D&D 5th Editon Discussion: 6th thread and counting

[AgentPaper]

On specializations, I'd see it as something like an intro deck for Magic: The Gathering. An intro deck, if you don't know, is simply a pre-packaged deck of cards that you can start playing with out of the box, specifically designed to allow a new player jump into the game as quickly and painlessly as possible.

Importantly for the comparison, the deck isn't optimized to be the best deck possible, or even all that great of a deck. It's designed to be functional, easy to play with, and comparable in power to other intro decks, so if you and a buddy both pick one up, you can play against each other and be somewhat evenly matched.

There are also a few specifically selected "bad" cards thrown in, which either don't fit with the way the deck works all that well, or are just underpowered to start with. The idea is, these are meant to be cards that the new player will realize are bad after just a few games, and then replace with a much better card that they got from somewhere else. Once the player has made that first swap, the deck becomes "theirs", and they are much more likely to look for other cards that might not be pulling their weight.

I think a very similar approach could be used for Specialties. They would be designed so that a player can quickly jump in and start playing a character, and they would be set up so that their character makes sense and works, but the specialties would be purposefully not optimized, with a few strategically placed "bad" feats to help encourage the player to choose something else. Once the player has chosen their own feat and tread off the "beaten path", so to speak, they'll come to see the character as "theirs".

Of course, the approach shouldn't be exactly the same. Some players just plain don't want to mess around with character customization, so the specialties should be set up to be viable, if not optimal. But even those who think they just hate character customization may find that they like it when the introduction to it is more gentle. They might find they want to change just one feat to this other feat, and then get hooked and start looking up more feats they could swap to, until their character is wholly their own. Or they might be happy with that one swap, which is also fine.


Anyways, I just wanted to say that Specialties can and will serve a very vital role to the game. Even if you're a veteran, or a new player who jumps straight into customization, they will have an important impact on the game for you because they will increase the fanbase, and the more people playing, the more likely you can get a group to play with, or one that's closer to you, or has people you like better in it, etc. It also means WotC is more likely to make niche/situational/complex feats that they might not have for fear of a new player grabbing them and having a bad experience because they don't understand why to take it/when to use it/how it works.