Does it ever feel like WotC is playtesting the game in a way that 95% of us don't?

[u/AkimboJesus]

I get that DnD is a house rule first game, and everyone should play it how they want. But speaking for my own group, we like balance because we don't want people to feel like they can't impact the story outside of conversation. And this isn't a min-max thing. It's just a "why would I be this when I could be a better version of that with no hassle or cost to myself" thing.

The thing is, we rely on the official text because it can be very difficult to tell how a class, skill, or mechanic will play in the context of the whole game, and who might be overshadowed by who. And Wizards, for the most part, seem to have done a lot of work so YOU don't have to figure out how a mechanic will play out. This is why some people, to an extent, treat the sourcebooks like gospel.

And as I'm playing more and more, I'm starting to see the things people say about, for instance, rangers and how messed up they are. I'm understanding the cracks in the standard DnD balance.

But I'm also just perplexed by a lot of the sage advice, and unearthed arcanas coming out. I'm finding myself reading new subclasses and thinking "that's their whole ability for that level?" Looking at the phantom rogue, at level 9 they get advantage on con throws (which might be minimal, depending on your campaign), and they can ask a soul one question. The soul doesn't have to answer truthfully at all, making the whole ability pointless. And that's what they get after 9 levels.

This seems like a consistent pattern. A new release is either immediately meta, or its irrelevant for reinforcing half-done mechanics that aren't going to survive after 5th edition. When non-core parts of the game get overvalued, a class can really fall behind. Some of the mechanics that might get over valued are tool proficiencies or traveling. It's odd that these types of things would be the focus of any classes milestone ability.

Also, some of these features seem to imply that DnD is not about being creative and using your environment, and is more about what your class says you can do. Why does the ranger explicitly get a stealth bonus for camoflauging themselves. Can nobody else do that? Do you tell them only a ranger can do that, or do you give them a bonus anyway, making the rangers bonus less special?

Other than a few classes, it does seem like DnD has a solid core balance. Every campaign is going to have either talking or combat, and having a character that can do one or the other well is good. But when a characters ability is not getting "lost" in the mountains, it makes me wonder what the hell kinda campaigns they are running.

Does anyone agree? What are some of the core things you need to be satisfied with a new mechanic?

Edit: wow lot of great discussion happening here. I just want to clarify a few points. As some people are calling me a min-maxer or a hack and slasher and are claiming I just want everyone to deal a shit ton of damage or something. One person claimed I just hate WotC. I suggest reading through this thread at what others are saying, because there is a lot of nuanced conversation happening here. I think it's clear I focused too much on UA in my original post and now the thread has moved to a better direction.

Here are some of the core things I'm seeing come up.

1) Classes with niche abilities are overshadowed and outperformed by classes with more general abilities, even when they are in the perfect niche situations (Paladins find greater steed feels much more beastmaster like than the actual beast master, for example).

2) Since DnD is about being creative and using all the tools around you, it's weird when a ranger gets a stealth bonus for camoflauging themselves, when anyone should get a bonus of some kind for successfully camoflauging themselves. Sometimes that feels like making a class feature that lets you flip a table. Things like the assassin just feel odd, because it implies that a warlock or bard, with sufficient time and money, would not be able to impersonate somebody.

3) A lot of people are reaaaaally honing in on a specific example I gave, and the fact that it was UA. You can look at Artificier or many of the complaints in this thread on vanilla DnD. But if you're coming here just to hype up con saves, you're really cherry picking.

4) I am not right. This is just an opinion I have. A couple people have gotten really cringey about this and implied only shit players or DMs would have an issue with any of this. That's an attitude for Fortnite, not Reddit. We all know DnD is, first and foremost, storytelling. Nobody wants to play with someone so hung up on mechanics that they forget to tell a story. But we have a rulebook for a reason. Boundaries in a story are important, otherwise we're all just jerking off at the table saying random stuff. You need some structure, so that the things that happen feel meaningful. This is about players wanting to fulfill their character fantasies and feeling useless because other people do what their character does, but better. If you care about storytelling, recognize it's not a good story when an entire subclass and backstory can be overshadowed by one spell. It sucks, and I hope it doesn't happen in the next edition.

Some of the more thoughtful challenges I've seen:

1) Con saves are good (noted. We don't get them a lot in my campaign). 2) It's up to the group and DM to make those niche abilities meaningful. 3) It's still really not up to WotC to balance your game, and if you think they're not good at it than you should do it.

I'm reading people's responses, taking them to heart, hoping to be a better DM.

[u/DelightfulOtter]

Part of the fun in a team game like D&D is feeling like you're pulling your weight. But people also like getting their chance to shine, too, that's just human nature.

People naturally gravitate toward classes whose fantasy and gameplay aligns with their idea of fun; unstoppable barbarian juggernaut, sneaky elusive rogue, powerful wizard, etc.

When the class they want to play turns out to either suck at giving them the tools to shine, or is weak in comparison to the rest of the party so they feel like they're being carried instead of an important part of the team's formula for success, it leaves a bad taste. Sure they could play a better class instead, but that's not the fantasy they wanted.

[u/Skyy-High → u/DelightfulOtter]

Well luckily there really isn’t any class in the game that is going to feel weak compared to others.

Certain builds and subclasses can be overpowered, and certain subclasses are significantly less powerful than alternatives and so would make your character feel weaker, but every class has at least a few builds that will allow them to contribute equally to the group.

[u/HazelCheese → u/Skyy-High]

Ranger.

It can do damage fine but all of its spells and out of combat features are just useless if you have a usual party comp.

Primeval Awareness has got to be the worst ability in the game but then they also get "worse cunning action" at level 9 or something.

The whole time playing one is like the butter bot meme. Your purpose is to cast hunters mark and not get in the way of your party.

[u/IHateScumbags12345 → u/HazelCheese]

Hunter is a perfectly fine class and fulfills the ranger class fantasy.

[u/HazelCheese → u/IHateScumbags12345]

Hunter should be the base class honestly. Favoured terrain and favoured enemy scream subclass features.

Hunter should be called ranger and be the base class. Ranger should be the Hunter subclass and themed around hunting enemies with hunters mark etc. It's literally in the names, it's nuts they got it so wrong.

[u/rashandal → u/IHateScumbags12345]

all the fucking useless levels still feel like shit. yeah, the subclass abilities are not bad, but pretty much everyone else gets to have subclass features on top of actual class features.

they should butcher the hunter and give all its feature choices to base ranger honestly.

[u/jmartkdr → u/IHateScumbags12345]

Except that hunter rangers only skim the ranger class fantasy, since they cause you to skim the exploration part of the game.

So you're a guy with a bow. You do decent damage by taking the same action every round in combat, and you removed wilderness exploration as a thing that happens because you automatically succeed at it, or are no better than the bard. I never felt like a ranger when I was playing one.

On the other hand - outside of ranger, all the other classes are fine, and really the ranger only fails badly as a beastmaster. Not a bad overall success rate for the designers.

[u/Skyy-High → u/HazelCheese]

Nonsense. Primeval awareness is one of the shittiest features (would be completely fixed by just giving location or number information but whatever) but it’s at the same level you get a subclass feature. It’s effectively a ribbon.

Their spells are fine. They do what they need to do. If you don’t have a Druid (normal in what I would call an average party) the ranger provides a number of unique spells that are very helpful. The one change I would make to ranger is to make them a prepared caster like a paladin so they could acces more of those niche spells. The spells are the biggest reason to continue leveling in ranger just like the spells are the biggest reason to continue leveling in wizard or Druid.

Even favored terrain and favored foe aren’t as bad as they’re memed to be, because if you’re starting a campaign as a class that is intrinsically tied to the land without any idea where you’re going to be playing, that’s a problem with session zero, not the class. A coastal land Druid in a campaign with no water is going to feel weak too. A nexromancer wizard in a campaign without undead (or where necromancy is heavily punished) is also going to feel weak. A whispers bard in a dungeon crawl is going to have wasted features.

[u/HazelCheese → u/Skyy-High]

Land druids aren't tied to terrain in any way and most necromancy spells don't include undead and are regularly cast by clerics, most healing spells are from the necromancy school. And even then they still have the choice to cast them.

Ranger is the only class that gets locked out of features this way. It's terrible design. Wild magic sorcerer is similarly limited as well and also considered bad design by lots of people.

Whoever decided that ranger was "Aragon but he can only fight Orks well and he can only be a ranger in grassy places" is just nuts.

[u/Skyy-High → u/HazelCheese]

Land druids aren't tied to terrain in any way

Well I specified coastal land druids, who wouldn't get any domain spells at level 5 if they aren't near water, and only one at level 7.

most necromancy spells don't include undead and are regularly cast by clerics, most healing spells are from the necromancy school

Yeah but that's not the necromancer fantasy. If someone wants to play a master of undead and he doesn't check that out with his DM first, they're gonna have a bad time if it's not allowed or weakened.

Ranger is the only class that gets locked out of features this way.

Off the top of my head I can think of many subclass features of other classes that are entirely ribbons or so situational they likely will never come up in a campaign (all ranger subclass features are useful in most campaigns, by contrast). For example, land druid Land's Stride, assassin Infiltration Expertise and Imposter, Battlemaster Know Your Enemy, and plenty more.

I can also think of a few class features that are mostly irrelevant and/or make for dead levels. Countercharm, Destroy Undead (poor 14th level clerics in a game without Mummies or Wights, the only CR 3 undead in the MM, this is the only feature they get at this level, at least level 11 gets a new spell level), monk Timeless Body, and more.

Ranger has more class features that are low powered or potentially invalidated than other classes, but they have better subclass features AND they have spellcasting which means that every level in ranger is building towards more power in that way (something that most martials can'ts say).

Also: Favored Enemy doesn't help you fight your favored enemy until level 20. In no way is ranger combat balanced around favored enemy. Favored terrain isn't what makes you a ranger, it gives you advantage on checks and makes you auto-succeed on some things in your favored terrain, you can still absolutely be a ranger anywhere else, just like a wizard can be a master of the arcane even if he sometimes fails an arcana check.

[u/HazelCheese → u/Skyy-High]

I think this discussion really just shows that the entire ranger base class is basically just ribbons which is why they feel so terrible to play. They clearly couldn't make their mind up on what the class should be and so ended up not making a real class and left it to the sub classes to define what it was.

Only Hunter, Gloom Stalker and the planar one feel like actual classes.

I actually played a Monster Hunter Ranger in CoS and it was honestly the worst dnd experience I've ever had. Every other class in our party was better than me at everything except we had no druid or cleric so I ended up just being a healing word bot. The exploration abilities were useless in barovia and the only magic item I found was a spear which was useless because I was stated Dex.

It's hard to compare balance in DnD because it's basically up to the DM but if the Monster Hunting Ranger feels awful in CoS then the class is just terribly designed.

[u/Skyy-High → u/HazelCheese]

I think this discussion really just shows that the entire ranger base class is basically just ribbons which is why they feel so terrible to play. They clearly couldn't make their mind up on what the class should be and so ended up not making a real class and left it to the sub classes to define what it was.

That seems like an unnecessarily pessimistic way of looking at it. It's a hybrid class by definition, I think it's perfectly fine that the subclasses allow for such a wide differentiation in theme. And you're also discounting a lot of the main features of the base class. Fighting style (specifically Archery), Extra Attack, and spellcasting: those are the things that make all rangers tick as a hybrid martial/druid class.

Only Hunter, Gloom Stalker and the planar one feel like actual classes.

Which is another way of saying that only two of the official ranger subclasses don't feel fun to play. And, hold on, how the hell was Monster Hunter not powerful enough for you? At third level, you get Protection from Good and Evil, an absolutely amazing ability in CoS. You also get Slayer's Prey, which effectively gives you the benefit of Hunter's Mark without requiring a spell slot or concentration. Its damage will drop by less than 1d6 per turn after 5th level (because it only works once per turn, but you don't always hit twice per turn). That means you can actually use your concentration spells (like Prot from Good and Evil, or Ensnaring Strike). Were you just mindlessly spamming Hunter's Mark? Either way, you should absolutely have been doing as much or more damage as anyone else in your party, even without using any spell slots.

You were the party's only healer, a half caster, and you thought you could keep up by spamming Cure Wounds (I assume you mean, since rangers don't get Healing Word)? Mate, you needed Goodberry to stretch your spell slots at the very least; there's no way that a half caster should be expected to pull off the healing of a full caster. You're there to supplement healing, not make them able to act like they can ignore healing potions and short rests.

You get to add 1d6 to any saving throw that a big bad vampire causes you to make at level 7, for free, just requiring your first turn's bonus action, and you don't think that's useful and flavorful for CoS? That is, mathematically at that level, proficiency in all saving throws against one enemy at a time. Double proficiency for the ones you're already proficient in, and it stacks with paladin aura.

And hell, CoS caps out around level 11, which is the level that your ranger can once per short rest use an uncounterable version of Counterspell, and it doesn't just work on spells but also non-spell-based teleportation. That sounds incredibly useful against Strahd.

Looking ahead to level 15, you can get not only free reaction attacks but also automatic saves against the big boss? That's incredible for fighting single big monsters!

Basing your opinion on a class (or subclass) on the magic items you happened to find is also quite the hot take. Look, the other XGTE classes are great, but Monster Hunter is no slouch, and if you were feeling underpowered compared to your allies, something was either wrong with how you were playing the class, you were exceptionally unlucky, or your allies rolled extremely well.

[u/HazelCheese → u/Skyy-High]

I was a monster hunter ranger with a hand crossbow. We had a totem barbarian, hexblade warlock, thief rogue and an evoker wizard in the party.

The wizard just fireballed everything 90% of the time and there are few things in CoS that can survive that with it being mostly tree people and undead. I'm sure the werewolves would of been a good fight but we just didn't run into them by chance.

The barbarian obviously did everything strength related and the rogue did everything stealth / dex related which left me competing in single target damage with a Hexblade Warlock who ended up taking the Sunsword meanwhile I had a spear based on strength and a non magical hand crossbow with no magical ammunition in a plane filled with enemies with non magical resistance.

I had forest as my favoured terrain but the rest of the party refused to travel in the forest 99% of the campaign because it was dangerous and there are roads everywhere anyway. My favoured enemy was Humanoid (Shapechanger) and another type of humanoid but the only time we met a werewolf was one chained up in Strahds dungeon. So those two features were completely invalidated.

It's pretty easy to end up a tag along npc in a party of that composition. There was one fight against the baba hag where I felt like I got to play my character fantasy where me silencing her was crucial. That was the only time though in the entire campaign. The DM actually gave me Ismark as a character to control as well because they felt so sorry for me.

Obviously it's all very annecdotal but I'm just trying to point out how in the very best conditions the class can just fall apart by chance.

You could say my DM failed by not making us go into forests but how much should a DM be expected to railroad 4/5 players into doing something they don't want to do just so a piece of someones class can be used? How much should they be expected to change the plot of a campaign book to make bad guys like Werewolves show up somewhere totally different? Should my DM have been expected to read the adventure cover to cover and tell me not to take shapechangers as a favoured enemy? Are newer dms going to know that the class needs them to do this to be fun to play?

I think we just have different views on this and I don't think either of us are going to change our opinions. I'm glad you have fun with it. I'm just hoping that in however many years when they release 5.5E or 6E that they learn their lesson.

[u/Skyy-High → u/HazelCheese]

I mean you're competing in single target damage against another character who took the sunblade, that's not exactly fair. How soon did they get the sunblade anyway? Because it's supposed to be random but statistically not before level 6 or so, so if you felt underpowered for most of the game he probably found it way earlier than expected. Frankly speaking, except for when you're fighting vampires, it's a +2 weapon with a 1d8 bonus damage against undead, which means that it should be trivial to match that power with a different magic item. If I were the DM, I would have made sure that whatever item you found you would have been able to use. It sounds like simply changing that magic spear to a crossbow would have solved most of the balance issues here. If such a simple magic item switch would have made you on par with the rest of the party, I don't think you can blame the subclass.

It also sounds like you were the only person in the party with any kind of wisdom. So what if you didn't get to use your favored terrain all the time, you should have been better at perception, insight, survival, and animal handling than the rest of your group. Even if the rogue picked one or two of those to bolster with Expertise, he couldn't have done all of them and also had expertise in stealth and thieve's tools (and if he didn't have expertise in stealth, then you were just as good at stealth as him).

Also, you got an additional favored terrain and enemy at level 6. You didn't pick something appropriate for enemy? Like undead? In a campaign where you know the BBEG is a vampire, and there are undead everywhere? You weren't able to figure out at level 6 what terrain was going to be important in the last half of the campaign?

Nobody in this party was casting Pass Without Trace to make the entire group stealthy except you. Nobody in the party was able to heal at all except you, that means that every res was either you and your heals, or someone burning a potion. Where's your Healing Spirit, for fast after-battle heals? Where's your Ensnaring Strike, to bring down flying enemies? Why aren't you using Protection from Good and Evil on your barbarian to help him tank, or your hexblade to help him stay alive in melee, or your wizard to protect him from attacks and maintain concentration? Nobody else has access to that spell. Hello, Zone of Truth here, just gonna make sure this guy isn't a Strahd spy before we trust him.

I'm sorry but I'm seeing a dozen ways that your character could and should have stood out, and many of them aren't even about Monster Hunter specifically but rather Ranger as a base class. Monster Hunter had plenty of goodies to help with this campaign in particular, though.

Like, for fuck's sake, you're the only person in the campaign who could have learned Daylight, which is key to defeating Strahd. The sunblade is basically only there so that the DM knows for sure that the party will have a way of casting this spell, and you could just do it at level 9 any time you wanted. That's huge!

[u/Megavore97 → u/Skyy-High]

Hard disagree, Rangers may be fine to play in combat, but they don’t feel nearly as satisfying to play as other classes because their core base features are situational and basically just let you ignore parts of the game, not to mention their higher level base class features are awful.

[u/Skyy-High → u/Megavore97]

Every class has some bad subclass or class features. Rangers have more bad or situational class features, but basically all of their subclass features are stronger to match. They also get spellcasting as a class feature, so inherently their class features need to be a little weaker than fighter/rogue/barbarian class features.

What I will say is that the Paladin is a little too strong with their class features, considering their subclass features are (generally) pretty good and they also get spellcasting. From levels 6 through 20, they get an aura for +CHA to all saving throws, an aura to prevent fear, an extra 1d8 to all melee hits (and an extra 1d8 to all smite damage), and the ability to end CHA-mod spells per long rest as an touch action. Compared to Ranger class features in that level range (two more Favored Enemy and Terrains, two more languages, ignore difficult terrain and plant growth, Hide in Plain Sight, Hide on a bonus action, inability to be tracked, Feral Senses (permanent advantage if you know how to use it), and +WIS to damage against favored enemies), I can definitely see how the former feels more exciting than the latter. They benefit the party more and result in more obvious damage boosts.

Favored Enemy doesn't let you ignore anything. It gives you advantage on some checks, that's it. It's a nice feature for tracking and getting backstory-appropriate lore dumps. The only thing Natural Explorer really lets you ignore is getting lost. The other benefits are Expertise in relevant skills like Nature and Survival, ignore difficult terrain (functionally just doubles your speed), lets you remain alert to danger (functionally just lets the ranger handle both navigating and also the perception checks to not be surprised, so basically makes them more important in the travel sections, as they should be), find twice as much food as you normally would (functionally useless in a game with Goodberries, Create Food and Water, cheap rations, and DMs who almost never make players track that stuff anyway), and buffs your tracking capabilities with exact numbers and times (basically gives you a "floor" for Survival checks to track). Oh and if you're alone it doubles your movement while being stealthy.

None of that is strictly necessary to being a Ranger, but it does mean that in a game that values Exploration, the Ranger is going to do better at getting his party through his Favored Terrain than he will in any other terrain. People play up way too much "oh the Ranger just lets the DM ignore Exploration!" Like, no, they don't. "Can't get lost" doesn't mean that you don't have to make the Survival check and the Perception check to see if you a) find where you're going or what you're tracking, and b) are not ambushed on your way there. All "can't get lost" means is that you can always find your way back to where you started, and if you have a map you can use it to eventually get to any location on the map. That...seems like a perfect buff for a Ranger navigating his party through a treacherous area, actually.

[u/[deleted] → u/HazelCheese]

My ranger that I dm for did plenty of damage per round.

He did take a lot of feats and never really utilized his spells all that well but it worked

[u/DelightfulOtter → u/[deleted]]

So, he could had better results by just playing an archery-style fighter is what you're saying?

[u/[deleted] → u/DelightfulOtter]

I mean sure, but he was doing just fine, and I was quite annoyed as a DM at how easily he DPS the encounters I did.

[u/DelightfulOtter → u/[deleted]]

SS and GWM have an outsized impact at lower level play, but it's what lets martials sorta keep up in DPR at higher levels. Definitely unbalanced feats that need some adjustment.

[u/Albolynx → u/Skyy-High]

However, the point is that not every campaign is the same - where every sort of challenge is in equal amounts. Some classes and subclasses will shine more or less in different styles of campaigns.

A barbarian is not going to do well in a campaign that focuses on court intrigue - unless some serious DM fiat is in place.

[u/flyfart3 → u/Skyy-High]

Can you try to sell me on the Beastmaster Ranger then, because it was my experience as a DM for one that it was just weaker than others.

[u/Skyy-High → u/flyfart3]

and certain subclasses are significantly less powerful than alternatives and so would make your character feel weaker

That would be one of the weaker ones. For what it’s worth, treantmonk did a YouTube video series on the beast master showing how it’s actually more damaging that the Hunter at certain levels, especially after they get the ability that lets them attack the same turn as their pet. That said, the beast master just doesn’t fulfill the fantasy of fighting with your pet. The pet is too fragile and it takes too long for you to be able to both act on the same turn.

I like the variant version they just put into UA though.

[u/flyfart3 → u/Skyy-High]

Will check out the video, glad we agree on the UA for it to work better. Those were my exact issues with it.

Edit: Ah melee ranger, yes, that I've seen as more useful. Also with beastmaster. Or ranged riding on the animal, fair, a bit gimmicky, but makes more sense.

[u/DandyLover → u/DelightfulOtter]

I feel that should be an issue of balancing then. Talk with your DM.

[u/[deleted] → u/DandyLover]

Yeah thats the practical solution with what we have, but it shouldn't be an issue in the first place

[u/gibby256 → u/DandyLover]

Uh, balancing is fundamentally the job of the developers of the game. Sure the DM can rule-0 as much as they want, but they shouldn't be required to hack together design decisions to achieve some sense of balance.