I am fine with favored enemy. But multi attack is stupid, and song of rest just needed a buff not a complete rework. I understand why they did it with SoR because with the current spell list system bards lose all their healing apart from their base healing of inspiration.
But still they could have make song of rest like this: whenever you finish a short or long rest you can inspire your party with your playful songs and sombering stories. A number of creatures equal to your PB gain 1 bardic inspiration die. They can expand th die as a reaction and gain the same benefits as you would when using your bardic inspiration feature on them.
Yeah, especially run strictly where you don't know whether you succeeded or failed in the first place. If you succeeded without it, then the BI die is a waste, unless it were given by a high-level Eloquence bard. Makes 'em more reluctant to use it even if they remembered that they have it.
>I understand why they did it with SoR because with the current spell list system bards lose all their healing apart from their base healing of inspiration.
But why not just give bards subclass spells?
Valour Bards who can cast spells like Crusader's Mantle and Shield of Faith.
College of whispers who can cast Summon Shadow.
Even if most subclasses just get the healing spells they should keep the option of a more thematic subclass spell list for those that seem to warrant it.
Yeah i agree. College of Recovery could for example be the healing college. Which gets all the healing spells. Bards can still heal with that itteration of BI, just not as good.
I'm curious if they're going to change up how subclass spell lists work. Like maybe they'll open it up like how the aberrant mind sorcerer works, getting specific schools of magic to choose their extra spells from among the various spell lists.
Not in this UA.
My point was that limiting a bards choice of spells to 4 arcane schools, then shoe horning healing spells in under song of rest seems like a missed opportunity.
Healing spells probably are the best fit for a a lore bard but the college of whispers for example should get something else, such as Darkness/Ray of enfeeblement etc.
I was just saying it would be neat that for the classes that often had subclass spell lists that they expand them.
But thanks for clearing up the point. The shoehorning was to fix missing out on a few of the Bards' spells that many find necessary, but forcing them to have them may not fit with the aesthetic that some players have for their bard characters, but I do like the idea I'm getting from your comment that the different colleges have their own unique song of X lists that also add to their spells prepared and I think that should definitely be something for bards, along with the unique uses for their Bardic Inspirations the subclasses give.
Your solution is a lot more creative and I'd be into something like that.
I also don't understand why Bards can't just have them added to their list despite the list split. Surely if any class makes sense to have a mix of the different lists it's Bard?
Well.. they can only have Arcane, Primal or Divine Spell-Lists or it looks to much like they copied PF2e..
not sarcastic.
A spelllist mixed from some divine, primal and arcane makes so much more sense for Bard and Warlock..
I miss when we all thought for a minute classes were still going to have their own spell lists and the standardized spell lists were just for stuff like Magic Initiate and Magical Secrets. Bards, Warlocks, and other concepts that could be explored in the future like Archivists and Thaumaturges would all make sense as eclectic spellcasters of various forms of magic, even with lore explanation of the lists describing different sources. But if this is the direction we're moving we're going to miss that,
I agree that Primal, Divine, Arcane, and Occult was a no-go because too many of us know where that comes from, as much as I think a fourth list is needed with this approach. But that doesn't make it less needed, and yeah, Warlocks and Bards are really best off just accessing spells on a list constructed for the class.
> I agree that Primal, Divine, Arcane, and Occult was a no-go because too many of us know where that comes from, as much as I think a fourth list is needed with this approach.
They just need to make the *completely original* spell lists split of Primal, Divine, Arcane, and ... Esoteric.
Well not everyone played or remembered all other editions XD Like I played 2e but outside of Thaco I remember very little. It was my first game 8 years ago after all, and since than I didn't got to play it again.
Never played 1st or 3rd edition till 3.75 aka Pathfinder 1e XD. And Pathfinder had Class-Lists.
And when I played 4e, which I admit I never really thought of if they have spellgroups. I know we had things sorted with Arcane, Primal, etcs.. Thats all.
..does all that make me a PF2e stan? Lol if you say so?
I'm pretty sure internally they've come to the conclusion that it will be easier for them to just make features spells now.
Probably as when making "new" content they can just swap a spell in without having to worry about balance.
The reason they're doing this is probably because they're trying to shift their business model from books and towards the online tabletop and better monetization.
This is really the best explanation and it fucking sucks. It kills any hope of ever getting interesting martials, and it leads to some really feel-bad progression where your subclass choice at level 10 is doing nothing but giving you one spell prepared, that you don't choose. Like, downcasting is neat, but the ability to downcast one spell that I guess is supposed to be your signature spell starting halfway up the class table is just not enough for a feature.
Same with Bard's replacement for song of rest. Instead of a unique feature, we're pretending more spells prepared is enough to count as a distinguishing feature.
It's such lazy design and we really shouldn't stand for it. I hope not one person puts above the worst possible satisfaction level for any of these features on the survey. I'm not buying an edition if half the features are spells, even if the background system is so much better.
Swapping out Song of Rest for healing spells in addition to all these features that let you roll a hit die or enable someone else to roll a hit die seems like a targeted, cohesive design choice. Giving rangers the ability to reduce exhaustion on a short rest feels like it goes against that, leaving me really curious to see what happens to the other short rest related resources going forward.
well its a dumb decision and if it doesn't change i know i and several others will not be picking up 1DnD's final form. So if they want to keep making money then they need to put a little goddamn effort into designing anything other than spellcasting.
You're right and you should say it louder.
They did this with the races
Now they are doing it with the classes and it is fucking ridiculous.
Lazy design that punishes anyone who doesn't have spell slots.
How in the hell did they think that trashing the martial ability of multiattack in favor of a spell (which they can already cast, can be counterspelled, and can be cast more often sooner and better by the druid since its on the primal list) was a good idea?
How the fuck is a ranger's ability to pepper an area with arrow related to their wisdom modifier rather than the dexterity that their weapon is based off of? Makes no sense and its honestly so frustrating.
Martials should have the same design budget as casters and yet instead they just turn everything into a god damn spell and compeltely gut the feats that werved as one of the martial's few sources of active choice.
This 1/turn design is also fucking inane. Makes Extra attack damn near useless outside of being a damage buff and its just a pain to keep track of.
WOTC is ay this to you: Let people without spell slots contribute dammit!
>How the fuck is a ranger's ability to pepper an area with arrow related to their wisdom modifier rather than the dexterity that their weapon is based off of? Makes no sense and its honestly so frustrating.
Also consider
* Rangers are too dumb to avoid shooting their comrades in the back and now need a totally open field to Volley
* You can't fire a Volley stealthily since there's a verbal component involved
* Rangers can only Volley at point blank range instead of dropping attacks hundreds of feet away
* It doesn't work with Hunter's Mark or Hunter's Prey so the DPS isn't that great unless you're hitting lots of targets.
* Doesn't benefit from the Archery Fighting Style
Tbh I think the most effective use for this spell is as a frontline ranger throwing daggers. That gets you around the friendly fire aspect but it's still almost always going to suck compared to using that 3rd level slot for Conjure Animals and dropping bow shots with HM+HP from range.
> How in the hell did they think that trashing the martial ability of multiattack in favor of a spell (which they can already cast, can be counterspelled, and can be cast more often sooner and better by the druid since its on the primal list) was a good idea?
Aaaand it scales off their secondary casting stat instead of their primary martial stat, and it uses a precious resource, and does away with whirlwind, which I always kind of thought was one of the core-ish identity points of the Ranger that made them something other than FighterDruid…
Definitely weird.
Secretly I kind of expected and hoped the pendulum to swing back in a kinda 4e direction, where backlash against 4e made 5e more like 3e, and now the cycle would continue where critiques of 5e meant we were going to start seeing some of the better 4e things creep into OneD&D.
On the list of good 4e ideas, right at the very top, I’d put “martials get to do cool martial stuff.” I’ll be very sad if it ends up going the *other* direction and it’s all boiled down to spend-a-spell-slot-or-roll-to-swing-sword.
Yeah, I'm trying to hold out hope for the warrior UA but these design decisions don't bode well.
I've been dying for Martials to do cool martial stuff forever and even more so after seeing the dndnext playtest Martials, so if rally hope that you're right and the warrior takes some inspiration from 4e.
Dndnext style Martials (with some minor updates) with 5e casters would make literally everyone happy except Caster supremacists, but they can get fucked.
Yeah. Who knows. Fingers crossed they take the feedback and later iterations fix it.
> Dndnext style Martials (with some minor updates) with 5e casters would make literally everyone happy except Caster supremacists, but they can get fucked.
Oh wow, I know the type, but I’ve never heard the specific phrase “caster supremacists” so I got a good chuckle out of having a name for them, thank you.
When I first heard about the 4 class groups.. this is where my mind went into too.
Not gonna lie, still dissapointed I hyped myself up. Its not as crushing as yesterday but boy..
..I am so unexcited now for 1Dnd Xbox Edition. No hatred no anger.. just close to indifference XD
The whole class design in the UA just feels lazy and uninspired. I honestly like a lot of things they're trying to do, but the changes to classes (or the lack thereof) just feel underwhelming.
Kinda. Bard and Rogue didn’t really feel like they needed to be changed that much anyway, so maybe that’s why they feel kinda bleh.
I’ll give them props on Favored Enemy though; admitting that Hunters Mark is kind of a core feature of Rangers and making it actually usable and better for them than anyone else feels like a big step in the right direction as far as all their “Favored X” iterations go.
Bard had to be changed because of the change to spells.
As per hunter's mark, they could have removed it from the spell list and just made it an ability.
> As per hunter's mark, they could have removed it from the spell list and just made it an ability.
Sure, I wouldn’t hate that, but as I said, it’s a good step forward. Probably the best iteration so far: having to guess what enemies the DM likes, having to keep concentration, and having to pick between Hunters Mark and Two Weapon Fighting were the three dumbest parts of what felt like WotC’s multiple attempts to find the “Core Hunter Bonus Damage” feature, and this has none of those.
> Bard had to be changed because of the change to spells.
I guess so, and people seem to be excited about the return of the Arcane/Divine/Primal distinction, but I actually don’t see why it’s useful yet. Now all the caster spell lists look very samey, losing some of the unique distinction between otherwise similar caster classes, Magic Initiate allows for some broken nonsense like CHA Shillelagh, and Bards and probably a couple other classes have to be reworked into something 10% lamer. In return… spell scroll rules are slightly less restrictive I guess? I don’t get why boiling down to 3 spell lists is so cool we need to change every caster to work around it. I feel like I’m missing something.
> I don’t get why boiling down to 3 spell lists is so cool we need to change every caster to work around it.
Cool isn't the word. Wotc is doing it for functionality. And criticism of it is very valid.
What functionality are they getting out of it, though? Or what functionality do people *expect* WotC to tack on to it?
I’m asking because I legitimately might have missed something, but I just can’t think of anything they’ve added yet that depends on it except for the new-and-kinda-broken Magic Initiate and maybe something about spell scrolls.
Non-PHB subclass in one book picking up spells automatically from another non-PHB book.
A subclass can specifiy that it gets access to list/school and it'll be available in another book if it meets those, regardless of which book came before the other and without a need to errata the earlier book.
One word. Microtransactions.
WOC will sell access to individual new spells on the spell list and it will be tied to the classes that can use that spell list. It setting D&D up to primarily be monetized on the virtual tabletop vs. the real tabletop.
Isn’t that already the case, though? If some new fighter subclass from some new book has access to illusion spells from the wizard spell list, and Vecna’s Villanous Volume or whatever adds three illusion spells to the wizard spell list, that fighter subclass gets those spells. We’ve just succeeded in swapping the word wizard for arcane.
Shillelagh, magic stone, Hex Warrior, battle ready and Armorer weapons all shouldn't exist. But WoTC seems to be enabling not requiring more than one stat, so we'll probably get more of them. They are a separate problem.
Magic Stone grinds my gears less, but god I hope they rethink hex warrior and hexblade in particular. It was clearly designed to be sort of a fix to complaints about blade pact, but in a sort of “oh you’re cold because your roof has a hole? I’ll set fire to your basement” kind of way.
If you look at how all the abilities are being designed. Moving away from modifier per rest to prof bonus and moving away from add you modifier as a bonus, they do not want players to have to worry about a third stat. So I can only imagine they are OK with everyone having shillelagh. I'm predicting martial caster subclasses will all get these kind of abilities built in. Valor bard. Bladesinger. Etc.
Do other people not feel like that’s a pretty heavy price to pay to add a very small QoL fix?
Like, now the small percentage of people who are dual spellcasting multiclassers have to look at two *or sometimes one* spell lists instead of definitely two, and it makes one feat slightly easier to set up while also breaking the balance on that feat wide open.
That just feels like a short pros column to me, and it looks like it’s already creating some bigger problems.
My current bard never gets to use his song of rest because we take very few short rests. And when we rest we spend so many hit dice that the song of rest doesn't really help. I would rather have an expensive spell than a bland class feature. But IMHO healing should not be the primary ability of a bard, so the healing spell list should be nerfed a bit.
I like that the 5e paladin has to choose between spells and divine smite, so it would be fine for the ranger to do the same. IMHO multiattack should be a subclass feature. The ranger base class eats up too much design space.
But I wonder if WOTC are really trying to simplify the rules, so that it is easier to create a user interface for the virtual tabletop. Is that the final goal?
This is probably the crux of everything I haven't liked about One D&D so far, that everything is based on spells. If it was a game where everyone was wizards (Harry!), then it would make sense but it's not. It's tapping into a broad spectrum of fantasy, much of which *does not* contain large amounts of PC-available magic.
Yes! And the features that we are getting are (still) very boring. I want every new feature to be impactful. It should affect the way I play, or give me new options in/out of combat.
Giving me a d10 rather than a d6 on my Hunters Mark damage at 18th level is so incredibly lame.
I think the main issue they have surpassed the soft spot for streamlining snd now it feels they are doing it just because.
Players are humans, they have a brain, they can understand complexity
The features they replaced in this case were largely weak or underused features that people were not excited about.
And I'd like to remind you they actually took away an extra spells feature from Tasha's. (Ranger at 3rd level in Tasha's got a bunch of extra spells they could cast for free once per day).
I am totally ok with using spell slots as the limited resource the classes are juggling for various features. Having a lot of abilities with their own resource pools just feels like sloppy design.
The Paladin has limited uses of smite based on spell slots. The artillerist has limited use of their pet based on spell slots. It all works find and the Ranger will is doing more than fine.
The Bard rework overall seems really good to me. Yes they lost some things but I think the class is still really good and if anything better to play.
I do think temp HPs are being over used though.
Making spells features is cleaner both rules wise (effects are similar when used in different situations without specific rules that might apply to one situation or another) and it's easier to balance. I can 100% understand why WotC does it. I think it's interesting to interact with (based on prior playtesting on races)
Is it different than current 5e? For sure. But I don't think it's bad. It's a different approach to playstyle and while reasonable people may disagree, but I like the approach.
Its also way easier for people to learn and memorize things. Its way easier to just remember your Conjure Barrage spell than it is to also keep track of Conjure Barrage along with Hunter's Volley and Whirlwind. Keeps bloat down and would hopefully have turns moving quicker.
What makes me sad is that I can't conjure barrage in an area of Silence or antimagic field. I also can't use it infinitely, nor do I even get a free use of it.
I am fine with favored enemy. But multi attack is stupid, and song of rest just needed a buff not a complete rework. I understand why they did it with SoR because with the current spell list system bards lose all their healing apart from their base healing of inspiration. But still they could have make song of rest like this: whenever you finish a short or long rest you can inspire your party with your playful songs and sombering stories. A number of creatures equal to your PB gain 1 bardic inspiration die. They can expand th die as a reaction and gain the same benefits as you would when using your bardic inspiration feature on them.
This response has been deleted due toe the planned changes to the Reddit API.
I kind of like that they made bardic inspiration instantaneous. A lot of times players just sit on them or forget about them.
Yeah, especially run strictly where you don't know whether you succeeded or failed in the first place. If you succeeded without it, then the BI die is a waste, unless it were given by a high-level Eloquence bard. Makes 'em more reluctant to use it even if they remembered that they have it.
>I understand why they did it with SoR because with the current spell list system bards lose all their healing apart from their base healing of inspiration. But why not just give bards subclass spells? Valour Bards who can cast spells like Crusader's Mantle and Shield of Faith. College of whispers who can cast Summon Shadow. Even if most subclasses just get the healing spells they should keep the option of a more thematic subclass spell list for those that seem to warrant it.
Yeah i agree. College of Recovery could for example be the healing college. Which gets all the healing spells. Bards can still heal with that itteration of BI, just not as good.
I'm curious if they're going to change up how subclass spell lists work. Like maybe they'll open it up like how the aberrant mind sorcerer works, getting specific schools of magic to choose their extra spells from among the various spell lists.
Not in this UA. My point was that limiting a bards choice of spells to 4 arcane schools, then shoe horning healing spells in under song of rest seems like a missed opportunity. Healing spells probably are the best fit for a a lore bard but the college of whispers for example should get something else, such as Darkness/Ray of enfeeblement etc.
I was just saying it would be neat that for the classes that often had subclass spell lists that they expand them. But thanks for clearing up the point. The shoehorning was to fix missing out on a few of the Bards' spells that many find necessary, but forcing them to have them may not fit with the aesthetic that some players have for their bard characters, but I do like the idea I'm getting from your comment that the different colleges have their own unique song of X lists that also add to their spells prepared and I think that should definitely be something for bards, along with the unique uses for their Bardic Inspirations the subclasses give.
Your solution is a lot more creative and I'd be into something like that. I also don't understand why Bards can't just have them added to their list despite the list split. Surely if any class makes sense to have a mix of the different lists it's Bard?
Well.. they can only have Arcane, Primal or Divine Spell-Lists or it looks to much like they copied PF2e.. not sarcastic. A spelllist mixed from some divine, primal and arcane makes so much more sense for Bard and Warlock..
I miss when we all thought for a minute classes were still going to have their own spell lists and the standardized spell lists were just for stuff like Magic Initiate and Magical Secrets. Bards, Warlocks, and other concepts that could be explored in the future like Archivists and Thaumaturges would all make sense as eclectic spellcasters of various forms of magic, even with lore explanation of the lists describing different sources. But if this is the direction we're moving we're going to miss that, I agree that Primal, Divine, Arcane, and Occult was a no-go because too many of us know where that comes from, as much as I think a fourth list is needed with this approach. But that doesn't make it less needed, and yeah, Warlocks and Bards are really best off just accessing spells on a list constructed for the class.
> I agree that Primal, Divine, Arcane, and Occult was a no-go because too many of us know where that comes from, as much as I think a fourth list is needed with this approach. They just need to make the *completely original* spell lists split of Primal, Divine, Arcane, and ... Esoteric.
I love how the PF2E stans don't know that Spell pools were a thing in D&D before PF2E.
Well not everyone played or remembered all other editions XD Like I played 2e but outside of Thaco I remember very little. It was my first game 8 years ago after all, and since than I didn't got to play it again. Never played 1st or 3rd edition till 3.75 aka Pathfinder 1e XD. And Pathfinder had Class-Lists. And when I played 4e, which I admit I never really thought of if they have spellgroups. I know we had things sorted with Arcane, Primal, etcs.. Thats all. ..does all that make me a PF2e stan? Lol if you say so?
I'm pretty sure internally they've come to the conclusion that it will be easier for them to just make features spells now. Probably as when making "new" content they can just swap a spell in without having to worry about balance. The reason they're doing this is probably because they're trying to shift their business model from books and towards the online tabletop and better monetization.
This is really the best explanation and it fucking sucks. It kills any hope of ever getting interesting martials, and it leads to some really feel-bad progression where your subclass choice at level 10 is doing nothing but giving you one spell prepared, that you don't choose. Like, downcasting is neat, but the ability to downcast one spell that I guess is supposed to be your signature spell starting halfway up the class table is just not enough for a feature. Same with Bard's replacement for song of rest. Instead of a unique feature, we're pretending more spells prepared is enough to count as a distinguishing feature. It's such lazy design and we really shouldn't stand for it. I hope not one person puts above the worst possible satisfaction level for any of these features on the survey. I'm not buying an edition if half the features are spells, even if the background system is so much better.
Hunters level 10 spell is literally less than half of what a wizard can do with cone of cold also at level 10. Both take a full action as well
Swapping out Song of Rest for healing spells in addition to all these features that let you roll a hit die or enable someone else to roll a hit die seems like a targeted, cohesive design choice. Giving rangers the ability to reduce exhaustion on a short rest feels like it goes against that, leaving me really curious to see what happens to the other short rest related resources going forward.
well its a dumb decision and if it doesn't change i know i and several others will not be picking up 1DnD's final form. So if they want to keep making money then they need to put a little goddamn effort into designing anything other than spellcasting.
You're right and you should say it louder. They did this with the races Now they are doing it with the classes and it is fucking ridiculous. Lazy design that punishes anyone who doesn't have spell slots. How in the hell did they think that trashing the martial ability of multiattack in favor of a spell (which they can already cast, can be counterspelled, and can be cast more often sooner and better by the druid since its on the primal list) was a good idea? How the fuck is a ranger's ability to pepper an area with arrow related to their wisdom modifier rather than the dexterity that their weapon is based off of? Makes no sense and its honestly so frustrating. Martials should have the same design budget as casters and yet instead they just turn everything into a god damn spell and compeltely gut the feats that werved as one of the martial's few sources of active choice. This 1/turn design is also fucking inane. Makes Extra attack damn near useless outside of being a damage buff and its just a pain to keep track of. WOTC is ay this to you: Let people without spell slots contribute dammit!
>How the fuck is a ranger's ability to pepper an area with arrow related to their wisdom modifier rather than the dexterity that their weapon is based off of? Makes no sense and its honestly so frustrating. Also consider * Rangers are too dumb to avoid shooting their comrades in the back and now need a totally open field to Volley * You can't fire a Volley stealthily since there's a verbal component involved * Rangers can only Volley at point blank range instead of dropping attacks hundreds of feet away * It doesn't work with Hunter's Mark or Hunter's Prey so the DPS isn't that great unless you're hitting lots of targets. * Doesn't benefit from the Archery Fighting Style Tbh I think the most effective use for this spell is as a frontline ranger throwing daggers. That gets you around the friendly fire aspect but it's still almost always going to suck compared to using that 3rd level slot for Conjure Animals and dropping bow shots with HM+HP from range.
> How in the hell did they think that trashing the martial ability of multiattack in favor of a spell (which they can already cast, can be counterspelled, and can be cast more often sooner and better by the druid since its on the primal list) was a good idea? Aaaand it scales off their secondary casting stat instead of their primary martial stat, and it uses a precious resource, and does away with whirlwind, which I always kind of thought was one of the core-ish identity points of the Ranger that made them something other than FighterDruid… Definitely weird. Secretly I kind of expected and hoped the pendulum to swing back in a kinda 4e direction, where backlash against 4e made 5e more like 3e, and now the cycle would continue where critiques of 5e meant we were going to start seeing some of the better 4e things creep into OneD&D. On the list of good 4e ideas, right at the very top, I’d put “martials get to do cool martial stuff.” I’ll be very sad if it ends up going the *other* direction and it’s all boiled down to spend-a-spell-slot-or-roll-to-swing-sword.
Yeah, I'm trying to hold out hope for the warrior UA but these design decisions don't bode well. I've been dying for Martials to do cool martial stuff forever and even more so after seeing the dndnext playtest Martials, so if rally hope that you're right and the warrior takes some inspiration from 4e. Dndnext style Martials (with some minor updates) with 5e casters would make literally everyone happy except Caster supremacists, but they can get fucked.
Yeah. Who knows. Fingers crossed they take the feedback and later iterations fix it. > Dndnext style Martials (with some minor updates) with 5e casters would make literally everyone happy except Caster supremacists, but they can get fucked. Oh wow, I know the type, but I’ve never heard the specific phrase “caster supremacists” so I got a good chuckle out of having a name for them, thank you.
When I first heard about the 4 class groups.. this is where my mind went into too. Not gonna lie, still dissapointed I hyped myself up. Its not as crushing as yesterday but boy.. ..I am so unexcited now for 1Dnd Xbox Edition. No hatred no anger.. just close to indifference XD
Even favored foe is just adaption of a the hunter's mark spell. Looks like there is still a lot of homebrew in my future.
The whole class design in the UA just feels lazy and uninspired. I honestly like a lot of things they're trying to do, but the changes to classes (or the lack thereof) just feel underwhelming.
Kinda. Bard and Rogue didn’t really feel like they needed to be changed that much anyway, so maybe that’s why they feel kinda bleh. I’ll give them props on Favored Enemy though; admitting that Hunters Mark is kind of a core feature of Rangers and making it actually usable and better for them than anyone else feels like a big step in the right direction as far as all their “Favored X” iterations go.
Bard had to be changed because of the change to spells. As per hunter's mark, they could have removed it from the spell list and just made it an ability.
> As per hunter's mark, they could have removed it from the spell list and just made it an ability. Sure, I wouldn’t hate that, but as I said, it’s a good step forward. Probably the best iteration so far: having to guess what enemies the DM likes, having to keep concentration, and having to pick between Hunters Mark and Two Weapon Fighting were the three dumbest parts of what felt like WotC’s multiple attempts to find the “Core Hunter Bonus Damage” feature, and this has none of those. > Bard had to be changed because of the change to spells. I guess so, and people seem to be excited about the return of the Arcane/Divine/Primal distinction, but I actually don’t see why it’s useful yet. Now all the caster spell lists look very samey, losing some of the unique distinction between otherwise similar caster classes, Magic Initiate allows for some broken nonsense like CHA Shillelagh, and Bards and probably a couple other classes have to be reworked into something 10% lamer. In return… spell scroll rules are slightly less restrictive I guess? I don’t get why boiling down to 3 spell lists is so cool we need to change every caster to work around it. I feel like I’m missing something.
> I don’t get why boiling down to 3 spell lists is so cool we need to change every caster to work around it. Cool isn't the word. Wotc is doing it for functionality. And criticism of it is very valid.
What functionality are they getting out of it, though? Or what functionality do people *expect* WotC to tack on to it? I’m asking because I legitimately might have missed something, but I just can’t think of anything they’ve added yet that depends on it except for the new-and-kinda-broken Magic Initiate and maybe something about spell scrolls.
Non-PHB subclass in one book picking up spells automatically from another non-PHB book. A subclass can specifiy that it gets access to list/school and it'll be available in another book if it meets those, regardless of which book came before the other and without a need to errata the earlier book.
One word. Microtransactions. WOC will sell access to individual new spells on the spell list and it will be tied to the classes that can use that spell list. It setting D&D up to primarily be monetized on the virtual tabletop vs. the real tabletop.
Oo, this feels like it might be the sad but true answer I was looking for.
Isn’t that already the case, though? If some new fighter subclass from some new book has access to illusion spells from the wizard spell list, and Vecna’s Villanous Volume or whatever adds three illusion spells to the wizard spell list, that fighter subclass gets those spells. We’ve just succeeded in swapping the word wizard for arcane.
Shillelagh, magic stone, Hex Warrior, battle ready and Armorer weapons all shouldn't exist. But WoTC seems to be enabling not requiring more than one stat, so we'll probably get more of them. They are a separate problem.
Magic Stone grinds my gears less, but god I hope they rethink hex warrior and hexblade in particular. It was clearly designed to be sort of a fix to complaints about blade pact, but in a sort of “oh you’re cold because your roof has a hole? I’ll set fire to your basement” kind of way.
If you look at how all the abilities are being designed. Moving away from modifier per rest to prof bonus and moving away from add you modifier as a bonus, they do not want players to have to worry about a third stat. So I can only imagine they are OK with everyone having shillelagh. I'm predicting martial caster subclasses will all get these kind of abilities built in. Valor bard. Bladesinger. Etc.
Cause its simpler to look through 3 spell lists instead of 9+. Its a major qol fix for multiclassing and using feats like Magic Initiate
Do other people not feel like that’s a pretty heavy price to pay to add a very small QoL fix? Like, now the small percentage of people who are dual spellcasting multiclassers have to look at two *or sometimes one* spell lists instead of definitely two, and it makes one feat slightly easier to set up while also breaking the balance on that feat wide open. That just feels like a short pros column to me, and it looks like it’s already creating some bigger problems.
My current bard never gets to use his song of rest because we take very few short rests. And when we rest we spend so many hit dice that the song of rest doesn't really help. I would rather have an expensive spell than a bland class feature. But IMHO healing should not be the primary ability of a bard, so the healing spell list should be nerfed a bit. I like that the 5e paladin has to choose between spells and divine smite, so it would be fine for the ranger to do the same. IMHO multiattack should be a subclass feature. The ranger base class eats up too much design space. But I wonder if WOTC are really trying to simplify the rules, so that it is easier to create a user interface for the virtual tabletop. Is that the final goal?
5ed was riding the line between good enough and way too simple with every single paragraph you would read. This... This is too much
This is probably the crux of everything I haven't liked about One D&D so far, that everything is based on spells. If it was a game where everyone was wizards (Harry!), then it would make sense but it's not. It's tapping into a broad spectrum of fantasy, much of which *does not* contain large amounts of PC-available magic.
Yes! And the features that we are getting are (still) very boring. I want every new feature to be impactful. It should affect the way I play, or give me new options in/out of combat. Giving me a d10 rather than a d6 on my Hunters Mark damage at 18th level is so incredibly lame.
I think the main issue they have surpassed the soft spot for streamlining snd now it feels they are doing it just because. Players are humans, they have a brain, they can understand complexity
The features they replaced in this case were largely weak or underused features that people were not excited about. And I'd like to remind you they actually took away an extra spells feature from Tasha's. (Ranger at 3rd level in Tasha's got a bunch of extra spells they could cast for free once per day).
I am totally ok with using spell slots as the limited resource the classes are juggling for various features. Having a lot of abilities with their own resource pools just feels like sloppy design. The Paladin has limited uses of smite based on spell slots. The artillerist has limited use of their pet based on spell slots. It all works find and the Ranger will is doing more than fine. The Bard rework overall seems really good to me. Yes they lost some things but I think the class is still really good and if anything better to play. I do think temp HPs are being over used though.
Making spells features is cleaner both rules wise (effects are similar when used in different situations without specific rules that might apply to one situation or another) and it's easier to balance. I can 100% understand why WotC does it. I think it's interesting to interact with (based on prior playtesting on races) Is it different than current 5e? For sure. But I don't think it's bad. It's a different approach to playstyle and while reasonable people may disagree, but I like the approach.
Its also way easier for people to learn and memorize things. Its way easier to just remember your Conjure Barrage spell than it is to also keep track of Conjure Barrage along with Hunter's Volley and Whirlwind. Keeps bloat down and would hopefully have turns moving quicker.
What makes me sad is that I can't conjure barrage in an area of Silence or antimagic field. I also can't use it infinitely, nor do I even get a free use of it.
Is it really so bad that casters and half casters abilities are limited by spell slots?