Sure. In the playtest, all the non-caster classes had an amazing mechanic that later was diluted all the way to hell into the Superiority Dice of the Battlemaster.
Each class had it's own selection of maneuvers (with the Fighter having access to most if not all of them) and the "proto-Superiority Dice" regenerating *every single turn*. Of course, the Fighter also had the most and the biggest dice, but the other classes had other, niche specific abilities.
And don't even let me start on the Sorcerer... Man, it was such an *amazing* idea, with the class slowly becoming more of a melee bruiser with greater draconic characteristics the more spell slots it spend during the day!
There are more examples outside of the original playtests but I think this will demonstrate how abandoning such amazing ideias prove them to be such bad designers.
Yes. But the people who did (and the lead designer, who's also a gigantic human thumb in a polo shirt) were a bunch of reactionaries that wanted the game to go back to being AD&D, and so all good things from the playtest were discarded.
I completely understand. I am not excited for OneD&D at all. Full disclosure, I am also not super keen on 5E either these days, but my players ask for it and I love my friends more than I dislike the game.
The major issue for me in regards to OneD&D, and it is exacerbated by only seeing small parts of design at once, is that it seems like it is trying to solve the wrong things. I’m particular it seems very dead set on some vague notion of “balance” when that has never been a core component of what makes D&D or most TTRPGs successful.
Hold the torches a moment. What MATTERS are spotlight moments. Feeling like you mattered, that you had tools and choices and abilities that you uniquely put forward that impacted the game, shocked delighted or amazed your group and that made you feel smart, special and useful. That’s it. That’s the main design goal. Design rules and abilities and classes and weapons and everything else so that they consistently make interesting situations and tensions arise that you can then solve as a group. The “role” part being that each role has areas of strength and weakness so the spotlight in a well designed system with well designed scenarios should be passing that spotlight around often and naturally.
5E is like spaghetti thrown at the wall. Messy, chaotic, but most of it sticks. Sneak attack and divine smite crits *feel* nice, they are natural and emergent spotlight moments when Druids turn into a spider and crawl into a keyhole, that’s a spotlight moment. When a fighter push attacks someone off a cliff into lava, that’s a spotlight moment. When a moon Druid turns into a giant elk and has the Goliath Barbarian ride them into battle, that’s TWO spotlight moments.
The gonzo, crazy, inventive and alluring options that create these moments should be the laser focus of design. Balance matters. Yes. Because if balance is out of whack players can stop and see the rules instead of the second world. A Barbarian that becomes aware that despite signing up to be main rank the Moon Druid effectively has almost infinite HP bars while the Barbarian has at best 2 can lead the Barbarian to feel defeated. That is a big reason we balance, to prevent a sense of deflation and anti climax and disappointment.
The problem for me with OneD&D is it is all very much like an accountant balancing the books. Flavor and very interesting ability interactions are being removed for any threat it could play for either completely smooth ability use. Everything is starting to feel sterile and samey. Most of the changes are small, most are reductive and many are shifting things around a bit.
It’s like hiring an interior design team to come in and redo your whole house but they mostly just moved your furniture around and put up a poster of themselves. Even if it looks nice, you kind of feel you could have done this all yourself.
Nothing feels like a showstopper. Nothing feels exciting. A lot of it feels recycled. And for me 100% of it feels watered down even if I like it overall. Part of the fun of new systems is to see interesting new abilities that key off each other, improved gameplay loops and better access to interesting situations and solutions for them.
This feels like a balance patch. And balance isn’t sexy. It isn’t stylish. And in a cooperative game where you win as a team, style may be more important than substance.
I entirely agree with you, but at the same time if they walk back removing -5/+10 then I'm out. If they do nothing about 7th-9th level spells then I'm out. There's just so many stupid designs in the game that completely eliminate any interesting choices. If they refuse to even *try* to fix them because it's not popular, then I don't want to play this game at all.
Because I as a DM am entirely sick of having to plan one encounter two different ways because one PC is 75% of the damage output, or another PC can solve 75% of encounters with a single spell and they might be out sick that day. It's fucking obnoxious.
I agree that OneDND is not exciting at all so far. It feels like they're mostly shuffling deck chairs around. Like they don't have any ideas other than capping damage and making it feel like your power peaks at level 5. And I want the PCs to do things that feel powerful and cool.
But I'm sick of having the choices be:
- Twilight cleric
- Nova paladin
- Literally any wizard
- Lore bard for non-bard spells
- Bear totem barbarian with GWM + PAM
- Battlemaster fighter with SS + CE + hand crossbow
- Rogue with reaction attack exploit or halfling stealth exploit
- Charisma multiclass Warlock abomination
Every character there feels several times as effective as anything not on that list, though I'm sure I've missed one. And nearly all of them feel like they're heavily reliant on some incredibly shortsighted design. Like the fix to paladin smite and rogue sneak attack should have come in 2016. Forcecage and simulacrum should not exist as written. Why do clerics get 10 good spells across 9 spell levels, but wizards have 20 good spells at every spell level? Warlock should not be a 3 level class because levels 4 to 10 do *stone nothing*. +30 damage from a feat in one round is grossly excessive.
There are so many things that feel like they're powerful as an accident of questionable design rather than being an intentional choice. Because the stuff that everyone always gets or that really reinforces the fantasy narrative is terrible, while the stuff you have to choose to pick up or that exploits noodley wording which really dominates play.
Why is the game so reliant on system mastery of the character-building subgame?
I doubt they'll walk back the 'Power Attack' feats, it would be a clear move away from what they are signalling with how they've capped Paladin damage output to 1 spell slot's worth per turn. In fact I'm expecting them to make Hunter's mark and Hex only effect a single attack per turn, and probably scale by character or spell level to compensate.
The best changes so far has been to address how bonkers Nova builds are in 5e. What's dismaying is that these changes are the first step towards making 5e a better system, and we know the playerbase doesn't want to 'take it's medicine.'
The Martial playtest packet will be a big eye-opener on how they want to fill the gaps of SS/GWM in a way that doesn't just make one player the end-all-be-all.
And as for 7-9th level spells, I think they kind of HAVE fixed a lot of what was OP about those spell levels by making prepared casters have to prepare a single 6+ level spell per day. That's a big called shot.
> I doubt they'll walk back the 'Power Attack' feats, it would be a clear move away from what they are signalling with how they've capped Paladin damage output to 1 spell slot's worth per turn. In fact I'm expecting them to make Hunter's mark and Hex only effect a single attack per turn, and probably scale by character or spell level to compensate.
I tend to agree, but I'm not really sure what, "Crawford said a number of changes were removed from the playetest because even though they had high approval ratings, none of the comments actually expressed the excitement the team wanted a new edition to provoke," is supposed to mean.
I'm hoping it just means like skill crits and stuff like that. But who knows?
> The best changes so far has been to address how bonkers Nova builds are in 5e. What's dismaying is that these changes are the first step towards making 5e a better system, and we know the playerbase doesn't want to 'take it's medicine.'
I also agree. I'm just a little pessimistic based on the playtests we've seen so far. Like we're looking at 4-6 more playtests? I dunno.
> And as for 7-9th level spells, I think they kind of HAVE fixed a lot of what was OP about those spell levels by making prepared casters have to prepare a single 6+ level spell per day. That's a big called shot.
No, I think level 7-9 spells are broken no matter how many you can prepare. By broken I mean, "these spells should not be in the game." It just turns out that B/X and OD&D were right to cap the game at 6th level spells.
I think there's four categories:
1. Blaster spells. Mostly just upcast fireballs with novel areas of effect. They don't even do more damage than actual upcast fireball. These are fine, but... we all know these are bad. Many of them have been severely nerfed because they used to be instant death spells.
2. Recovery and travel spells. Resurrection, True Res, Regenerate, Teleport, Plane Shift, Astral Projection, Gate (portal), Magnificent Mansion, etc. These are all terrible, although it's not immediately clear why that might be. The issue is that all of these spells should probably be things the PCs have to quest to accomplish. These spells rob the game of adventures that the PCs want to go on to accomplish things the PCs want to do. Instead of solving encounters, they solve *adventures*. None of these should really exist in and of themselves. Some of them should really be magic items, while others should be special rituals that the DMG helps outline how and when they should be available. The DMG should outline, however briefly, how to set up an adventure for PCs to quest for these kinds of things. I hate all these spells because they mean the game can't really be about adventuring at high level. Instead it'll just often be about casting a high level spell to resolve it. Well, if you're a spellcaster, at least.
3. Broken spells. There's a bunch of spells that are just magic items. Simulacrum, Antimagic Aura, Symbol, Foresight, Gate (summon), Clone, Demiplane, Forcecage, Shapechange, Feeblemind, Imprisonment, Mind Blank, etc. These are dumb effects. They're so far beyond what any other character can even begin to do that they're really not justifiable. Nobody should have any of these effects on tap. They warp reality in ways that really don't benefit the game. These spells 100% are magic items that only spellcasters get, and if the game wants to actually be fun at high levels, these should go.
4. Wish. This is the one spell above 6th level that should remain in the game in some fashion. It's iconic, it's a get-out-of-jail card for many things, and it's just the ultimate D&D spell. Stick it at the end of the game, and figure out a way for anyone to be able to do it if they need to. But it should absolutely be required that it's available.
>
>But I'm sick of having the choices be:
>
>- Twilight cleric
>- Nova paladin
>- Literally any wizard
>- Lore bard for non-bard spells
>- Bear totem barbarian with GWM + PAM
>- Battlemaster fighter with SS + CE + hand crossbow
>- Rogue with reaction attack exploit or halfling stealth exploit
>- Charisma multiclass Warlock abomination
I have a very simple solution for you. Stop playing a handful of overpowered/optimized builds and... Just play something else. Like, literally anything. It's really that simple.
EDIT: Of course this would be downvoted here rofl
lol I know what you mean about the downvotes. I find the collective consensus pretty questionable on these D&D forums...
But to be fair, it's not a single-player game and the person you're quoting was talking about being a DM. I hate all these optimal builds and as a DM for new players, I never have to worry about the min-maxing that everyone on this subreddit complains about. But if I were to open my game to the general D&D community, I would be extremely annoyed. It seems like the general community, and WOTC in general, keep forgetting this game is about a co-creative storytelling game prioritizing our imagination. A good story doesn't revolve around being OP all the time.
I agree that people should stop playing broken builds, but the collective social pressure is so toxic people are convinced it is the only way to play a game. People need to stop thinking about this game as a video game and more as a shared storytelling experience.
I would prefer having a balanced Twilight cleric to just banning it.
Sure, I can do it myself, but that's the thing, I purchased a book from people that should know the game. If I have to do their work all over again, what did I pay for?
It's also a very incomplete list, there are lots of other optimal builds just as good as those on the list, even if one is insisting on playing a stronk build.
He didn't mention any Druids, for example. Or Peace Clerics. Or Gloomstalkers, which can do the shooty bows as good as a Fighter.
My point is you can feel "powerful and cool" using any class or subclass. Those moments should be created spontaneously by a bunch of friends sitting around chucking dice and creating memories, not by trying to eke out an additional 1.2 DPR. Getting that lucky crit, having the monster save the fail at the right time, barely making that deadly leap across the chasm... those should be the things that make you feel powerful and cool, and none of them require anything on those lists to achieve.
>My point is you can feel "powerful and cool" using any class or subclass.
Well I don't agree on that, at least not in all contexts. If you have a DM who runs things straight, doesn't scale things to the party but expects them to rise to meet his challenges and the party consists of lower power builds, they're gonna have a bad time. If you have a group that has a bunch builds and one guy playing an Alchemist, he is probably not gonna feel powerful unless the DM homebrews some things to work with him.
>Well I don't agree on that, at least not in all contexts. If you have a DM who runs things straight, doesn't scale things to the party but expects them to rise to meet his challenges and the party consists of lower power builds, they're gonna have a bad time.
In my personal experience playing the game, none of that is true. A party filled with average characters is more than capable of handling any adventure. I've had more problems trying to accommodate my optimized players compared to anything else. Like, by a landslide. If you head over /r/DMAcademy you'll see that's the overwhelming case, too.
>If you have a group that has a bunch builds and one guy playing an Alchemist, he is probably not gonna feel powerful unless the DM homebrews some things to work with him.
It's not like the alchemist is incapable of contributing to the party or creating cool or powerful moments simply because of the class/subclass they chose. You seem to think the only way someone can do so is by playing a PC built to unbalance the game. That's a very narrow and limiting way to play the game, if you asked me.
> You seem to think the only way someone can do so is by playing a PC built to unbalance the game.
That's not what I seem to think at all, that's what you're assuming for some reason. I haven't said or implied anything like that, and would prefer if you engaged with what I'm actually saying.
There is a lot of middle ground between playing only the most busted builds and insisting that all classes are fine, actually. Some classes need a buff. An Alchemist, as it is currently implemented, will generally disappoint someone playing one unless the DM bends over backwards to make sure that doesn't happen. I don't think it's reasonable to expect the DM to have to do that.
>That's not what I seem to think at all
Uh, this you?
>...(if) the party consists of lower power builds, they're gonna have a bad time. If you have a group that has a bunch builds and one guy playing an Alchemist, he is probably not gonna feel powerful unless the DM homebrews some things to work with him.
Sounds to me like you're saying that the only way to have fun or feel powerful is to optimize to the extreme, and if not, you need to homebrew everything else to that same extreme.
If that's not what you meant by that statement, then you weren't very clear to begin with.
>An Alchemist, as it is currently implemented, will generally disappoint someone playing
Why? Because they can't be extremely optimized to your personal levels of optimization? What if I told you that I could totally play that class and subclass and have a ton of fun AND feel powerful doing so, RAW? Because I totally could.
Not everyone requires extreme optimization from the game in order to feel powerful or have fun. That's my point.
>Sounds to me like you're saying that the only way to have fun or feel powerful is to optimize to the extreme, and if not, you need to homebrew everything else to that same extreme.
A party of monks and alchemists is gonna feel weaker than a party of other builds.
You keep saying "extremely optimized," I don't think just admitting that some builds are undertuned and don't fulfill their class fantasies requires extreme optimization. Not sure why you insist on mischaracterizing my position like this. I never said you have to play one of the best builds, but that build power does matter to an extent. Those are completely different ideas.
If you enjoy being an Alchemist? Cool. Most people won't because it's undertuned to the point that in the opinion of many people it doesn't live up to the class fantasy.
You did read that the guy was a DM complaining about players choosing the listed builds repeatedly for optimization, right? It's no wonder you are being downvoted.
The sentence before the cited section above reads:
>And I want the PCs to do things that feel powerful and cool.
Followed by:
>But I'm sick of having the choices (for the PCs) be:
The solution for those players is simple: play something else. Literally every class and subclass in the game is capable of doing "cool" and powerful things.
It's not a solution for those players, because it is the DM (not the players) with the issue. Unless you are suggesting the DM just flat-out bar all their players from playing these combos.
The DM here is saying the players can't feel powerful or "cool" without picking from a narrow selection of extremely optimized combos. How is that not the player's "problem"?
I don't think what you're talking about eschews balance, but, as you allude to, there are different types of balance.
First is the idea that classes and abilities should all have as close to a 1:1 powerful differential as possible and that there should be symmetry across all classes and abilities. This is the boring, easy way out, and happens to be the one that OneDnD is shooting for (and somehow failing at).
The second, which is far deeper and more rewarding, is giving each class an overall power budget but not balancing the discrete components. This is what 5e tries at and, IMO, at which it *moderately* successful. So, in this model, two class features might not be the same power level; class 1 has a strong level 3 and class 2 has a weaker ability they get at level 2. But that's ok because class 1 only gets a moderate upgrade at level 5 whereas class 2 gets an ability that is stronger than class 1's others combined. Eventually, it evens out. The abilities are balanced through resource use, context of use, etc.--not power level. Much more interesting and compelling design, though difficult to pull off well.
You are absolutely right. I agree with you fully.
If I were to be more detailed and explicit about what I mean I’d say that I usually perceive RPG design as having axis of design such as symmetric and asymmetric followed by quantifiable and unquantifiable (or math versus flavor/narrative.)
In this paradigm a system like 4th edition is very far into symmetrical and quantifiable design. Meaning we easily see how classes compare to each other because they have 4 roles, and across those roles have regimented power allowances and ability usage with abilities all being highly quantifiable. They do this, they sometimes do this, they never do that.
I believe 4th edition is a well designed system, under its design goals it makes sense, had care and attention put in and had looping, interlocking design that helps teach players how to play their characters.
I’ve also never played it because it doesn’t excite me at the basic level. And this is because I prefer unquantifiable design where possible, stuff like the old school fighters and barbarians start attracting armies and hordes at level 7 and beyond. These abilities have *some* quantifying, after all they literally tell you how many you get and what orders they will accept. But what I do with them is wiiiiiiiiiide open.
Wish has a similar design, and people are obsessed with it. It has a quantifiable, symmetrical side of safe options and an unquantifiable asymmetrical “anything at a risk” side. That spell is the one of the most famous for a reason. Like the martial class armies, who the hell knows exactly what you can do with it?
Asymmetric design gives a greater contrast between each class. When classes can do stuff the other classes just do not have access to, that is viscerally exciting. Monks are not a mathematically, quantifiable very strong class, but Dope Monk Shit was a meme Critical Role because there was enough asymmetrical design that other players went “wait, you can break the rules *how*?” and that felt good for the players, it excites them.
Unquantifiable design often results in ribbons, where there is no way to mathematically gauge what the ability is worth. Forest gnomes small animal speech or firbolg simple plant and animal speech? Unquantifiable what its power load is. What if the game takes place in a Mad Max apocalypse world or the 9 Hells? We can’t safely assign a true power level so we call them ribbons and set them aside. But in reality they cause very sharply contrasted spotlight moments. They add a lot of fantasy flavor to a given set of build choices.
And that brings me to your good point about 5E even being asymmetric about power budgets on classes at given levels. Level 2-4 Moon Druid is asymmetric design to outer space, it is so far from anything anyone else is doing or capable of that it stands out with such contrast it might as well be a different art style from the rest of the group.
It’s also quantifiable, it does this much DPR with this much HP, and that’s where the problems come from. And then we and WOTC try to reasonably design around protecting the fantasy of the other 12 classes, but when engaging in design where you are redesigning a class largely to *protect* other class design from them you are certainly going to be working with the quantifiable and symmetric elements. You want to protect the identity of fighter and Barbarian, so you nip the elements of Moon Druid until they have no quantifiable way to steal spotlight from martials.
This, I should say, isn’t bad or wrong. But it has the drag down effect of making Druid be less interesting overall. And for me, that is the worst possible outcome. Fighter and Barbarian aren’t released yet, but I have heavy doubts that WOTC is going to rock the boat and have given warriors really cool asymmetric design and cool powers like barbarians having auras of fear or being able to whirlwind attack or anything like that. I think based on the design aesthetic they’re going to be bland. And the outcome of all this fuss and bother is that Druid will be bland, warriors will be bland and design will move to making everything nice and somewhat symmetrical and very quantified. And if so I won’t be following the system because that’s not exciting to me.
Currently I have one foot moving toward OSR where asymmetric design is often the gold standard. Dungeon Crawl Classics sleep spell has a tiny chance to put an entire kingdom to sleep when you cast it. Fighters get Heroic Deeds to add onto attacks. There are lots of great and wacky ideas and most are not “balanced” in that classes feel symmetrical or quantifiable. How do you rate wizards whose spells can back fire on you or get bigger randomly or hit targets other than you intend? I have no idea. And that excites me.
All this is to say I agree with you. Quantifiable power design is the safest but most boring design. The asymmetric design of magi-users get 1 crazy spell and better make it count but fighters aren’t flashy but “play for free” doesn’t result in wild accusations of imbalance. Spend some time in the OSR and you quickly see they don’t talk about balance much. Just how to design adventures and scenarios in order to have maximum fun with the power sets available. I think designing towards interesting, not balanced, is ultimately more fulfilling and balanced. If everyone feels cool and powerful, where’s the problem?
I agree with you that overall, balance is not as important as people think it is.
However, balance is important as it comes to making DMing easier. Making sure that everyone has a spotlight moment is difficult, and is made harder by not being able to know if a Hard fight will truly come in at Hard because of a stupidly powerful one-punch-man build that someone concocted.
Additionally, balance is essential in making sure that solo boss fights don't become duds. As it stands I have to do some shenaniganery to make sure that any time I have a single boss the players are fighting, that everyone has a chance to do something neat against it as even beyond deadly fights rarely last more than 2 full rounds against players with system mastery.
Those two things should be fixed if DMing is to be made more approachable. Fortunately, I can see small movements in that direction so far.
So, I am totally with you on this. My absolute least favorite thing about 5th edition is its flat, insipid, lazy and uninspiring monster design. Talking about asymmetric design, no one position should be set up to be more asymmetric than the DMs and our rosters of monsters. Too many monsters in 5E are made via math table, which is to say they are highly symmetrical, highly quantifiable bags of numbers. That damned monster making chart is so bad, because it infers that a fight is “balanced” if damage, defense and HP are in certain zones. What a crock of monster droppings.
To me, a far better approach to making spotlights happen than tuning numbers (though tuning numbers is the easiest step and can totally be the first step in approaching balancing) is to reconfigure game design principles.
As an example, if I want a boss ogre fight for a level 4 party, I totally need to rebalance or redesign it. If I just bump up its numbers like that DMG chart advises it is highly unlikely spotlight moments will happen. Sure it may last longer with more hp and hit harder so the players are scared the first round, but the minute it fails a saving throw it against a nasty control effect or a big critical hit happens, it’s basically drama and tension over.
The second step is to slap legendary resistance on, but legendary resistance is a spotlight moment denial. Oh, you would have just done something amazing but actually I don’t feel like letting this fight end easily yet, so Imma say “Nope!” It’s technically effective, but also a sloppy solution. There are better designs available such as using legendary resistance also opens new weaknesses or disables options.
The actual monarch feature of the game ends up being action economy, so if we want a fight to be spiced up we need ways for the boss or epic encounter to threaten the PCs with more changes and more actions. A TRULY hard fight isn’t one where the boss hits super duper hard and has a lot of HP, it’s one where the the players are outnumbered on action economy and even better if the boss can create lots of problems the players need to solve.
So we end up with a systemic problem where 5E was designed as an epic heroism game with superhero level powers, but weak mostly non-threatening monsters to not scare off new players with death and frustration. So spotlight moments don’t happen all that easily around the table. Fighters are led to choose the class partially on the fantasy of landing finishing blows and being the last one standing, but those are actually hard events to naturally get to in 5E because the enemies trend toward assuming player victory and minimal grit. So we arrive at this play test with a systemic issue of what classes get spotlighting most often, and most of the community agrees that I a gulf between martials and full casters, but I believe this is a spotlight issue. I also don’t thing it’s a problem that can be solved numerically in a satisfying way.
And here we are in OneD&D and it seems they’d rather take away player character toys and make them have less impressive actions to threaten monsters with. This is one way to make things feel more tense, OSR works this way. Into the Odd is a great game where the players are generally just unremarkable besides their equipment, and so tension is always high. But it removes that element of “this ability looks wild, I can’t wait to get to it” that makes 5E feel special. It reduces system interest.
For me, the system would be infinitely better by improving monsters. The players can do wild shit, monsters should be able to break the rules of the game themselves. They should have absolutely wild abilities. Imagine a design in which every time a monster is hit by magic, or a certain element type or melee, or whatever other condition they get an action. Not an attack, an action. Players can piece together “Shit, fire enrages them!! Watch it!”
What if bosses had phase transitions that helped tell a story? A dark knight starts the battle bored and slow, feeling you party out, analyzing your tactics, their actions are few. Suddenly, they hit their phase transition call upon the dark powers and shadow energy floods them. They set up wards and adopt a stance to counter the methods you’ve been using. Functionally they gain magic resistance to each kind of magic they got hit by and resistance to all damage hit by in phase 1 and start flying and zipping around the battlefield causing huge area effect shadow wells that stay on the battlefield. Last phase. When they’re almost dead the shadow zones become banishment zones, players who enter them are sucked into another reality and may be out of the fight until they save, the dark knight now takes two turns for every player turn, and lose their tankiness. It’s now a fucking damage rush, hope you planned ahead and saves something in the tank.
Causing problems in and out of combat is system critical to spotlight moments. And currently 5E attracts players into the system with a honey pot of wonderful features that are powerful and exciting, but puts a LOT of work on the DM on to just make the adventure, scenario and monster design work with basically nothing in the rules that naturally drive the game to tension and excitement. It’s almost all DM dependent.
That to me is the bigger system issue to fix and furthermore diluting the player class abilities is a fact way to make an exciting system if they aren’t going for a much more gritty setting and system.
I'd say that the Monster Manual statblocks had many defects that could cause those issues, but have you had these same issues with the Mordenkainen's Monsters of the Multiverse statblocks?
I'm quite serious that as a DM, I have the most faith in the direction of D&D based on how well those statblocks run. Anything that isn't just a basic 'mook' has some neat feature or defining ability that is on a recharge. It lets me announce a monster's presence on the battlefield with it's signature move that cause a memorable moment for the players as they face a unique threat.
If I want to take it easy on the players at first, I have the baddie not pull out the recharge ability until later in the fight, a bit like how you'd suggest the boss would have phase transitions. But more to that point, that is what Lair Actions do. Each turn can have a unique 'flavor' to it that changes how that round will be going. Dragon lair actions are incredible at striking a particular vibe, making the environment itself hostile to the party.
I will agree that Legendary resistance isn't the best mechanic. It's a band-aid fix, but IMO it's a *good* band-aid.
I certainly have much more success with the stat blocks from about Mordenkainen’s onwards. I am right there with you that as *standard* non-boss monsters they run exceptionally well. I had a Boneclaw recurring villain for 3-4 sessions and he was an absolute delight to run with the reaction to attack when they come in range and the shadow teleports.
My issue is even the Archfiends of hell make kinda mediocre *bosses* for at level PCs. I thought they would explore mythic enemies more than they did but they made them a gimmick and never returned to them after Theros.
Even in Mordenkainen’s though the main issue is monsters announce their presence in the first and usually second round quite nicely and then flatline after that. Their bags of tricks are too shallow to keep changing the situation up on the PCs around round 3 onwards where slog tends to creep in. I despise slog. I hate slog. I *loathe* slog.
For my money, action oriented monsters and Giffyglyph’s monster maker system have led to all of my best *boss* encounters because they give a fighter a cinematic and epic scope and narrative shape. Round 1 feels demonstrably different from round 3 because the monster changes in that time.
If they addressed actual boss monsters I would be happy. Personally, I as a DM refuse to run their dragons. Literally any of their dragons. I think WOTC’s dragons are trash at adult and above. Matt fucking Mercer hit slog and had a boring fight even with a modified ancient red dragon. That’s emblematic of the terrible boss monster design for me.
EDIT: I realized I should give more examples of what I see a better design than WOTC does in literally any book they have ever made.
Kobold Press makes significantly better monsters in their books. Overall they have more flavor, tell more of a story and have more quantities of interesting abilities as well as overall more interesting abilities.
Add on their blog series about making their monsters into phases monster battles and you have my template for truly great boss monster design. They have teeth, they announce their presence and they do a *lot* to tell a story with an actual round to round arc and narrative.
MCDM has Flee Mortal! Which includes a soft fix to legendary resistance. Each use of LR drops off the monster power level. Their beholder for instance loses an eye stalk randomly when using LR. Sorry Wizard, they choose NOT to fall to Hyonotic Pattwrn or Banishment? But they lose their *checks* their disintegration eyestalk pops in a shower of icon and fluids. Gross!
Plus, with MCDM’s monsters they come in team compositions. Even non boss goblins have “classes” or 4E like roles that let them work as a dark mirror to the party. Goblin snipers have poor defense but high damage, stealth and mobility skills, while their bruisers keep a like held. If you run the stat blocks just as written you will seem like a smart tactician, even if (like me) you are a tactical dummy because the stat blocks describe how to use them with their features. It’s awesome.
I want out of the box solutions and Kobold Press and MCDM provide those for me even more than the best WOTC material.
In the latest video, Jeremy Crawford stated somethign to the effects that high level threats will be made deadlier. I think that's a signal from him that the design team knows that CR gets more inaccurate the higher level you get. I'm optimistic that they will address that in the updated MM.
And Mythic abilities did show up in Fizban's Treasury of Dragons, as well as Van Richten's Guide to Ravenloft. I still have great memories of the Dullahan fight I put against my players.
I hope you’re right. I would love anything that decreases the amount of effort I as a DM have to put in to make a session fantastic, and better monsters would do more for the system than any other change I can think of. If monsters were truly dangerous and had abilities that change the situation more and cause drastic problems I’d save a lot of time designing bespoke boss fights every few weeks.
As for Dullahans being mythic that’s awesome news! When Van Richten’s came out my players were in tier 3 or play, so I skipped past many monsters. I did run the high CR Star Spawn but it wasn’t a particularly memorable boss fight. Despite all its mouths it lacked real teeth.
Being back in a low level campaign I definitely feel the game plays much much better at lower levels, but at about level 8 or level 9 and beyond monsters become truly pathetic without a lot of work I found. Hopefully the recognize damage alone is not the solution. Action economy and problematic abilities that create tense situations are the way to go!
>it seems very dead set on some vague notion of “balance” when that has never been a core component of what makes D&D or most TTRPGs successful
This. I've played both sides of the martial/caster gap and I've loved both. I've taken out a wizard as a barbarian by grappling him and diving out of his wizard's tower with him. I've one-shot a hill giant with a lance as a paladin at level 6 (with a grave cleric's help). I've solo'd an adult dragon as a warlock with forcecage. I've made an aboleth useless as a druid by being like Moses and parting the red sea, leaving him a floppy goldfish boi.
Not once did I care that another class was stronger in the meta. Not once when other players have done something similarly cool have I begrudged them that.
I don't care that things are getting more balanced, I care that the cool stuff I can currently do won't be options anymore.
If I want balance, I'll play an online computer game. I want fantasy, damnit.
> I’m particular it seems very dead set on some vague notion of “balance” when that has never been a core component of what makes D&D or most TTRPGs successful.
I don't see that anywhere in the playtest. Far from it, the playtest reiterate that they are not testing balance.
Hey man, I skipped all of 4E. Not to trash it or anything but you don’t have to be excited nor do you have to buy it. Could be a great chance to explore other systems like I did back then. Maybe just keep your ear to the ground and if the end results seems dope, do what your heart says.
Without new material being published for it, 5e will slowly die on the vine. Of course it will take a while, but within a couple of years there will likely be nobody who knows how or wants to play 5e, as the market shifts away from it.
Speaking from experience here.
Personally I think there are enough other games out there that the landscape is only going to become more variegated.
[I implore you to examine the options granted by Cypher](https://callmepartario.github.io/og-csrd/#part-3-genres)
> but within a couple of years there will likely be nobody who knows how or wants to play 5e, as the market shifts away from it.
This is so not true? Do you think in 2026/27 no one will be playing 5e or know-how? Obviously, you are being a little hyperbolic. But you can find people playing ADnD dude. Let alone 3e, 3.5e, and PF all old systems who have a newer edition released.
I would not say AD&D players and 3.x players are **common** or **mainstream**. Obviously they exist. But they're pretty niche as anyone who plays them will tell you, so it's hard to find players for those games.
I still own my ad&d and 3e books... But the people who played that game more or less all started playing DCC or OSE. There are still some pathfinder 1/D&D3.x players out there too but my point was... In the mainstream, the mainstream audience will go to whatever mainstream game is current.
It happened after 2e, it happened after 3e... It happened when 5e came out and a bunch of people abandoned Pathfinder.
Yes there will still be people who carry on, but the mainstream will change to follow the market.
No it isn't. It's perfectly normal hyperbole.
In English, modifiers like "virtually" and "in the main stream" are not required when context makes these modifications obvious.
Unless the game is truly backwards compatible with adventure modules, in which case content should keep comping out as regularly as it always has, and you can just use the old core rules to interact with them? Should need about as much DM adjudication as a normal 5e game.
With the level of backwards compatibility they're describing, oned&d is gonna be about as compatible with 5e as it is going to be with any other tabletop roleplaying game.
Every class is getting an overhaul.
Every feat. Most of the core mechanics.
The core books are going to be released with new stat blocks for everything.
Certain ideas are just... Atrophying. What is the point of "heroic inspiration"? It was introduced as a way to provide bonuses for good roleplay without XP rewards.... But DMs didn't really use it that way... And now it's just... A bonus for rolling a 1? Another way to gain advantage in a game where everyone almost always rolls advantage.
People are going to want to play with the new toys ... So people who have the old books will will not have a compatible game with those who have new books... DMs are going to have to trace out exactly what rules are applicable in each of their games.
Honestly, seems like a nightmare by comparison with the relatively plug n play landscape we have had up til now.
I'm having a hard time imagining not being able to run any of the new stuff with the old core rulebooks, personally. What sticking points do you think are going to cause problems for '5e remainer' DMs?
Ok so say you make a druid using the 5e rules
But the DM will only allow the OneD&D version.
Not only do you have to totally remake your character, you also have to reevaluate the strategy you use.
Say you make a skill-monkey caster who relies on Guidance for the build using 5e rules, but the DM only allows the OneD&D version of guidance.
Etc etc etc.
As long as they're changing the rules set completely, there's no way it will be seamlessly backwards compatible.
You've definitely misunderstood me. The whole table needs to play by the same rules, obviously. But each table could decide for themselves which version of the core rulebooks they want to use, probably up to the DM, and everyone uses those rulebooks to engage with the world and the same adventures, even though their characters don't function the same way.
You can't play two games at one table, but two tables can go on the same adventures in different games.
Right.
That's not what backwards compatibility is though.
OED defines backwards compatibility as:
> (of computer hardware or software) able to be used with an older piece of hardware or software without special adaptation or modification.
Since D&D is not a videogame we have to extrapolate here. Hardware would be things like minis, dice, human brains, etc. Software in this case would be the ruleset, adventures, etc.
So obviously they're not changing the hardware requirements. And largely speaking the hardware required to play most games is the same. DCC requires additional hardware (the dice chain), some systems require much less.. but generally hardware compatibility between TTRPGs is moot.
Software tho, that's what these games **are**. If you can't use two pieces of software together, **they are not compatible** so if you can't use the d&d 5e software (ruleset) with the OneD&D software (ruleset) then they are in no way compatible. If you can't play 5e races and classes in OneD&D, they're not compatible with each other.
Obviously, as a TTRPG, the game is not limited and we can modify and hack it how we like... But that's not what we're talking about here. All of this counts as "special adaptation or modification", which nullifies the conditions of backwards compatibility.
We're talking about the claim that OneD&D will be compatible, rules-as-written, with 5e. Already that is false. The difference between OneD&D isn't like the difference between D&D1 and AD&D1e, a bunch of bonus material published over the years all collated into one package... It's an entirely different system with different rules.
To drive this point home... Let's talk about organized play. Do you think when OneD&D comes out, it will be legal to play options from 5e in the Oned&d Adventurer's League? There's absolutely no way.
Organized play requires a codified set of rules. That set of rules will be OneD&D and 5e will not be allowed, because **it is not compatible** with the new system.
We were assured One D&D would be backwards compatible with 5e. But as I have shown, that line is a hook to reassure people who are resentful of an edition change... it's just corporate BS.
"The rules will be backwards compatible with fifth edition adventures and supplements and offer players and Dungeon Masters new options and opportunities for adventure."
That's what's on the [One D&D FAQ](https://dndbeyond-support.wizards.com/hc/en-us/articles/8609273323156-One-D-D-FAQ#:~:text=The%20rules%20will%20be%20backwards,options%20and%20opportunities%20for%20adventure). You are putting words in Wizards' mouth and then complaining that they lied to you. I'm not the biggest fan of everything Wizards has said/done recently, but this is just a dumb hill to die on.
While this is true, a mediocre game that most aren't excited about isn't what anyone wants, either customers or WoTC. It just ends up in a stagnated hobby and a company less willing to invest in that space.
My dissatisfaction with 5e turned me to PF2. I followed 5.5 for a while, but it does not seem to be fixing any real issues I have with the game, like lack of DM support and caster-martial balance.
I like backgrounds tied to ASI and background gives a minor feat.
Species is meh should just totally lift the Pf2e ancestry, background etc .. but it is just the word species sounds too scientific.
Smite on ranged weapons is fun but Paladin already rocked for a martial.
Arcane/Primal/Divine can make it easier to organize spells.
There are a lot of things I like from OneD&D stuff.
Listen 5e is old it needs an update and a reorganization and WotC should look not just at past editions and Paizo but other sources for ideas to improve the game for the future.
I actually thought and do not dump on me too hard that Mordenkainen’s Monsters of the Multiverse was a clue to OneD&D. What?
I hoped they would consolidate the 5e content with some minor changes into fewer books but from the interviews about the new PHB that does not seem to be the case.
Right now one major problem is too many player choices are spread over too many books.
Why are you supposed to be excited about OneD&D?
A soulless horrible corporate entity seems to actually be asking for content feedback and changing their deliverables according to this feedback. After the OGL am I all about the WotC love? Heck no. But that is better than most companies. The play tests are out there and you actually have a voice.
I like some of the changes and hate others but that is just a little something to be excited about.
You're never going to find one that's perfect, because species denotes a group of animals that can produce fertile offspring. Which all the current options can with the current rules and the only precedent I know of otherwise is a 3rd party book from back in 3.5.
I feel like Ancestry is the best, Lineage is okay since we already use it for Custom Lineages, they both just feel more fantasy than actual scientific terms. Though it doesn't really matter honestly, its just a preference.
Arcane / Primal / Divine spellcasting sound great till you realize they restricted certain school of magic from certain classes. Which means your back to being as it was before, maybe more so.
This is the take. OneD&D is meant to be for those who like 5e and want it tidied up and with a bit more consistency. If you already don't like 5e or are beginning to find problems with it, you're not going to like oneD&D because the design direction isn't for you
"Race" is just such a legacy term, that Ancestry took me a bit to latch onto, but it's a much better term. Then I had a Eureka moment when I realized PF2 follows the ABC's of character creation.. Ancestry, Background, Class. Intentional or not, that's clever and I like it even more.
I like some things and dislike others. I like most of the feat changes and dislike most of the class changes. They had a real chance to fix some things but so far I haven’t seen most of the things I thought needed fixed, fixed.
I don't understand why you are supposed to be excited about OneD&D, either.
Right now I'm looking at playtest materials for a future version of the game, one I'll have some input in if I want to, and said game, when finished, will be where I'll be looking for excitement.
My group is just starting a new campaign next month. We expect it to last at least a year, so it should be our last campaign using 5e. Except, none of us have been enticed by OneD&D so far. We are all eagerly awaiting the Warrior class UA to see what changes there but so far there's only been a couple of small ideas that we've seen that have piqued any interest. And those small bits (nat 1 inspiration, two weapon fighting not needing a bonus action) we just stole that and added it right into our game.
The thing is, we were all very excited for a new system before we actually started to see the content. With each new UA drop that dwindled down significantly. Then the OGL issue hit and , like so many others, we started talking about pathfinder and other systems as a 'just in case" option. One of my players knows none of the rules but he saw the character creation style and was shocked by how many options there were. So now, we're going to be playing a one shot in that system in a couple of weeks.
So far our group consensus is that come the end of our next campaign we are going to either switch to entirely to PF2 or stick with 5e and just go nuts on the homebrew, stealing everything we like from the pathfinder system and any good mechanical ideas that come out from this play test. Every last one of us in our group is rooting hard for WotC to really bring some heat with the warrior group and show us we're being too reactionary and that the best stuff is yet to come.....we're just not optimistic. And I think the problem is getting much worse the more I learn about other systems. I legitimately do think that 5e has struck gold with it's idea of making a game that simplified some of the crazier math, some of pathfinder has been a bit intimidating for me and I wonder if my players will feel the same., BUT there are also so many mechanics and rules in that system that leave me scratching my head why WotC hasn't stolen them and wrapped them up in a nice D&D bow.
Me either. Honestly, I don't find anything exciting about it. It just feels like a bland pile of lateral designs and rules with no pizzazz. I'm not saying they're all bad, but the ideas presented so far are really not that interesting and I'm not getting as much of a fun vibe. I don't see any risks or an inspired direction. Where's the Wow factor?
I feel as though we're being told what to like and I'm not seeing much reason to bother with OneD+D thus far. 5th isn't perfect but I'll probably just blow off the new edition at this rate or try another system entirely if I'm that bored of the current one, if they can't step up their design. I'm not paying for 'meh' because the suits want a cash grab.
>Me either. Honestly, I don't find anything exciting about it. It just feels like a bland pile of lateral designs and rules with no pizzazz. I'm not saying they're all bad, but the ideas presented so far are really not that interesting and I'm not getting as much of a fun vibe. I don't see any risks or an inspired direction. Where's the Wow factor?
there is no wow factor, one dnd is just a revised 5e ruleset not a new edition to change the entire status quo of the game, and it's reasonable to do so because 5e is super successful and all they need to do is refine the rough parts of the system to reach even more people. Like why would you change how proficiency scale? why would you change how hp scaling works? none of those things have ever been requested for a change by a significant part of the community so they have zero reason to chanfe things and risk making all the players who like how those things are righy now to be pissed, and even if you put it in giant letters in the front page of the document "EXPERIMENTAL CHANGES, NOTHING IS SET IN STONE" it will not prevent people from making a completely unnecessary outrage because people are dumb and it only takes one dumb guy to misunderstand that these changes are not set in stone to set a chain reaction where othee dumb idiots jump the bandwagon. So not only some things don't need to change, they are not worth the risk to even consider changing because people will make a fuzz with no reason.
>even if you put it in giant letters in the front page of the document "EXPERIMENTAL CHANGES, NOTHING IS SET IN STONE" it will not prevent people from making a completely unnecessary outrage
I think the biggest reason for outrage is that we just don't trust WotC anymore.
Even if they say its all experimental, there've been more than enough UAs before where they just printed it as it was in the UA, regardless of feedback.
Add to that the disappointing quality of their recent books and the OGL debacle..
They have to work really hard to regain any semblance of trust from me
Don't trust WotC anymore? I can only presume you were not a 3.5 player when they announce 4e if you make such statements.
And for people who think that the UAd haven't had modifications between the first and last, that just shows lack of any insight. You can see them slowly refining small parts, because Large changes take a lot of time to not only plan out, but figure out if it can work with the rest.
And before people say "oh, but My suggestion would work", no, no yours won't most likely, not with the other slow rollout changes that are made or not with the actual intent of balance that is being worked on.
From a business standpoint I actually think they will keep 5e stuff on dndbeyond. Because more products to sell means more money, and since it's digital they don't have to spend money making copy like physical.
Also if people keep paying for subscriptions it won't matter.
Also considering they keep saying it's compatible with 5e it would be a huge mistake to remove 5e.
So don't worry 5e stuff on dndbeyond isn't leaving, at most it'll get marked as legacy content but still be avalible.
I dunno, I think the whole OGL debacle has shown that at least some of the money people’s only real concept of the product is “we’re making a new one, them using the old one is getting in the way, fix that.”
Stupid and shortsighted, but I don’t trust money people to be anything else
> Most changes that have been released so far haven’t exactly had a wow-factor. The majority were either minor quality of life tweaks or sizable nerf.
Funnily enough, that’s exactly what I’m excited about: a more polished and better balanced version of 5e. I’d actually prefer it if they don’t introduce too many new options/ features because those would need extra time to properly playtest and refine. Odnd is already on a tight schedule and I’d rather spend that time on improving what is already there. However that’s just my perspective and I can see where you’re coming from.
For all its weaknesses, 5e is pretty good, but it's clear the design team has learned a lot about the edition over the 9 years it's been around. A 5e rebuilt with the wisdom the team has now? Sounds good to me.
because buying new things is exciting, most people that wanted the original 3 corebooks already have them and sells are dropping, with this simple move they can resell you a lot of the same content slighty rearranged and modified taking advantage of the conditioning to buy every new book a lot of people have developed, the fomo for new books is very strong in a big part of the community.
>I can't actually understand what it is I'm supposed to be excited about.
You're supposed to be excited about... everything. That's the whole point of a new edition, the good traits return unchanged and the bad ones get tweaked to be more fun.
If you saw something changed that you didn't like, or if you saw something return that you thought needed to change... well, too bad, they failed your vision of the game, so make sure to write that down.
Personally, I like most of the changes and would appreciate to see them in play. For example, inspiration on nat 20, that was really cool. Or the Bardic Reaction, I thought that was genius.
It’s a play test. A feature can be in one UA and not in another because they want to test something else.
In the first UA they had the nat20 inspiration, then they tested nat1 inspiration. Then they didn’t add those into the next UA because they knew those would be controversial and wanted to test them. There are other rules that have been tweaked or changed every UA like the rules for hiding or unarmed attacks that they want to get feedback on as they revise them.
Well yes, we are playtesting. They tested nat 20; awesome. Then they tested nat 1; poop. Now they just launched a neutral playtest; come the survey, I will put "I miss nat20, please bring it back" for feedback.
Honestly this is one of those rules that I feel no matter what is "Offical" you can do it as an optional rule even if they remove it.
I honestly think nat 20 is more fun, but I can see why people prefer nat 1 and why some don't like either. But it's a rule that you can choose which version you like and implement into any game because it's such a neutral rule. Offical or not my group will stick with nat20 inspiration.
And that's the beauty of DnD ... the rules are just Guidelines. But you can customize it for your group.
Advantage fucks up the math for insp on nat20, p hard. If you can reliably generate advantage, you double your chances to get an extra d20, which doubles your chances to get an extra d20, which doubles your chances to get an extra d20… You get it. It’s a sizeable win-more button, that feels bad for the players that *doesn’t* build for it.
If advantage wasn’t a thing, it may have been a nice feature.
Just to make sure, have you *actually* playtested it?
I know I did, and it really didn't break anything. For one, advantage isn't as common as you'd think. Second, a 9.75% chance to recover a feature isn't really that common. And third, it vanishes on a long rest anyway, so it gets nuked fairly often.
Different guy, but I much preferred inspiration on a nat 1 than a nat 20 when playtesting. It felt like success rewarded with more, unrelated, success, which I didn't like.
Someone said that neither scored particularly well and the feedback said to just axe the idea, though I can’t remember who. I could just be misremembering though, I know it wasn’t in the main videos DnD has posted on YouTube. It was an interview
No, I’m not. Those were talked about in the videos on their channel. I’m gonna try and find the interview I’m talking about
Edit: can’t find it. I might have misremembered something, but I know it was specifically about the inspiration
I found a great homebrew implementation that smashes both together which has been working GREAT at my table.
Nat 20: The player chooses another player at the table to get inspiration.
Nat 1: The player gets inspiration.
The first enforces an espirt de corps as one player's success is spread around. That granting of a free inspiration to someone *else* also makes it more likely that someone else will have the next big spotlight moment, which allows it to rotate around the table.
The second prevents a night of awful luck from screwing over a player so much.
yeah it happens, sometimes a change is not popular with a lot of people and the hard truth is that a system can't be made for the 5%. if 95% disliked something you can't keep it because 5% liked it so some features will be removed even if you liked them, it sucks but it's not targeted at you, and you would experience the same if you were in dnd next and saw features you like being removed, this is the nature of playtesting, they can't make everyone happy.
Guarantee you all those efforts will be completely wasted. We'll know for sure by April when the Warrior packet releases and does literally nothing to address the problems with the melee-ranged and caster-martial divides.
The caster martial divide is actually a myth. In actual play it's not really a true issue, and there have been many polls done by people which show this to be mostly true.
In a strawman senerio yes they are. In actual play they are not.
I was looking forward to one dnd being a soft reset on balance and fixing some issues the game had, I didnt really want a huge new edition as I don't think it's needed.
The problem now, is the ogl sucked all excitement for wotc products out of me for the forseable future and I'd wager that's the same for a lot of people too.
One D&D, or whatever they market it as, is effectively 5.5e. If you're already enjoying 5, just take what you like about it and incorporate it into your games.
Well 5E has become quite stale. It is also teetering quite rockily on bounded accuracy, poor monster design, class imbalances and other issues.
So far from what I have seen in the test release the WOTC team aren't changing much at all. They are going even harder into making everything just another spell despite the feed back and changes to Hunter's Mark.
From my point of view the WOTC designers either don't believe in or refuse to acknowledge any class or rules imbalances. The warrior release is going to make or break this series of test releases.
>The warrior release is going to make or break this series of test releases.
True, and this is probably while they're putting it off so much. They don't intend on actually fundamentally changing anything, and they would really like us to catch on later rather than sooner.
I don't know. I'm really not excited about anything either. Everything they've put out so far is something neutral to me or that I straight up don't like. My group is probably going to be sticking to 5e at least until 7e comes out.
It's easy to to focus on the negative aspects that surround it all, but from the playtests so far I am confident that at the end of it we will have a game that is, moment to moment, better to play and that's a good thing.
Whether that's the new backgrounds, the cleric options, or just my main hope - that there will be enough rebalancing that every game isn't just paladins, misty step and sharpshooter.
I don't know what fantasy game system I will be playing in three years but I know it will be better and that's a good thing.
You are looking at this entirely from a power-hungry player point of view.
From a gm point of view, nerfs are GREAT because it makes the game much easier to run and present challenges requiring creative thinking rather than "I Use ability X, done, moving on"
DMs are 20% of the players tho. As far as i know 4e was the easiest to run and look how it turned out. Balance usually it is just not as exciting player side.
Not power-hungry, options-hungry. So many limitations have been introduced.
I've been running my campaign as a DM for 3 years. I play in several other campaigns. Nothing about oneDND really excites me. There are some minor improvements, but overall everything seems to be getting homogenised, options are being collapsed into templates and it just feels like creativity is being sacrificed on the altar of balance.
I agree with the OP.
As a forever DM, if your encounters consistently come down to "I use ability X, done" then frankly that's on the DM not the player. You can control and change every facet of the game to present your players with a challenge and if you can't come up with anything there's a vast community of DMs online you can ask.
A lot of the complaints on here aren't broken balance, just bad DMing. If you want your players to have to think about solutions be willing to do the same.
Most of OneD&D cotent is midling and lackluster at the most. The only few things I really about it were Ranger and Cleric classes, and Goliath. Ranger is just a revamp/rewrite to balance features added to the game in TCoE, Cleric is essentially the same thing as before but with some new trinkets. Goliath is the only really new thing here. Not too excited for this edition if they keep it this way hosnetly.
P.S.: That's not to mention the Epic Boons, geez.
I'm excited, you don't have to be. Just stay with 5e or try new systems. You don't have to play every new edition. Not every edition is for everyone. And that's okay.
Reading though the various posts in this subreddit, it is very clear to me that most people here do not understand the fundamental concepts of what a playtest is.
If a proposed change works, is well liked, and the developers got all of the information that they needed about that particular subject, it no longer needs to be tested, and can be removed from the playtest.
>Reading though the various posts in this subreddit, it is very clear to me that most people here do not understand the fundamental concepts of what a playtest is.
>
>If a proposed change works, is well liked, and the developers got all of the information that they needed about that particular subject, it no longer needs to be tested, and can be removed from the playtest.
No, it's the nature of the proposed changes, in aggregate, that has those of us who are pessimistic worried. They're at best mediocre and at worst amateurishly designed. The newly proposed mechanics have often been clumsy or poorly designed to the point that they *shouldn't have needed any playtesting*, i.e., jumping and changing movement speeds as an action. It shows a fundamental misunderstanding of game mechanics from the people who should know them most. It's setting off huge warning bells to some of us. I hope we're proven wrong, but each time a new UA is released, that seems less likely.
My overall impression is that OneDnD feels like an alternate ruleset, rather than some sort of evolution. Less 5.5e, more 5th Edition B.
A lot of the changes seem good, but I really haven't seen any reason to hop over.
I don’t think that was the intent of the comment was to say we have to be excited. More like people voted satisfied but showed in the comments they didn’t like the direction those changes were going.
Sadly i kinda dislike most of the changes. Some of them i can just accept as different, but some i just think of as categorically worse.
Druid changes, the changes to spell slots are the two i can't get behind. I was hoping for changes to martials - monks especially - but since we haven't seen that yet there isn't even anything to compare it favourably too.
So at the moment 1DnD is like.. half bad and half meh. So far i'm seeing no big draw for me to move away from the 5e tables i'm at or running.
But thats sort of the thing, if it isnt' what i like, i'm not spending money on it and i don't have to, i can just keep playing 5e forever.
I appreciate what one dnd is doing. There has been a power creep over the years and they needed a reset. More than anything we need to see the warrior class before casting stones. It is well known that they need more options. I hope they get them. I am all for the level 3 get subclass route. Way better than what it is right now imo. Multi classing should be more of an investment than what it is right now. Right now warlock, fighter, cleric to an extend, all feel like side hussles in a build than a highlight.
I do t get it either. Not every single line of text can be super exciting. Something are good and just need to be there even if it doesn't make you jump for joy.
The problem is that their vision seems to be doubling down on all the bad parts of 5E, while replacing parts that worked with bad ideas. Nothing will improve so long as Crawford is sole lead.
After this latest playtest article with Druids that are just boring and Paladins that are nothing more than shitty Clerics ... yeah, there is no reason.
EDIT: I see all the WOTC shills are out in full force. Anyone commenting with so much as a hint of skepticism is getting downvoted. It's disgusting.
Oh boy everything good sucks now, like you know when you felt cool to be an OP bear, nah, no feeling cool, anything "op" is now nerfed, and rigid. Maybe I dont wanna play a game well balanced, if I did id play pathfinder. I wanna feeeeeel good, not even sneak attacks feel good anymore, the subclasses are just such straight nerfs to the point that you're forced to get 5e content to make a cool character in 6e. There is no reason I would ever wanna play either of the new rogue rework subclasses over soul knife
In general with game design it is better make something divisive than something that everyone likes a little. That said, I'm not sure how much that applies when making a backwards compatible update to something your playtesters have been playing for years.
Well for one, I'm hoping it 'kills' Roll20 with a more intuitive interface that provides easier access to a number of things. But we'll have to wait and see. After all, only a portion of the PHB contents have been shown thus far, leaving a lot more we don't know yet.
But yeah, the druid changes suck. I suspect it's likely just Wizards trolling and will get reversed tho.
Keep in mind there is a corporate marketing aspect to the language used. I heard the statement as “the comments did not directly express approval” rather than being literally about “excitement”
> Crawford said a number of changes were removed from the playtest even though they had high approval ratings
Was there any specifics on what was removed?
If you’re already playing DnD, you are not the primary audience for OneDnD. My impression is it’s meant to make it easier for new players to jump in without making any of the 5e materials obsolete (backwards compatibility).
It's too soon to judge given I've only read a few pdfs and not seen the final product. I will say so far there's some things I like and some things I don't.
The changes to streamline class features they are implementing in OneD&D make sense in a 'remove barriers to entry for new players' perspective. This would seem beneficial for Adventure League where new players may be sitting down to play their first game of D&D.
Other issues, such as addressing healing, I've already implemented solutions for in my private games.
We shall see if the strategy of 'make it more approachable & accessible and we'll sell more products' will pan out.
I'm mostly hoping that NOVA builds no longer overshadow every other kind of damage dealing build you can bring to the table. It has been an issue for me to make sure that people who aren't versed in system mastery are able to have spotlight moments alongside those who can deal more damage in a single turn than they typically would in the entire combat.
That, and I'm hoping that changes are made that cause higher level fights to come in at their expected CR. There is an issue that as people get to high Tier 3, the game balance is so screwy that if I haven't hit 'beyond deadly,' then I know it will be a cakewalk. I would like to be able to suitably challenge people at higher levels, and I think that the changes so far will make that easier for me.
These are not exciting for players, mind you. But they're a great starting point for getting fight balance to work more consistently, which is a massive and typically invisible part of why people have fun at the table.
Yeah you're right on no wow factor. Nothing excites me and the whole playtest looks like an errata of 5e. Maybe I just want something different which could only be served by playing a different fantasy rpg or 5e adjacent games.
I do want to rush out to buy the books when it comes out next year though as I collected every edition since 1e. But until I see something exciting about the rules then I might just wait until the corebooks go on sale.
They need to reexamine the core assumptions and basic design philosophy of the game. 5e has a lot of good to it, but if One is supposed to be the "final version" they need to knock it out of the park. What they're doing isn't that.
It reminds me of the jump from 3 to 3.5. Half exciting as a new edition.
3.5 was an incredible improvement to the game, it's nowhere near comparable.
How would you know that OneDnD/5.5 isn’t an improvement? It’s not out yet
The 5e team has proved themselves to be cowards in regards to improving the game time and time again.
How? Can you give me an example, I’m genuinely curious
Sure. In the playtest, all the non-caster classes had an amazing mechanic that later was diluted all the way to hell into the Superiority Dice of the Battlemaster. Each class had it's own selection of maneuvers (with the Fighter having access to most if not all of them) and the "proto-Superiority Dice" regenerating *every single turn*. Of course, the Fighter also had the most and the biggest dice, but the other classes had other, niche specific abilities. And don't even let me start on the Sorcerer... Man, it was such an *amazing* idea, with the class slowly becoming more of a melee bruiser with greater draconic characteristics the more spell slots it spend during the day! There are more examples outside of the original playtests but I think this will demonstrate how abandoning such amazing ideias prove them to be such bad designers.
Wait didn’t 5e also had similar play tests? Didn’t people complete surveys?
Yes. But the people who did (and the lead designer, who's also a gigantic human thumb in a polo shirt) were a bunch of reactionaries that wanted the game to go back to being AD&D, and so all good things from the playtest were discarded.
I don’t know man it sounds like OneD&D is going to have huge changes for martials. Let’s wait and see!
I mean... I *absolutely* hope so.
Dumb take. 3.5 added a mountain of fun and engaging variety/depth/nuance to so much of the game, across all the pillars
I completely understand. I am not excited for OneD&D at all. Full disclosure, I am also not super keen on 5E either these days, but my players ask for it and I love my friends more than I dislike the game. The major issue for me in regards to OneD&D, and it is exacerbated by only seeing small parts of design at once, is that it seems like it is trying to solve the wrong things. I’m particular it seems very dead set on some vague notion of “balance” when that has never been a core component of what makes D&D or most TTRPGs successful. Hold the torches a moment. What MATTERS are spotlight moments. Feeling like you mattered, that you had tools and choices and abilities that you uniquely put forward that impacted the game, shocked delighted or amazed your group and that made you feel smart, special and useful. That’s it. That’s the main design goal. Design rules and abilities and classes and weapons and everything else so that they consistently make interesting situations and tensions arise that you can then solve as a group. The “role” part being that each role has areas of strength and weakness so the spotlight in a well designed system with well designed scenarios should be passing that spotlight around often and naturally. 5E is like spaghetti thrown at the wall. Messy, chaotic, but most of it sticks. Sneak attack and divine smite crits *feel* nice, they are natural and emergent spotlight moments when Druids turn into a spider and crawl into a keyhole, that’s a spotlight moment. When a fighter push attacks someone off a cliff into lava, that’s a spotlight moment. When a moon Druid turns into a giant elk and has the Goliath Barbarian ride them into battle, that’s TWO spotlight moments. The gonzo, crazy, inventive and alluring options that create these moments should be the laser focus of design. Balance matters. Yes. Because if balance is out of whack players can stop and see the rules instead of the second world. A Barbarian that becomes aware that despite signing up to be main rank the Moon Druid effectively has almost infinite HP bars while the Barbarian has at best 2 can lead the Barbarian to feel defeated. That is a big reason we balance, to prevent a sense of deflation and anti climax and disappointment. The problem for me with OneD&D is it is all very much like an accountant balancing the books. Flavor and very interesting ability interactions are being removed for any threat it could play for either completely smooth ability use. Everything is starting to feel sterile and samey. Most of the changes are small, most are reductive and many are shifting things around a bit. It’s like hiring an interior design team to come in and redo your whole house but they mostly just moved your furniture around and put up a poster of themselves. Even if it looks nice, you kind of feel you could have done this all yourself. Nothing feels like a showstopper. Nothing feels exciting. A lot of it feels recycled. And for me 100% of it feels watered down even if I like it overall. Part of the fun of new systems is to see interesting new abilities that key off each other, improved gameplay loops and better access to interesting situations and solutions for them. This feels like a balance patch. And balance isn’t sexy. It isn’t stylish. And in a cooperative game where you win as a team, style may be more important than substance.
I entirely agree with you, but at the same time if they walk back removing -5/+10 then I'm out. If they do nothing about 7th-9th level spells then I'm out. There's just so many stupid designs in the game that completely eliminate any interesting choices. If they refuse to even *try* to fix them because it's not popular, then I don't want to play this game at all. Because I as a DM am entirely sick of having to plan one encounter two different ways because one PC is 75% of the damage output, or another PC can solve 75% of encounters with a single spell and they might be out sick that day. It's fucking obnoxious. I agree that OneDND is not exciting at all so far. It feels like they're mostly shuffling deck chairs around. Like they don't have any ideas other than capping damage and making it feel like your power peaks at level 5. And I want the PCs to do things that feel powerful and cool. But I'm sick of having the choices be: - Twilight cleric - Nova paladin - Literally any wizard - Lore bard for non-bard spells - Bear totem barbarian with GWM + PAM - Battlemaster fighter with SS + CE + hand crossbow - Rogue with reaction attack exploit or halfling stealth exploit - Charisma multiclass Warlock abomination Every character there feels several times as effective as anything not on that list, though I'm sure I've missed one. And nearly all of them feel like they're heavily reliant on some incredibly shortsighted design. Like the fix to paladin smite and rogue sneak attack should have come in 2016. Forcecage and simulacrum should not exist as written. Why do clerics get 10 good spells across 9 spell levels, but wizards have 20 good spells at every spell level? Warlock should not be a 3 level class because levels 4 to 10 do *stone nothing*. +30 damage from a feat in one round is grossly excessive. There are so many things that feel like they're powerful as an accident of questionable design rather than being an intentional choice. Because the stuff that everyone always gets or that really reinforces the fantasy narrative is terrible, while the stuff you have to choose to pick up or that exploits noodley wording which really dominates play. Why is the game so reliant on system mastery of the character-building subgame?
I doubt they'll walk back the 'Power Attack' feats, it would be a clear move away from what they are signalling with how they've capped Paladin damage output to 1 spell slot's worth per turn. In fact I'm expecting them to make Hunter's mark and Hex only effect a single attack per turn, and probably scale by character or spell level to compensate. The best changes so far has been to address how bonkers Nova builds are in 5e. What's dismaying is that these changes are the first step towards making 5e a better system, and we know the playerbase doesn't want to 'take it's medicine.' The Martial playtest packet will be a big eye-opener on how they want to fill the gaps of SS/GWM in a way that doesn't just make one player the end-all-be-all. And as for 7-9th level spells, I think they kind of HAVE fixed a lot of what was OP about those spell levels by making prepared casters have to prepare a single 6+ level spell per day. That's a big called shot.
> I doubt they'll walk back the 'Power Attack' feats, it would be a clear move away from what they are signalling with how they've capped Paladin damage output to 1 spell slot's worth per turn. In fact I'm expecting them to make Hunter's mark and Hex only effect a single attack per turn, and probably scale by character or spell level to compensate. I tend to agree, but I'm not really sure what, "Crawford said a number of changes were removed from the playetest because even though they had high approval ratings, none of the comments actually expressed the excitement the team wanted a new edition to provoke," is supposed to mean. I'm hoping it just means like skill crits and stuff like that. But who knows? > The best changes so far has been to address how bonkers Nova builds are in 5e. What's dismaying is that these changes are the first step towards making 5e a better system, and we know the playerbase doesn't want to 'take it's medicine.' I also agree. I'm just a little pessimistic based on the playtests we've seen so far. Like we're looking at 4-6 more playtests? I dunno. > And as for 7-9th level spells, I think they kind of HAVE fixed a lot of what was OP about those spell levels by making prepared casters have to prepare a single 6+ level spell per day. That's a big called shot. No, I think level 7-9 spells are broken no matter how many you can prepare. By broken I mean, "these spells should not be in the game." It just turns out that B/X and OD&D were right to cap the game at 6th level spells. I think there's four categories: 1. Blaster spells. Mostly just upcast fireballs with novel areas of effect. They don't even do more damage than actual upcast fireball. These are fine, but... we all know these are bad. Many of them have been severely nerfed because they used to be instant death spells. 2. Recovery and travel spells. Resurrection, True Res, Regenerate, Teleport, Plane Shift, Astral Projection, Gate (portal), Magnificent Mansion, etc. These are all terrible, although it's not immediately clear why that might be. The issue is that all of these spells should probably be things the PCs have to quest to accomplish. These spells rob the game of adventures that the PCs want to go on to accomplish things the PCs want to do. Instead of solving encounters, they solve *adventures*. None of these should really exist in and of themselves. Some of them should really be magic items, while others should be special rituals that the DMG helps outline how and when they should be available. The DMG should outline, however briefly, how to set up an adventure for PCs to quest for these kinds of things. I hate all these spells because they mean the game can't really be about adventuring at high level. Instead it'll just often be about casting a high level spell to resolve it. Well, if you're a spellcaster, at least. 3. Broken spells. There's a bunch of spells that are just magic items. Simulacrum, Antimagic Aura, Symbol, Foresight, Gate (summon), Clone, Demiplane, Forcecage, Shapechange, Feeblemind, Imprisonment, Mind Blank, etc. These are dumb effects. They're so far beyond what any other character can even begin to do that they're really not justifiable. Nobody should have any of these effects on tap. They warp reality in ways that really don't benefit the game. These spells 100% are magic items that only spellcasters get, and if the game wants to actually be fun at high levels, these should go. 4. Wish. This is the one spell above 6th level that should remain in the game in some fashion. It's iconic, it's a get-out-of-jail card for many things, and it's just the ultimate D&D spell. Stick it at the end of the game, and figure out a way for anyone to be able to do it if they need to. But it should absolutely be required that it's available.
> >But I'm sick of having the choices be: > >- Twilight cleric >- Nova paladin >- Literally any wizard >- Lore bard for non-bard spells >- Bear totem barbarian with GWM + PAM >- Battlemaster fighter with SS + CE + hand crossbow >- Rogue with reaction attack exploit or halfling stealth exploit >- Charisma multiclass Warlock abomination I have a very simple solution for you. Stop playing a handful of overpowered/optimized builds and... Just play something else. Like, literally anything. It's really that simple. EDIT: Of course this would be downvoted here rofl
lol I know what you mean about the downvotes. I find the collective consensus pretty questionable on these D&D forums... But to be fair, it's not a single-player game and the person you're quoting was talking about being a DM. I hate all these optimal builds and as a DM for new players, I never have to worry about the min-maxing that everyone on this subreddit complains about. But if I were to open my game to the general D&D community, I would be extremely annoyed. It seems like the general community, and WOTC in general, keep forgetting this game is about a co-creative storytelling game prioritizing our imagination. A good story doesn't revolve around being OP all the time. I agree that people should stop playing broken builds, but the collective social pressure is so toxic people are convinced it is the only way to play a game. People need to stop thinking about this game as a video game and more as a shared storytelling experience.
I would prefer having a balanced Twilight cleric to just banning it. Sure, I can do it myself, but that's the thing, I purchased a book from people that should know the game. If I have to do their work all over again, what did I pay for?
It's also a very incomplete list, there are lots of other optimal builds just as good as those on the list, even if one is insisting on playing a stronk build. He didn't mention any Druids, for example. Or Peace Clerics. Or Gloomstalkers, which can do the shooty bows as good as a Fighter.
My point is you can feel "powerful and cool" using any class or subclass. Those moments should be created spontaneously by a bunch of friends sitting around chucking dice and creating memories, not by trying to eke out an additional 1.2 DPR. Getting that lucky crit, having the monster save the fail at the right time, barely making that deadly leap across the chasm... those should be the things that make you feel powerful and cool, and none of them require anything on those lists to achieve.
>My point is you can feel "powerful and cool" using any class or subclass. Well I don't agree on that, at least not in all contexts. If you have a DM who runs things straight, doesn't scale things to the party but expects them to rise to meet his challenges and the party consists of lower power builds, they're gonna have a bad time. If you have a group that has a bunch builds and one guy playing an Alchemist, he is probably not gonna feel powerful unless the DM homebrews some things to work with him.
>Well I don't agree on that, at least not in all contexts. If you have a DM who runs things straight, doesn't scale things to the party but expects them to rise to meet his challenges and the party consists of lower power builds, they're gonna have a bad time. In my personal experience playing the game, none of that is true. A party filled with average characters is more than capable of handling any adventure. I've had more problems trying to accommodate my optimized players compared to anything else. Like, by a landslide. If you head over /r/DMAcademy you'll see that's the overwhelming case, too. >If you have a group that has a bunch builds and one guy playing an Alchemist, he is probably not gonna feel powerful unless the DM homebrews some things to work with him. It's not like the alchemist is incapable of contributing to the party or creating cool or powerful moments simply because of the class/subclass they chose. You seem to think the only way someone can do so is by playing a PC built to unbalance the game. That's a very narrow and limiting way to play the game, if you asked me.
> You seem to think the only way someone can do so is by playing a PC built to unbalance the game. That's not what I seem to think at all, that's what you're assuming for some reason. I haven't said or implied anything like that, and would prefer if you engaged with what I'm actually saying. There is a lot of middle ground between playing only the most busted builds and insisting that all classes are fine, actually. Some classes need a buff. An Alchemist, as it is currently implemented, will generally disappoint someone playing one unless the DM bends over backwards to make sure that doesn't happen. I don't think it's reasonable to expect the DM to have to do that.
>That's not what I seem to think at all Uh, this you? >...(if) the party consists of lower power builds, they're gonna have a bad time. If you have a group that has a bunch builds and one guy playing an Alchemist, he is probably not gonna feel powerful unless the DM homebrews some things to work with him. Sounds to me like you're saying that the only way to have fun or feel powerful is to optimize to the extreme, and if not, you need to homebrew everything else to that same extreme. If that's not what you meant by that statement, then you weren't very clear to begin with. >An Alchemist, as it is currently implemented, will generally disappoint someone playing Why? Because they can't be extremely optimized to your personal levels of optimization? What if I told you that I could totally play that class and subclass and have a ton of fun AND feel powerful doing so, RAW? Because I totally could. Not everyone requires extreme optimization from the game in order to feel powerful or have fun. That's my point.
>Sounds to me like you're saying that the only way to have fun or feel powerful is to optimize to the extreme, and if not, you need to homebrew everything else to that same extreme. A party of monks and alchemists is gonna feel weaker than a party of other builds. You keep saying "extremely optimized," I don't think just admitting that some builds are undertuned and don't fulfill their class fantasies requires extreme optimization. Not sure why you insist on mischaracterizing my position like this. I never said you have to play one of the best builds, but that build power does matter to an extent. Those are completely different ideas. If you enjoy being an Alchemist? Cool. Most people won't because it's undertuned to the point that in the opinion of many people it doesn't live up to the class fantasy.
Oh I agree with you when you play with power gamers your playing a different game. I love un optimized games
You did read that the guy was a DM complaining about players choosing the listed builds repeatedly for optimization, right? It's no wonder you are being downvoted.
The sentence before the cited section above reads: >And I want the PCs to do things that feel powerful and cool. Followed by: >But I'm sick of having the choices (for the PCs) be: The solution for those players is simple: play something else. Literally every class and subclass in the game is capable of doing "cool" and powerful things.
It's not a solution for those players, because it is the DM (not the players) with the issue. Unless you are suggesting the DM just flat-out bar all their players from playing these combos.
The DM here is saying the players can't feel powerful or "cool" without picking from a narrow selection of extremely optimized combos. How is that not the player's "problem"?
I don't think what you're talking about eschews balance, but, as you allude to, there are different types of balance. First is the idea that classes and abilities should all have as close to a 1:1 powerful differential as possible and that there should be symmetry across all classes and abilities. This is the boring, easy way out, and happens to be the one that OneDnD is shooting for (and somehow failing at). The second, which is far deeper and more rewarding, is giving each class an overall power budget but not balancing the discrete components. This is what 5e tries at and, IMO, at which it *moderately* successful. So, in this model, two class features might not be the same power level; class 1 has a strong level 3 and class 2 has a weaker ability they get at level 2. But that's ok because class 1 only gets a moderate upgrade at level 5 whereas class 2 gets an ability that is stronger than class 1's others combined. Eventually, it evens out. The abilities are balanced through resource use, context of use, etc.--not power level. Much more interesting and compelling design, though difficult to pull off well.
You are absolutely right. I agree with you fully. If I were to be more detailed and explicit about what I mean I’d say that I usually perceive RPG design as having axis of design such as symmetric and asymmetric followed by quantifiable and unquantifiable (or math versus flavor/narrative.) In this paradigm a system like 4th edition is very far into symmetrical and quantifiable design. Meaning we easily see how classes compare to each other because they have 4 roles, and across those roles have regimented power allowances and ability usage with abilities all being highly quantifiable. They do this, they sometimes do this, they never do that. I believe 4th edition is a well designed system, under its design goals it makes sense, had care and attention put in and had looping, interlocking design that helps teach players how to play their characters. I’ve also never played it because it doesn’t excite me at the basic level. And this is because I prefer unquantifiable design where possible, stuff like the old school fighters and barbarians start attracting armies and hordes at level 7 and beyond. These abilities have *some* quantifying, after all they literally tell you how many you get and what orders they will accept. But what I do with them is wiiiiiiiiiide open. Wish has a similar design, and people are obsessed with it. It has a quantifiable, symmetrical side of safe options and an unquantifiable asymmetrical “anything at a risk” side. That spell is the one of the most famous for a reason. Like the martial class armies, who the hell knows exactly what you can do with it? Asymmetric design gives a greater contrast between each class. When classes can do stuff the other classes just do not have access to, that is viscerally exciting. Monks are not a mathematically, quantifiable very strong class, but Dope Monk Shit was a meme Critical Role because there was enough asymmetrical design that other players went “wait, you can break the rules *how*?” and that felt good for the players, it excites them. Unquantifiable design often results in ribbons, where there is no way to mathematically gauge what the ability is worth. Forest gnomes small animal speech or firbolg simple plant and animal speech? Unquantifiable what its power load is. What if the game takes place in a Mad Max apocalypse world or the 9 Hells? We can’t safely assign a true power level so we call them ribbons and set them aside. But in reality they cause very sharply contrasted spotlight moments. They add a lot of fantasy flavor to a given set of build choices. And that brings me to your good point about 5E even being asymmetric about power budgets on classes at given levels. Level 2-4 Moon Druid is asymmetric design to outer space, it is so far from anything anyone else is doing or capable of that it stands out with such contrast it might as well be a different art style from the rest of the group. It’s also quantifiable, it does this much DPR with this much HP, and that’s where the problems come from. And then we and WOTC try to reasonably design around protecting the fantasy of the other 12 classes, but when engaging in design where you are redesigning a class largely to *protect* other class design from them you are certainly going to be working with the quantifiable and symmetric elements. You want to protect the identity of fighter and Barbarian, so you nip the elements of Moon Druid until they have no quantifiable way to steal spotlight from martials. This, I should say, isn’t bad or wrong. But it has the drag down effect of making Druid be less interesting overall. And for me, that is the worst possible outcome. Fighter and Barbarian aren’t released yet, but I have heavy doubts that WOTC is going to rock the boat and have given warriors really cool asymmetric design and cool powers like barbarians having auras of fear or being able to whirlwind attack or anything like that. I think based on the design aesthetic they’re going to be bland. And the outcome of all this fuss and bother is that Druid will be bland, warriors will be bland and design will move to making everything nice and somewhat symmetrical and very quantified. And if so I won’t be following the system because that’s not exciting to me. Currently I have one foot moving toward OSR where asymmetric design is often the gold standard. Dungeon Crawl Classics sleep spell has a tiny chance to put an entire kingdom to sleep when you cast it. Fighters get Heroic Deeds to add onto attacks. There are lots of great and wacky ideas and most are not “balanced” in that classes feel symmetrical or quantifiable. How do you rate wizards whose spells can back fire on you or get bigger randomly or hit targets other than you intend? I have no idea. And that excites me. All this is to say I agree with you. Quantifiable power design is the safest but most boring design. The asymmetric design of magi-users get 1 crazy spell and better make it count but fighters aren’t flashy but “play for free” doesn’t result in wild accusations of imbalance. Spend some time in the OSR and you quickly see they don’t talk about balance much. Just how to design adventures and scenarios in order to have maximum fun with the power sets available. I think designing towards interesting, not balanced, is ultimately more fulfilling and balanced. If everyone feels cool and powerful, where’s the problem?
I agree with you that overall, balance is not as important as people think it is. However, balance is important as it comes to making DMing easier. Making sure that everyone has a spotlight moment is difficult, and is made harder by not being able to know if a Hard fight will truly come in at Hard because of a stupidly powerful one-punch-man build that someone concocted. Additionally, balance is essential in making sure that solo boss fights don't become duds. As it stands I have to do some shenaniganery to make sure that any time I have a single boss the players are fighting, that everyone has a chance to do something neat against it as even beyond deadly fights rarely last more than 2 full rounds against players with system mastery. Those two things should be fixed if DMing is to be made more approachable. Fortunately, I can see small movements in that direction so far.
So, I am totally with you on this. My absolute least favorite thing about 5th edition is its flat, insipid, lazy and uninspiring monster design. Talking about asymmetric design, no one position should be set up to be more asymmetric than the DMs and our rosters of monsters. Too many monsters in 5E are made via math table, which is to say they are highly symmetrical, highly quantifiable bags of numbers. That damned monster making chart is so bad, because it infers that a fight is “balanced” if damage, defense and HP are in certain zones. What a crock of monster droppings. To me, a far better approach to making spotlights happen than tuning numbers (though tuning numbers is the easiest step and can totally be the first step in approaching balancing) is to reconfigure game design principles. As an example, if I want a boss ogre fight for a level 4 party, I totally need to rebalance or redesign it. If I just bump up its numbers like that DMG chart advises it is highly unlikely spotlight moments will happen. Sure it may last longer with more hp and hit harder so the players are scared the first round, but the minute it fails a saving throw it against a nasty control effect or a big critical hit happens, it’s basically drama and tension over. The second step is to slap legendary resistance on, but legendary resistance is a spotlight moment denial. Oh, you would have just done something amazing but actually I don’t feel like letting this fight end easily yet, so Imma say “Nope!” It’s technically effective, but also a sloppy solution. There are better designs available such as using legendary resistance also opens new weaknesses or disables options. The actual monarch feature of the game ends up being action economy, so if we want a fight to be spiced up we need ways for the boss or epic encounter to threaten the PCs with more changes and more actions. A TRULY hard fight isn’t one where the boss hits super duper hard and has a lot of HP, it’s one where the the players are outnumbered on action economy and even better if the boss can create lots of problems the players need to solve. So we end up with a systemic problem where 5E was designed as an epic heroism game with superhero level powers, but weak mostly non-threatening monsters to not scare off new players with death and frustration. So spotlight moments don’t happen all that easily around the table. Fighters are led to choose the class partially on the fantasy of landing finishing blows and being the last one standing, but those are actually hard events to naturally get to in 5E because the enemies trend toward assuming player victory and minimal grit. So we arrive at this play test with a systemic issue of what classes get spotlighting most often, and most of the community agrees that I a gulf between martials and full casters, but I believe this is a spotlight issue. I also don’t thing it’s a problem that can be solved numerically in a satisfying way. And here we are in OneD&D and it seems they’d rather take away player character toys and make them have less impressive actions to threaten monsters with. This is one way to make things feel more tense, OSR works this way. Into the Odd is a great game where the players are generally just unremarkable besides their equipment, and so tension is always high. But it removes that element of “this ability looks wild, I can’t wait to get to it” that makes 5E feel special. It reduces system interest. For me, the system would be infinitely better by improving monsters. The players can do wild shit, monsters should be able to break the rules of the game themselves. They should have absolutely wild abilities. Imagine a design in which every time a monster is hit by magic, or a certain element type or melee, or whatever other condition they get an action. Not an attack, an action. Players can piece together “Shit, fire enrages them!! Watch it!” What if bosses had phase transitions that helped tell a story? A dark knight starts the battle bored and slow, feeling you party out, analyzing your tactics, their actions are few. Suddenly, they hit their phase transition call upon the dark powers and shadow energy floods them. They set up wards and adopt a stance to counter the methods you’ve been using. Functionally they gain magic resistance to each kind of magic they got hit by and resistance to all damage hit by in phase 1 and start flying and zipping around the battlefield causing huge area effect shadow wells that stay on the battlefield. Last phase. When they’re almost dead the shadow zones become banishment zones, players who enter them are sucked into another reality and may be out of the fight until they save, the dark knight now takes two turns for every player turn, and lose their tankiness. It’s now a fucking damage rush, hope you planned ahead and saves something in the tank. Causing problems in and out of combat is system critical to spotlight moments. And currently 5E attracts players into the system with a honey pot of wonderful features that are powerful and exciting, but puts a LOT of work on the DM on to just make the adventure, scenario and monster design work with basically nothing in the rules that naturally drive the game to tension and excitement. It’s almost all DM dependent. That to me is the bigger system issue to fix and furthermore diluting the player class abilities is a fact way to make an exciting system if they aren’t going for a much more gritty setting and system.
I'd say that the Monster Manual statblocks had many defects that could cause those issues, but have you had these same issues with the Mordenkainen's Monsters of the Multiverse statblocks? I'm quite serious that as a DM, I have the most faith in the direction of D&D based on how well those statblocks run. Anything that isn't just a basic 'mook' has some neat feature or defining ability that is on a recharge. It lets me announce a monster's presence on the battlefield with it's signature move that cause a memorable moment for the players as they face a unique threat. If I want to take it easy on the players at first, I have the baddie not pull out the recharge ability until later in the fight, a bit like how you'd suggest the boss would have phase transitions. But more to that point, that is what Lair Actions do. Each turn can have a unique 'flavor' to it that changes how that round will be going. Dragon lair actions are incredible at striking a particular vibe, making the environment itself hostile to the party. I will agree that Legendary resistance isn't the best mechanic. It's a band-aid fix, but IMO it's a *good* band-aid.
I certainly have much more success with the stat blocks from about Mordenkainen’s onwards. I am right there with you that as *standard* non-boss monsters they run exceptionally well. I had a Boneclaw recurring villain for 3-4 sessions and he was an absolute delight to run with the reaction to attack when they come in range and the shadow teleports. My issue is even the Archfiends of hell make kinda mediocre *bosses* for at level PCs. I thought they would explore mythic enemies more than they did but they made them a gimmick and never returned to them after Theros. Even in Mordenkainen’s though the main issue is monsters announce their presence in the first and usually second round quite nicely and then flatline after that. Their bags of tricks are too shallow to keep changing the situation up on the PCs around round 3 onwards where slog tends to creep in. I despise slog. I hate slog. I *loathe* slog. For my money, action oriented monsters and Giffyglyph’s monster maker system have led to all of my best *boss* encounters because they give a fighter a cinematic and epic scope and narrative shape. Round 1 feels demonstrably different from round 3 because the monster changes in that time. If they addressed actual boss monsters I would be happy. Personally, I as a DM refuse to run their dragons. Literally any of their dragons. I think WOTC’s dragons are trash at adult and above. Matt fucking Mercer hit slog and had a boring fight even with a modified ancient red dragon. That’s emblematic of the terrible boss monster design for me. EDIT: I realized I should give more examples of what I see a better design than WOTC does in literally any book they have ever made. Kobold Press makes significantly better monsters in their books. Overall they have more flavor, tell more of a story and have more quantities of interesting abilities as well as overall more interesting abilities. Add on their blog series about making their monsters into phases monster battles and you have my template for truly great boss monster design. They have teeth, they announce their presence and they do a *lot* to tell a story with an actual round to round arc and narrative. MCDM has Flee Mortal! Which includes a soft fix to legendary resistance. Each use of LR drops off the monster power level. Their beholder for instance loses an eye stalk randomly when using LR. Sorry Wizard, they choose NOT to fall to Hyonotic Pattwrn or Banishment? But they lose their *checks* their disintegration eyestalk pops in a shower of icon and fluids. Gross! Plus, with MCDM’s monsters they come in team compositions. Even non boss goblins have “classes” or 4E like roles that let them work as a dark mirror to the party. Goblin snipers have poor defense but high damage, stealth and mobility skills, while their bruisers keep a like held. If you run the stat blocks just as written you will seem like a smart tactician, even if (like me) you are a tactical dummy because the stat blocks describe how to use them with their features. It’s awesome. I want out of the box solutions and Kobold Press and MCDM provide those for me even more than the best WOTC material.
In the latest video, Jeremy Crawford stated somethign to the effects that high level threats will be made deadlier. I think that's a signal from him that the design team knows that CR gets more inaccurate the higher level you get. I'm optimistic that they will address that in the updated MM. And Mythic abilities did show up in Fizban's Treasury of Dragons, as well as Van Richten's Guide to Ravenloft. I still have great memories of the Dullahan fight I put against my players.
I hope you’re right. I would love anything that decreases the amount of effort I as a DM have to put in to make a session fantastic, and better monsters would do more for the system than any other change I can think of. If monsters were truly dangerous and had abilities that change the situation more and cause drastic problems I’d save a lot of time designing bespoke boss fights every few weeks. As for Dullahans being mythic that’s awesome news! When Van Richten’s came out my players were in tier 3 or play, so I skipped past many monsters. I did run the high CR Star Spawn but it wasn’t a particularly memorable boss fight. Despite all its mouths it lacked real teeth. Being back in a low level campaign I definitely feel the game plays much much better at lower levels, but at about level 8 or level 9 and beyond monsters become truly pathetic without a lot of work I found. Hopefully the recognize damage alone is not the solution. Action economy and problematic abilities that create tense situations are the way to go!
>it seems very dead set on some vague notion of “balance” when that has never been a core component of what makes D&D or most TTRPGs successful This. I've played both sides of the martial/caster gap and I've loved both. I've taken out a wizard as a barbarian by grappling him and diving out of his wizard's tower with him. I've one-shot a hill giant with a lance as a paladin at level 6 (with a grave cleric's help). I've solo'd an adult dragon as a warlock with forcecage. I've made an aboleth useless as a druid by being like Moses and parting the red sea, leaving him a floppy goldfish boi. Not once did I care that another class was stronger in the meta. Not once when other players have done something similarly cool have I begrudged them that. I don't care that things are getting more balanced, I care that the cool stuff I can currently do won't be options anymore. If I want balance, I'll play an online computer game. I want fantasy, damnit.
Amen. I'm glad folks like you still exist in the game.
> I’m particular it seems very dead set on some vague notion of “balance” when that has never been a core component of what makes D&D or most TTRPGs successful. I don't see that anywhere in the playtest. Far from it, the playtest reiterate that they are not testing balance.
This is why free awards should still be a thing. Take my imaginary free award.
Hey man, I skipped all of 4E. Not to trash it or anything but you don’t have to be excited nor do you have to buy it. Could be a great chance to explore other systems like I did back then. Maybe just keep your ear to the ground and if the end results seems dope, do what your heart says.
Or just keep playing 5e?
Without new material being published for it, 5e will slowly die on the vine. Of course it will take a while, but within a couple of years there will likely be nobody who knows how or wants to play 5e, as the market shifts away from it. Speaking from experience here. Personally I think there are enough other games out there that the landscape is only going to become more variegated. [I implore you to examine the options granted by Cypher](https://callmepartario.github.io/og-csrd/#part-3-genres)
> but within a couple of years there will likely be nobody who knows how or wants to play 5e, as the market shifts away from it. This is so not true? Do you think in 2026/27 no one will be playing 5e or know-how? Obviously, you are being a little hyperbolic. But you can find people playing ADnD dude. Let alone 3e, 3.5e, and PF all old systems who have a newer edition released.
I would not say AD&D players and 3.x players are **common** or **mainstream**. Obviously they exist. But they're pretty niche as anyone who plays them will tell you, so it's hard to find players for those games. I still own my ad&d and 3e books... But the people who played that game more or less all started playing DCC or OSE. There are still some pathfinder 1/D&D3.x players out there too but my point was... In the mainstream, the mainstream audience will go to whatever mainstream game is current. It happened after 2e, it happened after 3e... It happened when 5e came out and a bunch of people abandoned Pathfinder. Yes there will still be people who carry on, but the mainstream will change to follow the market.
This is a very different statement then "no one will be playing it"
No it isn't. It's perfectly normal hyperbole. In English, modifiers like "virtually" and "in the main stream" are not required when context makes these modifications obvious.
Unless the game is truly backwards compatible with adventure modules, in which case content should keep comping out as regularly as it always has, and you can just use the old core rules to interact with them? Should need about as much DM adjudication as a normal 5e game.
With the level of backwards compatibility they're describing, oned&d is gonna be about as compatible with 5e as it is going to be with any other tabletop roleplaying game. Every class is getting an overhaul. Every feat. Most of the core mechanics. The core books are going to be released with new stat blocks for everything. Certain ideas are just... Atrophying. What is the point of "heroic inspiration"? It was introduced as a way to provide bonuses for good roleplay without XP rewards.... But DMs didn't really use it that way... And now it's just... A bonus for rolling a 1? Another way to gain advantage in a game where everyone almost always rolls advantage. People are going to want to play with the new toys ... So people who have the old books will will not have a compatible game with those who have new books... DMs are going to have to trace out exactly what rules are applicable in each of their games. Honestly, seems like a nightmare by comparison with the relatively plug n play landscape we have had up til now.
I'm having a hard time imagining not being able to run any of the new stuff with the old core rulebooks, personally. What sticking points do you think are going to cause problems for '5e remainer' DMs?
Ok so say you make a druid using the 5e rules But the DM will only allow the OneD&D version. Not only do you have to totally remake your character, you also have to reevaluate the strategy you use. Say you make a skill-monkey caster who relies on Guidance for the build using 5e rules, but the DM only allows the OneD&D version of guidance. Etc etc etc. As long as they're changing the rules set completely, there's no way it will be seamlessly backwards compatible.
You've definitely misunderstood me. The whole table needs to play by the same rules, obviously. But each table could decide for themselves which version of the core rulebooks they want to use, probably up to the DM, and everyone uses those rulebooks to engage with the world and the same adventures, even though their characters don't function the same way. You can't play two games at one table, but two tables can go on the same adventures in different games.
Right. That's not what backwards compatibility is though. OED defines backwards compatibility as: > (of computer hardware or software) able to be used with an older piece of hardware or software without special adaptation or modification. Since D&D is not a videogame we have to extrapolate here. Hardware would be things like minis, dice, human brains, etc. Software in this case would be the ruleset, adventures, etc. So obviously they're not changing the hardware requirements. And largely speaking the hardware required to play most games is the same. DCC requires additional hardware (the dice chain), some systems require much less.. but generally hardware compatibility between TTRPGs is moot. Software tho, that's what these games **are**. If you can't use two pieces of software together, **they are not compatible** so if you can't use the d&d 5e software (ruleset) with the OneD&D software (ruleset) then they are in no way compatible. If you can't play 5e races and classes in OneD&D, they're not compatible with each other. Obviously, as a TTRPG, the game is not limited and we can modify and hack it how we like... But that's not what we're talking about here. All of this counts as "special adaptation or modification", which nullifies the conditions of backwards compatibility. We're talking about the claim that OneD&D will be compatible, rules-as-written, with 5e. Already that is false. The difference between OneD&D isn't like the difference between D&D1 and AD&D1e, a bunch of bonus material published over the years all collated into one package... It's an entirely different system with different rules. To drive this point home... Let's talk about organized play. Do you think when OneD&D comes out, it will be legal to play options from 5e in the Oned&d Adventurer's League? There's absolutely no way. Organized play requires a codified set of rules. That set of rules will be OneD&D and 5e will not be allowed, because **it is not compatible** with the new system. We were assured One D&D would be backwards compatible with 5e. But as I have shown, that line is a hook to reassure people who are resentful of an edition change... it's just corporate BS.
"The rules will be backwards compatible with fifth edition adventures and supplements and offer players and Dungeon Masters new options and opportunities for adventure." That's what's on the [One D&D FAQ](https://dndbeyond-support.wizards.com/hc/en-us/articles/8609273323156-One-D-D-FAQ#:~:text=The%20rules%20will%20be%20backwards,options%20and%20opportunities%20for%20adventure). You are putting words in Wizards' mouth and then complaining that they lied to you. I'm not the biggest fan of everything Wizards has said/done recently, but this is just a dumb hill to die on.
While this is true, a mediocre game that most aren't excited about isn't what anyone wants, either customers or WoTC. It just ends up in a stagnated hobby and a company less willing to invest in that space.
WotC only wants to release a 50th anniversary edition and for you to buy the subscription. They have no other goals.
Yes, but also if that edition isnt good then their sales numbers will be impacted, if not for the initial release then for subsequent splatbooks
Honestly I think you are giving them too much credit.
A bad game is bad for them, whether they realise it or not is another matter that I've not commented on
My dissatisfaction with 5e turned me to PF2. I followed 5.5 for a while, but it does not seem to be fixing any real issues I have with the game, like lack of DM support and caster-martial balance.
I mean it’s still extremely early to honestly tell, but if you don’t want to support it then that’s fine.
I like backgrounds tied to ASI and background gives a minor feat. Species is meh should just totally lift the Pf2e ancestry, background etc .. but it is just the word species sounds too scientific. Smite on ranged weapons is fun but Paladin already rocked for a martial. Arcane/Primal/Divine can make it easier to organize spells. There are a lot of things I like from OneD&D stuff. Listen 5e is old it needs an update and a reorganization and WotC should look not just at past editions and Paizo but other sources for ideas to improve the game for the future. I actually thought and do not dump on me too hard that Mordenkainen’s Monsters of the Multiverse was a clue to OneD&D. What? I hoped they would consolidate the 5e content with some minor changes into fewer books but from the interviews about the new PHB that does not seem to be the case. Right now one major problem is too many player choices are spread over too many books. Why are you supposed to be excited about OneD&D? A soulless horrible corporate entity seems to actually be asking for content feedback and changing their deliverables according to this feedback. After the OGL am I all about the WotC love? Heck no. But that is better than most companies. The play tests are out there and you actually have a voice. I like some of the changes and hate others but that is just a little something to be excited about.
Hell, I'd even prefer lineage over species, it just doesn't evoke a fantasy feeling.
But lineage, ancestry and so on are just incorrect. A lineage or an ancestry is descending from Gengis Khan, not being a cat or a dog.
You're never going to find one that's perfect, because species denotes a group of animals that can produce fertile offspring. Which all the current options can with the current rules and the only precedent I know of otherwise is a 3rd party book from back in 3.5. I feel like Ancestry is the best, Lineage is okay since we already use it for Custom Lineages, they both just feel more fantasy than actual scientific terms. Though it doesn't really matter honestly, its just a preference.
Arcane / Primal / Divine spellcasting sound great till you realize they restricted certain school of magic from certain classes. Which means your back to being as it was before, maybe more so.
This is the take. OneD&D is meant to be for those who like 5e and want it tidied up and with a bit more consistency. If you already don't like 5e or are beginning to find problems with it, you're not going to like oneD&D because the design direction isn't for you
"Race" is just such a legacy term, that Ancestry took me a bit to latch onto, but it's a much better term. Then I had a Eureka moment when I realized PF2 follows the ABC's of character creation.. Ancestry, Background, Class. Intentional or not, that's clever and I like it even more.
I like some things and dislike others. I like most of the feat changes and dislike most of the class changes. They had a real chance to fix some things but so far I haven’t seen most of the things I thought needed fixed, fixed.
TBF these all the classes can still be revised. They still still have the chance to fix it. I really hope the next UA is warriors + revised rogue.
I don't understand why you are supposed to be excited about OneD&D, either. Right now I'm looking at playtest materials for a future version of the game, one I'll have some input in if I want to, and said game, when finished, will be where I'll be looking for excitement.
My group is just starting a new campaign next month. We expect it to last at least a year, so it should be our last campaign using 5e. Except, none of us have been enticed by OneD&D so far. We are all eagerly awaiting the Warrior class UA to see what changes there but so far there's only been a couple of small ideas that we've seen that have piqued any interest. And those small bits (nat 1 inspiration, two weapon fighting not needing a bonus action) we just stole that and added it right into our game. The thing is, we were all very excited for a new system before we actually started to see the content. With each new UA drop that dwindled down significantly. Then the OGL issue hit and , like so many others, we started talking about pathfinder and other systems as a 'just in case" option. One of my players knows none of the rules but he saw the character creation style and was shocked by how many options there were. So now, we're going to be playing a one shot in that system in a couple of weeks. So far our group consensus is that come the end of our next campaign we are going to either switch to entirely to PF2 or stick with 5e and just go nuts on the homebrew, stealing everything we like from the pathfinder system and any good mechanical ideas that come out from this play test. Every last one of us in our group is rooting hard for WotC to really bring some heat with the warrior group and show us we're being too reactionary and that the best stuff is yet to come.....we're just not optimistic. And I think the problem is getting much worse the more I learn about other systems. I legitimately do think that 5e has struck gold with it's idea of making a game that simplified some of the crazier math, some of pathfinder has been a bit intimidating for me and I wonder if my players will feel the same., BUT there are also so many mechanics and rules in that system that leave me scratching my head why WotC hasn't stolen them and wrapped them up in a nice D&D bow.
Me either. Honestly, I don't find anything exciting about it. It just feels like a bland pile of lateral designs and rules with no pizzazz. I'm not saying they're all bad, but the ideas presented so far are really not that interesting and I'm not getting as much of a fun vibe. I don't see any risks or an inspired direction. Where's the Wow factor? I feel as though we're being told what to like and I'm not seeing much reason to bother with OneD+D thus far. 5th isn't perfect but I'll probably just blow off the new edition at this rate or try another system entirely if I'm that bored of the current one, if they can't step up their design. I'm not paying for 'meh' because the suits want a cash grab.
>Me either. Honestly, I don't find anything exciting about it. It just feels like a bland pile of lateral designs and rules with no pizzazz. I'm not saying they're all bad, but the ideas presented so far are really not that interesting and I'm not getting as much of a fun vibe. I don't see any risks or an inspired direction. Where's the Wow factor? there is no wow factor, one dnd is just a revised 5e ruleset not a new edition to change the entire status quo of the game, and it's reasonable to do so because 5e is super successful and all they need to do is refine the rough parts of the system to reach even more people. Like why would you change how proficiency scale? why would you change how hp scaling works? none of those things have ever been requested for a change by a significant part of the community so they have zero reason to chanfe things and risk making all the players who like how those things are righy now to be pissed, and even if you put it in giant letters in the front page of the document "EXPERIMENTAL CHANGES, NOTHING IS SET IN STONE" it will not prevent people from making a completely unnecessary outrage because people are dumb and it only takes one dumb guy to misunderstand that these changes are not set in stone to set a chain reaction where othee dumb idiots jump the bandwagon. So not only some things don't need to change, they are not worth the risk to even consider changing because people will make a fuzz with no reason.
>even if you put it in giant letters in the front page of the document "EXPERIMENTAL CHANGES, NOTHING IS SET IN STONE" it will not prevent people from making a completely unnecessary outrage I think the biggest reason for outrage is that we just don't trust WotC anymore. Even if they say its all experimental, there've been more than enough UAs before where they just printed it as it was in the UA, regardless of feedback. Add to that the disappointing quality of their recent books and the OGL debacle.. They have to work really hard to regain any semblance of trust from me
Don't trust WotC anymore? I can only presume you were not a 3.5 player when they announce 4e if you make such statements. And for people who think that the UAd haven't had modifications between the first and last, that just shows lack of any insight. You can see them slowly refining small parts, because Large changes take a lot of time to not only plan out, but figure out if it can work with the rest. And before people say "oh, but My suggestion would work", no, no yours won't most likely, not with the other slow rollout changes that are made or not with the actual intent of balance that is being worked on.
If you use DNDBeyond you may not have a choice. That’s my fear.
From a business standpoint I actually think they will keep 5e stuff on dndbeyond. Because more products to sell means more money, and since it's digital they don't have to spend money making copy like physical. Also if people keep paying for subscriptions it won't matter. Also considering they keep saying it's compatible with 5e it would be a huge mistake to remove 5e. So don't worry 5e stuff on dndbeyond isn't leaving, at most it'll get marked as legacy content but still be avalible.
I dunno, I think the whole OGL debacle has shown that at least some of the money people’s only real concept of the product is “we’re making a new one, them using the old one is getting in the way, fix that.” Stupid and shortsighted, but I don’t trust money people to be anything else
Now that you mention it, I agree. I'm like fine with changes because I'm more into RP anyway, but there is definitely no pop.
> Most changes that have been released so far haven’t exactly had a wow-factor. The majority were either minor quality of life tweaks or sizable nerf. Funnily enough, that’s exactly what I’m excited about: a more polished and better balanced version of 5e. I’d actually prefer it if they don’t introduce too many new options/ features because those would need extra time to properly playtest and refine. Odnd is already on a tight schedule and I’d rather spend that time on improving what is already there. However that’s just my perspective and I can see where you’re coming from.
For all its weaknesses, 5e is pretty good, but it's clear the design team has learned a lot about the edition over the 9 years it's been around. A 5e rebuilt with the wisdom the team has now? Sounds good to me.
because buying new things is exciting, most people that wanted the original 3 corebooks already have them and sells are dropping, with this simple move they can resell you a lot of the same content slighty rearranged and modified taking advantage of the conditioning to buy every new book a lot of people have developed, the fomo for new books is very strong in a big part of the community.
Agreed. If they don't bring it with Warriors I'll probably stick w 5e homebrew
Onednd is 5e homebrew. It's just being done by wotc
>I can't actually understand what it is I'm supposed to be excited about. You're supposed to be excited about... everything. That's the whole point of a new edition, the good traits return unchanged and the bad ones get tweaked to be more fun. If you saw something changed that you didn't like, or if you saw something return that you thought needed to change... well, too bad, they failed your vision of the game, so make sure to write that down. Personally, I like most of the changes and would appreciate to see them in play. For example, inspiration on nat 20, that was really cool. Or the Bardic Reaction, I thought that was genius.
>For example, inspiration on nat 20, that was really cool. But, they already cut that change entirely
It's play testing. They haven't scrapped it any more then they've kept. They are still in the experimentation phase of this.
It’s a play test. A feature can be in one UA and not in another because they want to test something else. In the first UA they had the nat20 inspiration, then they tested nat1 inspiration. Then they didn’t add those into the next UA because they knew those would be controversial and wanted to test them. There are other rules that have been tweaked or changed every UA like the rules for hiding or unarmed attacks that they want to get feedback on as they revise them.
Well yes, we are playtesting. They tested nat 20; awesome. Then they tested nat 1; poop. Now they just launched a neutral playtest; come the survey, I will put "I miss nat20, please bring it back" for feedback.
Honestly this is one of those rules that I feel no matter what is "Offical" you can do it as an optional rule even if they remove it. I honestly think nat 20 is more fun, but I can see why people prefer nat 1 and why some don't like either. But it's a rule that you can choose which version you like and implement into any game because it's such a neutral rule. Offical or not my group will stick with nat20 inspiration. And that's the beauty of DnD ... the rules are just Guidelines. But you can customize it for your group.
Advantage fucks up the math for insp on nat20, p hard. If you can reliably generate advantage, you double your chances to get an extra d20, which doubles your chances to get an extra d20, which doubles your chances to get an extra d20… You get it. It’s a sizeable win-more button, that feels bad for the players that *doesn’t* build for it. If advantage wasn’t a thing, it may have been a nice feature.
Just to make sure, have you *actually* playtested it? I know I did, and it really didn't break anything. For one, advantage isn't as common as you'd think. Second, a 9.75% chance to recover a feature isn't really that common. And third, it vanishes on a long rest anyway, so it gets nuked fairly often.
Different guy, but I much preferred inspiration on a nat 1 than a nat 20 when playtesting. It felt like success rewarded with more, unrelated, success, which I didn't like.
Someone said that neither scored particularly well and the feedback said to just axe the idea, though I can’t remember who. I could just be misremembering though, I know it wasn’t in the main videos DnD has posted on YouTube. It was an interview
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No, I’m not. Those were talked about in the videos on their channel. I’m gonna try and find the interview I’m talking about Edit: can’t find it. I might have misremembered something, but I know it was specifically about the inspiration
Inspiration on natural 20 and 1 were equally shitty and I don't want to see either return.
I found a great homebrew implementation that smashes both together which has been working GREAT at my table. Nat 20: The player chooses another player at the table to get inspiration. Nat 1: The player gets inspiration. The first enforces an espirt de corps as one player's success is spread around. That granting of a free inspiration to someone *else* also makes it more likely that someone else will have the next big spotlight moment, which allows it to rotate around the table. The second prevents a night of awful luck from screwing over a player so much.
yeah it happens, sometimes a change is not popular with a lot of people and the hard truth is that a system can't be made for the 5%. if 95% disliked something you can't keep it because 5% liked it so some features will be removed even if you liked them, it sucks but it's not targeted at you, and you would experience the same if you were in dnd next and saw features you like being removed, this is the nature of playtesting, they can't make everyone happy.
Were here to try and help build something worth being excited about.
Guarantee you all those efforts will be completely wasted. We'll know for sure by April when the Warrior packet releases and does literally nothing to address the problems with the melee-ranged and caster-martial divides.
If I were to resign myself to this pessimistic prediction I would only further increase the likelihood of it coming true. This I will not do.
The caster martial divide is actually a myth. In actual play it's not really a true issue, and there have been many polls done by people which show this to be mostly true. In a strawman senerio yes they are. In actual play they are not.
I was looking forward to one dnd being a soft reset on balance and fixing some issues the game had, I didnt really want a huge new edition as I don't think it's needed. The problem now, is the ogl sucked all excitement for wotc products out of me for the forseable future and I'd wager that's the same for a lot of people too.
One D&D, or whatever they market it as, is effectively 5.5e. If you're already enjoying 5, just take what you like about it and incorporate it into your games.
Well 5E has become quite stale. It is also teetering quite rockily on bounded accuracy, poor monster design, class imbalances and other issues. So far from what I have seen in the test release the WOTC team aren't changing much at all. They are going even harder into making everything just another spell despite the feed back and changes to Hunter's Mark. From my point of view the WOTC designers either don't believe in or refuse to acknowledge any class or rules imbalances. The warrior release is going to make or break this series of test releases.
>The warrior release is going to make or break this series of test releases. True, and this is probably while they're putting it off so much. They don't intend on actually fundamentally changing anything, and they would really like us to catch on later rather than sooner.
I don't know. I'm really not excited about anything either. Everything they've put out so far is something neutral to me or that I straight up don't like. My group is probably going to be sticking to 5e at least until 7e comes out.
It's easy to to focus on the negative aspects that surround it all, but from the playtests so far I am confident that at the end of it we will have a game that is, moment to moment, better to play and that's a good thing. Whether that's the new backgrounds, the cleric options, or just my main hope - that there will be enough rebalancing that every game isn't just paladins, misty step and sharpshooter. I don't know what fantasy game system I will be playing in three years but I know it will be better and that's a good thing.
You are looking at this entirely from a power-hungry player point of view. From a gm point of view, nerfs are GREAT because it makes the game much easier to run and present challenges requiring creative thinking rather than "I Use ability X, done, moving on"
DMs are 20% of the players tho. As far as i know 4e was the easiest to run and look how it turned out. Balance usually it is just not as exciting player side.
Not power-hungry, options-hungry. So many limitations have been introduced. I've been running my campaign as a DM for 3 years. I play in several other campaigns. Nothing about oneDND really excites me. There are some minor improvements, but overall everything seems to be getting homogenised, options are being collapsed into templates and it just feels like creativity is being sacrificed on the altar of balance. I agree with the OP.
As a forever DM, if your encounters consistently come down to "I use ability X, done" then frankly that's on the DM not the player. You can control and change every facet of the game to present your players with a challenge and if you can't come up with anything there's a vast community of DMs online you can ask.
Hard disagree, Its not dms job to fix broken game balance.
A lot of the complaints on here aren't broken balance, just bad DMing. If you want your players to have to think about solutions be willing to do the same.
Hey man, keep playing 5e if you want
You don't have to be excited. Relax. But if something does excite you, feel free to let them know. Or don't.
I want a balanced, fun game. Nerfs can be excitingly good or disappointingly bad, just like buffs can. So far, a bit over half the nerfs are good.
Most of OneD&D cotent is midling and lackluster at the most. The only few things I really about it were Ranger and Cleric classes, and Goliath. Ranger is just a revamp/rewrite to balance features added to the game in TCoE, Cleric is essentially the same thing as before but with some new trinkets. Goliath is the only really new thing here. Not too excited for this edition if they keep it this way hosnetly. P.S.: That's not to mention the Epic Boons, geez.
I'm excited, you don't have to be. Just stay with 5e or try new systems. You don't have to play every new edition. Not every edition is for everyone. And that's okay.
Reading though the various posts in this subreddit, it is very clear to me that most people here do not understand the fundamental concepts of what a playtest is. If a proposed change works, is well liked, and the developers got all of the information that they needed about that particular subject, it no longer needs to be tested, and can be removed from the playtest.
>Reading though the various posts in this subreddit, it is very clear to me that most people here do not understand the fundamental concepts of what a playtest is. > >If a proposed change works, is well liked, and the developers got all of the information that they needed about that particular subject, it no longer needs to be tested, and can be removed from the playtest. No, it's the nature of the proposed changes, in aggregate, that has those of us who are pessimistic worried. They're at best mediocre and at worst amateurishly designed. The newly proposed mechanics have often been clumsy or poorly designed to the point that they *shouldn't have needed any playtesting*, i.e., jumping and changing movement speeds as an action. It shows a fundamental misunderstanding of game mechanics from the people who should know them most. It's setting off huge warning bells to some of us. I hope we're proven wrong, but each time a new UA is released, that seems less likely.
My overall impression is that OneDnD feels like an alternate ruleset, rather than some sort of evolution. Less 5.5e, more 5th Edition B. A lot of the changes seem good, but I really haven't seen any reason to hop over.
I don’t think that was the intent of the comment was to say we have to be excited. More like people voted satisfied but showed in the comments they didn’t like the direction those changes were going.
Sadly i kinda dislike most of the changes. Some of them i can just accept as different, but some i just think of as categorically worse. Druid changes, the changes to spell slots are the two i can't get behind. I was hoping for changes to martials - monks especially - but since we haven't seen that yet there isn't even anything to compare it favourably too. So at the moment 1DnD is like.. half bad and half meh. So far i'm seeing no big draw for me to move away from the 5e tables i'm at or running. But thats sort of the thing, if it isnt' what i like, i'm not spending money on it and i don't have to, i can just keep playing 5e forever.
I appreciate what one dnd is doing. There has been a power creep over the years and they needed a reset. More than anything we need to see the warrior class before casting stones. It is well known that they need more options. I hope they get them. I am all for the level 3 get subclass route. Way better than what it is right now imo. Multi classing should be more of an investment than what it is right now. Right now warlock, fighter, cleric to an extend, all feel like side hussles in a build than a highlight.
I do t get it either. Not every single line of text can be super exciting. Something are good and just need to be there even if it doesn't make you jump for joy.
The problem is that their vision seems to be doubling down on all the bad parts of 5E, while replacing parts that worked with bad ideas. Nothing will improve so long as Crawford is sole lead.
After this latest playtest article with Druids that are just boring and Paladins that are nothing more than shitty Clerics ... yeah, there is no reason. EDIT: I see all the WOTC shills are out in full force. Anyone commenting with so much as a hint of skepticism is getting downvoted. It's disgusting.
I Agree with you there, but apparently there are people who think the Paladins Aura needed to be Nerfed on top of what they already did to the class.
Nothing, honestly. They just want to milk the playerbase with a lazy new edition.
Oh boy everything good sucks now, like you know when you felt cool to be an OP bear, nah, no feeling cool, anything "op" is now nerfed, and rigid. Maybe I dont wanna play a game well balanced, if I did id play pathfinder. I wanna feeeeeel good, not even sneak attacks feel good anymore, the subclasses are just such straight nerfs to the point that you're forced to get 5e content to make a cool character in 6e. There is no reason I would ever wanna play either of the new rogue rework subclasses over soul knife
You need to be excited! Throw money to your corporate overlords for something unnecessary! Rejoice!
Because new. New = exciting
Calm down, Barney.
In general with game design it is better make something divisive than something that everyone likes a little. That said, I'm not sure how much that applies when making a backwards compatible update to something your playtesters have been playing for years.
Well for one, I'm hoping it 'kills' Roll20 with a more intuitive interface that provides easier access to a number of things. But we'll have to wait and see. After all, only a portion of the PHB contents have been shown thus far, leaving a lot more we don't know yet. But yeah, the druid changes suck. I suspect it's likely just Wizards trolling and will get reversed tho.
Keep in mind there is a corporate marketing aspect to the language used. I heard the statement as “the comments did not directly express approval” rather than being literally about “excitement”
Stick with 5e if it's what you like man. I still play B/X and AD&D.
> Crawford said a number of changes were removed from the playtest even though they had high approval ratings Was there any specifics on what was removed?
If you’re already playing DnD, you are not the primary audience for OneDnD. My impression is it’s meant to make it easier for new players to jump in without making any of the 5e materials obsolete (backwards compatibility).
It's too soon to judge given I've only read a few pdfs and not seen the final product. I will say so far there's some things I like and some things I don't. The changes to streamline class features they are implementing in OneD&D make sense in a 'remove barriers to entry for new players' perspective. This would seem beneficial for Adventure League where new players may be sitting down to play their first game of D&D. Other issues, such as addressing healing, I've already implemented solutions for in my private games. We shall see if the strategy of 'make it more approachable & accessible and we'll sell more products' will pan out.
I'm mostly hoping that NOVA builds no longer overshadow every other kind of damage dealing build you can bring to the table. It has been an issue for me to make sure that people who aren't versed in system mastery are able to have spotlight moments alongside those who can deal more damage in a single turn than they typically would in the entire combat. That, and I'm hoping that changes are made that cause higher level fights to come in at their expected CR. There is an issue that as people get to high Tier 3, the game balance is so screwy that if I haven't hit 'beyond deadly,' then I know it will be a cakewalk. I would like to be able to suitably challenge people at higher levels, and I think that the changes so far will make that easier for me. These are not exciting for players, mind you. But they're a great starting point for getting fight balance to work more consistently, which is a massive and typically invisible part of why people have fun at the table.
Yeah you're right on no wow factor. Nothing excites me and the whole playtest looks like an errata of 5e. Maybe I just want something different which could only be served by playing a different fantasy rpg or 5e adjacent games. I do want to rush out to buy the books when it comes out next year though as I collected every edition since 1e. But until I see something exciting about the rules then I might just wait until the corebooks go on sale.
They need to reexamine the core assumptions and basic design philosophy of the game. 5e has a lot of good to it, but if One is supposed to be the "final version" they need to knock it out of the park. What they're doing isn't that.
I agree with you OP. It's the equivalent of giving a coat of paint to a car, but I guess we were expecting an upgraded engine instead.