.
BI short rest recovery late is the only argument for actual power reduction. But we've seen upticks in ability elsewhere.
The main problem with bard is twofold: the loss of thematically appropriate magic, which is a problem but not power wise, and BI needs more uses, but it always did even in 5e as well. That's not new.
Do they want to make it easier to create a viable character even if it's not optimal?
I think this is the biggest recurring theme to a large chunk of changes. And not just as a matter of 'easier for beginners', but also just 'easier to play a wide variety of builds effectively without the need to jump through a very narrow set of hoops to feel viable.
Exploiting the Sneak attack reaction was literally doubling your damage. The delta between standard rogues and those who built around a very narrow set of features or party comps was too huge.
The same thing, to a lesser extend, with a lot of these feats, which often forced you into specific weapons. I find it refreshing that all 4 core melee weapon styles seem viable in One DnD. And they did so without an overall nerf to effectiveness - damage is actually up, especially when comparing it to any non-vhuman race.
However, there are also some areas in the latest UA where they haven't really given us an explanation at all:
Rogue sneak attack restrictions
Bardic inspiration pacing (fewer uses at low levels), and removal of level 6 magical secrets from lore bard.
Reduction/change in power for some feats.
I think in general these probably fall under *balance changes*, but wizards hasn't actually said they want to rebalance the game, or (assuming a rebalance is what they want) what they are hoping to achieve with a different balance.
off hand I would say every one of these is closing an obvious unintended loophole in the original.
Removing the Rogue ability to Sneak Attack off-turn not only nerfs the DPR of a class with suboptimal DPR to begin with, it also invalidates other build choices people only make when there's a Rogue in the party, like the Battle Master Maneuver for letting someone else attack instead (which is utterly useless except when you use it to let a Rogue Sneak Attack). To the extent that's WOTC closing a loophole, it also exhibits a fundamental lack of understanding of how people were playing Rogues - but in fairness to WOTC I think you're wrong, and this is a balance issue. They nerfed Sneak Attack because they also buffed it in the same PDF, as the Hide action is now leaps and bounds more achievable than in the rules we have now.
Removing the reliance of Bardic Inspiration on Charisma doesn't close any "loopholes" at all and instead opens up a new one because now you can 1-dip into Bard with relatively poor Charisma (say, 14) and let your PB scale your BI up to basically full utility. It's fairly self-evident there that WOTC is simply in love with PB scaling and has no understanding of why ability score scaling is usually superior.
I find it refreshing that all 4 core melee weapon styles seem viable in One DnD. And they did so without an overall nerf to effectiveness - damage is actually up, especially when comparing it to any non-vhuman race.
I find it refreshing that all 4 core melee weapon styles seem viable in One DnD. And they did so without an overall nerf to effectiveness - damage is actually up, especially when comparing it to any non-vhuman race.
Removing the Rogue ability to Sneak Attack off-turn not only nerfs the DPR of a class with suboptimal DPR to begin with, it also invalidates other build choices people only make when there's a Rogue in the party, like the Battle Master Maneuver for letting someone else attack instead (which is utterly useless except when you use it to let a Rogue Sneak Attack).
Crazy thought. But with power attack feats gone... Martial dps needs to be reevaluated, no? Maybe, if rogue is still not competitive, we should bump the class and not just this one loophole, so more styles of play are viable?
Maybe, if rogue was the only one Battlemaster gave off turn attacks to... Maybe the writers want to fix it so the off turn Battlemaster commands are more standard and balanced?
To the extent that's WOTC closing a loophole, it also exhibits a fundamental lack of understanding of how people were playing Rogues
Another silly thought. Maybe this was done specifically to see how many people are attached to this way of playing rogue. First I heard of it. Maybe... People weren't really playing rogue that way outside certain tables.
- but in fairness to WOTC I think you're wrong, and this is a balance issue. They nerfed Sneak Attack because they also buffed it in the same PDF, as the Hide action is now leaps and bounds more achievable than in the rules we have now.
Removing the reliance of Bardic Inspiration on Charisma doesn't close any "loopholes" at all and instead opens up a new one because now you can 1-dip into Bard with relatively poor Charisma (say, 14) and let your PB scale your BI up to basically full utility. It's fairly self-evident there that WOTC is simply in love with PB scaling and has no understanding of why ability score scaling is usually superior.
Attribute scaling just means specific classes get MC'd with instead of any class. More options to MC with is feature, not bug. Not misunderstanding.
The only way to prevent the multiclass issues is to make it scale with class levels. But, honestly, BI is roughly on par with Bless and Guidance spells; 1 class level for the equivalent of a level 1 feat seems fair to me.
However, there are also some areas in the latest UA where they haven't really given us an explanation at all:
Rogue sneak attack restrictions
Bardic inspiration pacing (fewer uses at low levels), and removal of level 6 magical secrets from lore bard.
Reduction/change in power for some feats.
I think in general these probably fall under *balance changes*, but wizards hasn't actually said they want to rebalance the game, or (assuming a rebalance is what they want) what they are hoping to achieve with a different balance.
off hand I would say every one of these is closing an obvious unintended loophole in the original.
One that restricts gameplay by taking away SA on ready action and in other ways forcing to play a certain class in one way? Crawford said it himself that rogues are about cheating and exploiting situations. Seems to be going the opposite direction of that.
Bard changes aren't a reduction in power. For the most part, it's lateral. BI uses? Down over maximized CHA, up for gish types, so a wash. Reaction over bonus action? QoL change, but not stronger nor weaker.
Prepared spells? Stronger. Song of Restoration + BI heals vs Song of Rest? Play style change, stronger in some ways, weaker in others. Same with new spell list - terrible for flavor but not weaker.
Jack of all trades later, but Expertise earlier. More subclass levels, stronger. One less magic secrets trait, but each is stronger to make up for it.
BI short rest recovery late is the only argument for actual power reduction. But we've seen upticks in ability elsewhere.
The main problem with bard is twofold: the loss of thematically appropriate magic, which is a problem but not power wise, and BI needs more uses, but it always did even in 5e as well. That's not new.
Respectfully disagree about BI. Every bard college (except maybe Spirits) is now less effective at low levels because their subclass feature that uses BI as a resource is now also reduced significantly until level 7. Overall, the usefulness of BI has been significantly weakened at low levels, but people are glossing over it because if you look at the class features without looking at when you get them, the bard looks like it's received a buff overall. With the current UA, I don't think a bard will feel as fun to play until level 7, and you won't feel like you can make a unique bard until your first magical secrets at level 11.
I bet an 11th level bard will be pretty fun to play, but most games stop pretty shortly after this UA bard starts getting online. I wonder how many bards will even sniff magical secrets.
Again, this might not be an issue if their design philosophy is to extend the power curve into higher levels. But they haven't told us that's what they want, so I just have to say it looks pretty bad to me.
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P.S. I agree about the spell list and changes to spellcasting/preparation. I think power is in favor of the new rules, but I think the new list is a flavor fail. Let me pull little bits from everywhere like an actual jack of all trades.
Respectfully disagree about BI. Every bard college (except maybe Spirits) is now less effective at low levels because their subclass feature that uses BI as a resource is now also reduced significantly until level 7.
Valor, sword and whispers also would prefer to leave Cha at low levels and focus on Dex. With the current rules, that's doable.
Along with Spirits. . . That's half the subclasses.
Overall, the usefulness of BI has been significantly weakened at low levels, but people are glossing over it because if you look at the class features without looking at when you get them, the bard looks like it's received a buff overall. With the current UA, I don't think a bard will feel as fun to play until level 7, and you won't feel like you can make a unique bard until your first magical secrets at level 11.
I don't deny that short rest recovery delay is a nerf. But it suffers from the warlock/monk issue - Short rest based mechanics are unreliable, especially in dungeons. For the amount that lore bard wants to use BI? Or sword bard flourishes? Even short rest at level 1 isn't enough.
The sorlock solution is the only way I can see it work. Short rest recharge plus sacrificing spell slots. That will generate uses in a pinch.
I bet an 11th level bard will be pretty fun to play, but most games stop pretty shortly after this UA bard starts getting online. I wonder how many bards will even sniff magical secrets.
Acording to data released by WotC, only about 5% make it past level 10. With another 1 or 2 percent devoted to games that start at high/epic level.
I personally suspect that bard subclasses are meant to have bonus spells, Ala Tasha sorcerer style. So there's no point in magic secrets below level 11 and circle 6 spells, as we should have an equivalent already.
Again, this might not be an issue if their design philosophy is to extend the power curve into higher levels. But they haven't told us that's what they want, so I just have to say it looks pretty bad to me.
Its not a great look, but that's exactly why they did it. They do some bad, provocative changes specifically to get feedback on it and judge how the base feels. Sometimes, that's the kind of data you need.
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P.S. I agree about the spell list and changes to spellcasting/preparation. I think power is in favor of the new rules, but I think the new list is a flavor fail. Let me pull little bits from everywhere like an actual jack of all trades.
Personally I wish they had just made 4 lists. Arcane list is super overburdened.
I think with bard being a full caster, it doesn't really make sense to intentionally keep CHA low for those subclasses, so I disagree somewhat. I think I'd rather play a different class than skimp on spellcasting, but maybe that just comes down to personal preference.
However, I agree that # of uses doesn't need to be tied to CHA. Burning a spell slot for a use of BI is a decent tradeoff. I think there are several ways they could alleviate the resource pressure without untying completely from proficiency bonus (which is something I think they have doubled down on for One D&D and probably won't change).
Subclass spell lists would go a long way towards fixing the flavor/uniqueness issue.
Honestly, I think we're like 95% aligned. I just disagree with wizards' approach, and I wish they would say why they have made certain changes. I'd much rather test an implementation of a vision. Right now I feel our only option is to test features in a vacuum, and we can only guess as to what their vision might be.
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The idea that Wizards would intentionally create something they think is bad, just to provoke a response from us, is an interesting take. I don't think they'd do that, but who knows?
I have a different theory. Wizards (and Crawford in particular) have a history of glossing over design mistakes and doubling down on baffling rules in 5e. I can't actually think of a time where they admitted wording of a rule was a mistake. But I can think of plenty of times where they told us the wording, and obvious loopholes it produced, was intentional. And now they're in a weird position where they want to close loopholes (and maybe make some other balance changes), but to talk about it would be some admission that some of the 5e rules are inconsistent and bad.
Don't get me wrong. Silently fixing the game is better than totally doubling down on bad rules, but it doesn't exactly inspire confidence that we'll ever know why they made certain changes, or that they're even open to changing certain aspects of the rules. Every time they give us a change without talking about their ideas for it, I'm wondering if it's fixing something they thought was bad, or if it's just an unintentional side-effect of some other vision for how they want people to play the game. And that's a weird place to be in for playtesting purposes.
The only thing we're really disagreeing on is the transparency thing. At this point, we're just going over why each thing they changed could be done.
Ultimately, though, transparency for surveys and studies is not always a good thing - for a number of questions, its better to have a blind audience, and see what kind of responce you get. Knee jerk reactions are important for a lot of these things.
Like, with sneak attack no longer doing the off turn thing. The job of a game designer is to make sure you have a wide variety of competative builds. If this one thing is a major outlier... either the rogue class as a whole needs to do sneak attack twice a round, or once. But its not like they're perfect either - saying once a round instead of once a round should be more flexible than only on your turn.
And the item thing with thieves? Maybe they're changing the item rules or something. Maybe doing items is a slight of hand skill trick in the first place. It'd fit the theme of slight of hand. Or maybe they meant to slip it into cunning action as a whole - assassins want to use poison a lot, but fast hands made the rogue better at using poisnon than the assassin before, so....
Ultimately, though, transparency for surveys and studies is not always a good thing - for a number of questions, its better to have a blind audience, and see what kind of responce you get. Knee jerk reactions are important for a lot of these things.
I'll concede this point. Ultimately I'm just hoping for a transparent feedback process. Hopefully they'll tell us the results of their surveys, and at some point talk about how and why they plan to balance it differently than 5e. I still think talking about those details is important even if it may not come until later in the UA process.
One thing JC mention a few times and this is what ppl need to keep in mind " We are just testing some extreme/different things to get some feedback" which provokes reactions that probably give more concise feedback and simply ask straight out.
If u have a nice day u not say much, but if u have a bad day u tell me a story about why god and creation are against u in detail, this might be what they want.
Give us like 5 bullet points of "goals" to evaluate the rules changes against.
Trying to fill out a survey based on rules that interact with rules we haven't seen is kinda nutty. We can strictly go with what's in the pdfs so far, which may not give them useful reactions at all. Knowing what *they* are trying to achieve with the changes is going to help that feedback. I answered a lot of "Maybe, depending on the rest of the rules" in the first survey. I shouldn't have to do that. I also wonder if my previous feedback would be very different if I saw more rules or just had *more to go on*.
Does this balance the classes more? Does this close overpowered loopholes? Does this let you create more interesting unique characters?
These are all possible frameworks in which to evaluate new rules and give feedback. Then, when you survey, "Does X make the game more balanced?" or "If we did Y would that be more interesting for characters?" you get good feedback. Us guessing *why* is actually counter-productive.
I'd guess at some point they started with "What's broken, could be streamlined or missing from 5e?" and got info on that. You'd think they'd drill down on that with specific ideas for changes based on that gathered info, and survey those things for either what we thought would fix it, or if we liked their ideas in general. Then pick some options, put them in rule variants and test them in play, adjust and repeat. But it feels like we jumped some steps.
We don't know who is the market for these car changes, what it's cost is, or even what all the features of the car are. But we're supposed to take it out for a drive and see if we want to buy it instead of the car we have.
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Overall, I like the changes in the 2 UAs we've gotten so far. But one thing I wish wizards would give us is some explanation about why they want to make certain changes.
Here are some areas where we do know why a change has been made:
However, there are also some areas in the latest UA where they haven't really given us an explanation at all:
I think in general these probably fall under *balance changes*, but wizards hasn't actually said they want to rebalance the game, or (assuming a rebalance is what they want) what they are hoping to achieve with a different balance.
In the videos that were released alongside the UA, these changes were glossed over for the most part. But the designers had to know people would notice them. Why not get ahead and say "Fans may have noticed X feature is gone/different. That's because we felt like Y was more emblematic of the class, and we also found that some players were frustrated that this class seemed to be doing more than others between levels 2-5."
Pure Speculation:
We can make some educated guesses about these design choices, but it's all speculation until wizards tells us the *why*. And until they do, I expect every UA will have people angry or confused about X feature being changed/removed. (Even with an explanation, people will complain, but at least it will be limited to a specific justification and not open to 100 different interpretations.)
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Final thoughts: Overall, I've been enjoying the changes in these UAs and I think they've had some really good ideas (and good justifications for most of those ideas). And I think speculation can be fun too! But it would do the community some good, and allow us to provide more focused feedback, if wizards would give us that bigger picture view about their design goals for all of the changes.
Why do we need transparency? Like... this is a SURVEY. The whole point is to throw things at the wall (us) and see what sticks. This is not the final version, so they're free to test out what works and what doesn't.
And that's exactly what's going on here. Their reason for doing things is finding the answer to this question : "What do people think if we do this?"
While I’m not sure that we need all the design transparency that the OP request, some more information would be useful in evaluating features.
A popularity contest of features is a bad way to design a game, so some insight might actually help to show why we’re getting what we are and what our expectations should align with.
Surely they have expectations and desires for how these changes might affect play patterns.
My point is that they've already told us their reasoning for almost everything except the balance changes. Why not be more explicit and tell us what they want from these changes?
The feedback I've seen around these changes so far seems to just be "I don't like that X is weaker." Without knowing how they're going to change the other classes, my feedback for the bard and rogue is going to be negative. If they are going to completely rebalance low levels for all classes, then I might be totally fine with these changes.
off hand I would say every one of these is closing an obvious unintended loophole in the original.
The bard changes are not closing any loopholes, they’re just straight reductions in power from the previous *intended* design.
I think you could make that case for a lot of these other changes though. If that’s their intention, why not just say so?
Here’s an example of why I think this ambiguity is bad for feedback:
The sneak attack loophole could be fixed without burdening it with this UA’s additional restrictions. Just add a line about “You may not use sneak attack again in this way until the start of your next turn or until you roll initiative.” Are they just trying to prevent potential wording mistakes like they made in the 5e rules, or are the UA sneak attack restrictions truly how they want the feature to work? Who knows? In the first case, I agree with the intent and disagree with the implementation. In the latter case (and the absence of intent), I just have to say “it’s bad”.
Edit: for clarity
Bard changes aren't a reduction in power. For the most part, it's lateral. BI uses? Down over maximized CHA, up for gish types, so a wash. Reaction over bonus action? QoL change, but not stronger nor weaker.
Prepared spells? Stronger. Song of Restoration + BI heals vs Song of Rest? Play style change, stronger in some ways, weaker in others. Same with new spell list - terrible for flavor but not weaker.
Jack of all trades later, but Expertise earlier. More subclass levels, stronger. One less magic secrets trait, but each is stronger to make up for it.
BI short rest recovery late is the only argument for actual power reduction. But we've seen upticks in ability elsewhere.
The main problem with bard is twofold: the loss of thematically appropriate magic, which is a problem but not power wise, and BI needs more uses, but it always did even in 5e as well. That's not new.
I think this is the biggest recurring theme to a large chunk of changes. And not just as a matter of 'easier for beginners', but also just 'easier to play a wide variety of builds effectively without the need to jump through a very narrow set of hoops to feel viable.
Exploiting the Sneak attack reaction was literally doubling your damage. The delta between standard rogues and those who built around a very narrow set of features or party comps was too huge.
The same thing, to a lesser extend, with a lot of these feats, which often forced you into specific weapons. I find it refreshing that all 4 core melee weapon styles seem viable in One DnD. And they did so without an overall nerf to effectiveness - damage is actually up, especially when comparing it to any non-vhuman race.
But yes - this is just speculation.
Removing the Rogue ability to Sneak Attack off-turn not only nerfs the DPR of a class with suboptimal DPR to begin with, it also invalidates other build choices people only make when there's a Rogue in the party, like the Battle Master Maneuver for letting someone else attack instead (which is utterly useless except when you use it to let a Rogue Sneak Attack). To the extent that's WOTC closing a loophole, it also exhibits a fundamental lack of understanding of how people were playing Rogues - but in fairness to WOTC I think you're wrong, and this is a balance issue. They nerfed Sneak Attack because they also buffed it in the same PDF, as the Hide action is now leaps and bounds more achievable than in the rules we have now.
Removing the reliance of Bardic Inspiration on Charisma doesn't close any "loopholes" at all and instead opens up a new one because now you can 1-dip into Bard with relatively poor Charisma (say, 14) and let your PB scale your BI up to basically full utility. It's fairly self-evident there that WOTC is simply in love with PB scaling and has no understanding of why ability score scaling is usually superior.
4 core melee weapon styles? Sword/board, double knife, heavy weapon, spear?
Basically - Sword (or any 1h weapon)/board, dual wield, heavy weapon, polearm (reach).
Crazy thought. But with power attack feats gone... Martial dps needs to be reevaluated, no? Maybe, if rogue is still not competitive, we should bump the class and not just this one loophole, so more styles of play are viable?
Maybe, if rogue was the only one Battlemaster gave off turn attacks to... Maybe the writers want to fix it so the off turn Battlemaster commands are more standard and balanced?
Another silly thought. Maybe this was done specifically to see how many people are attached to this way of playing rogue. First I heard of it. Maybe... People weren't really playing rogue that way outside certain tables.
Attribute scaling just means specific classes get MC'd with instead of any class. More options to MC with is feature, not bug. Not misunderstanding.
The only way to prevent the multiclass issues is to make it scale with class levels. But, honestly, BI is roughly on par with Bless and Guidance spells; 1 class level for the equivalent of a level 1 feat seems fair to me.
One that restricts gameplay by taking away SA on ready action and in other ways forcing to play a certain class in one way? Crawford said it himself that rogues are about cheating and exploiting situations. Seems to be going the opposite direction of that.
Respectfully disagree about BI. Every bard college (except maybe Spirits) is now less effective at low levels because their subclass feature that uses BI as a resource is now also reduced significantly until level 7. Overall, the usefulness of BI has been significantly weakened at low levels, but people are glossing over it because if you look at the class features without looking at when you get them, the bard looks like it's received a buff overall. With the current UA, I don't think a bard will feel as fun to play until level 7, and you won't feel like you can make a unique bard until your first magical secrets at level 11.
I bet an 11th level bard will be pretty fun to play, but most games stop pretty shortly after this UA bard starts getting online. I wonder how many bards will even sniff magical secrets.
Again, this might not be an issue if their design philosophy is to extend the power curve into higher levels. But they haven't told us that's what they want, so I just have to say it looks pretty bad to me.
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P.S. I agree about the spell list and changes to spellcasting/preparation. I think power is in favor of the new rules, but I think the new list is a flavor fail. Let me pull little bits from everywhere like an actual jack of all trades.
Valor, sword and whispers also would prefer to leave Cha at low levels and focus on Dex. With the current rules, that's doable.
Along with Spirits. . . That's half the subclasses.
I don't deny that short rest recovery delay is a nerf. But it suffers from the warlock/monk issue - Short rest based mechanics are unreliable, especially in dungeons. For the amount that lore bard wants to use BI? Or sword bard flourishes? Even short rest at level 1 isn't enough.
The sorlock solution is the only way I can see it work. Short rest recharge plus sacrificing spell slots. That will generate uses in a pinch.
Acording to data released by WotC, only about 5% make it past level 10. With another 1 or 2 percent devoted to games that start at high/epic level.
I personally suspect that bard subclasses are meant to have bonus spells, Ala Tasha sorcerer style. So there's no point in magic secrets below level 11 and circle 6 spells, as we should have an equivalent already.
Its not a great look, but that's exactly why they did it. They do some bad, provocative changes specifically to get feedback on it and judge how the base feels. Sometimes, that's the kind of data you need.
Personally I wish they had just made 4 lists. Arcane list is super overburdened.
I think with bard being a full caster, it doesn't really make sense to intentionally keep CHA low for those subclasses, so I disagree somewhat. I think I'd rather play a different class than skimp on spellcasting, but maybe that just comes down to personal preference.
However, I agree that # of uses doesn't need to be tied to CHA. Burning a spell slot for a use of BI is a decent tradeoff. I think there are several ways they could alleviate the resource pressure without untying completely from proficiency bonus (which is something I think they have doubled down on for One D&D and probably won't change).
Subclass spell lists would go a long way towards fixing the flavor/uniqueness issue.
Honestly, I think we're like 95% aligned. I just disagree with wizards' approach, and I wish they would say why they have made certain changes. I'd much rather test an implementation of a vision. Right now I feel our only option is to test features in a vacuum, and we can only guess as to what their vision might be.
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The idea that Wizards would intentionally create something they think is bad, just to provoke a response from us, is an interesting take. I don't think they'd do that, but who knows?
I have a different theory. Wizards (and Crawford in particular) have a history of glossing over design mistakes and doubling down on baffling rules in 5e. I can't actually think of a time where they admitted wording of a rule was a mistake. But I can think of plenty of times where they told us the wording, and obvious loopholes it produced, was intentional. And now they're in a weird position where they want to close loopholes (and maybe make some other balance changes), but to talk about it would be some admission that some of the 5e rules are inconsistent and bad.
Don't get me wrong. Silently fixing the game is better than totally doubling down on bad rules, but it doesn't exactly inspire confidence that we'll ever know why they made certain changes, or that they're even open to changing certain aspects of the rules. Every time they give us a change without talking about their ideas for it, I'm wondering if it's fixing something they thought was bad, or if it's just an unintentional side-effect of some other vision for how they want people to play the game. And that's a weird place to be in for playtesting purposes.
The only thing we're really disagreeing on is the transparency thing. At this point, we're just going over why each thing they changed could be done.
Ultimately, though, transparency for surveys and studies is not always a good thing - for a number of questions, its better to have a blind audience, and see what kind of responce you get. Knee jerk reactions are important for a lot of these things.
Like, with sneak attack no longer doing the off turn thing. The job of a game designer is to make sure you have a wide variety of competative builds. If this one thing is a major outlier... either the rogue class as a whole needs to do sneak attack twice a round, or once. But its not like they're perfect either - saying once a round instead of once a round should be more flexible than only on your turn.
And the item thing with thieves? Maybe they're changing the item rules or something. Maybe doing items is a slight of hand skill trick in the first place. It'd fit the theme of slight of hand. Or maybe they meant to slip it into cunning action as a whole - assassins want to use poison a lot, but fast hands made the rogue better at using poisnon than the assassin before, so....
I'll concede this point. Ultimately I'm just hoping for a transparent feedback process. Hopefully they'll tell us the results of their surveys, and at some point talk about how and why they plan to balance it differently than 5e. I still think talking about those details is important even if it may not come until later in the UA process.
One thing JC mention a few times and this is what ppl need to keep in mind " We are just testing some extreme/different things to get some feedback" which provokes reactions that probably give more concise feedback and simply ask straight out.
If u have a nice day u not say much, but if u have a bad day u tell me a story about why god and creation are against u in detail, this might be what they want.
Give us like 5 bullet points of "goals" to evaluate the rules changes against.
Trying to fill out a survey based on rules that interact with rules we haven't seen is kinda nutty. We can strictly go with what's in the pdfs so far, which may not give them useful reactions at all. Knowing what *they* are trying to achieve with the changes is going to help that feedback. I answered a lot of "Maybe, depending on the rest of the rules" in the first survey. I shouldn't have to do that. I also wonder if my previous feedback would be very different if I saw more rules or just had *more to go on*.
Does this balance the classes more? Does this close overpowered loopholes? Does this let you create more interesting unique characters?
These are all possible frameworks in which to evaluate new rules and give feedback. Then, when you survey, "Does X make the game more balanced?" or "If we did Y would that be more interesting for characters?" you get good feedback. Us guessing *why* is actually counter-productive.
I'd guess at some point they started with "What's broken, could be streamlined or missing from 5e?" and got info on that. You'd think they'd drill down on that with specific ideas for changes based on that gathered info, and survey those things for either what we thought would fix it, or if we liked their ideas in general. Then pick some options, put them in rule variants and test them in play, adjust and repeat. But it feels like we jumped some steps.
We don't know who is the market for these car changes, what it's cost is, or even what all the features of the car are. But we're supposed to take it out for a drive and see if we want to buy it instead of the car we have.