New OneD&D Playtest Video

[Psyren]

One word: finally!!!


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pthoCnUUcHQ

Highlights:

- Goliath w/ giant heritages was very highly rated
- Revised Dragonborn is now highly rated
- Ardling is out of the PHB. Crawford and other fans love it, but the devs feel they need to introduce it to the multiverse a bit better in a future product rather than them being core.
- Jump Action is out of the rules glossary. It passed the scoring threshold but the comments weren't delighted by it.
- Confirmation that they're on the fence with Eldritch Blast being a spell or Warlock class feature
- More frequent survey feedback videos in 2023 to go along with the packet release videos
- Next UA packet "in a few days", then the following packet will be in April, and then chonkier packets roughly bimonthly after that.
- There will now be a changelog showing what has been removed since the previous packet.

[animorte]

Thanks for the update! Really looking forward the the extra reading. Give us the info with enough time to adjust it properly.

[Oramac]

Thanks for posting!! I hadn't seen it yet.


- Next UA packet "in a few days", then the following packet will be in April, and then chonkier packets roughly bimonthly after that.

So probably either Friday or Monday, I'm guessing. I wonder what it'll be? Warrior classes? Mage Classes? More races? Something else? Only time will tell!

[Psyren]

Thanks for posting!! I hadn't seen it yet.



So probably either Friday or Monday, I'm guessing. I wonder what it'll be? Warrior classes? Mage Classes? More races? Something else? Only time will tell!

My guess would be the remainder of Priest, and maybe the revised Expert stuff, whose feedback which they'll go over in the intro video. But that's just a guess.

Oh, one thing I left out of the highlights which I will edit in:

- Jump Action scored decently well, but when they dug into the feedback, there was a lot of "meh, I could live with this" commentary that undermined the numerical score. So the Jump Action will be removed from the glossary in the next packet while they figure out a better way to accomplish the goal (clearer rules about when and how you can jump) without the heavy cost (an Action.)

[Unoriginal]

One word: finally!!!


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pthoCnUUcHQ


I stopped watching when Crawford started pretending that the Jumping-as-an-action stuff got high score but that once they read the comments they discovered that those comments were "meh" or "I could live with it", and that this is Not Good Enough For The Design Team (TM).

Neither of them could even admit that the Ardling got low scores.

WotC needs to learn to publicly acknowledge their failures rather than trying to sugar-coat and spin it into them having the good role.

[Dr.Samurai]

Any idea what is unclear about the jump rules right now as they are? I think the confusion some people have is simply "what DCs are appropriate to jump further". But the rules for jumping are pretty clear... a number of feet equal to Strength score for a running long jump, half that if you don't move 10ft first, and a number of feet equal to 3+str mod for a vertical jump, or half that if you don't move 10ft first. You can reach a height of your vertical jump +1.5x your height. If you want to clear an obstacle on your long jump, you can clear a height equal to 1/4th your jump distance, with a DC 10 Athletics check. If you jump into difficult terrain, make a DC 10 Acrobatics check to avoid falling prone.

That is from memory. Someone can spot check to see if I remembered something incorrectly. But I'm not sure what requires moving this to an Action. I understand they are backing away from it given the feedback, but not sure what it was solving, or even now what they're trying to solve for.

Glad they're reacting to the feedback on this though (I am genuinely baffled that it scored "decently well").

[BRC]

Any idea what is unclear about the jump rules right now as they are? I think the confusion some people have is simply "what DCs are appropriate to jump further". But the rules for jumping are pretty clear... a number of feet equal to Strength score for a running long jump, half that if you don't move 10ft first, and a number of feet equal to 3+str mod for a vertical jump, or half that if you don't move 10ft first. You can reach a height of your vertical jump +1.5x your height. If you want to clear an obstacle on your long jump, you can clear a height equal to 1/4th your jump distance, with a DC 10 Athletics check. If you jump into difficult terrain, make a DC 10 Acrobatics check to avoid falling prone.

That is from memory. Someone can spot check to see if I remembered something incorrectly. But I'm not sure what requires moving this to an Action. I understand they are backing away from it given the feedback, but not sure what it was solving, or even now what they're trying to solve for.

Glad they're reacting to the feedback on this though (I am genuinely baffled that it scored "decently well").

They're making a bunch of new explicit Actions for in-combat applications of skills (like Search, Study, ect), my guess is they just got overzealous by saying "All uses of skills are actions"

[Unoriginal]

Any idea what is unclear about the jump rules right now as they are?

It's Corporate Can't for "we want to limit and codify 3D movement because it gives PCs too many unpredictable options, and we have to prevent the customers from Making Mistakes (TM)".


(I am genuinely baffled that it scored "decently well").

I am genuinely baffled Crawford is that bad a liar.

[stoutstien]

Any idea what is unclear about the jump rules right now as they are? I think the confusion some people have is simply "what DCs are appropriate to jump further". But the rules for jumping are pretty clear... a number of feet equal to Strength score for a running long jump, half that if you don't move 10ft first, and a number of feet equal to 3+str mod for a vertical jump, or half that if you don't move 10ft first. You can reach a height of your vertical jump +1.5x your height. If you want to clear an obstacle on your long jump, you can clear a height equal to 1/4th your jump distance, with a DC 10 Athletics check. If you jump into difficult terrain, make a DC 10 Acrobatics check to avoid falling prone.

That is from memory. Someone can spot check to see if I remembered something incorrectly. But I'm not sure what requires moving this to an Action. I understand they are backing away from it given the feedback, but not sure what it was solving, or even now what they're trying to solve for.

Glad they're reacting to the feedback on this though (I am genuinely baffled that it scored "decently well").
Probably just the break down with higher movement speeds and jump/falling. Some weird corner cases pop up.



I stopped watching when Crawford started pretending that the Jumping-as-an-action stuff got high score but that once they read the comments they discovered that those comments were "meh" or "I could live with it", and that this is Not Good Enough For The Design Team (TM).

Neither of them could even admit that the Ardling got low scores.

WotC needs to learn to publicly acknowledge their failures rather than trying to sugar-coat and spin it into them having the good role.

Yea they blew past the trust thermocline at mach 5 and it will take them a while to realize that continuing on like nothing happens will be a folly that has, and will, repeat itself.

[animorte]

(I am genuinely baffled that it scored "decently well").
I'm sure far more people are genuinely baffled that they read the comments, even though we've recently had a discussion and proof to the contrary.

[Oramac]

My guess would be the remainder of Priest, and maybe the revised Expert stuff, whose feedback which they'll go over in the intro video. But that's just a guess.

I had to rewatch the video, but at 7:27 he specifically mentioned the Druid and Paladin, so you're probably right about finishing up the Priest classes.

[BeholderEyeDr]

I stopped watching when Crawford started pretending that the Jumping-as-an-action stuff got high score but that once they read the comments they discovered that those comments were "meh" or "I could live with it", and that this is Not Good Enough For The Design Team (TM).

Neither of them could even admit that the Ardling got low scores.

WotC needs to learn to publicly acknowledge their failures rather than trying to sugar-coat and spin it into them having the good role.

This feels unfairly critical. They talked briefly about the ardling in the video, and they made it pretty clear that it wasn't been super well received and even discussed the main reason why. I don't think they need to come out and say "It received 57% satisfied which is below our threshold and here are its feature subscore breakdown" or something. They gave it a couple iterations, people weren't sufficiently satisfied, they discussed why, and they dropped it. To the degree that it was a failure, they said why, owned it, and said that they were therefore leaving it for now. Frankly, that's great process and communication.

As for Jump, this is actually great insight to their process and should be reassuring to anyone who has been skeptical about the devs taking qualitative feedback into account (like the one retracted leak asserted). Remember, their first metric is satisfied vs. unsatisfied. As a professional survey researcher, this is just fine from a survey analysis point of view, provided you keep one key limitation in mind: "satisfied" is somewhat more expansive, in that it includes a somewhat neutral attitude of "well it's fine, but I'm not thrilled." This needs to be teased out with other modes of inquiry, like the qualitative feedback they asked for. It's very likely that the Jump action did reach 70% satisfied overall, but when they dug into the qualitative feedback they found out that that is the situation they were dealing with, as Crawford says in the video. There's no reason to think there's any pretending or lying here: something was rated close to the satisfied threshold, but when they dug into the qualitative feedback they found that it wasn't for the reasons they wanted, so they're dropping it. That's how the process should work.

This video was, to me, a great insight into their process specifically regarding their willingness to iterate on or scrap material that isn't reaching their benchmarks of not just satisfaction, but clarity and enthusiasm, and how they're taking a mixed approach to feedback: quantitative, qualitative, playtest, internet reaction, everything.

[KorvinStarmast]

My guess would be the remainder of Priest, and maybe the revised Expert stuff, whose feedback which they'll go over in the intro video.
- Jump Action scored decently well, but when they dug into the feedback, there was a lot of "meh, I could live with this" commentary that undermined the numerical score. So the Jump Action will be removed from the glossary in the next packet while they figure out a better way to accomplish the goal (clearer rules about when and how you can jump) without the heavy cost (an Action.) Good. That was one of the more egregious errors they had made.

Neither of them could even admit that the Ardling got low scores. The Jump and Ardling stuff might have gotten good scores (or non bad scores) from people who didn't think through those very thoroughly. I do like what he said about introducing the Ardling in another way/form since there is a segment of the player population who likes that idea.

WotC needs to learn to publicly acknowledge their failures rather than trying to sugar-coat and spin it into them having the good role. But that's not gonna happen. Accentuate the Positive!

They're making a bunch of new explicit Actions for in-combat applications of skills (like Search, Study, ect), my guess is they just got overzealous by saying "All uses of skills are actions" Won't bet against that.

It's Corporate Can't for "we want to limit and codify 3D movement because it gives PCs too many unpredictable options, and we have to prevent the customers from Making Mistakes (TM)". That last bit is a part of the problem. And Crawford is being groomed for management, I suspect, hence the use of spin as a tool.

I had to rewatch the video, but at 7:27 he specifically mentioned the Druid and Paladin, so you're probably right about finishing up the Priest classes. Good news. I'd like to see how all three fit together. :smallsmile:

@Psyren: thanks for the overall summary.

- Goliath w/ giant heritages was very highly rated
How will this stack/interfere with Rune Knight?

- Revised Dragonborn is now highly rated
Well, Fizban's also very good, but I guess it is an improvement.

- Ardling is out of the PHB. Crawford and other fans love it, but the devs feel they need to introduce it to the multiverse a bit better in a future product rather than them being core. Good riddance to hot garbage. But OK, bring them in later on, I can see that as a thing like Kenku.

- Confirmation that they're on the fence with Eldritch Blast being a spell or Warlock class feature Happy either way.

- More frequent survey feedback videos in 2023 to go along with the packet release videos Marketing 101.

- Next UA packet "in a few days", then the following packet will be in April, and then chonkier packets roughly bimonthly after that.
OK, hope to review it over the weekend.

- There will now be a changelog showing what has been removed since the previous packet. That's nice. :smallsmile:

[Mastikator]

(I am genuinely baffled that it scored "decently well").

Scores do not always reflect actual opinion.
For example
https://www.boredpanda.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/Amazon-Review-real-5bfc73c443899-png__880.jpg

[Psyren]

I had to rewatch the video, but at 7:27 he specifically mentioned the Druid and Paladin, so you're probably right about finishing up the Priest classes.

Yeah and it's going to be more than that since the packet will be beefy. The only other thing I can think of would be revised Expert stuff, especially since they didn't mention any of that feedback here. (Clearly they have it, since they were discussing the feedback for the subsequent packet!)



Neither of them could even admit that the Ardling got low scores.

To be clear, the Ardling was still in the 60s, we know that because he said in the other video that nothing got below 60s. More people liked it than didn't, it just wasn't enough of a groundswell to clear the threshold for PHB inclusion.


Any idea what is unclear about the jump rules right now as they are? I think the confusion some people have is simply "what DCs are appropriate to jump further". But the rules for jumping are pretty clear... a number of feet equal to Strength score for a running long jump, half that if you don't move 10ft first, and a number of feet equal to 3+str mod for a vertical jump, or half that if you don't move 10ft first. You can reach a height of your vertical jump +1.5x your height. If you want to clear an obstacle on your long jump, you can clear a height equal to 1/4th your jump distance, with a DC 10 Athletics check. If you jump into difficult terrain, make a DC 10 Acrobatics check to avoid falling prone.

That is from memory. Someone can spot check to see if I remembered something incorrectly. But I'm not sure what requires moving this to an Action. I understand they are backing away from it given the feedback, but not sure what it was solving, or even now what they're trying to solve for.

Glad they're reacting to the feedback on this though (I am genuinely baffled that it scored "decently well").

There's also the weird issue of what happens if you try to jump when you don't have enough movement left that turn. Do you hang in midair that round? Fall immediately? Can you exceed your move if you jump at the end? What if you want to jump multiple times in one move?


Scores do not always reflect actual opinion.
For example
https://www.boredpanda.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/Amazon-Review-real-5bfc73c443899-png__880.jpg

To be fair, that's more of an indictment of sample sizes than scores. 40k respondents will tend to mitigate the effects of this sort of thing.

[Brookshw]

Thanks for sharing, looking forward to the next playtest packet.

Tangent, it'll be interesting to see dueling playtest packets between this and KP's PBF, and I'm wondering if/what they may steal from one another.

[Mastikator]

To be fair, that's more of an indictment of sample sizes than scores. 40k respondents will tend to mitigate the effects of this sort of thing.

I've read user reviews for products that get many reviews. Human stupidity is not in short supply and I don't think sample size can mitigate it. Sometimes people give 4/5 on something they don't like because it's not sufficiently disruptive. Sometimes people give 1/5 on something they haven't even seen because their favorite influencer told them it was bad.

[BeholderEyeDr]

Thanks for sharing, looking forward to the next playtest packet.

Tangent, it'll be interesting to see dueling playtest packets between this and KP's PBF, and I'm wondering if/what they may steal from one another.

I'd be shocked if either recognized each other. They seem to be heading in different directions and have totally different design goals. KP in particular seems to be intentionally not doing OneDnD style changes as a point of pride (for better or worse). I'd be willing to bet that if there's any commonality, it's pure coincidence based on working with the same starting system.

[Dienekes]

Well, whenever I become confused by what WotC is doing and the decisions of this playtest, I will be able to remind myself "The Jump Action got more than 60% satisfaction rating."

Actually, what was the cut off? It's closer to 80% isn't it?

[Psyren]

Tangent, it'll be interesting to see dueling playtest packets between this and KP's PBF, and I'm wondering if/what they may steal from one another.

I think you and I have different definitions of "interesting" :smallbiggrin:


Well, whenever I become confused by what WotC is doing and the decisions of this playtest, I will be able to remind myself "The Jump Action got more than 60% satisfaction rating."

Actually, what was the cut off? It's closer to 80% isn't it?

It got at least 70% by score based on his commentary, because that's the threshold.


I've read user reviews for products that get many reviews. Human stupidity is not in short supply and I don't think sample size can mitigate it. Sometimes people give 4/5 on something they don't like because it's not sufficiently disruptive. Sometimes people give 1/5 on something they haven't even seen because their favorite influencer told them it was bad.

I don't know about sample size mitigating "stupidity" - but it certainly can and does mitigate the two examples you just gave.

[Mastikator]

Well, whenever I become confused by what WotC is doing and the decisions of this playtest, I will be able to remind myself "The Jump Action got more than 60% satisfaction rating."

Actually, what was the cut off? It's closer to 80% isn't it?

Below 60% means bad.
60-70 means it can be salvaged
70-80 means it must be tuned/fixed but is on solid ground
80-90 means it is beloved and will only be (slightly) altered for cohesion and balance reasons
90+ means they hit the bullseye

He also mentioned in this interview that they are aware that the survey results are only just that. Results from the people who took the survey, and that they keep an eye on what people write on social media, for whatever that may be worth.

[Dienekes]

It got at least 70% by score based on his commentary, because that's the threshold.



Below 60% means bad.
60-70 means it can be salvaged
70-80 means it must be tuned/fixed but is on solid ground
80-90 means it is beloved and will only be (slightly) altered for cohesion and balance reasons
90+ means they hit the bullseye

He also mentioned in this interview that they are aware that the survey results are only just that. Results from the people who took the survey, and that they keep an eye on what people write on social media, for whatever that may be worth.

Thanks to both of you.

And just really further enforces my main point. The jump action got over 70% satisfaction rating. I'm glad it's going, but I do not have my faith in the testers.

[Psyren]

Regardless, its good to know that a 70% doesn't stop them from diving deeper.

[PhoenixPhyre]

To be fair, that's more of an indictment of sample sizes than scores. 40k respondents will tend to mitigate the effects of this sort of thing.

#pedantry

Well....not really. There's a well-known phenomenon in marketing around satisfaction scores that has to do with some underlying psychology and it's held up for things with millions of reviews (such as movies). Basically, on a 10-point scale (the effect applies to other scales but obviously not with the same numbers), a 9 or 10 is positive, a 7 or 8 is neutral, and anything below that is negative.

On a star scale, 5 stars is positive, 4 is neutral. 3- is negative. And there really isn't any trend as to whether a 3 is really better than a 1 across people.

Effectively, people rarely actually give their actual numerical feedback. They tend very high. CF NPS scores. Effectively, Likert scales can be very deceptive if interpreted at face value.

I'd hope that they'd be interpreting things in this light.

[Psyren]

#pedantry

Well....not really. There's a well-known phenomenon in marketing around satisfaction scores that has to do with some underlying psychology and it's held up for things with millions of reviews (such as movies). Basically, on a 10-point scale (the effect applies to other scales but obviously not with the same numbers), a 9 or 10 is positive, a 7 or 8 is neutral, and anything below that is negative.

On a star scale, 5 stars is positive, 4 is neutral. 3- is negative. And there really isn't any trend as to whether a 3 is really better than a 1 across people.

Effectively, people rarely actually give their actual numerical feedback. They tend very high. CF NPS scores. Effectively, Likert scales can be very deceptive if interpreted at face value.

I'd hope that they'd be interpreting things in this light.

#equal pedantry

The specific example I was responding to was "thing has an average rating of 60% because of one person who grossly misinterpreted what a 1 star rating means." When that one person's mistake carries a third of the vote, the sampling error is very high.

[PhoenixPhyre]

#equal pedantry

The specific example I was responding to was "thing has an average rating of 60% because of one person who grossly misinterpreted what a 1 star rating means." When that one person's mistake carries a third of the vote, the sampling error is very high.

Pedantry accepted.

[Atranen]

Bad news for me--right at the start, we hear "Cleric--high score". That's enough to be a deal-breaker for me in terms of whether I'll switch to OneD&D or not. I played one in a playtest recently and was really disappointed with it in action.

He does say they will spend more time looking into the details later, so there might still be hope.

At least if it's backwards compatible I can use the 5e Cleric :smalltongue: But I'm not expecting that to be legal in Organized Play for so long.

Good on the team for pulling the Ardling. I think it's fine as a non-core species and hope they can find a way to include it.

[Kane0]

- Ardling is out of the PHB. Crawford and other fans love it, but the devs feel they need to introduce it to the multiverse a bit better in a future product rather than them being core.
- Jump Action is out of the rules glossary. It passed the scoring threshold but the comments weren't delighted by it.

Huzzah!
10char

[Ignimortis]

- Goliath w/ giant heritages was very highly rated
- Revised Dragonborn is now highly rated
Certainly not because of my votes. Then again, I simply do not care for expanded race options. Elves have always been enough for me.


- Ardling is out of the PHB. Crawford and other fans love it, but the devs feel they need to introduce it to the multiverse a bit better in a future product rather than them being core.
Good. No sense in them being core. If you really wanted anti-Tieflings, should've put Aasimar in, they're simple and easy to work with.


- Jump Action is out of the rules glossary. It passed the scoring threshold but the comments weren't delighted by it.
Best news so far, though I'm very iffy on the scoring threshold if it did pass that.


- Confirmation that they're on the fence with Eldritch Blast being a spell or Warlock class feature

I see literally no reason for EB to be anything but a warlock class feature. None whatsoever.


- There will now be a changelog showing what has been removed since the previous packet.
Useful.

[Joe the Rat]

#pedantry

Well....not really. There's a well-known phenomenon in marketing around satisfaction scores that has to do with some underlying psychology and it's held up for things with millions of reviews (such as movies). Basically, on a 10-point scale (the effect applies to other scales but obviously not with the same numbers), a 9 or 10 is positive, a 7 or 8 is neutral, and anything below that is negative.

On a star scale, 5 stars is positive, 4 is neutral. 3- is negative. And there really isn't any trend as to whether a 3 is really better than a 1 across people.

Effectively, people rarely actually give their actual numerical feedback. They tend very high. CF NPS scores. Effectively, Likert scales can be very deceptive if interpreted at face value.

I'd hope that they'd be interpreting things in this light.

It's good to see they are keeping fairly stringent on what's "good" and what's "probably good, but we need to dig in to see why it's so-so." NPS-level satisfaction is a good start.

Action Jump is a good example of why you should comment - when things come out on the breakpoint, you want to see what the responses are.

[Psyren]

@ all those celebrating the Ardling's demise (ding! dong!), I thought it was telling that they didn't mention the Aasimar either. Maybe the Aasimar will be placed in the DMG again, but the revised MPMM version this time. That would give Tieflings their core counterpart without the race who can fly at level 1 being a baseline option.


Bad news for me--right at the start, we hear "Cleric--high score". That's enough to be a deal-breaker for me in terms of whether I'll switch to OneD&D or not. I played one in a playtest recently and was really disappointed with it in action.

Out of curiosity, what disappointed you about it? (I have my own criticisms of it to be clear.)

[Atranen]

Out of curiosity, what disappointed you about it? (I have my own criticisms of it to be clear.)

At the level I played (5), they still don't have a thematic channel divinity option, which harms the feeling that you are 'the priest of deity X'. The only thing the subclass (life) has is some domain spells (which you could take anyway) and a small buff to healing spells (noteworthy but passive), so there's nothing active that feels like "I am a cleric of X".

I suspect this to be an even worse problem at level 1; the fact that it's still a problem at 5 is really discouraging.

[ZRN]

This feels unfairly critical. They talked briefly about the ardling in the video, and they made it pretty clear that it wasn't been super well received and even discussed the main reason why. I don't think they need to come out and say "It received 57% satisfied which is below our threshold and here are its feature subscore breakdown" or something. They gave it a couple iterations, people weren't sufficiently satisfied, they discussed why, and they dropped it. To the degree that it was a failure, they said why, owned it, and said that they were therefore leaving it for now. Frankly, that's great process and communication.

As for Jump, this is actually great insight to their process and should be reassuring to anyone who has been skeptical about the devs taking qualitative feedback into account (like the one retracted leak asserted). Remember, their first metric is satisfied vs. unsatisfied. As a professional survey researcher, this is just fine from a survey analysis point of view, provided you keep one key limitation in mind: "satisfied" is somewhat more expansive, in that it includes a somewhat neutral attitude of "well it's fine, but I'm not thrilled." This needs to be teased out with other modes of inquiry, like the qualitative feedback they asked for. It's very likely that the Jump action did reach 70% satisfied overall, but when they dug into the qualitative feedback they found out that that is the situation they were dealing with, as Crawford says in the video. There's no reason to think there's any pretending or lying here: something was rated close to the satisfied threshold, but when they dug into the qualitative feedback they found that it wasn't for the reasons they wanted, so they're dropping it. That's how the process should work.

This video was, to me, a great insight into their process specifically regarding their willingness to iterate on or scrap material that isn't reaching their benchmarks of not just satisfaction, but clarity and enthusiasm, and how they're taking a mixed approach to feedback: quantitative, qualitative, playtest, internet reaction, everything.

Yeah, I think the cynicism from some posters here is a bit misplaced. Like, how would you like it if your boss went on the internet to a million angry nerds and said, "Wow, Tim's project only got a 57%, below our 70% threshold. What a piece of crap! THAT'LL never see the light of day!" It's perfectly reasonable for them to remain mostly positive while they're explaining their process, which after all it's not like they even have to do.

[Sigreid]

Yeah, I think the cynicism from some posters here is a bit misplaced. Like, how would you like it if your boss went on the internet to a million angry nerds and said, "Wow, Tim's project only got a 57%, below our 70% threshold. What a piece of crap! THAT'LL never see the light of day!" It's perfectly reasonable for them to remain mostly positive while they're explaining their process, which after all it's not like they even have to do.
Nah, us really angry nerds have already checked out and they don't hear from us.

[Saelethil]

@ all those celebrating the Ardling's demise (ding! dong!), I thought it was telling that they didn't mention the Aasimar either. Maybe the Aasimar will be placed in the DMG again, but the revised MPMM version this time. That would give Tieflings their core counterpart without the race who can fly at level 1 being a baseline option.


I keep seeing people referencing Aasimar’s 1st level flight but as far as I know they’ve always gotten it at 3rd. Is there an updated version I haven’t seen? If they get it at 1st level I agree that it belongs in the DMG but the most recent Dragonborn got limited flight at 5th so maybe they have other reasons for not wanting them in the PHB?

[Psyren]

At the level I played (5), they still don't have a thematic channel divinity option, which harms the feeling that you are 'the priest of deity X'. The only thing the subclass (life) has is some domain spells (which you could take anyway) and a small buff to healing spells (noteworthy but passive), so there's nothing active that feels like "I am a cleric of X".

I suspect this to be an even worse problem at level 1; the fact that it's still a problem at 5 is really discouraging.

I hear you but I suspect the primary issue here is the Life domain itself; by necessity its domain spells and entry feature are just going to be "cleric, but more" due to its vanilla healbot nature. If instead we had the Light domain's Warding Flare, Scorching Ray and Fireball, I suspect you'd feel much more different from other clerics at level 5 even without the CD coming online yet.


Nah, us really angry nerds have already checked out and they don't hear from us.

Have you/they though? :smallsigh:


I keep seeing people referencing Aasimar’s 1st level flight but as far as I know they’ve always gotten it at 3rd. Is there an updated version I haven’t seen? If they get it at 1st level I agree that it belongs in the DMG but the most recent Dragonborn got limited flight at 5th so maybe they have other reasons for not wanting them in the PHB?

My bad but that doesn't exactly hurt the point. Dragonborn have showed us they feel even 1/day flight should be at 5th. Doing that with Aasimar would require yet another redesign when they've already had 3 or 4.

[Atranen]

I hear you but I suspect the primary issue here is the Life domain itself; by necessity its domain spells and entry feature are just going to be "cleric, but more" due to its vanilla healbot nature. If instead we had the Light domain's Warding Flare, Scorching Ray and Fireball, I suspect you'd feel much more different from other clerics at level 5 even without the CD coming online yet.

True, but it doesn't get around the fact that a 5th level light cleric is less 'light cleric' and more 'generic cleric' than in 5e. This is a strictly worse change for not much benefit. They could give the CD option at 3, for example.

[Psyren]

True, but it doesn't get around the fact that a 5th level light cleric is less 'light cleric' and more 'generic cleric' than in 5e. This is a strictly worse change for not much benefit. They could give the CD option at 3, for example.

Fair enough, I'm not opposed to swapping 3 and 6 if that helps. Personally I feel like a "X Cleric" either way but I might end up being in the minority there.

[Zevox]

Huh, I must admit I'm surprised to hear the Aardling is gone from their plans. I was fully expecting the more animal-centric versions to be more popular than the thematically scatter-shot first version. Pleased to see it, though; as I've always said, they don't seem like a PHB race to me. Would be nice if they now do the obvious thing and add the Aasimar in their place, but either way, good decision I'd say.

Not really much else to say right now. As someone who counts Paladin as one his two favorite classes (the other is Wizard) though, seeing the new version of that may be enlightening. They say they're looking for the fans of each class to feel like the changes make them noticeably more fun - time to see if they've done that for me.

[Saelethil]

The Druid and Paladin play test comes out tomorrow. The next play test after that will be in April to allow for more feedback time. Play test will also be a lot meatier starting with the April play test.

I would be surprised if the upcoming one didn’t have updates to the Expert classes as well.

[Psyren]

I would be surprised if the upcoming one didn’t have updates to the Expert classes as well.

That's definitely my hope. Especially to see if they updated the rogue, it's in dire need of help prior to 13.

[Saelethil]

That's definitely my hope. Especially to see if they updated the rogue, it's in dire need of help prior to 13.

It’s been a while since I read through any of that UA but I remember most of my problems being with the subclasses.

[Segev]

On jump...

If I had to guess what they find "unclear," it's things like whether you can jump more than once in a single move, whether you can jump near the end of a move and continue the same jump next turn without touching down, etc. I fear that they're going to go - based on the "jump is an action" attempt they made - in the direction of, "All jumps must be completed in the turn they happen." That way, I think, lies unfortunate amounts of gameplay interference with the world it is modeling.

My personal stance is that there's absolutely nothing wrong with a jump that remains incomplete between turns, with the creature "hovering in mid-air" in place. It makes no less sense than a creature who's running towards or away from a fight "stopping between turns" when he's really running continuously. The jumping creature isn't really hovering in mid-air. The "snapshot" of where he is when his just happened to go off while he was in the air. The next snapshot will probably show him on the ground somewhere, having finished the jump and moved into position for whatever he was jumping someplace to do.

The only thing I would ask for from WotC in terms of updating Jumping rules for "OneD&D" is that they give some sort of guidance as to just how much further a "successful" Strength(Athletics) check should let you jump than your baseline. And what "successful" means. A formula would be particularly lovely. "You can jump an additional foot for every point by which you exceed a DC 15 check," for example, would be a useful formula. (Not saying that should BE the formula, just giving an example of what a formula might be.) Another could be, "You can jump an additional foot for every 5 points you score on the check."

[MoiMagnus]

My personal stance is that there's absolutely nothing wrong with a jump that remains incomplete between turns, with the creature "hovering in mid-air" in place. It makes no less sense than a creature who's running towards or away from a fight "stopping between turns" when he's really running continuously. The jumping creature isn't really hovering in mid-air. The "snapshot" of where he is when his just happened to go off while he was in the air. The next snapshot will probably show him on the ground somewhere, having finished the jump and moved into position for whatever he was jumping someplace to do.

I'd love WotC to openly take a clearer stance on "rounds being simultaneous and successive turns being an approximation" vs "turns being actually consecutive in-universe". This has an influence on jump as if they choose the former, it's totally fine for jumps to end mid-air. But this also has an influence on what happen when you need to "roll for initiative" at the middle of a character's sequence of actions.

Though I'm fine with just having some paragraphs about both methods in the DMG if they want to keep the game open to both (maybe they is already some? I've failed to find any in my quick search)

[Sigreid]

Have you/they though? :smallsigh:


Yep. Once in a while I look at a thread to laugh at the crap show, but I'm lost to them. It doesn't matter what they do.

[Psyren]

Yep. Once in a while I look at a thread to laugh at the crap show, but I'm lost to them. It doesn't matter what they do.

Suuuuure thing.


It’s been a while since I read through any of that UA but I remember most of my problems being with the subclasses.

Those need a lot of work too, yeah. But Rogue in particular had the most base class problems - having lost both their Reaction SA and Steady Aim, they've taken a significant step back from where they were in 5e, and Subtle Strikes doesn't make up for it as it comes too close to the end of most campaigns.

[PhoenixPhyre]

Suuuuure thing. 👍


Nice sarcasm. Pity it's not justified.


Yep. Once in a while I look at a thread to laugh at the crap show, but I'm lost to them. It doesn't matter what they do.

I'm with Sigreid (mostly)--I didn't even respond to the last survey because I looked at the content and had already made my "yeah, not interested" decision. If, after it's released fully, it turns out to be great...then I might reconsider. But so far they've shown no indication that their ideas of what needs changing (and more importantly how it should change) matches mine. They're changing lots of stuff that works just fine, mostly (IMO) for the worse (or at best neutral). And not actually showing any indication of making the things that I see as rough spots any better. In fact, they're doubling down on what I consider flaws.

They could do a perfect job and make their changes amazing. But it won't matter, because I disagree with the underlying philosophy of what should change and what those changes should look like.

[Hael]

I'm worried they are taking 'survey' results too literally (particularly b/c they are implemented in about the most amateurish way possible). Like the cleric could score highly in their setup, but if they ask another question like 'do you prefer the 5e cleric', they might get results they won't be happy with.

[Unoriginal]

but if they ask another question like 'do you prefer the 5e cleric', they might get results they won't be happy with.

Which is why they're not asking those questions.

[Psyren]

Nice sarcasm. Pity it's not justified.

"I'm going to continually check in on threads about {thing} to show everyone just how little I care about it" is not a position I can take particularly seriously, no.


I'm worried they are taking 'survey' results too literally (particularly b/c they are implemented in about the most amateurish way possible). Like the cleric could score highly in their setup, but if they ask another question like 'do you prefer the 5e cleric', they might get results they won't be happy with.

They already asked about 5e cleric though, there was an entire series of PHB surveys prior to the OneD&D playtest even beginning.

[Hael]

They already asked about 5e cleric though, there was an entire series of PHB surveys prior to the OneD&D playtest even beginning.

Yes, and that's a completely different questionnaire with its own scale and so you can't relate the two. Someone might be tempted to do just that, but that would be an example of the sort of thing that is a major statistical faux pas.

[Goobahfish]

I watched the whole video... at the end, I wasn't sure I learned anything other than... no Ardlings and people like Goliaths!

There is only so much they can rehash their 'methodology'.

[Sigreid]

"I'm going to continually check in on threads about {thing} to show everyone just how little I care about it" is not a position I can take particularly seriously, no.


Sure, because nobody gets bored at their desk job and randomly clicks on items on the forum they're subscribed to...

[Psyren]

I watched the whole video... at the end, I wasn't sure I learned anything other than... no Ardlings and people like Goliaths!

There is only so much they can rehash their 'methodology'.

There was more than that:

- Next packet in less than a week, will contain Paladin and Druid among other things
- Following packet in April, both promised to be beefy
- People liked Cleric
- Jump Action out
- Packets will contain changelog of new and cut items going forward

[Dienekes]

By the way, new packet's out.

Quick glance: Wild Shape is Channel Nature now. They've also done that thing where they create incredibly generic and flavorless stat blocks for all creatures and tell you to just roleplay that it's whatever you want it to be. Which, I'll admit, I'm not really a fan of. But it probably makes it easier to balance.

[BeholderEyeDr]

There was more than that:

- Next packet in less than a week, will contain Paladin and Druid among other things
- Following packet in April, both promised to be beefy
- People liked Cleric
- Jump Action out
- Packets will contain changelog of new and cut items going forward

I also found it helpful for them to clarify their methodology through examples, specifically how they handle low-satisfaction-threshold items. After two iterations of ardlings, the consistent low satisfaction (mid/high 60s or so, possibly low 70s at most on the second iteration one would guess), coupled with the qualitative feedback they were receiving (in the survey and elsewhere), led them to scrap them for now even though they were in the "salvageable" tier of satisfaction. Similarly, the Jump action reportedly scored adequately on satisfaction, but the qualitative feedback was such that it didn't actually meaningfully add to or help the game in the ways they were hoping. I find this glimpse into their process both interesting and heartening. Probably not everyone will care about that, and instead just want the new stuff; that's fine. But I liked it, and think more communication about the design process is generally a good thing.

[Atranen]

Fair enough, I'm not opposed to swapping 3 and 6 if that helps. Personally I feel like a "X Cleric" either way but I might end up being in the minority there.

It helps, but it doesn't fix the problem, as even with the change a level 2 cleric in 5e has more thematic abilities than a level 5 cleric in OneD&D. It's a classic case of something not being broken, so why fix it?


By the way, new packet's out.

Quick glance: Wild Shape is Channel Nature now. They've also done that thing where they create incredibly generic and flavorless stat blocks for all creatures and tell you to just roleplay that it's whatever you want it to be. Which, I'll admit, I'm not really a fan of. But it probably makes it easier to balance.

I'm just looking through druid now. A lot to digest. I'm not a fan of "Channel Nature", which sounds and feels too similar to the cleric. I don't care for the generic beast forms either. I doubt that being easier to run at the table makes it worth it, and it takes some of the fun out of playing druid.

Good to note they responded to feedback about weak epic boons and PB/day mechanics working poorly with multiclasses.

[animorte]

I'm just looking through druid now. A lot to digest. I'm not a fan of "Channel Nature", which sounds and feels too similar to the cleric.
To be fair, some people just claim it should be a Cleric subclass anyway, which I don't necessarily support.

At first glance, it sounds silly, but it may open up more thematic presence. I haven't read through much yet though. I'll get back to ya!

[Joe the Rat]

By the way, new packet's out.

Quick glance: Wild Shape is Channel Nature now. They've also done that thing where they create incredibly generic and flavorless stat blocks for all creatures and tell you to just roleplay that it's whatever you want it to be. Which, I'll admit, I'm not really a fan of. But it probably makes it easier to balance.

I need to dig in more, but renaming the Druid Special Ability Resource does a nice job of de-emphasizing turning into bears as what druids are about. It opens space for Nature's Aid, and makes Wildfire less of a semantic standout. It's fiddly, but I appreciate it. (Is Primal or Primeval Channel a better name?)

Where I see a big beef coming up is the slightly subtly introduced changes to wildshape: No Tiny Spiders until 11th, and No wildshape HP buffer.

[Segev]

I need to dig in more, but renaming the Druid Special Ability Resource does a nice job of de-emphasizing turning into bears as what druids are about. It opens space for Nature's Aid, and makes Wildfire less of a semantic standout. It's fiddly, but I appreciate it. (Is Primal or Primeval Channel a better name?) I agree, largely. Pity that the vast majority of Druid class features now modify Wild Shape (and do so in ways that leave it weaker than 5e's version at all levels).

I think the name is...okay...but would not fault anybody for wanting something better. "Tap Primal Energy" or "Primal Surge," perhaps?


Where I see a big beef coming up is the slightly subtly introduced changes to wildshape: No Tiny Spiders until 11th, and No wildshape HP buffer.

I acknowledge that "Tiny" is actually much more powerful than the old rules gave it credit for, just by virtue of "it looks innocuous. Are they REALLY going to assume something's off?" But level 11 is ridiculous. And no hp buffer, even on the moon druid, when wild shape is clearly still meant to be "get in and mix it up?" Coupled to wild shape stripping you of armor and shield, for likely a lower AC? That's going to make druids too fragile to play the role they're designed to play.

[KorvinStarmast]

It helps, but it doesn't fix the problem, as even with the change a level 2 cleric in 5e has more thematic abilities than a level 5 cleric in OneD&D. It's a classic case of something not being broken, so why fix it? Not gonna argue, but they felt they had to have all of the "you are a subclass now at level 3" harmonized across all classes. Something was going to change.

To be fair, some people just claim it should be a Cleric subclass anyway, which I don't necessarily support. Works for me, but they are not going to do that, see "primal spell list" for why.