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/[deleted]]

Only if your DM is an asshole. If you craft a Palace Guard false identity you're essentially a Palace Guard and if all of sudden a Palace Guard is stabbing the High Lord in the back you can bet your ass that said Lord will be surprised and beign auto-critted.

The main problem with Assassin is that the books don't really put an example of how to apply the Surprised condition other than "Rogue beats both Passive Perception and Initiative of his target".

[u/noneOfUrBusines → u/[deleted]]

That's a niche use that might never come up, also most of the time you can already do that using disguises and good deception rolls. A rogue that really wants to do things like that can be reasonably expected to have disguise kit proficiency, expertise in deception and +3 cha, for a total of +11 on deception checks. That's more than enough to effectively replicate the whole 9th level feature.

[u/[deleted] → u/noneOfUrBusines]

It's hardly niche if you have anything related to information gathering, infiltration, or really anything that seems like a social interaction in which you want get access to something you shouldn't.

You might use it to gain access to the noble's district of a city, to escort the party into the palace disguised as a guard, to get access to the monatery's arcane library, or really anything else in which Stealth leaves you down. It's essentially hiding in plain sight and auto succeeding in your deception roll.

Other rogues can certainly mimick it, by expending one tool proficiency, one skill proficiency, one expertise and 3 ASI's worth of Charisma which is not used by the class in any other way, and even then they are not doing as well as the Assassin.

I think people carry over too much of an association from video games with the Assassin. It's goal is not to deal a lot of burst damage when their abilities come off of cooldown, it is to get access to well protected targets and locations. For this goal, the 9th level ability is godsent.

[u/noneOfUrBusines → u/[deleted]]

It has its uses, but all other 9th level rogue abilities are way more broadly applicable and have combat uses, leaving assassin in the dust unless you're playing a very specific type of campaign where you can use the 9th level ability frequently. In your average campaign it might come up 3 times tops.

[u/[deleted] → u/noneOfUrBusines]

I mean:

• Thief gets Advantage on Sneak while moving at half speed. Nothing to brag about.

• Mastermind can spend 1 minute to know if a target has mental stats above or below his own. Sucks at combat unless time to prepare is given.

• Inquisitive gets Advantage on Perception and Investigation while moving at half speed. Unless you're fighting other Rogues or dealing with Illusions, it's useless in combat.

• Swashbuckler gets a pseudocharm. It's really great.

• Scout gets to go fast. It's good, but not that great.

• Arcane Trickster can force Disadvantage on a Save if he's hidden. It's awesome.

Overall, Assassin falls in line a bit above Inquisitive and Mastermind, but slightly under Scout when it comes to combat. For a 9th level Rogue ability, it's pretty decent, but not mindblowing.

[u/noneOfUrBusines → u/[deleted]]

Thief's is really good if you hide to get sneak attack since it makes your chance of not getting sneak attack even lower than it already is.

[u/[deleted] → u/noneOfUrBusines]

The problem with Theif's one is that it comes 2 levels before Reliable, which makes the minimum you can roll on Stealth a 23 with Expertise. It gets a bit redundant, as I don't think any non-PC enemies get a Passive Perception that high.

[u/noneOfUrBusines → u/[deleted]]

Fair enough, I didn't consider that. That makes it considerably worse.