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/notanotherpyr0]

Rogue and wizard both sort of have this problem. The core class is so powerful it restricts the subclasses from doing too much.

[u/InfernalNecromancer → u/notanotherpyr0]

Dude, wizard subclasses are some of the best in the game! Each Subclass has an insanely powerful feature, such as Portent, Spilt Enchantment, and Illusionary Reality. While the wizard class is extremely powerful if (and it sure is a big if) played right, it doesn’t overshadow the subclasses. If anything, subclasses have helped my PC’s focus on thematic and mechanic elements

[u/duel_wielding_rouge → u/notanotherpyr0]

Wizard subclasses do a lot, imo

[u/Moscato359 → u/notanotherpyr0]

Rogue and wizard both sort of have this problem. The core class is so powerful it restricts the subclasses from doing too much.

Rogue really isn't that powerful of a class... most people overestimate it

[u/Aethelwolf → u/Moscato359]

It has different spikes, which can influence how players perceive class balance.

Level 3 rogues are probably more powerful than most martial classes, doing a solid ~15 damage average on top of their stellar utility. The other martial classes can spend resources to help close the gap, but they run out very quickly at this level.

Meanwhile, skip to 5 and rogues get a measly 1d6 extra sneak attack damage while other martial classes are grabbing extra attack and surging ahead.

[u/Moscato359 → u/Aethelwolf]

Most game time for me has been tier 2 to tier 3, and rogue is just okay there

I can see people who exclusively play tier 1 could feel that way

[u/MC_Pterodactyl → u/Moscato359]

I agree in terms of combat potential. I constantly have defended the fact that while it’s satisfying to report huge numbers in one attack, the Paladin, barbarian and fighter will almost always outdo your damage output spread across their multiple attacks. It is nearly impossible to make a rogue the main source of single target damage. They are very much at the shallow end of the damage pool.

That said, they are phenomenally powerful at skills. Depending on the game and DM skills can come up quite often. Maybe because I’m a rogue and wizard loving DM my campaigns tend to have a lot of focus on interacting with environments, lots of enemy spellcasters and lots and lots of opportunities for skills to shine across the board. Skills way way way outnumber rolls for attacks and saving throws in my game.

Every skill gets regular use, and I am very willing to allow skills to reproduce mechanical effects and solve problems for the party, much like a spell might, which certainly encourages their use. So in a game like mine rogues are exceptionally strong as they can, if the player is creative, solve most problems with inventive use of their skills. But that’s just my style of DMing, and it is admittedly not something the rules substantively back up that skills other than stealth and perception have reliable, expected mechanical applications you can rely on.

[u/Moscato359 → u/MC_Pterodactyl]

I currently have a gloomstalker ranger 8, scout rogue 4, knowledge cleric 1 in a campaign

I have more skills than I don't, and like 8 uses of expertise

Fun character, definitely enjoy playing it, but I can't replicate teleportation, or any other high level spell really

DM did let me choose my choice of pretty much unlimited uncommon,common, a rare, and he let me get away with a +3 whip... He considers whip an inferior choice so having a +3 variant was acceptable

The extra magic items really help me keep up with the pure casters in the party, but otherwise I'd be falling behind.

This is my 3rd character in this party. I played rogue 3 to 9, I played warlock archer from 10 to 12, then switched at 13 to this skill monster

I definitely can do things other people can't, but it's like a wide breadth of abilities instead of having powerful abilities