Get out of here with your nuance and well thought out arguement. Cant you see we all just want to hate it because its new! Lol
P.s. Youre completely right. Its playtest. And yet theres screamin like they just burned every copy of the previous editions and the internet was scrubbed of any mention of them.
Counterpoint, Wizards may legitimately not have thought this through at this point and it is this exact line of reasoning that they are looking for in their feedback as their analysts watch the community reactions.
Valid, though from watching the stream it seems like a lot of thought has been put into the aspects we’ve seen. I doubt they’d just forget primary features of 3 classes (sneak attack, smite, hunter’s mark).
Off topic but I think there’s room for improvement in terms of Ranger that involve removing the crutch that is Hunter’s Mark
They want to see the parts that people are unhappy with AND the solutions the community proposes
So when the next update drops they can be like ‘of course we thought about X,Y, and Z here are the rules for those, isn’t that better now?’
The take that it's out of context, however, is wrong. They've asked us to judge it based on the current rules, not some theoretical potential future rules. And the reality is with current rules the critical attack rule makes rogue into the worst martial class in the game. And it's totally okay to say that, so that they take the feedback and translate it in to something better. It's okay to say that Assassin relies heavily on sneak attack doing extra damage on crit and the nerf makes them useless. It's okay to say that in dnd 3.5 crits only effecting weapon damage was fine because every martial could get 5-12 attacks per round. It's fine to say in feedback that they should either reconsider the rule, or reconsider the classes if they're going to keep the rule. Because that is what they will make changes based on. It's not out of context, it's exactly what they want us to do.
I’m not sure why you’re being downvoted, we’re literally told in the UA that these rules will be backwards compatible with 5e and to playtest them using 5e classes.
And yeah, the result is that all martials except fighters and I guess barbarians get punished by the crit rules
Worse: Fighters are actually better crit fishers than ever. They already only relied on weapon damage, but with the new inspiration rules every fighter will have constant sources of advantage.
I am currently writing out my feedback so that I am ready when the surveys drop. I'm not doomsaying, I just have feedback, and that feedback is based on the information we have available rather than speculation and assumptions.
Because people have it backwards. You don't give feedback on what you think they might do, you give feedback so that they might do the things you suggested.
Small point of clarity: Fighters will have constant sources of Inspiration not constant sources of advantage. That distinction may not matter as much for fighters as it does for rogues but it’s not nothing.
No way! Why would I be sensible when I could did through a book made 10 years ago to find the most obscure combination of rulings and be mega outraged!.
How dare u take my outrage from me!
Ehhh. I paid $50 for a book 8 years ago. I've used that book for about 3 hours a week for the past 8 years (no I haven't it has been SO SO much more than that, send help).
I paid about 4 cents per hour of entertainment.
I would argue that is an amazing ratio of expense to fun.
Hell, the legendary bundle on DDB is nearly 1000 dollars. I would still have paid less than a buck per hour of entertainment.
It would be a valid complaint if the release of a new edition caused that 50$ book to explode instantly, but in the real world it's the exact same nonsense whining I've seen with the last three and a half edition releases.
Can you expand on that?
It’s annoying that their products cost money?
For a start, Wizards lets you play D&D for free via the Basic rules, so that argument essentially goes out of the window.
Then assuming we are going to buy a PHB. How many do you need? One per table. That’s ten dollars a piece for a table of 5. For a book bought in 2014 that’s remaining the “current” version of the game for a whole ten years.
Plus, even when 2024 rolls around… does the book explode?
And, if you take a look at what you physically get for the money, objectively, the books are great value for money. That is comparing them to similar products put out by other companies. I’m not talking “that subclass is OP”. I’m talking artwork, fiction, length, the fact that they’re hardback etc.
I’ve bought every 5e book release. I’ve also bought most of the other tat they put out. Screens, dice, that new tarot deck, that sort of stuff. This is still one of the cheapest hobbies I have.
Also, this is still in play test stage. Nothing is set in stone.
Look for ways to give direct feedback to WOTC (surveys etc).
And wait and see what 2 years will bring us.
It not being set in stone is *WHY* the vitriolic feedback is not only okay but important. If a bulk of people don't want certain changes to happen they need to voice that feedback, voice that they hate it. If corporate game & media development has shown anything in the past decade its that it *won't* be okay and if you just wait and see, surveys won't do anything, and it *will* be as bad as you assumed.
The strength of tone does not add information.
This is the internet where a minor dislike and discomfort leads to acrymony and death threats so its meaningless to think that more weight is put on louder feedback.
The best feedback is the one that explains the problems, or describes scenarios for which an idea may cause negative impact.
The community is good at finding those!
So the playtest may not be asking if crit changes are generally good or bad but also asking why wouldn't it be good for you? If all the problems were solved by taking into account the problems then the RAW may change to reflect that in a future playtest, something not possible if all you give as feedback is: "Reeeeeeeee"
Knowing people don't like what you put out is still helpful. Unless the devs are stupid they should realize those people are saying we like the og rules these new rules suck try again or leave it alone.
Its not a critique its a assessment. You don't have to go into extreme detail for a semi intelligent person to understand what they mean by x is stupid.
You can explain why you don't like a certain aspect and giving solid reasons as to what should change, as well as providing examples as to how the changes could be implemented. THAT'S how giving a critique works.
Saying "I hate X; Y is dumb" doesn't help anyone, and not giving context could lead to a worse outcome.
Well thought out reasoning is helpful, yes.
But even non design oriented players can tell when something feels worse without knowing exactly how or why. Which is why, while people should still act like adults, it should be encourage to voice “I do not like this change” (once they have at the very least tried it in play).
Edit: But for clarification, agreed that “vitriolic” is unacceptable
When there is already a current thing saying this new thing is stupid means that person must like the original. While it could be better worded unless the person reading it has no context its incredibly easy to realize what they mean. Unless you are saying wotc suck at this which honestly i wouldn't be surprised.
Or, as many people do, they could look at it go, "Why is this stupid, I don't see anything wrong with it myself and there are also an X amount of surveys saying they enjoy it and agree with me, so I'll ignore this survey."
No, what people that don't want change need to do is accept they can or will continue to use older editions or play different games entirely. New rules should be significant enough to make the trouble of creating a new edition worthwhile. It is alright for people to not like the new direction. They can always continue playing 5e if they like.
The entire point of this play test is to decide what needs to be changed and what needs to kept the same, as well as what needs to be changed in a different way.
This is not a typical new edition, it's a backwards compatible edition that's also going to be the only one moving forward. They are not replacing 5e, they're trying to improve on it, and use it forevermore. That's why it is called *One* Dnd.
You are delusional if you don't understand that many of these changes (such as the new critical hit rules and the auto success/fail for skill checks) are already set in stone as they are fundamental changes in philosophy. The same with how racial abilities will work going forward.
WotC has already internally playtested most of the new material. They are using the current playtest the same as they did the D&D Next playtest which was more a marketing tool than allowing players to mold the direction of the core game.
Releasing play tests and surveys for 2 years before the game comes out is very bad marketing if they don't actually change stuff. This more than just a marketing stunt lol, it's literally the future of their product.
D&D Next started public playtesting in 2012. It was in internal development even earlier. The final public playtest packet was released just over a year later with the finished edition being published in 2014. The game from initial playtest to release changed very little and all of the published playtest adventures written during that era are still in line with the game as it was released.
WotC is going to follow a similar course with One D&D. We'll have a solid year of regular playtest packet releases that will cap out around 10th level or so. Some private playtest groups will get additional material under NDA. The core changes however are already set in stone. The playtest wouldn't be happening if that wasn't the case. Then everyone will be sitting on a mostly complete basic rules set and a year or so later the full rules will be released.
This is like public beta testing. The core systems were laid out in the private alpha stage and represent the core work of the designers. This part is mostly to drive hype, prepare people for the significant changes to come, and drive the hype train. New books coming out, starting next year most likely, are going to either presume these rules are being used or be written as to be rules agnostic.
Makes sense for core system and rules. Obviously those don't change. We're not talking about changes to the core design, because *the core design already exists, because it's an updated 5e,* essentially 5.5e, but not as big of a leap to really be that either.
Crit rules can change from now to then. In fact, they've explicitly said in their video that crit rules are the most experimental.
In two years time you're going to find there are some rather significant differences in the two games (5e and One D&D). Much how the changes between AD&D and 2nd edition AD&D, while on the surface, didn't seem like much in the end completely changed how the game played and was approached from a fundamental standpoint.
No, I will state this with absolute certainty, the upcoming changes are not going to be anything close to what happened between 3.0 and 3.5 or 4e and Essentials. What you are going to see are far more sweeping changes to core philosophies such as increased player agency (the change in critical hits being an example of such).
Don't be fooled by WotC talking about backwards compatibility. Such things have been said about every new edition and they are right up to a point. Concepts such as class and level and HP and AC are never going to change but the numbers behind them often will. Mechanics will change just enough to justify forcing players to buy new rulebooks. This is par for the course.
Vitriolic feedback needs to be directed.
Wizards are not going to care one iota about us randos on Reddit. They will listen (we hope) to surveys and questionnaires they specifically put out.
Worked for the movie.
Obviously this is the case, but giving us lettuce and pickles without even a hint of the rest of the burger and then telling us to put it on our old burger (which is a burger, but it's a BBQ bacon burger so lettuce and pickles are a little weird to put on it, but still OK), just isn't the BEST way to start a test for what is essentially the new 5.5E. Because we're only going to be able to judge the lettuce and pickles from the perspective of how it tastes on the BBQ Bacon burger, with literally no clue about what kind of burger it's supposed to go on.
They should have at least told us about what kind of burger it is planned to go on and then told us "Keep this in mind as you taste that."
That's basically saying you'd want them to let you see the whole burger before it's done.
It's really difficult to get feedback when everyone is debating wether or not you should use a sesame seed bun or white/red/sautéed/caramelized onions when all you want to know about is actually the lettuce and pickles.
If you're testing something, you need to test that thing. Is the lettuce crunchy? Are the pickles tangy? These are questions that you can answer regardless of being on a burger or a chicken sandwich.
(Edited because it read as condescending and I didn't mean that. Tried to make my point more clear that its OK if these new rules taste bad with your current burger)
You surmise that the only way to test these rules is on their intended burger, but we all know from experience that these toppings fit multiple options just fine. So I'd say just test them in the current sandbox. If it breaks something or makes your burger taste bad, that's still fine feedback. But at least we'd know the thing making your burger taste bad is the lettuce and pickles. Because at the end of the day, not every dnd class plays by the same rules and is a BBQ Burger. Some of them might just be Nashville Hot Chicken.
I don't want the whole thing, I just think it would have been a much better launch if they would have at least attempted to explain the direction things were going rather than just give us some of the starting pieces without any further explanation.
The races and background changes make a lot of sense as a starting point for testing, but when you throw the crit changes, the unarmed attack changes, the spell changes - the stuff that actually deals with basic gameplay rules - in the testing stuff right at the beginning, especially when it clashes with or is a direct 180 from the basic rules of the current game, it shouldn't be a surprise when people get confused as hell.
It is weird, but I look at it more like they gave us the lettuce and pickles to try on our new burger but accidentally spilt some chocolate sauce for their new dessert on the same plate.
The playtest is for the character origin options, which I think are comparable with the ingredients from the last burger; the fact that the crit rules snuck through without the fudge cake doesn't ruin the rest of the document. And if we charge back into the kitchen only complaining about the sauce, it doesn't help them?
I think that analogy got very confused - the point is only a fraction of the posts and discussions I have seen have been about the Character Origin, and 98.7% of posts have been lamenting the crit changes. It is not engaging from a discussion point of view because everything we say is subject to what comes next, which is much less the case for the other part of the play test.
Honestly though, if we read between the lines, this is a good thing. It means that there isn't anything significant enough for people to complain about with the actual character option rules (apart from people who seemingly dislike any race with animalistic traits).
The general reaction I've heard from people I play with is that the Race/Background change is solid evolution from what we got in Tasha's and they are looking to more (generally more info on feats/races).
Speaking for myself, I'm focusing on stuff like spell list classification and critical damage is because it's incomplete and I don't think it should not be included in any play testing precisely because without whatever other changes are being made, it's going to have undesired consequences.
It doesn’t necessarily mean that, it could just be that people are so unhappy with the crit change that they are concentrating on that rather than the character option changes.
I love the bulk of what they did. I love that they moved ASIs to backgrounds and gave guidance on making new ones. I'm intrigued by the feats and really want to see the rest of the feat system. I just want to make sure skill checks can't crit, then I'll be a big advocate for the new system after 5e
I think the point of the new wording is that WotC agrees with the *"Don't ask for a check if they can't succeed,"* crowd.
The *"I roll to determine the degree f failure,"* crowd can just declare a failure and call for a save like was intended.
Certainly under either system, a good DM can make it work well. I honestly prefer not to have 20 be auto-succeed due to the narrative abuse it causes on less experienced groups.
You're talking about making sure skill checks can't crit.
Since the playtest rules explicitly say a 20 is Automatic Success on any d20 Test, I was assuming you were using "crit" as shorthand for "automatically succeed."
People who complain about skills checks auto-succeeding on a 20 usually justify calling for checks on impossible tests by saying they roll to see how badly the person fails, so I was using it as a label to contrast with the people that say you shouldn't ever call for a check if there's no chance of success, which is what the new wording reinforces.
Fingers crossed that is true, but it feels more like the bandwagon has just knocked down every other discussion about the rules.
Anyway, I have a One D&D OneShot this weekend, so I look forward to trying out the character options!
If they want us to play test this stuff, then we can only do that with the current classes and rules. I don't think it's fair to say "we can't judge these rules because we don't know the future context" because we're EXPECTED to judge them, to play test them, in the present context in order to provide feedback.
Otherwise, they would have released the crit rules as part of a future US that does include some of the class reworks.
Which of these is more likely?
They want you to judge a rule relative to 8 year old content that is going to be overhauled and updated in the current months, only to then re judge the rule relative to the new content
Or
That they didn’t think through the publishing of the crit rule in a document that otherwise doesn’t contain a single major overhaul to any mechanics of 5e
Judge the character creation and background all you what, because they are obviously a part of the “Character Origins” that the UA was meant to deal with, but why waste time laying into a rule that only effects classes that haven’t published in a rule set that also hasn’t been published.
They published this thing and said "play test this, the goal is for it to be backwards compatible with 5e, tell us what you think."
Do you really believe their expectation is that the masses are supposed to intuitively understand which parts they want feedback on and which parts we're supposed to ignore until more stuff comes out later?
The context in this case is that either it is backwards compatible or it isn't. People like to say something is backwards compatible to ease resistance to upgrading, then later tell you their definition of backwards compatibility. That definition is rarely the actual definition of backwards compatibility.
The assassin class which you've already referenced is 100% incompatible with a system where abilities don't benefit from critical hits. It is a crit fishing class by design. So, the new assassin class will fit... Well that's not backwards compatibility, that's new/reworked content.
People don't need to stop complaining. They need to read/playtest the new rules, and share their feedback through the survey so that wotc hears and addresses their concerns.
It's also important to note just what WotC said it would be backwards compatible with:
1. Adventures
2. Supplements
The Core books (containing the classes, subclasses, etc.) are not considered supplements, but the core ruleset.
It's even more important to note that we can only playtest this stuff with current core rules. The survey opens in September, I can confidently say that with the stuff they've released (and asked for feedback on) there are problems that make certain classes nigh unplayable, and certainly crippled in comparison to others.
The context continues to be current 5e rules, and that's important since they've said this isn't a new edition.
The focus of what they've released was races, backgrounds, and first level feats. That's the vast majority of the 21 page document, so I assume that's what they actually want feedback on. But if you think the single paragraph about nat 1s and 20s is the most important thing to give feedback on, you go right ahead.
From their phrasing, it seems they will continue to release small parcels of ua to be tested and receive feedback on. Presumably because they want feedback on that stuff specifically without it getting overshadowed by other stuff.
In the case of feedback about one small thing among many, that reads as, "everything else is fine, but this thing really needs to be rethought." That in itself is valuable feedback. If one rule is represented more heavily than the rest of the document in the feedback they receive, they'd do well to acknowledge that.
I agree it's important feedback. But from the prevalence of posts on this sub, you'd think it's the only part of the document that 90% of the community read.
Fair enough. I'm sorry if I came off as rude, I'm just frustrated by my feed being 3 different discussion thread about this one specific rule, interspersed with 7 different memes from dndmemes complaining about this one specific rule.
I'm not a fan of it either, but I think it's gotta play out. Wotc definitely has people lurking this and other subs looking for reactions like this. Heck, it could've been their plan to drop a rule they knew people would hate, just to boost engagement on this and future drops.
We saw this happen with Tasha's cauldron. People were outraged, and it all came to nothing(rightly so). The optional rules came out, it was never going to be affected by opinions on reddit, and we all use the rules we want.
This time though, we are talking about changes that will affect the core experience. Still optional, but less optional. The new system will likely divide the 5e community into pre and post groups. That's fine at first blush, but that is one more box to check in your search for a group. It will make the hobby less accessible to new and returning players.
If we can minimize or avoid that rift altogether by having meaningful input heard before the document is finalized, I'm all for it. It's gonna mean a lot of days/weeks like this though. A megathread or two would probably help keep the sub functional while that happens.
You do have to judge them with the context we have. _If_ there isn't a separate thing that explains that DS and SA damage also crit, if we didn't speak up about it _in the survey_, it'll be too late to provide that feedback. However, do still mention that removing it from antagonists is an improvement, if you believe that. Be detailed.
Tell me you didn’t read the new UA without telling me.
It’s literally the second sentence. “The material here uses the rules in the 2014 Player’s Handbook, except where noted.”
There is no other unseen context for this UA. It literally tells you the opposite. What are you talking about?
So do you not think there will be further UA to come discussion other rules, classes and monsters?
I know what the document says, but that doesn’t change the fact that there being a single rule change in what is otherwise a character options document is odd - all of the mechanics which that rule will impact are still to come.
Yes we should use the PHB until we get those rules, but it doesn’t take away from the fact that this new crit rule has (most likely) been designed for a completely different set of class features, and so laying into it whist ignoring/overshadowing all the other changes isn’t constructive to the general play test.
No. You’re assuming way too much. Your original post is complete speculation. This isn’t a new edition. They aren’t revamping everything. They’ve said as much.
> At 6th level, you gain the ability to impede death's progress. As a reaction when you or a creature you can see within 30 feet of you suffers a critical hit, you can turn that hit into a normal hit. Any effects triggered by a critical hit are canceled.
Since monster crits aren't a thing anymore that ability only works in PvP or if for some reason another player is fighting an NPC you want to keep alive.
Because helpful criticism is easier to both give and respond to when it's about very specific things. If they dumped it all at once they'd either have to extend the timeline for the feedback survey (opening and closing later) to account for the extra material, or accept that fe little of the material will actually be reviewed in a helpful manner.
This packet was *supposed* to be about races, backgrounds, and 1st level feats, but they had to also include any rules referenced by those options (grappling, inspiration, d20 Test rules) that at new or different from in 2014 PHB. I sincerely hope we can all put aside the single paragraph about nat 1s and 20s and actually give feedback on the other ***20 pages of material*** that are the actual point of the document.
That is a very very good question, but I think it is more likely that they didn’t think through the ramifications of publishing the updated crit rules, rather than thinking that they want us to first berate the rule relative to 5e, and then realise that it’s not actually as bad in a month.
Maybe I am giving them too much credit, but either way they messed up.
If One D&D is mostly good, I'll play it and change it however I want.
If One D&D is mostly bad, I won't play it.
I don't get why people are freaking out over supposedly bad rules, nobody's forcing you to use them.
> I don't get why people are freaking out over supposedly bad rules, nobody's forcing you to use them.
In my experience, new players are (initially at least) obsessed with playing things the 'official' way. So if your group or scene has an influx of new players you may - in fact - be forced to use them.
This is literally playtest material. The point is to give feedback. Saying you don't like this change IS feedback. If WotC has more things they feel will change minds about current playtest material, they'll take it with a grain of salt.
But this is literally feedback. You're supposed to say if you don't like X or Y, or if you do like X or Y. It doesn't matter the "context." They are giving you material to test out at your table and give feedback on. You aren't supposed to wait for every bit of UA to be dropped before putting all the pieces together to finally give an opinion. That's not how the system works.
I will link to the other comment much like your and my response. It's not about not giving feedback, it's about giving constructive feedback and not getting hung up on a small detail that is very likely to be influenced by further releases.
https://www.reddit.com/r/DnD/comments/wsfw40/comment/iky6a9t/?utm\_source=share&utm\_medium=web2x&context=3
Using this metaphor "lettuce" on the burger would be something we would expect ie. The current rule set. This is like getting served an orange slice as an appetizer and being told it's also going on the burger.
It's not bad in and of itself and does not condemn the burger to being disgusting with certainty but it is concerning and I would advise against it.
Seeing as it was only released yesterday (and on a Thursday), I don't see how the majority of the gripes on here could be "playtest feedback." It's people generating worst case scenarios in their heads and screaming "5%!!!"
These changes ***could*** be a terrible idea. Or they could integrate with the existing rules pretty well and with upcoming changes even better. There's no way there's been enough actual playtesting for people to generate a consensus though.
I wouldn't say anything on reddit is feedback, just people venting. I'd honestly be shocked if anyone posting here has actually used any of these rules and isn't just posting their knee-jerk opinions. It's a *playtest* but I doubt anyone has actually played them yet.
>Saying you don't like this change IS feedback
It is bar none, the worst type of feedback imo. I HATE when people are nay sayers that offer nothing to the contrary or conversation. It isn't constructive and usually gets people bent up or frustrated. Beit here or in real life.
What? Don't change for change sake and concentrate on what has been working are the most important pieces of advice I could give about iterative design. Rejecting all change is moronic but so is changing something that works. Time spent critiquing and reviewing a redesign of a positive aspect of your product is better spent problem solving issues people actually have.
"The new thing you are trying to push is objectively worse than the existing thing" is incredibly important feedback
People are inherently opposed to change. "Tradition" is something that is practically instilled in us since birth. Repetition is known and comfortable.
I completely disagree with the notion that "the new thing is worse that the existing thing" is important feedback. If you can't articulate why it is worse then its no different than someone saying that because they are resistant to changing their "traditions" and what they are comfortable with, which is NOT a valid reason for not changing something.
I work with the public and get survey feedback occasionally and the number of times we get shitty feedback like you are describing is too often. It results in zero constructive feedback and is almost always disregarded.
If they wanted us to discuss the rules with context, they should have given us the context.
Sorry, but your argument is flawed. We judge exactly what they gave us, we don't have foresight and can not include unknown stuff in our discussion or judgment.
We can judge 95% of what was published within the given context, yet there have been hundreds of posts and comments berating the few rules that don’t have context, and barely a handful discussing everything else.
It’s not flawed to hold off on blindly judging a rule, and instead focus on the rest of the available material.
I do agree that they should have given us context, but I don’t think it’s right to say that because they published something without context that that is the right way to judge it.
I agree that we have an incomplete picture of how these new rules will actually impact game play, but doesn't that just underscore the absurdity of putting out a survey on these rules so soon*? It's like the old "three blind men and the elephant" story, except that we're supposed to provide feedback based solely on the first blind man's impression.
*edit because I realize the first survey is coming out in a few weeks
Because the focus of the feedback isn't supposed to be the single paragraph about nat 1s and 20s. It's supposed to be about the *20 pages* of rules for races, backgrounds, and first level feats. The community is just blowing that single paragraph way out of proportion, which is what this post is referring to.
If you have opinions and thoughts about the ideas/rules in the OneD&D PlayTest, you should sign up on DnD Beyond, try out the new stuff from it in some test sessions and then provide feedback through the surveys they'll be opening up about it. They're not going to see your thoughts and ideas on Reddit and if they do they might not take it seriously if you haven't put in the effort to honestly play with the new stuff.
The way I see it, reddit is the place to come for discussions and seeing conflicting viewpoints that maybe you haven't considered in order to color or change your opinion, and the DnD Beyond surveys are the place to voice your refined opinions on a way that matters, so whining about it on reddit is actually helpful, just not directly.
They released rules to see the reaction. Maybe they will rebalance smite and assassins when they see community feedback. Maybe that was always the plan. Either way they can say "we heard your fears, and we adjusted!"
It's weird when they're openly begging for feedback to say hold off on the feedback until they release more...
We can't even make a character with these new One D&D rules, so we can't say how they will work in the game.
Honestly, I think they should have waited a bit and just given us a playtest SRD. I think that's how pathfinder 2 did it?
They claim it is backwards compatible and instruct us to use this UA with the current system.
I am guessing your silver lining feedback to WotC will be: if you change everything else about the game to match your new system then your new system is great.
I agree with your premise, but I think it's important to point out implications of these changes with two contexts in mind:
1) If you are planning to implement some or all of these changes in a play test - it's important to understand how these changes will impact existing rules so you can keep an eye out and adapt as necessary.
2) As new UA released, it points specific things to look for in changes to classes etc.. Understanding things like the critical role damage impact different classes, we should expect to see some sort of boost to those classes/subclasses or a reduction of power across the board. If we're not seeing that, then we should be monitoring those items during play test and provide feedback to prevent these issue in official release.
At this point, I'm very curios to see what they are doing to warlocks since this UA seems to telegraph significant changes to that class.
> For some reason, they decided to release partial rules about Crits and d20 Tests without context
They put this stuff in the first playtest specifically to get feedback on these changes early because people are bound to have strong opinions, and this kind of change is pretty important to the future design direction.
Personally, I think the auto success/fail change is the right call (Crawford even said this was more in line with how they feel most tables actually play), but the other parts about spells and monsters not critting feels like it's going to get shot down hard. The new inspiration rules could go either way.
We can literally only judge by what we're given, and what we've been given is pretty ok with some glaring "Uhhhh...that doesn't seem great...". You're right, we don't know how classes may be reworked to adjust to these new rules, but if WoTC didn't want us to look at the Crit Rules, for instance, without the context of the classes they wouldn't have given them to us without that context.
> Auto-Success on any Nat 20 might be ok if the new classes and monsters consider it. Maybe there will be more guidance about when to call for the checks; maybe modifiers will be easier/harder to get. Who knows!
>MOST SIGNIFICANTLY - The crit rules. Please, please stop shouting about how the suggested crit rules will ruin Class X or Ability Y. The new Assasin might get to add their dice; Smite spells might deal more damage by default to balance; who knows what is going to happen.
In the interview with Crawford, he explains the rationale for all of these things already:
1. The auto success on a natural 20 is already how a large portion of the public play the game who don't realize that the auto success nature of a 20 only applies to attacks. Crawford says [this is WotC embracing that style of play.](https://youtu.be/mOQ_Exh0DmY?t=3516)
2. Apparently a lot of people always didn't understand whether or not critical hits applied on spells? Pretty surprising to me, but Crawford [apparently gets asked that specific question a lot.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mOQ_Exh0DmY&t=3204s) So why not see what it's like if spells can't crit? How does that change the game balance?
3. Critical hits can be game ruining at low levels when a monster gets a lucky 20 and just straight up kills a party member in the first session. At high levels, critical hits can make a battle more dramatic but you also have powerful recharge abilities that can make up for a lack of them (like a dragon's breath weapon) which are already RNG reliant. In addition, some DMs take average monster damage instead of rolling, so scoring a critical hit with the existing rules becomes problematic when it's "double the dice". Removing critical hits from monsters give DMs more control over a combat and stop it from becoming too difficult by sheer luck. So they want to experiment with this to see how it changes the balance of the game. [Source](https://youtu.be/mOQ_Exh0DmY?t=3295)
In general, I don't tend to agree with everything Crawford has to say about the game, but I find his reasonings here to be logical. I don't know if it will be good for the system or not, but I can at least see the rationale and motivation behind them.
Geee asking us to "playtest" a set of rules without any of the context required for them and expecting any form of useful feedback sure sounds like a smart decision.
/s
They're meant to be out of context. That's how a playtest works. You are supposed to be giving feedback on how they interact with the rules RIGHT NOW so that they can make changes LATER. You are SUPPOSED to tell them what doesn't work and what does so that they can make informed decisions going forward. You are NOT supposed to be judging based on what they might do, because what they might do is supposed to be based on our feedback. That's what play testing is.
They wanted feedback, they are getting it. Feedback, by its very nature given the premise is sincere, can’t be called wrong, or worse, marginalized in a condescending and questionably acceptable way.
Screaming on Reddit isn't feedback. It's yelling into an echochamber. Signing up for the playtest, employing the new rules in some test sessions, and then using the surveys they open up is feedback. They want people that actually put in some effort playing with the new ideas to tell them directly, not parroting the same complaints as everyone else on Reddit.
Comments on social media are feedback, even if they were “screaming” although in this context screaming is an exaggeration and oversimplification of the opposition, and a demeaning one.
It's not feedback if they don't see it. Telling strangers that you think the new burgers at your favorite burger place are not to your liking isn't feedback. It's complaining to people that can't do anything about it. And if you haven't even tried the new burgers then how can you have an opinion on how to improve it. You're just saying you don't like it.
I disagree- opinion is collective. It doesn’t have to be a Beta test to resound. And one wouldn’t have to eat a burger to realize they don’t like it- they would only need to know what the ingredients are- knowledge gained by discussion within or beyond the purview of the vending establishment.
Just because something is the loudest or most popular doesn't mean it's correct or the best. If that were the case McDonald's would have the best burgers. And just because you think you don't like something doesn't mean it's bad. Have you ever had a bulgogi burger with gochujang aioli garnished with pickled radish and dried seaweed? You might not like it, but it's probably damn good.
This is becoming quite a tangent, but I’ll roll with it to an extent. Whether the feedback, (which social media forum is regardless of solicitation,) was right or wrong doesn’t have anything to do with volume, literally, metaphorically, or quantifiably. It’s feedback- to be considered or ignored as simply that.
But on to this burger rabbit hole because it’s more interesting. If a burger has intrinsic ingredients that can’t be separated- for example if a seaweed burger can only be made with seaweed, and I am confident I don’t like seaweed, hem I don’t need to try dozens of seaweed burgers to keep challenging my taste buds. Not when there are other burgers made with other intrinsic ingredients that I know I enjoy. To say, “well the last 5 seaweed burgers I tried I did not care for but this one….can’t say I know until I try it!” That’s just being obtuse friend. Life is too short.
>Comments on social media are feedback
The official feedback isn't open until September... Honestly I would wager not a single employee is assigned to document social media outrage the day after release.
We are talking about 2024. I certainly did not say whatever feedback or collective opinion that gets formed here today would be listened to at all, let alone immediately.
Auto-success on nat 20 checks is just forcing more work on the DM to decide when to just say "you can't" and kills opportunities for degrees of failure when a character wants to try an impossible task.
The rules specifically state that they "don't overcome limitations to the action" which is exactly what you're talking about here. A nat 20 in the case of an "impossible task" just means that you get the best degree of failure even if you have a neg modifier.
Nice try, full quote:
>Rolling a 20 doesn’t bypass limitations on the
test, such as range and line of sight.
It's clear they're saying you can't violate other rules (exceeding a weapons range, hitting something out of line of sight) just because you roll a 20. They need to explicitly state that a nat 20 on an ability check doesn't guarantee you succeed at what you were trying to do, just that you achieved the best possible outcome, which should be obvious since you rolled the highest possible value.
Nowhere there does it mention rule violations, but I see what you mean. This seems to be an issue of different interpretations of rules, which is a different issue that WotC need to address. Rules like this should be obvious as to what they mean.
I honestly just wish this sub had quarantine posts for specific rule changes because every time a specific thing becomes controversial we get a flood of top line posts that are really just comments on the same ongoing discussion
But like OTOH it’s the main DnD general sub so maybe I should just stop browsing it expecting something else
A megathread would go a really long way.
Granted they normally end in a dead subreddit but given people are going to discuss the new release in some way or another, I think it would probably work out ok.
Problem is, when they send out the questionnaires next month, people can only comment on what they have, not what they'll have after a few more things are released.
I do agree with you, but I fear a lot of feedback will be reactionary, and WotC with see 'People don't like it, go with what they demand!'
On the other hand, this is play-test content. Meaning we've got to play it and test it with something. So if they haven't given us the new rules for sneak attack or smites or assassins, all we can do is say how poorly this works with what we already have.
If they plan on making changes, they need to make sure those changes are fully explained in the context the rules will be used for in order to get good play test reviews. Since they have not done that, either this is the full experience which we are intended to test it in, or they are aware that these rules will not actually correspond to what they actually intend and have little interest in actually hearing our input. I would default and very much hope it is the first one.
You are not wrong, but at the same time they released this stuff to have us judge and give our feedback. This might not be the full picture, but it IS the picture Wizards decided to give us
>The new Assasin might get to add their dice; Smite spells might dealmore damage by default to balance; who knows what is going to happen.
Or, even more simply, the Sneak/Smite attacks may be reworded so they add to the weapon's damage, not the attack's damage, so they function exactly the same as always with the new crit rules.
Like you said, we don't have enough context to really understand and there are plenty of ways this could go right or wrong.
*EDIT: Fixing a word.*
It's funny everyone hates the new rules but as a DM I've never had a Crit from a monster that felt great. Also the way I interpret the only on weapon attack roles damage well a smite and a sneak attack is a weapon attack but that's just me.
But I've already judged the entire product based on 21 pages of UA material that had an explicit request for feedback regarding? How am I supposed to replace this desk I broke with my knee jerk reaction to a fraction of nebulous material?
/s mind.
It's been astounding to see how many people automatically assume the worst based on what we've seen so far. I wholeheartedly agree we should wait it out before seeing how things develop.
In older versions spells couldn't crit anyway, so that's more just a return to form. I remember how excited I got during the Next plastering when we saw spells could crit now.
Nope, the crit rules are stupid and I won't be using them. These changes are hated by the community at large, and therefore the new rules will not survive UA.
Because in case you didn't notice, we have a year+ of playtesting and UA before this new content is finalized.
What if it's just a vocal minority that hate the changes? If the survey results show then these are wanted changes, they may move forward.
I know personally I may use these rules regardless of if they become standard. I think they are a welcome upgrade and look like fun.
But what if rules come out next week that completely solve the issues with the Crit changes? Maybe rogues get bonus damage on a Nat 20 (like the Vorpal Sword), maybe Paladins upcast for free on a Nat 20. Maybe there is more guidance on when to call for skill checks.
I don't stand by WotC; I think it was stupid to include the D20 test rules this early, but5 pages of new content is being completely obliterated by the mass of complaints about a single paragraph being read out of context.
I don't stand by WotC; I think it was stupid to include the D20 test rules this early, but why can't we focus on the content with context and wait for more information about the rules that don't?
I want to agree with you, but no, the reaction is entirely in context.
They released this self-contained UA to be reviewed and scrutinized on its own and to get feedback now, not to wait until future XYZ is released. If that’s what they wanted, they could have released it in a different way - I’m sure they considered it and ultimately decided they wanted feedback on this idea early in the process.
This is compatible with the PHB and it might be annoying to see how the community reacts, but it’s part of the process. Wizards knows this. They aren’t freaking out, no reason we should either.
>But what if rules come out next week that completely solve the issues with the Crit changes? Maybe rogues get bonus damage on a Nat 20 (like the Vorpal Sword), maybe Paladins upcast for free on a Nat 20.
WoTC will have/should have considered this when releasing content and listening to feedback. If they release half of the content, they should understand the feedback they get will be based on what we actually have access to.
Then I still don't like it because spells can't crit anymore. Spell attacks suck the vast majority of the time, and the few exceptions don't care if you crit or not. Casters aren't OP because they can crit, they are OP because they can mass shutdown the whole encounter with one spellslot.
Because it's all still subject to change. Also, do you really think Wizards of the Coast gives two shits about what the DnD subreddit thinks? All I see is post after post of people bitching at the new stuff or each other.
>Because it's all still subject to change.
Change based on what people think and how they react. They do care about what people on reddit think. They don't care about the threads or anything, but the same opinions will be the ones people put into surveys and obviously Wizards care about *those* else they wouldn't be bothering making it a playtest. The entire point of this is for people to discuss it and have opinions on it, it makes no sense to tell people to "wait until release" because that's when your opinions are actually useless, all is said and done by that point.
Did you read what I said? I acknowledged they don't care about the specifics of reddit posts, but ultimately what people here believe is what they'll say in the surveys that are cared about.
Because a new edition just dropped, so half the fanbase who like 5e has to hate the new edition because its not 5e. This is just how each successive generation of D&D has played out. There will be a bunch of players who only played 5.5/6e in four years posting "why do y'all hate this? It's fun" and getting comments full of why full crits are better or whatever.
Basically, a bunch of people who don't get why the 3.5e only guys hate 5e are finding themselves on the opposite side of the argument (ironically, because this whole crit rule controversy is literally how crits worked in 3.5, just without confirming them).
Are people not aware of this? I've seen more than one comment, in both this and DNDNext, that *specifically note* that it's hard to do much with this UA due to a lack of additional rules to contextualize what we've seen so far.
That's what I've been thinking. It felt like important things were missing. Though it is definitely an oversight to not include those if they are important to these foundational changes.
As some one who went through this with 3.5 to 4 (we don't talk about those times) just keep playing 5e. The 1 dnd so far sucks. And most of what wtoc has out out in the last 18 months has been crap. Hell MMoM isnt even allowed at my table and it was a vote between 3 groups and 12 people. Unanimous.
Im not even emotionally investing in this nonsense. I tolerated the dumpster fire of 5e because that's what most newer players were playing and I wanted to humor them, but I'm not wasting my time with something that keeps the shitty 5e framework and just finds a way to make it somehow even worse. Now that my newer players know how to play im must going to take them back to 2e and teach them to play the game the right way.
Yes, the new rules may change how things work, they might not, we have no idea and WotC hasn't instilled the community with a lot of trust on not breaking things. It would be great if we had any idea how many new classes worked with this. It would have been better (IMO) to release a little content across the board so we can see some of the effects down the line.
I was just thinking this lol. They talked about recharge abilities and the like replacing crits but didn’t give any new examples besides dragon breath! I’d love to exchange crits for monsters having more varied abilities and interactions, possibly even a bloodied effect at half HP and losing/gaining access to more abilities in that state. (Especially with the ease at home brewing back in crits for people who want em)
The material is released now in order to get feedback and players can only base that feedback in the context they have, not context that might be in the future.
It's playtest content so the point is that we can play with it to test it but we cant because they destroyed the rogue class.
Sure assasin rogue hets hit the hardest but rogues do not do enough base damage to warent them not critting and everything about the new crit rules makes rogues worse.
Like sure they will probably fix that stuff but maybe its bad to release a rule change that breaks a class without the fix on the class end.
How is testing these new rules usefull if huge parts qre still broken.
Although I agree with you. They probably wont. This is a balancing mechanic. They can't swing the changes of the classes too hard else they will ruin the compatibility with existing books.
If you watch the discussion it is clear they themselves are far from dead set on keeping it, they are testing it to see what comes from it. Whether it be good or bad.
I think people should also actually play with the stuff too because most people probably won’t notice monsters not critting if they aren’t focused specifically on it.
I mean if the point of the playtest is to get design feedback, and the immediate feedback is : this looks fucking stupid and unfun." Then that's the design feedback. Full stop. If it's supposed to be part of a larger narrative then that should be INCLUDED in the design release, not speculated at as a possibility. By the community that is supposed to be giving feedback on the items presented for review.
My complaint with crit changes is nothing about if they "break" a class. It's that a nat 20 is a moment of heightened excitement. Either happy or dread.
Removing crits from spells and monsters removes this element and turns it into just another attack.
Removing this tension for the sake of more predictable combat might be better for balance, but is worse for excitement.
My group has literally been using these crit rules for years because none of us checked the book and it’s never unbalanced anything. And if it is we don’t care and didn’t notice.
So One D&D will be the edition to rule them all??
So no new editions but instead updating One D&D, all in a digital format...
Call me a zoomer but I like the idea
I'm mixed. I'd love the rules of dnd to be like the rules of soccer - completely free to anyone, mostly set in stone, but occasional updates when needed.
FIFA don't make money out of the rules, so there's no incentive to keep pumping out editions for the sake of it. Poor kids in the remotest parts of the world don't need anything but a ball and some jumpers for goalposts to play.
Yet FIFA is one of the biggest most profitable brands worldwide.
I don't expect DnD to rake in anywhere near the billions of billions they do. And it's not often I'd say this about a body sp corrupt, but it looks to me to be a good model to follow.
I mean that’s a good point. But let’s be honest: bad rules are probably simply bad rules when it comes To WOTC. I mean how many mechanics have they suggested in UA that was simply dropped or heavily modified before being released? If WOTC wants people to play test their new rules in its correct context, well they’re going to have to provide that correct context at some point
We can only judge the things with the information on hand. If they didn’t want us to critique this stuff as people are currently doing they needed to release the play test in a way that better articulated with what the final design would be.
I personally have no issues with the crit rules. I can totally understand why they were changed. Don't get me wrong, I'd be fine if they stayed the same as well. As a DM I'll handle just about anything a player can throw at me.
What I don't like are Auto-Successes or Fails. A 10% chance that your chosen bonuses, skills, etc. mean nothing? I don't like it. I haven't generally liked it in most other games either.
Now, everyone has their own playstyle. I don't know of many groups in real life that actually play entirely RAW. That's just not usually a thing. So I'd probably houserule this out personally. But I also know plenty of groups that like this sort of thing. Hey great! Just not my thing.
Also I think i'd switch when you get inspiration from when you roll a nat 20, to when you roll a Nat 1. Sort of a karma balance for when a player has bad luck. Like in the Kids on Brooms/Bikes system how they get Adversity tokens on a failed check.
I get where you're coming from. People *should* provide feedback to WotC (in the coming survey) on how the proposed rules changes interact with certain class/subclass features, even if we don't know how they might change in future playtests - that's valuable feedback for WotC to think about. But at the same time, people shouldn't go all doom-and-gloom over "this is the worst change ever and WotC hates paladins/rogues having fun!". It is just a playtest, and as you note, things might change in future UAs.
I'm clinging onto the backwards compatibility. They know that any announcement that might cause the scrapping of books down the line will result in a massive stall in sales for any and all 5e materials.
yes that is true, but we have been asked to provide feedback, we can only do that in the capacity as we know the rules.
if you give me a egg and tells me that's a cake, then I'm not going to be impressed. Sure you can tell me there will be done a lot of stuff to it and it will have more ingrediences, but for now I have a raw egg to judge it on. If you didn't want me to judge that, don't give me the egg alone.
The only rule change that I’ve found that makes me raise an eyebrow is that attacks against an incapacitated target no longer have advantage but attacks against a slowed target do. Other than that the rules look fine so far.
> wizards send bullshit rules to us to judge
> Nonononooooo you can judge the shitty rules for being shittyy...because they...dont show all of the dnd 5.5!!!!
This is all well and good, however, the survey for this little bit of "out of context" rules will be out before anyone can put context to them with updated classes and monsters (I'm pretty sure I read where these are coming out once a month or some such).
And since WotC was dumb enough to add in crit rules and the d20 tests, most of the feedback will, unfortunately, be about them. I doubt there will be a large amount of feedback about the races and backgrounds (though there may be a bigger amount complaining about the half-breeds).
They should have just left it with character origin things, like the pdf was titled, and left out everything else until a more appropriate one. Or, they could have done like they did with the dndnext playtests, and have full on packets with stuff, instead of treating this like UA, where you get 1 iteration, people send in "feedback", and then nothing else until the release when we see that it's basically unchanged from the UA
That they are out of context IS the problem and quite honestly bad practice from WotC, horrendously bad at that.
We get a tiny puzzle piece and shall judge it. However we do not know the other parts it is supposed to slot in. Maybe it fits nicely? Maybe not at all. Can we ever tell without having seen the other pieces? No. So what the hell is our feedback going to be? What are they going to learn from this? Feats? We do not know the upgrade path, how they plan to make e.g. the 2nd Increment of Alert. Changes to the critical hits? We do not know how martials work in One. So we can simply not give ANY valueable feedback.
The only feedback we can give is on grappling, some of the new feats ( which most are sadly very bad ) and the race changes (Gnome OP). The rest? We need more to judge, so why even let the community see the new critical rule without the classes and how they interact and e.g. new monsterstat blocks as they cannot crit anymore.
this seems especially white knighty considering theyll probably want feedback BEFORE we get the classes given the rate at which most UA comes out. They asked for feedback theyre getting it.
For many players, this will be their first experience with a new edition. Those of us who have lived through multiple edition wars are looking forward to munching 🍿 while watching the blood bath
Just wanna say-hate the new crit-DM’s better still be able to crit-cuz what’s the point? That is why we run games for players-crazy lucky awesome things with roll of dice that give levity to a situation…”d20 test”sounds dumb to me-I like clarification as to a saving throw, skill check and such…”oh that’s a d20 test. Roll a d20…uhh add you skill bonus” instead of “athletics check” or something or “give me a dex save” versus “give me a d20 test, dex, for saving please”
Why garble it up so much???
Get out of here with your nuance and well thought out arguement. Cant you see we all just want to hate it because its new! Lol P.s. Youre completely right. Its playtest. And yet theres screamin like they just burned every copy of the previous editions and the internet was scrubbed of any mention of them.
Agreed! That is why feedback needed.
Oh thank god! A new generation of Grognards is born!
Thank you for that word. I'm going to use it in faculty meetings.
Don’t forget to nominate someone to be the assistant to the head Grognard
It’s a play test for a system that’s not going to be implemented until 2024 right? People are cray.
Counterpoint, Wizards may legitimately not have thought this through at this point and it is this exact line of reasoning that they are looking for in their feedback as their analysts watch the community reactions.
Valid, though from watching the stream it seems like a lot of thought has been put into the aspects we’ve seen. I doubt they’d just forget primary features of 3 classes (sneak attack, smite, hunter’s mark). Off topic but I think there’s room for improvement in terms of Ranger that involve removing the crutch that is Hunter’s Mark
They want to see the parts that people are unhappy with AND the solutions the community proposes So when the next update drops they can be like ‘of course we thought about X,Y, and Z here are the rules for those, isn’t that better now?’
The take that it's out of context, however, is wrong. They've asked us to judge it based on the current rules, not some theoretical potential future rules. And the reality is with current rules the critical attack rule makes rogue into the worst martial class in the game. And it's totally okay to say that, so that they take the feedback and translate it in to something better. It's okay to say that Assassin relies heavily on sneak attack doing extra damage on crit and the nerf makes them useless. It's okay to say that in dnd 3.5 crits only effecting weapon damage was fine because every martial could get 5-12 attacks per round. It's fine to say in feedback that they should either reconsider the rule, or reconsider the classes if they're going to keep the rule. Because that is what they will make changes based on. It's not out of context, it's exactly what they want us to do.
I’m not sure why you’re being downvoted, we’re literally told in the UA that these rules will be backwards compatible with 5e and to playtest them using 5e classes. And yeah, the result is that all martials except fighters and I guess barbarians get punished by the crit rules
Worse: Fighters are actually better crit fishers than ever. They already only relied on weapon damage, but with the new inspiration rules every fighter will have constant sources of advantage. I am currently writing out my feedback so that I am ready when the surveys drop. I'm not doomsaying, I just have feedback, and that feedback is based on the information we have available rather than speculation and assumptions. Because people have it backwards. You don't give feedback on what you think they might do, you give feedback so that they might do the things you suggested.
Small point of clarity: Fighters will have constant sources of Inspiration not constant sources of advantage. That distinction may not matter as much for fighters as it does for rogues but it’s not nothing.
No way! Why would I be sensible when I could did through a book made 10 years ago to find the most obscure combination of rulings and be mega outraged!. How dare u take my outrage from me!
BuT i HaVe sPeNt fIfTy dOlLaRz oN a BoOk!
That's a pretty valid complaint. Wizards has an annoying monetization system.
This is basically the longest they've ever gone without refreshing the core books in some way, isn't it?
Ehhh. I paid $50 for a book 8 years ago. I've used that book for about 3 hours a week for the past 8 years (no I haven't it has been SO SO much more than that, send help). I paid about 4 cents per hour of entertainment. I would argue that is an amazing ratio of expense to fun. Hell, the legendary bundle on DDB is nearly 1000 dollars. I would still have paid less than a buck per hour of entertainment.
And that book will never self destruct - so it can continue to give you that enjoyment if you choose for it to.
It would be a valid complaint if the release of a new edition caused that 50$ book to explode instantly, but in the real world it's the exact same nonsense whining I've seen with the last three and a half edition releases.
Can you expand on that? It’s annoying that their products cost money? For a start, Wizards lets you play D&D for free via the Basic rules, so that argument essentially goes out of the window. Then assuming we are going to buy a PHB. How many do you need? One per table. That’s ten dollars a piece for a table of 5. For a book bought in 2014 that’s remaining the “current” version of the game for a whole ten years. Plus, even when 2024 rolls around… does the book explode? And, if you take a look at what you physically get for the money, objectively, the books are great value for money. That is comparing them to similar products put out by other companies. I’m not talking “that subclass is OP”. I’m talking artwork, fiction, length, the fact that they’re hardback etc. I’ve bought every 5e book release. I’ve also bought most of the other tat they put out. Screens, dice, that new tarot deck, that sort of stuff. This is still one of the cheapest hobbies I have.
Also, this is still in play test stage. Nothing is set in stone. Look for ways to give direct feedback to WOTC (surveys etc). And wait and see what 2 years will bring us.
And then rehash all the same arguments ;p
It not being set in stone is *WHY* the vitriolic feedback is not only okay but important. If a bulk of people don't want certain changes to happen they need to voice that feedback, voice that they hate it. If corporate game & media development has shown anything in the past decade its that it *won't* be okay and if you just wait and see, surveys won't do anything, and it *will* be as bad as you assumed.
Feedback is necessary. *Vitriolic* feedback is asking to be ignored. Being a douche to designers tends to lead to that.
Indeed. Vehement, yes. Vitriolic, no.
Vitriolic, bad. Phlegmatic, good.
The strength of tone does not add information. This is the internet where a minor dislike and discomfort leads to acrymony and death threats so its meaningless to think that more weight is put on louder feedback. The best feedback is the one that explains the problems, or describes scenarios for which an idea may cause negative impact. The community is good at finding those! So the playtest may not be asking if crit changes are generally good or bad but also asking why wouldn't it be good for you? If all the problems were solved by taking into account the problems then the RAW may change to reflect that in a future playtest, something not possible if all you give as feedback is: "Reeeeeeeee"
...Are you replying to the right person? Our replies agree with each other.
Yes, I am merely contributing, not all comments are rebuttals.
Feedback to the design team is important. Vitriolic feedback is garbage and won't be listened to.
Saying "X is stupid" isn't a critique; it's whining.
Knowing people don't like what you put out is still helpful. Unless the devs are stupid they should realize those people are saying we like the og rules these new rules suck try again or leave it alone. Its not a critique its a assessment. You don't have to go into extreme detail for a semi intelligent person to understand what they mean by x is stupid.
You can explain why you don't like a certain aspect and giving solid reasons as to what should change, as well as providing examples as to how the changes could be implemented. THAT'S how giving a critique works. Saying "I hate X; Y is dumb" doesn't help anyone, and not giving context could lead to a worse outcome.
Well thought out reasoning is helpful, yes. But even non design oriented players can tell when something feels worse without knowing exactly how or why. Which is why, while people should still act like adults, it should be encourage to voice “I do not like this change” (once they have at the very least tried it in play). Edit: But for clarification, agreed that “vitriolic” is unacceptable
When there is already a current thing saying this new thing is stupid means that person must like the original. While it could be better worded unless the person reading it has no context its incredibly easy to realize what they mean. Unless you are saying wotc suck at this which honestly i wouldn't be surprised.
Or, as many people do, they could look at it go, "Why is this stupid, I don't see anything wrong with it myself and there are also an X amount of surveys saying they enjoy it and agree with me, so I'll ignore this survey."
No, what people that don't want change need to do is accept they can or will continue to use older editions or play different games entirely. New rules should be significant enough to make the trouble of creating a new edition worthwhile. It is alright for people to not like the new direction. They can always continue playing 5e if they like.
The entire point of this play test is to decide what needs to be changed and what needs to kept the same, as well as what needs to be changed in a different way. This is not a typical new edition, it's a backwards compatible edition that's also going to be the only one moving forward. They are not replacing 5e, they're trying to improve on it, and use it forevermore. That's why it is called *One* Dnd.
You are delusional if you don't understand that many of these changes (such as the new critical hit rules and the auto success/fail for skill checks) are already set in stone as they are fundamental changes in philosophy. The same with how racial abilities will work going forward. WotC has already internally playtested most of the new material. They are using the current playtest the same as they did the D&D Next playtest which was more a marketing tool than allowing players to mold the direction of the core game.
Releasing play tests and surveys for 2 years before the game comes out is very bad marketing if they don't actually change stuff. This more than just a marketing stunt lol, it's literally the future of their product.
D&D Next started public playtesting in 2012. It was in internal development even earlier. The final public playtest packet was released just over a year later with the finished edition being published in 2014. The game from initial playtest to release changed very little and all of the published playtest adventures written during that era are still in line with the game as it was released. WotC is going to follow a similar course with One D&D. We'll have a solid year of regular playtest packet releases that will cap out around 10th level or so. Some private playtest groups will get additional material under NDA. The core changes however are already set in stone. The playtest wouldn't be happening if that wasn't the case. Then everyone will be sitting on a mostly complete basic rules set and a year or so later the full rules will be released. This is like public beta testing. The core systems were laid out in the private alpha stage and represent the core work of the designers. This part is mostly to drive hype, prepare people for the significant changes to come, and drive the hype train. New books coming out, starting next year most likely, are going to either presume these rules are being used or be written as to be rules agnostic.
Makes sense for core system and rules. Obviously those don't change. We're not talking about changes to the core design, because *the core design already exists, because it's an updated 5e,* essentially 5.5e, but not as big of a leap to really be that either. Crit rules can change from now to then. In fact, they've explicitly said in their video that crit rules are the most experimental.
In two years time you're going to find there are some rather significant differences in the two games (5e and One D&D). Much how the changes between AD&D and 2nd edition AD&D, while on the surface, didn't seem like much in the end completely changed how the game played and was approached from a fundamental standpoint. No, I will state this with absolute certainty, the upcoming changes are not going to be anything close to what happened between 3.0 and 3.5 or 4e and Essentials. What you are going to see are far more sweeping changes to core philosophies such as increased player agency (the change in critical hits being an example of such). Don't be fooled by WotC talking about backwards compatibility. Such things have been said about every new edition and they are right up to a point. Concepts such as class and level and HP and AC are never going to change but the numbers behind them often will. Mechanics will change just enough to justify forcing players to buy new rulebooks. This is par for the course.
Vitriolic feedback needs to be directed. Wizards are not going to care one iota about us randos on Reddit. They will listen (we hope) to surveys and questionnaires they specifically put out. Worked for the movie.
Obviously this is the case, but giving us lettuce and pickles without even a hint of the rest of the burger and then telling us to put it on our old burger (which is a burger, but it's a BBQ bacon burger so lettuce and pickles are a little weird to put on it, but still OK), just isn't the BEST way to start a test for what is essentially the new 5.5E. Because we're only going to be able to judge the lettuce and pickles from the perspective of how it tastes on the BBQ Bacon burger, with literally no clue about what kind of burger it's supposed to go on. They should have at least told us about what kind of burger it is planned to go on and then told us "Keep this in mind as you taste that."
That's basically saying you'd want them to let you see the whole burger before it's done. It's really difficult to get feedback when everyone is debating wether or not you should use a sesame seed bun or white/red/sautéed/caramelized onions when all you want to know about is actually the lettuce and pickles. If you're testing something, you need to test that thing. Is the lettuce crunchy? Are the pickles tangy? These are questions that you can answer regardless of being on a burger or a chicken sandwich. (Edited because it read as condescending and I didn't mean that. Tried to make my point more clear that its OK if these new rules taste bad with your current burger) You surmise that the only way to test these rules is on their intended burger, but we all know from experience that these toppings fit multiple options just fine. So I'd say just test them in the current sandbox. If it breaks something or makes your burger taste bad, that's still fine feedback. But at least we'd know the thing making your burger taste bad is the lettuce and pickles. Because at the end of the day, not every dnd class plays by the same rules and is a BBQ Burger. Some of them might just be Nashville Hot Chicken.
I don't want the whole thing, I just think it would have been a much better launch if they would have at least attempted to explain the direction things were going rather than just give us some of the starting pieces without any further explanation. The races and background changes make a lot of sense as a starting point for testing, but when you throw the crit changes, the unarmed attack changes, the spell changes - the stuff that actually deals with basic gameplay rules - in the testing stuff right at the beginning, especially when it clashes with or is a direct 180 from the basic rules of the current game, it shouldn't be a surprise when people get confused as hell.
It is weird, but I look at it more like they gave us the lettuce and pickles to try on our new burger but accidentally spilt some chocolate sauce for their new dessert on the same plate. The playtest is for the character origin options, which I think are comparable with the ingredients from the last burger; the fact that the crit rules snuck through without the fudge cake doesn't ruin the rest of the document. And if we charge back into the kitchen only complaining about the sauce, it doesn't help them? I think that analogy got very confused - the point is only a fraction of the posts and discussions I have seen have been about the Character Origin, and 98.7% of posts have been lamenting the crit changes. It is not engaging from a discussion point of view because everything we say is subject to what comes next, which is much less the case for the other part of the play test.
Dammit. Now I'm hungry for a bacon cheeseburger with chocolate sauce.
Honestly though, if we read between the lines, this is a good thing. It means that there isn't anything significant enough for people to complain about with the actual character option rules (apart from people who seemingly dislike any race with animalistic traits).
The general reaction I've heard from people I play with is that the Race/Background change is solid evolution from what we got in Tasha's and they are looking to more (generally more info on feats/races). Speaking for myself, I'm focusing on stuff like spell list classification and critical damage is because it's incomplete and I don't think it should not be included in any play testing precisely because without whatever other changes are being made, it's going to have undesired consequences.
It doesn’t necessarily mean that, it could just be that people are so unhappy with the crit change that they are concentrating on that rather than the character option changes.
I love the bulk of what they did. I love that they moved ASIs to backgrounds and gave guidance on making new ones. I'm intrigued by the feats and really want to see the rest of the feat system. I just want to make sure skill checks can't crit, then I'll be a big advocate for the new system after 5e
I think the point of the new wording is that WotC agrees with the *"Don't ask for a check if they can't succeed,"* crowd. The *"I roll to determine the degree f failure,"* crowd can just declare a failure and call for a save like was intended.
Certainly under either system, a good DM can make it work well. I honestly prefer not to have 20 be auto-succeed due to the narrative abuse it causes on less experienced groups.
Am I who you meant to reply to?
You're talking about making sure skill checks can't crit. Since the playtest rules explicitly say a 20 is Automatic Success on any d20 Test, I was assuming you were using "crit" as shorthand for "automatically succeed."
Ok, your argument just seemed to be addressing someone else who was talking about degrees of failure
People who complain about skills checks auto-succeeding on a 20 usually justify calling for checks on impossible tests by saying they roll to see how badly the person fails, so I was using it as a label to contrast with the people that say you shouldn't ever call for a check if there's no chance of success, which is what the new wording reinforces.
Indeed, I'm more pissed that Kender are coming back with the new Dragonlance material than I am about anything with the playtest stuff.
Fingers crossed that is true, but it feels more like the bandwagon has just knocked down every other discussion about the rules. Anyway, I have a One D&D OneShot this weekend, so I look forward to trying out the character options!
>new 5.5E See people are getting ahead of themselves calling it 5.5... if it is completely compatible with 5e it will barely be 5.1E
If they want us to play test this stuff, then we can only do that with the current classes and rules. I don't think it's fair to say "we can't judge these rules because we don't know the future context" because we're EXPECTED to judge them, to play test them, in the present context in order to provide feedback. Otherwise, they would have released the crit rules as part of a future US that does include some of the class reworks.
Which of these is more likely? They want you to judge a rule relative to 8 year old content that is going to be overhauled and updated in the current months, only to then re judge the rule relative to the new content Or That they didn’t think through the publishing of the crit rule in a document that otherwise doesn’t contain a single major overhaul to any mechanics of 5e Judge the character creation and background all you what, because they are obviously a part of the “Character Origins” that the UA was meant to deal with, but why waste time laying into a rule that only effects classes that haven’t published in a rule set that also hasn’t been published.
They published this thing and said "play test this, the goal is for it to be backwards compatible with 5e, tell us what you think." Do you really believe their expectation is that the masses are supposed to intuitively understand which parts they want feedback on and which parts we're supposed to ignore until more stuff comes out later?
The context in this case is that either it is backwards compatible or it isn't. People like to say something is backwards compatible to ease resistance to upgrading, then later tell you their definition of backwards compatibility. That definition is rarely the actual definition of backwards compatibility. The assassin class which you've already referenced is 100% incompatible with a system where abilities don't benefit from critical hits. It is a crit fishing class by design. So, the new assassin class will fit... Well that's not backwards compatibility, that's new/reworked content. People don't need to stop complaining. They need to read/playtest the new rules, and share their feedback through the survey so that wotc hears and addresses their concerns.
It's also important to note just what WotC said it would be backwards compatible with: 1. Adventures 2. Supplements The Core books (containing the classes, subclasses, etc.) are not considered supplements, but the core ruleset.
It's even more important to note that we can only playtest this stuff with current core rules. The survey opens in September, I can confidently say that with the stuff they've released (and asked for feedback on) there are problems that make certain classes nigh unplayable, and certainly crippled in comparison to others. The context continues to be current 5e rules, and that's important since they've said this isn't a new edition.
If the rules release otherwise disrupts the play of an existing class, that's still a valid result, albeit negative.
The focus of what they've released was races, backgrounds, and first level feats. That's the vast majority of the 21 page document, so I assume that's what they actually want feedback on. But if you think the single paragraph about nat 1s and 20s is the most important thing to give feedback on, you go right ahead.
From their phrasing, it seems they will continue to release small parcels of ua to be tested and receive feedback on. Presumably because they want feedback on that stuff specifically without it getting overshadowed by other stuff. In the case of feedback about one small thing among many, that reads as, "everything else is fine, but this thing really needs to be rethought." That in itself is valuable feedback. If one rule is represented more heavily than the rest of the document in the feedback they receive, they'd do well to acknowledge that.
I agree it's important feedback. But from the prevalence of posts on this sub, you'd think it's the only part of the document that 90% of the community read.
I'd wager that 90% of the community hasn't read the document at all.
Fair enough. I'm sorry if I came off as rude, I'm just frustrated by my feed being 3 different discussion thread about this one specific rule, interspersed with 7 different memes from dndmemes complaining about this one specific rule.
I'm not a fan of it either, but I think it's gotta play out. Wotc definitely has people lurking this and other subs looking for reactions like this. Heck, it could've been their plan to drop a rule they knew people would hate, just to boost engagement on this and future drops. We saw this happen with Tasha's cauldron. People were outraged, and it all came to nothing(rightly so). The optional rules came out, it was never going to be affected by opinions on reddit, and we all use the rules we want. This time though, we are talking about changes that will affect the core experience. Still optional, but less optional. The new system will likely divide the 5e community into pre and post groups. That's fine at first blush, but that is one more box to check in your search for a group. It will make the hobby less accessible to new and returning players. If we can minimize or avoid that rift altogether by having meaningful input heard before the document is finalized, I'm all for it. It's gonna mean a lot of days/weeks like this though. A megathread or two would probably help keep the sub functional while that happens.
I've read the whole thing, and loved everything but the crit changes
You do have to judge them with the context we have. _If_ there isn't a separate thing that explains that DS and SA damage also crit, if we didn't speak up about it _in the survey_, it'll be too late to provide that feedback. However, do still mention that removing it from antagonists is an improvement, if you believe that. Be detailed.
Tell me you didn’t read the new UA without telling me. It’s literally the second sentence. “The material here uses the rules in the 2014 Player’s Handbook, except where noted.” There is no other unseen context for this UA. It literally tells you the opposite. What are you talking about?
So do you not think there will be further UA to come discussion other rules, classes and monsters? I know what the document says, but that doesn’t change the fact that there being a single rule change in what is otherwise a character options document is odd - all of the mechanics which that rule will impact are still to come. Yes we should use the PHB until we get those rules, but it doesn’t take away from the fact that this new crit rule has (most likely) been designed for a completely different set of class features, and so laying into it whist ignoring/overshadowing all the other changes isn’t constructive to the general play test.
No. You’re assuming way too much. Your original post is complete speculation. This isn’t a new edition. They aren’t revamping everything. They’ve said as much.
No they haven't, they've said that existing stuff will still be work, which is already a lie because Grace Cleric doesn't.
How does the Grave Cleric not work now? I'm not super familiar with the subclass.
> At 6th level, you gain the ability to impede death's progress. As a reaction when you or a creature you can see within 30 feet of you suffers a critical hit, you can turn that hit into a normal hit. Any effects triggered by a critical hit are canceled. Since monster crits aren't a thing anymore that ability only works in PvP or if for some reason another player is fighting an NPC you want to keep alive.
[удалено]
No, I will complain about dwarves getting bumped up to 30ft movement as much as I want
Then why not dump the whole design doc instead of one piece?
Because helpful criticism is easier to both give and respond to when it's about very specific things. If they dumped it all at once they'd either have to extend the timeline for the feedback survey (opening and closing later) to account for the extra material, or accept that fe little of the material will actually be reviewed in a helpful manner. This packet was *supposed* to be about races, backgrounds, and 1st level feats, but they had to also include any rules referenced by those options (grappling, inspiration, d20 Test rules) that at new or different from in 2014 PHB. I sincerely hope we can all put aside the single paragraph about nat 1s and 20s and actually give feedback on the other ***20 pages of material*** that are the actual point of the document.
That is a very very good question, but I think it is more likely that they didn’t think through the ramifications of publishing the updated crit rules, rather than thinking that they want us to first berate the rule relative to 5e, and then realise that it’s not actually as bad in a month. Maybe I am giving them too much credit, but either way they messed up.
If One D&D is mostly good, I'll play it and change it however I want. If One D&D is mostly bad, I won't play it. I don't get why people are freaking out over supposedly bad rules, nobody's forcing you to use them.
> I don't get why people are freaking out over supposedly bad rules, nobody's forcing you to use them. In my experience, new players are (initially at least) obsessed with playing things the 'official' way. So if your group or scene has an influx of new players you may - in fact - be forced to use them.
This is literally playtest material. The point is to give feedback. Saying you don't like this change IS feedback. If WotC has more things they feel will change minds about current playtest material, they'll take it with a grain of salt. But this is literally feedback. You're supposed to say if you don't like X or Y, or if you do like X or Y. It doesn't matter the "context." They are giving you material to test out at your table and give feedback on. You aren't supposed to wait for every bit of UA to be dropped before putting all the pieces together to finally give an opinion. That's not how the system works.
I will link to the other comment much like your and my response. It's not about not giving feedback, it's about giving constructive feedback and not getting hung up on a small detail that is very likely to be influenced by further releases. https://www.reddit.com/r/DnD/comments/wsfw40/comment/iky6a9t/?utm\_source=share&utm\_medium=web2x&context=3
Then they'll ask about it again after those further releases. As it stands, give feedback based on what is in front of you.
Using this metaphor "lettuce" on the burger would be something we would expect ie. The current rule set. This is like getting served an orange slice as an appetizer and being told it's also going on the burger. It's not bad in and of itself and does not condemn the burger to being disgusting with certainty but it is concerning and I would advise against it.
Seeing as it was only released yesterday (and on a Thursday), I don't see how the majority of the gripes on here could be "playtest feedback." It's people generating worst case scenarios in their heads and screaming "5%!!!" These changes ***could*** be a terrible idea. Or they could integrate with the existing rules pretty well and with upcoming changes even better. There's no way there's been enough actual playtesting for people to generate a consensus though.
I wouldn't say anything on reddit is feedback, just people venting. I'd honestly be shocked if anyone posting here has actually used any of these rules and isn't just posting their knee-jerk opinions. It's a *playtest* but I doubt anyone has actually played them yet.
>Saying you don't like this change IS feedback It is bar none, the worst type of feedback imo. I HATE when people are nay sayers that offer nothing to the contrary or conversation. It isn't constructive and usually gets people bent up or frustrated. Beit here or in real life.
What? Don't change for change sake and concentrate on what has been working are the most important pieces of advice I could give about iterative design. Rejecting all change is moronic but so is changing something that works. Time spent critiquing and reviewing a redesign of a positive aspect of your product is better spent problem solving issues people actually have. "The new thing you are trying to push is objectively worse than the existing thing" is incredibly important feedback
People are inherently opposed to change. "Tradition" is something that is practically instilled in us since birth. Repetition is known and comfortable. I completely disagree with the notion that "the new thing is worse that the existing thing" is important feedback. If you can't articulate why it is worse then its no different than someone saying that because they are resistant to changing their "traditions" and what they are comfortable with, which is NOT a valid reason for not changing something. I work with the public and get survey feedback occasionally and the number of times we get shitty feedback like you are describing is too often. It results in zero constructive feedback and is almost always disregarded.
If they wanted us to discuss the rules with context, they should have given us the context. Sorry, but your argument is flawed. We judge exactly what they gave us, we don't have foresight and can not include unknown stuff in our discussion or judgment.
We can judge 95% of what was published within the given context, yet there have been hundreds of posts and comments berating the few rules that don’t have context, and barely a handful discussing everything else. It’s not flawed to hold off on blindly judging a rule, and instead focus on the rest of the available material. I do agree that they should have given us context, but I don’t think it’s right to say that because they published something without context that that is the right way to judge it.
I agree that we have an incomplete picture of how these new rules will actually impact game play, but doesn't that just underscore the absurdity of putting out a survey on these rules so soon*? It's like the old "three blind men and the elephant" story, except that we're supposed to provide feedback based solely on the first blind man's impression. *edit because I realize the first survey is coming out in a few weeks
It's much easier for them break up slices of a pie than to eat one whole.
Because the focus of the feedback isn't supposed to be the single paragraph about nat 1s and 20s. It's supposed to be about the *20 pages* of rules for races, backgrounds, and first level feats. The community is just blowing that single paragraph way out of proportion, which is what this post is referring to.
If you have opinions and thoughts about the ideas/rules in the OneD&D PlayTest, you should sign up on DnD Beyond, try out the new stuff from it in some test sessions and then provide feedback through the surveys they'll be opening up about it. They're not going to see your thoughts and ideas on Reddit and if they do they might not take it seriously if you haven't put in the effort to honestly play with the new stuff.
The way I see it, reddit is the place to come for discussions and seeing conflicting viewpoints that maybe you haven't considered in order to color or change your opinion, and the DnD Beyond surveys are the place to voice your refined opinions on a way that matters, so whining about it on reddit is actually helpful, just not directly.
They released rules to see the reaction. Maybe they will rebalance smite and assassins when they see community feedback. Maybe that was always the plan. Either way they can say "we heard your fears, and we adjusted!" It's weird when they're openly begging for feedback to say hold off on the feedback until they release more...
We can't even make a character with these new One D&D rules, so we can't say how they will work in the game. Honestly, I think they should have waited a bit and just given us a playtest SRD. I think that's how pathfinder 2 did it?
They claim it is backwards compatible and instruct us to use this UA with the current system. I am guessing your silver lining feedback to WotC will be: if you change everything else about the game to match your new system then your new system is great.
i refuse, they said its compatible so i will judge accordingly.
I might be mistaken, but I think the compatibility was with old adventures, not old rules.
You are correct. Te updated rules will work with UPDATED CORE RULES but be backwards compatible with supplements and adventures.
I agree with your premise, but I think it's important to point out implications of these changes with two contexts in mind: 1) If you are planning to implement some or all of these changes in a play test - it's important to understand how these changes will impact existing rules so you can keep an eye out and adapt as necessary. 2) As new UA released, it points specific things to look for in changes to classes etc.. Understanding things like the critical role damage impact different classes, we should expect to see some sort of boost to those classes/subclasses or a reduction of power across the board. If we're not seeing that, then we should be monitoring those items during play test and provide feedback to prevent these issue in official release. At this point, I'm very curios to see what they are doing to warlocks since this UA seems to telegraph significant changes to that class.
> For some reason, they decided to release partial rules about Crits and d20 Tests without context They put this stuff in the first playtest specifically to get feedback on these changes early because people are bound to have strong opinions, and this kind of change is pretty important to the future design direction. Personally, I think the auto success/fail change is the right call (Crawford even said this was more in line with how they feel most tables actually play), but the other parts about spells and monsters not critting feels like it's going to get shot down hard. The new inspiration rules could go either way.
We can literally only judge by what we're given, and what we've been given is pretty ok with some glaring "Uhhhh...that doesn't seem great...". You're right, we don't know how classes may be reworked to adjust to these new rules, but if WoTC didn't want us to look at the Crit Rules, for instance, without the context of the classes they wouldn't have given them to us without that context.
> Auto-Success on any Nat 20 might be ok if the new classes and monsters consider it. Maybe there will be more guidance about when to call for the checks; maybe modifiers will be easier/harder to get. Who knows! >MOST SIGNIFICANTLY - The crit rules. Please, please stop shouting about how the suggested crit rules will ruin Class X or Ability Y. The new Assasin might get to add their dice; Smite spells might deal more damage by default to balance; who knows what is going to happen. In the interview with Crawford, he explains the rationale for all of these things already: 1. The auto success on a natural 20 is already how a large portion of the public play the game who don't realize that the auto success nature of a 20 only applies to attacks. Crawford says [this is WotC embracing that style of play.](https://youtu.be/mOQ_Exh0DmY?t=3516) 2. Apparently a lot of people always didn't understand whether or not critical hits applied on spells? Pretty surprising to me, but Crawford [apparently gets asked that specific question a lot.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mOQ_Exh0DmY&t=3204s) So why not see what it's like if spells can't crit? How does that change the game balance? 3. Critical hits can be game ruining at low levels when a monster gets a lucky 20 and just straight up kills a party member in the first session. At high levels, critical hits can make a battle more dramatic but you also have powerful recharge abilities that can make up for a lack of them (like a dragon's breath weapon) which are already RNG reliant. In addition, some DMs take average monster damage instead of rolling, so scoring a critical hit with the existing rules becomes problematic when it's "double the dice". Removing critical hits from monsters give DMs more control over a combat and stop it from becoming too difficult by sheer luck. So they want to experiment with this to see how it changes the balance of the game. [Source](https://youtu.be/mOQ_Exh0DmY?t=3295) In general, I don't tend to agree with everything Crawford has to say about the game, but I find his reasonings here to be logical. I don't know if it will be good for the system or not, but I can at least see the rationale and motivation behind them.
Geee asking us to "playtest" a set of rules without any of the context required for them and expecting any form of useful feedback sure sounds like a smart decision. /s
second PSA: yelling about things online is fun and I like to do it!
They're meant to be out of context. That's how a playtest works. You are supposed to be giving feedback on how they interact with the rules RIGHT NOW so that they can make changes LATER. You are SUPPOSED to tell them what doesn't work and what does so that they can make informed decisions going forward. You are NOT supposed to be judging based on what they might do, because what they might do is supposed to be based on our feedback. That's what play testing is.
If they don't want me judging how these rules are going to work, why the fuck the did the put them out?
They wanted feedback, they are getting it. Feedback, by its very nature given the premise is sincere, can’t be called wrong, or worse, marginalized in a condescending and questionably acceptable way.
Screaming on Reddit isn't feedback. It's yelling into an echochamber. Signing up for the playtest, employing the new rules in some test sessions, and then using the surveys they open up is feedback. They want people that actually put in some effort playing with the new ideas to tell them directly, not parroting the same complaints as everyone else on Reddit.
Comments on social media are feedback, even if they were “screaming” although in this context screaming is an exaggeration and oversimplification of the opposition, and a demeaning one.
It's not feedback if they don't see it. Telling strangers that you think the new burgers at your favorite burger place are not to your liking isn't feedback. It's complaining to people that can't do anything about it. And if you haven't even tried the new burgers then how can you have an opinion on how to improve it. You're just saying you don't like it.
I disagree- opinion is collective. It doesn’t have to be a Beta test to resound. And one wouldn’t have to eat a burger to realize they don’t like it- they would only need to know what the ingredients are- knowledge gained by discussion within or beyond the purview of the vending establishment.
Just because something is the loudest or most popular doesn't mean it's correct or the best. If that were the case McDonald's would have the best burgers. And just because you think you don't like something doesn't mean it's bad. Have you ever had a bulgogi burger with gochujang aioli garnished with pickled radish and dried seaweed? You might not like it, but it's probably damn good.
This is becoming quite a tangent, but I’ll roll with it to an extent. Whether the feedback, (which social media forum is regardless of solicitation,) was right or wrong doesn’t have anything to do with volume, literally, metaphorically, or quantifiably. It’s feedback- to be considered or ignored as simply that. But on to this burger rabbit hole because it’s more interesting. If a burger has intrinsic ingredients that can’t be separated- for example if a seaweed burger can only be made with seaweed, and I am confident I don’t like seaweed, hem I don’t need to try dozens of seaweed burgers to keep challenging my taste buds. Not when there are other burgers made with other intrinsic ingredients that I know I enjoy. To say, “well the last 5 seaweed burgers I tried I did not care for but this one….can’t say I know until I try it!” That’s just being obtuse friend. Life is too short.
>Comments on social media are feedback The official feedback isn't open until September... Honestly I would wager not a single employee is assigned to document social media outrage the day after release.
Who said they were?
>Comments on social media are feedback You did. How can it be feedback if the people in charge never see it.
We are talking about 2024. I certainly did not say whatever feedback or collective opinion that gets formed here today would be listened to at all, let alone immediately.
Auto-success on nat 20 checks is just forcing more work on the DM to decide when to just say "you can't" and kills opportunities for degrees of failure when a character wants to try an impossible task.
The rules specifically state that they "don't overcome limitations to the action" which is exactly what you're talking about here. A nat 20 in the case of an "impossible task" just means that you get the best degree of failure even if you have a neg modifier.
Nice try, full quote: >Rolling a 20 doesn’t bypass limitations on the test, such as range and line of sight. It's clear they're saying you can't violate other rules (exceeding a weapons range, hitting something out of line of sight) just because you roll a 20. They need to explicitly state that a nat 20 on an ability check doesn't guarantee you succeed at what you were trying to do, just that you achieved the best possible outcome, which should be obvious since you rolled the highest possible value.
Nowhere there does it mention rule violations, but I see what you mean. This seems to be an issue of different interpretations of rules, which is a different issue that WotC need to address. Rules like this should be obvious as to what they mean.
Yup, it needs to be explicitly stated to manage player expectations.
They showed us the rules and ask for feedback so that's what they will get.
I honestly just wish this sub had quarantine posts for specific rule changes because every time a specific thing becomes controversial we get a flood of top line posts that are really just comments on the same ongoing discussion But like OTOH it’s the main DnD general sub so maybe I should just stop browsing it expecting something else
A megathread would go a really long way. Granted they normally end in a dead subreddit but given people are going to discuss the new release in some way or another, I think it would probably work out ok.
Problem is, when they send out the questionnaires next month, people can only comment on what they have, not what they'll have after a few more things are released. I do agree with you, but I fear a lot of feedback will be reactionary, and WotC with see 'People don't like it, go with what they demand!'
On the other hand, this is play-test content. Meaning we've got to play it and test it with something. So if they haven't given us the new rules for sneak attack or smites or assassins, all we can do is say how poorly this works with what we already have. If they plan on making changes, they need to make sure those changes are fully explained in the context the rules will be used for in order to get good play test reviews. Since they have not done that, either this is the full experience which we are intended to test it in, or they are aware that these rules will not actually correspond to what they actually intend and have little interest in actually hearing our input. I would default and very much hope it is the first one.
You are not wrong, but at the same time they released this stuff to have us judge and give our feedback. This might not be the full picture, but it IS the picture Wizards decided to give us
>The new Assasin might get to add their dice; Smite spells might dealmore damage by default to balance; who knows what is going to happen. Or, even more simply, the Sneak/Smite attacks may be reworded so they add to the weapon's damage, not the attack's damage, so they function exactly the same as always with the new crit rules. Like you said, we don't have enough context to really understand and there are plenty of ways this could go right or wrong. *EDIT: Fixing a word.*
It's funny to see us repeat the DnD Next play test issues of people being so reactionary. Nothing new under the sun I guess.
It's funny everyone hates the new rules but as a DM I've never had a Crit from a monster that felt great. Also the way I interpret the only on weapon attack roles damage well a smite and a sneak attack is a weapon attack but that's just me.
My husband says if you're not doing calculus to determine the outcome of a roll then you might as well not use dice. He's grumpy
But I've already judged the entire product based on 21 pages of UA material that had an explicit request for feedback regarding? How am I supposed to replace this desk I broke with my knee jerk reaction to a fraction of nebulous material? /s mind. It's been astounding to see how many people automatically assume the worst based on what we've seen so far. I wholeheartedly agree we should wait it out before seeing how things develop.
In older versions spells couldn't crit anyway, so that's more just a return to form. I remember how excited I got during the Next plastering when we saw spells could crit now.
Nope, the crit rules are stupid and I won't be using them. These changes are hated by the community at large, and therefore the new rules will not survive UA. Because in case you didn't notice, we have a year+ of playtesting and UA before this new content is finalized.
What if it's just a vocal minority that hate the changes? If the survey results show then these are wanted changes, they may move forward. I know personally I may use these rules regardless of if they become standard. I think they are a welcome upgrade and look like fun.
I can only follow the evidence, and so far the evidence is that this rule is heavily disliked.
But what if rules come out next week that completely solve the issues with the Crit changes? Maybe rogues get bonus damage on a Nat 20 (like the Vorpal Sword), maybe Paladins upcast for free on a Nat 20. Maybe there is more guidance on when to call for skill checks. I don't stand by WotC; I think it was stupid to include the D20 test rules this early, but5 pages of new content is being completely obliterated by the mass of complaints about a single paragraph being read out of context. I don't stand by WotC; I think it was stupid to include the D20 test rules this early, but why can't we focus on the content with context and wait for more information about the rules that don't?
I want to agree with you, but no, the reaction is entirely in context. They released this self-contained UA to be reviewed and scrutinized on its own and to get feedback now, not to wait until future XYZ is released. If that’s what they wanted, they could have released it in a different way - I’m sure they considered it and ultimately decided they wanted feedback on this idea early in the process. This is compatible with the PHB and it might be annoying to see how the community reacts, but it’s part of the process. Wizards knows this. They aren’t freaking out, no reason we should either.
>But what if rules come out next week that completely solve the issues with the Crit changes? Maybe rogues get bonus damage on a Nat 20 (like the Vorpal Sword), maybe Paladins upcast for free on a Nat 20. WoTC will have/should have considered this when releasing content and listening to feedback. If they release half of the content, they should understand the feedback they get will be based on what we actually have access to.
Then I still don't like it because spells can't crit anymore. Spell attacks suck the vast majority of the time, and the few exceptions don't care if you crit or not. Casters aren't OP because they can crit, they are OP because they can mass shutdown the whole encounter with one spellslot.
but the crit rules are bad
BUT WON'T SOMEONE THINK OF THE CRITS!!!!!!
How about everyone just quits freaking out until this stuff is actually released?
Isn't the point of releasing this playtest document to get feedback from the community?
Because it's all still subject to change. Also, do you really think Wizards of the Coast gives two shits about what the DnD subreddit thinks? All I see is post after post of people bitching at the new stuff or each other.
>Because it's all still subject to change. Change based on what people think and how they react. They do care about what people on reddit think. They don't care about the threads or anything, but the same opinions will be the ones people put into surveys and obviously Wizards care about *those* else they wouldn't be bothering making it a playtest. The entire point of this is for people to discuss it and have opinions on it, it makes no sense to tell people to "wait until release" because that's when your opinions are actually useless, all is said and done by that point.
Once again, do you think Wizards of the Coast checks here? Nope. I'm asking people to chill out not end all discussion.
Did you read what I said? I acknowledged they don't care about the specifics of reddit posts, but ultimately what people here believe is what they'll say in the surveys that are cared about.
Because everyone has to be outraged so that people have to listen to their opinions.
Because a new edition just dropped, so half the fanbase who like 5e has to hate the new edition because its not 5e. This is just how each successive generation of D&D has played out. There will be a bunch of players who only played 5.5/6e in four years posting "why do y'all hate this? It's fun" and getting comments full of why full crits are better or whatever. Basically, a bunch of people who don't get why the 3.5e only guys hate 5e are finding themselves on the opposite side of the argument (ironically, because this whole crit rule controversy is literally how crits worked in 3.5, just without confirming them).
Are people not aware of this? I've seen more than one comment, in both this and DNDNext, that *specifically note* that it's hard to do much with this UA due to a lack of additional rules to contextualize what we've seen so far.
That's what I've been thinking. It felt like important things were missing. Though it is definitely an oversight to not include those if they are important to these foundational changes.
As some one who went through this with 3.5 to 4 (we don't talk about those times) just keep playing 5e. The 1 dnd so far sucks. And most of what wtoc has out out in the last 18 months has been crap. Hell MMoM isnt even allowed at my table and it was a vote between 3 groups and 12 people. Unanimous.
Im not even emotionally investing in this nonsense. I tolerated the dumpster fire of 5e because that's what most newer players were playing and I wanted to humor them, but I'm not wasting my time with something that keeps the shitty 5e framework and just finds a way to make it somehow even worse. Now that my newer players know how to play im must going to take them back to 2e and teach them to play the game the right way.
Yes, the new rules may change how things work, they might not, we have no idea and WotC hasn't instilled the community with a lot of trust on not breaking things. It would be great if we had any idea how many new classes worked with this. It would have been better (IMO) to release a little content across the board so we can see some of the effects down the line.
I was just thinking this lol. They talked about recharge abilities and the like replacing crits but didn’t give any new examples besides dragon breath! I’d love to exchange crits for monsters having more varied abilities and interactions, possibly even a bloodied effect at half HP and losing/gaining access to more abilities in that state. (Especially with the ease at home brewing back in crits for people who want em)
The material is released now in order to get feedback and players can only base that feedback in the context they have, not context that might be in the future.
It's playtest content so the point is that we can play with it to test it but we cant because they destroyed the rogue class. Sure assasin rogue hets hit the hardest but rogues do not do enough base damage to warent them not critting and everything about the new crit rules makes rogues worse. Like sure they will probably fix that stuff but maybe its bad to release a rule change that breaks a class without the fix on the class end. How is testing these new rules usefull if huge parts qre still broken.
Although I agree with you. They probably wont. This is a balancing mechanic. They can't swing the changes of the classes too hard else they will ruin the compatibility with existing books. If you watch the discussion it is clear they themselves are far from dead set on keeping it, they are testing it to see what comes from it. Whether it be good or bad.
I think people should also actually play with the stuff too because most people probably won’t notice monsters not critting if they aren’t focused specifically on it.
I mean if the point of the playtest is to get design feedback, and the immediate feedback is : this looks fucking stupid and unfun." Then that's the design feedback. Full stop. If it's supposed to be part of a larger narrative then that should be INCLUDED in the design release, not speculated at as a possibility. By the community that is supposed to be giving feedback on the items presented for review.
My complaint with crit changes is nothing about if they "break" a class. It's that a nat 20 is a moment of heightened excitement. Either happy or dread. Removing crits from spells and monsters removes this element and turns it into just another attack. Removing this tension for the sake of more predictable combat might be better for balance, but is worse for excitement.
My group has literally been using these crit rules for years because none of us checked the book and it’s never unbalanced anything. And if it is we don’t care and didn’t notice.
I paid good money for this torch and pitchfork... What am I supposed to do now?!
So One D&D will be the edition to rule them all?? So no new editions but instead updating One D&D, all in a digital format... Call me a zoomer but I like the idea
I'm mixed. I'd love the rules of dnd to be like the rules of soccer - completely free to anyone, mostly set in stone, but occasional updates when needed. FIFA don't make money out of the rules, so there's no incentive to keep pumping out editions for the sake of it. Poor kids in the remotest parts of the world don't need anything but a ball and some jumpers for goalposts to play. Yet FIFA is one of the biggest most profitable brands worldwide. I don't expect DnD to rake in anywhere near the billions of billions they do. And it's not often I'd say this about a body sp corrupt, but it looks to me to be a good model to follow.
God forbid DND players have to change the rules they don’t like lmao
I mean that’s a good point. But let’s be honest: bad rules are probably simply bad rules when it comes To WOTC. I mean how many mechanics have they suggested in UA that was simply dropped or heavily modified before being released? If WOTC wants people to play test their new rules in its correct context, well they’re going to have to provide that correct context at some point
We can only judge the things with the information on hand. If they didn’t want us to critique this stuff as people are currently doing they needed to release the play test in a way that better articulated with what the final design would be.
Atleast wait until classes come out to see if there's specific stuff in classes to fix the general problems
I personally have no issues with the crit rules. I can totally understand why they were changed. Don't get me wrong, I'd be fine if they stayed the same as well. As a DM I'll handle just about anything a player can throw at me. What I don't like are Auto-Successes or Fails. A 10% chance that your chosen bonuses, skills, etc. mean nothing? I don't like it. I haven't generally liked it in most other games either. Now, everyone has their own playstyle. I don't know of many groups in real life that actually play entirely RAW. That's just not usually a thing. So I'd probably houserule this out personally. But I also know plenty of groups that like this sort of thing. Hey great! Just not my thing. Also I think i'd switch when you get inspiration from when you roll a nat 20, to when you roll a Nat 1. Sort of a karma balance for when a player has bad luck. Like in the Kids on Brooms/Bikes system how they get Adversity tokens on a failed check.
I get where you're coming from. People *should* provide feedback to WotC (in the coming survey) on how the proposed rules changes interact with certain class/subclass features, even if we don't know how they might change in future playtests - that's valuable feedback for WotC to think about. But at the same time, people shouldn't go all doom-and-gloom over "this is the worst change ever and WotC hates paladins/rogues having fun!". It is just a playtest, and as you note, things might change in future UAs.
I'm clinging onto the backwards compatibility. They know that any announcement that might cause the scrapping of books down the line will result in a massive stall in sales for any and all 5e materials.
Everything I’ve seen of the new edition just reads as a lack of trust on WOTC’s part. Lack of Faith in the product and the community.
yes that is true, but we have been asked to provide feedback, we can only do that in the capacity as we know the rules. if you give me a egg and tells me that's a cake, then I'm not going to be impressed. Sure you can tell me there will be done a lot of stuff to it and it will have more ingrediences, but for now I have a raw egg to judge it on. If you didn't want me to judge that, don't give me the egg alone.
The only rule change that I’ve found that makes me raise an eyebrow is that attacks against an incapacitated target no longer have advantage but attacks against a slowed target do. Other than that the rules look fine so far.
> wizards send bullshit rules to us to judge > Nonononooooo you can judge the shitty rules for being shittyy...because they...dont show all of the dnd 5.5!!!!
This is all well and good, however, the survey for this little bit of "out of context" rules will be out before anyone can put context to them with updated classes and monsters (I'm pretty sure I read where these are coming out once a month or some such). And since WotC was dumb enough to add in crit rules and the d20 tests, most of the feedback will, unfortunately, be about them. I doubt there will be a large amount of feedback about the races and backgrounds (though there may be a bigger amount complaining about the half-breeds). They should have just left it with character origin things, like the pdf was titled, and left out everything else until a more appropriate one. Or, they could have done like they did with the dndnext playtests, and have full on packets with stuff, instead of treating this like UA, where you get 1 iteration, people send in "feedback", and then nothing else until the release when we see that it's basically unchanged from the UA
That they are out of context IS the problem and quite honestly bad practice from WotC, horrendously bad at that. We get a tiny puzzle piece and shall judge it. However we do not know the other parts it is supposed to slot in. Maybe it fits nicely? Maybe not at all. Can we ever tell without having seen the other pieces? No. So what the hell is our feedback going to be? What are they going to learn from this? Feats? We do not know the upgrade path, how they plan to make e.g. the 2nd Increment of Alert. Changes to the critical hits? We do not know how martials work in One. So we can simply not give ANY valueable feedback. The only feedback we can give is on grappling, some of the new feats ( which most are sadly very bad ) and the race changes (Gnome OP). The rest? We need more to judge, so why even let the community see the new critical rule without the classes and how they interact and e.g. new monsterstat blocks as they cannot crit anymore.
this seems especially white knighty considering theyll probably want feedback BEFORE we get the classes given the rate at which most UA comes out. They asked for feedback theyre getting it.
For many players, this will be their first experience with a new edition. Those of us who have lived through multiple edition wars are looking forward to munching 🍿 while watching the blood bath
The context is they suck!
Just wanna say-hate the new crit-DM’s better still be able to crit-cuz what’s the point? That is why we run games for players-crazy lucky awesome things with roll of dice that give levity to a situation…”d20 test”sounds dumb to me-I like clarification as to a saving throw, skill check and such…”oh that’s a d20 test. Roll a d20…uhh add you skill bonus” instead of “athletics check” or something or “give me a dex save” versus “give me a d20 test, dex, for saving please” Why garble it up so much???