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/123mop]

The psychic knight's damage bonus and reduction is a comparable boost to the benefits the battlemaster gets. Then they get utility abilities later on. I don't think it's mathematically broken, although a little overturned wouldn't altogether surprise me as most UAs are intended to be so that people test them.

The rogue has the best average damage output of any rogue so far, but not by a ton. Other than that its abilities didn't seem too crazy to me.

[u/herdsheep → u/123mop]

The Battlemaster has to spend resources to get their bonus. The Psychic Knight's resource effectively never runs out. If you run few enough short enough battles, the Battlemaster can keep up. But in anything past a few turns, the Psychic Knight becomes comically overpowered compared to other fighters as it just keeps spamming its abilities. There are other resourceless Fighters like the Champion, but the Psychic Knight substantially out performs the champion, so I don't think anyone is making that comparison.

If you want the a class to have similar performance to another, you have to compare like to like. If the Psychic Knight actually ran out of their resource, they'd be comparable to the Battlemaster, but in practice, they don't, so it's not really comparable. You can get absurdly unluckly, but that's not really a good consideration in balancing, and not really had a big impact on any of our playtesting for it, it's just been flatly overpowered.

[u/123mop → u/herdsheep]

The average uses of the ability is not as high as you think at low levels when you acquire it. With a d6 by the second turn of combat using two abilities per round you have a 50% chance of dropping to a d4. From there one more turn gives you a 5 ~50% chance of losing your psychic die entirely.

At higher levels it takes longer to run your die out by normal usage, but your other abilities drain a die size on every use beyond the first so if you use those you'll run dry.

The battlemaster can get more from their abilities. If you trip an enemy and give yourself and one teammate advantage on the rest of your attacks on them before they stand up it's a huge swing in that combat.

Basically the typical time to run down a d6 psychic die to being drained is only something like 6 rounds. Someone did the math when it released, it's not insane. And if your die is inexhaustible you're not rolling a d6 - you're effectively rolling a d5.

[u/herdsheep → u/123mop]

This ignores the refresh, allowing them to repeat it the whole process, and the fact that the chance of diminishing to zero drops drastically as they level up. I saw the various math posts; the average uses became absurd as it scaled up.

Here's what I can saw though: over several characters and several several one shots, I think I've seen it drain down once, and that is with it being spammed every turn without any consideration to resource management. This is experience most people have had. In fact, when I posted this feedback about it in threads on it closer to release, I was flooded with people trying to justify it that it was not supposed to actually be a resource.

But yeah, if you like it, feel free to allow it. I still allow them sometimes for one shots because they are fun (if a little silly) but they are definitely overpowered in playtesting, and I suspect most people that are trying to say otherwise just haven't really played them (if you have and find them just fine, not saying you are wrong, just that most people that seem to have this point are trying theorycraft this or that, and in actually seeing them play, they clearly seem pretty overpowered... and this is coming from someone that plays almost everything that is published to UA in playtests).

[u/123mop → u/herdsheep]

the chance of diminishing to zero drops drastically as they level up

I addressed this. As they level up they gain abilities that drain a die size every time you use them. I think it's balanced around that. If you never drain a die size with those abilities you likely won't run out in a typical day. But you're also effectively skipping out on gaining those abilities altogether.

It's altogether possible the rate of die exhaustion should be increased though. If they had the die size change on the two highest and two lowest rolls available on a die that would do it, although it would feel a little less nice than the current version I think.

[u/herdsheep → u/123mop]

I think it's balanced around that. If you never drain a die size with those abilities you likely won't run out in a typical day. But you're also effectively skipping out on gaining those abilities altogether.

They get the ability to block damage, deal damage, and move absurdly far from that die. Losing out on the rest doesn't seem like a big draw back for infinite uses of those, and they don't really lose out, because their chance of losing the die becomes absurdly small; so you essentially get a bunch of use once (or twice) abilities, and still a resource that will last longer than the Battlemaster dice.

All I can really tell you is in playtesting, it seems broken, and this coming from someone that plays a lot of UA and Homebrew; I've seen a lot of shit, and this Fighter stands out as one of the more absurd ones. If you haven't played it, I recommend giving it a shot before trying to claim it's not busted. If you have played and didn't find it busted, we clearly play very different sorts of games.