It seems like when they do come up with good ideas they end up getting dropped because of them trying to please the fan base. It might be better if they had less input from the public instead of trying to create something by committee.
Yeah, product by committee rarely turns out well. What I am hoping is they are using their own oversight to say something like "well the playtesters like these *ideas* so how can we take that feedback and make it broadly applicable". Obviously, it's all speculation though.
I dunno how many new ideas they came up with that they dropped, but I definitely agree that god I miss the early attempts where it was least dramatically more experimental than it is now. I kinda wish they would diversify their writing staff and be willing to commit to more experimentation. It’s otherwise so safe and clearly trying to pull a fraction of an audience that is already playing it.
See, the thing is, D&D has a pretty large community. That means many, many players. And that means that there's never a majority of people agreeing on something. And to complicate things further, most of those people have no shard of an idea of how game design works, they just pretend that they know.
@@AhglockSome were and some were good ideas implemented poorly. They failed to recognize the difference and just scrapped everything that got blow back instead of trying to improve them.
Having gone through the change from AD&D to 2nd Edition, this is very different and refreshing in that I get a say in the change. Even though it is very diluted among the other survey submissions, it is still a new sensation. Honestly, I think they wanted to publish something new to coincide with the 50th anniversary.
What im looking for is not power per say, its customizability and experimentation. I want open features that interact with one another in exciting new ways. I feel like one dnd is taking a step further away from that direction, which was already fairly lacking in 5e.
This is my feeling as well. I'd rather they make divine smite 1d4s instead but allow me to combine it with other features to create my own way of hit than the current implement where it's basically isolated from any other feature of the game. But what's worse, all this only means they do not plan to update combat design rules to account for party build. They rather remove interactions and emergent gameplay that provide a proper framework to help DMs balancing the game regarding the different possibilities for a party.
@@InsightCheck An example of interactions being made less interesting is how more and more features are being changed to being once per turn. It makes the interaction binary and therefore leaves no room for experimentation. Id rather have 1d8 per hit than 2d8 once per turn, sure 2d8 might be more powerful, but its less interesting to play with.
@@BlueFrenzy Odd, my original reply didnt go through. Anyway, yea I totally agree.. I get the sense they really wanna put features in small boxes to avoid them having unexpected results.. imo thats just making the entire system blander. Yea, they should patch game breaking things like the wish/simulacrum interaction, but otherwise, let people experiment. Playing Baldurs Gate 3 has also opened my eyes to how much more fun the system is if we remove some of the needless restrictions we have on things like two weapon fighting for example. Is having handcrossbows viable for two weapon fighting balanced? Probably not, but who cares, its intuitive and cool and makes for some interesting interactions.
It has been fun playtesting all their new rules, but I have to say that as they walk back a lot of their proposed changes, I wonder more and more if people will really think 2024 > 2014 + Xanathar's + Tasha's. For me, I could homebrew in Weapon Masteries (for example) and not buy $180 worth of books. I really think Monsters and the Monster action economy is where the biggest gains are, though, and we haven't even seen what they're doing to monsters, so it might be that the PHB and DMG aren't worth it, but maybe the MM will be.
Yeah this is a totally fair point. Will it be "worth" it to buy the new books if a lot of the changes end up resembling to a high degree their 2014 counterpart. I guess we just have to wait and see what the next 4-5 UAs offer.
I've personally left D&D for other games. However I still don't want the game that I started with decades ago to fail, I notice that once again the playtest seems to have largely abandoned DM's. Outside of the weapon specializations and a few minor tweaks, I don't recall seeing anything that actually helps DM's. They're coming up quick on that 2024 deadline and we've had only one rambly video about broad basics of what they might have in the DMG, and none of it seemed to address some very key issues. It all sounded like more 'advice' without any rules. While I agree that player classes needed work, and spells and abilities needed a fair bit of new paint as well, I've always felt like this was the edition that largely told DM's to just make it up themselves. Monsters and modules created with the credo of 'assume the party never has magic items' was always baffling to me. I know it was done to artificially make magic items feel more powerful, and to cut back on the 'golf bag of swords' problem that I've personally never seen happen in any edition, but it chain reacted into a CR system that is completely broken and needs an extensive overhaul. An overhaul that won't happen because they have crippled their design space by having to make it all backwards compatible. I'd personally love to see more rules to help free up DM's workspace to focus on more creative things. Rules on crafting magic items, rules on economy, rules on creating settlements and what kind of populace and level of equipment one might find there (3rd edition did this incredibly well). Rules on actually creating monsters and enemies with the same formulas they use internally, and not the thrown-together mess that's in the old DMG. I'd like to think DM's will get more support. But I thought that for the five years that I played 5e and barely anything really came of it. Maybe they have a really big DMG update in the pipeline but we'll just have to see. So for me personally the whole One-D&D playtest would have been a wash if I still actively played the system. I mainly run games, so I wouldn't have much to test.
Though we know very little about what it will look like, aside from using Xanathar's as a base and some restructuring to the mess of chapters in the current book, it has been confirmed that there will be a new DMG which will also have at least one public playtest. I would LOVE to see more and hope we do but that's the stuff I am also really excited to see.
May I want to know if by other games you meant TTRPGs or video games? Because that mindset of "Make the GM figure it out" for problems in the system, is pretty toxic and puts a bunch of work to the GM, and only seen in 5e, I saw a bunch of other systems much easier to GM
Definitely agree that backwards compatibility is a frustrating part of all of this. If they just committed to a new edition they could do so much to streamline the game like they keep saying they want to. By keeping it backwards compatible they have to bring over a lot of stuff that will make the game more difficult for new players. I personally am going to stick with Pathfinder second edition because I love that game but 5th edition got me into role playing so a new edition that brings more people into the hobby would be wonderful.
I think One D&D is a mixed bag marked by the issues of Base 5e. Seems like every time they're brought up, people complain about Hunter's Mark being a Spell even though it's because they can't just change it to not be one easily, whereas Divine Smite being a Spell too being criticized when it's honestly better for being made the same as the other Smite Spells. Thus, I feel like many people just don't think about it all through the lens of making One D&D directly from Base 5e and refining the rough edges without making it impossible to play with previous adventure books. That said, I still hope they fix the Feat/ASI system by splitting them apart, meaning you get a Feat and Ability Score Increase, so that 1st Lvl Feats are still usable and there is no longer a problem with Feats removing the ability to max out Ability Scores, I think it'd be balanced enough while adding actual options and depth without hefty sacrifices. Also, I will always advocate to change 1st Lvl HP to +Con Score over +Con Mod to help make 1st Lvl more playable and NOT have your character be made of paper mache.
I think you've got a pretty accurate assessment here. I think many of us, including myself, certainly had loftier expectations for what One D&D would become despite the designers telling us otherwise the entire time. After a year, I think most people are accepting that, as you say, it's really about smoothing out the rough edges while not obsoleting old content. While I can't say I wasn't "hoping" for more, I'm not disappointed either. HP being + Con Score sounds interesting. Would definitely help the early game a lot but would certainly have balance implications down the line. An interesting thought though!
@@InsightCheck Adding +Con Score to HP shouldn't be too much of a big deal down the line, when your normal HP would be big anyway and the Con Score bonus is small by comparison, it just helps drastically improve durability at low levels when you're very squishy and can be killed a little too easily from experience, especially in the pre-made adventures (looking at you Phandelver).
@@halozoo2436Additionally, you're with a party, not flying solo. If you're flying solo, there are sidekicks. But it's about using your literal wits (hoping you have some real-life wits and aren't just hoping the DM is kind) and character abilities to make it through encounters. Also, keep in mind that adventuring is dangerous and not for the faint of heart. It's kind of like saying "anyone should be able to be a coal miner because what's the big deal?". Coal Mining is dangerous and hundreds, or even thousands, of people are injured or die for that profession. D&D is meant to be fun but dangerous. If your character is walking out of the gate with 20+ HP, then where's the challenge? Goblins have max 12. Orcs are 22. Your level 1 isn't about to try to face down an Orc. Sorry Legolas wannabe. Legolas and Aragorn had a lot of time training and "leveling" to be able to take down orcs. And even in things like Lord of the Rings there was plenty of character death. Put simply, fighting is dangerous. And just because you have magic doesn't necessarily make you "strong" or able to wield it effectively. Plenty of anime about fantasy worlds/games/genre that prove this point. Want to see what it might be like to be in a D&D campaign? Watch Goblin Slayer. Very visceral and very realistic if you think about it from a "damn, being an adventurer is not joke and takes planning and thought". Lastly - one well placed arrow to the dome or check is probably going to end most people. No matter how much you think you've trained. If that goblin scores a crit, it is what it is. You're level 1, it's not like you just spent a year playing this character.
Personally, I hope each classes get something useful and distintive to each classes. For example, I hope Druid features to lean more into spect of Nature Magic or Elemental Magic rather than copy/paste from Cleric's Cantrip/Melee enhencements.
That would be great and I do think that updates like that are really on the table. They've talked at length about how they want the classes to feel distinct and unique, and, even though they have missed the mark a few times we also got stuff like Cunning Strike recently which is quite distinct for Rogue! I hope we get some more like that.
Personally I think they just need to round out the Spell List with more ways to call up plants, earth and storms to attack foes and control the battlefield. Also, their Damaging Cantrips need an overhaul as Produce Flame needs its Range doubled or even quadrupled so they can actually fight at a decent range compared to Thorn Whip which wants to be shorter ranged, plus the addition of new earth, lightning and thunder Cantrips to attack from a distance with. As for the Cleric similarities, I don't mind them too much as it does work, I just want a better Potent Cantrip upgrade that isn't a slap in the face.
I think people forget how hard it is to have both mechanical depth and simplicity. In a lot of cases to achieve one you have to sacrifice the other, not to say its impossible to have a balance of low skill floor and high skill ceiling, but to achieve that is so much harder then a few simple changes. Something like that in a single player experience is hard, and in a multiplayer one? Especially one as open ended as DnD is quite the feat. And the fact of the matter is, most players dont have time to spend to parse out a bunch of sifferent rulings, go through hundreds of feats and abilities to develop the exact character they want or min/max for a high power campaign. Most players just want to have an excuse to get together and mess around with some friends, and that is just as valid. And if players want more depth, then there are other systems to introduce them too, and it may be less overwhelming as they already have some base level knowledge on ttrpgs so a simple system can be a gateway to more complex ones as well.
For me, I think the ONED&D process was important and needed. 5E was so culturally significant, but more and more the flaws and cracks were revealed so much more. The way people played has changed dramatically and the game should change to reflect its culture. The revelation of 5Es flaws and WotC+Hasbro’s ickiness and stagnation is also revealed and more indies needed representation. I think my biggest issue in their design direction is that they aren’t actually making the game welcoming to new players. It’s obvious that the critiques and test audiences are extremely well versed in D&D. It should be simpler yet more balanced and expressive, not pushing a feature bloat per level and chargen. It should learn from PF2Es strengths and flaws, and D&D4Es, and modern conventions such as theater of the mind compatibility and QA clarity.
Yeah, for as much grief as people give it for being "too easy" or things like that, there probably still is a lot they could do to enhance the new player experience.
@@InsightCheck Frfr. I really believe that in terms of depth and complexity D&D is a 7/10 since modern games tend to be so much more clear and streamlined, and even though PF2E is my beloved I’m kinda frustrated at it for remaining so clunky and deep that some people are uneasy making that jump to new games.
The problem that WotC is stuck with is at it's core, D&D is not new player friendly. That was never really the original developer intent, every system up to and including 3.5 was designed to be intricate, complex, and rules heavy. You either were interested with that, or D&D wasn't for you, it was never trying to have broad appeal. It was designed as a wargame/simulation first, narrative device second, if at all. They tried to make the game drastically more new player friendly with 4e, and 4e was hated by older players for how much of a departure it was from "real D&D", and also didn't really succeed at making a truly simple system. So then 5e comes along, takes the core mechanics from 3.5, and just takes a machete to them. Static bonuses are axed in favor of advantage/disadvantage, specific rules on situations are replaced with "DM discretion", skill points and BAB are replaced with proficiency bonus. But this doesn't make 5e a simple system, it makes it a complex system with half of the pieces removed, and some of the simplifications from 4e grafted in. As a direct result, 5e is the most broken version of D&D released so far. It however did manage to be not completely offensive to older players while also being simple enough for most new players. It was also the current edition of D&D for most of the last decade of a TTRPG boom. I maintain that if 5e was just a generic TTRPG rather than being an edition of D&D, it would see little to no play. It has no core appeal. If you want a deep combat system with interesting mechanical choices, 5e is a shallow puddle of wildly unbalanced options. You can make some interesting builds, but even if you do, your in combat actions will get repetitive very quick. If you want a flexible, narrative-driven system, 5e is still heavily reliant on high-crunch, HP-depletion combat, and next to no noncombat rules outside of "make a skill check against a DC". The only thing 5e does successfully is be a middle ground between dozens of different preferences. It is the TTRPG expression of the quote "A good compromise is when both parties are dissatisfied" Ideally, there would have just been a 6th edition with a tangible core design goal, a solid idea of what it is trying to be. But WotC doesn't want to risk butchering the cash cow of 5e for an uncertain new edition, so they're doing this weird half measure. They claim backwards compatibility while clearly making changes that, at the very least, wildly unbalance older content.
@@craftyfirestormdude, I’m being genuine when I say that this is the best explanation for 5E and it’s problems (and why I don’t like it) I’ve probably ever seen. 5E is too light to be crunchy, and too crunchy to be light, yet never felt like a satisfying middle ground.
Wow I did not realize you had under 100k subs. The production value of your videos are amazing and that doesn’t even begin to mention the content! Been subbed for a couple of weeks now I think and I loved every video of yours I’ve seen! Keep it up!!
I pressed X to doubt @3:50 mark. "They had a small design team mistakes will happen." WotC isn't some Indie Game developer. They are a billion dollar corporation. They, probably, were told to rush out a new edition because 4e was doing poorly (lower than expected sales) so they went off and recreated 3.5e but Simplified... and took a few ideas from 4e and threw them on top... They didn't take the time to properly vet the interactions nor did they spend the time to actually make rules for many things and just went, "let the DM figure this out." My point is this, they had the money, they had the resources, they had the time. They just _refused_ to use them. Do not give them a benefit of the doubt where none exists. Yes, mistakes happen. Sometimes it happens because they were overlooked, or they editors missed the mistake. For example, PF2e has had many problems with items when it first released. The shield block reaction was causing expensive magical shields to break on a regular basis, tools to craft items were to bulky to carry around for the Alchemist, and the bulk limits Paizo used was quickly found to be too impractical, so they made an errata to backpacks to remove 2 bulk worth of items in them all within the first several months of release. Except for shields, they are getting fixed in the Remaster. The point is, for large complex games like D&D 3.0 through 5e, and soon One D&D and Paizo's Pathfinder and Starfinder games, these oversights are expected. What isn't expected is _bad_ game design. Which 3.5e Simplified with Aspects of 4e Thrown on Top does _have._ Who thought it was a good idea to make "Advantage" and "Disadvantage" so easy to get, nullifying many other things the players _could_ do? Hell, why do those things even exist? Oh... right... they wanted to distance themselves from _math_ and rolling dice is something the intellectually challenged can do on their own. Or abandoning entire systems from 3.5e and just telling the DMs to wing it (item system!). What I was hoping WotC would do is to fix their game design... but marketing wants the game to be "backwards compatible"... so fixing the game isn't going to happen. After a single year... all they have shown was changing things regarding the classes, seeing what's popular, what's not popular without touching the core mechanics of the game which _do_ need to be worked on.
For what it's worth, a large company does not necessarily equal a large and flush team for any given project. Apple's Maps team was famously extremely underfunded after its bomb of a launch, the Diablo and StarCraft teams at Blizzard were shells of themselves for years while other projects took priorities. Neither of us know definitively what the truth is, I am choosing to take the statements from people who were there at face value. The point is though that it is far from unheard of for billion dollar companies to have smaller and less well funded teams. Also, both I and they were speaking in relative terms. It's not to say that "hey here is 10 million dollars, go make a game" isn't a lot of money. But If they now have a budget of say 50 million, that's a substantial difference in what can be accomplished.
@@InsightCheck, Pointing out how AAA video game developers mistreat their staff... doesn't support your position.. in fact it detracts from it. Relative to the Indie Game Companies... 10 million is a _lot_ of cash... especially if the designers are using already created rules. Most of their work was already done. Which is why _those_ companies can produce better quality games than WotC did with 5e. As I said, WotC rushed this product out of the door... while giving the design team two objectives: 1. Get the 3.5e Players to buy WotC products, again. 2. Simplify the game so more people will be interested in playing the game... as most people dislike Math... it was the math that the design team tried to remove... from a tactical _skirmish_ game. *Rollseyes* The most difficult thing for Jeremy and Co. to do was come up with the math. Once they figured out the math, all they had to do was copy and paste spells/actions/abilities from previous editions and modify them to make them fit with the new math. They choose to simplify things even further _and_ add 4e mechanics which don't work with 3.5e rules. *Shrugs* They could have completed their tasks... and refused to. Either through lack of time or through incompetence. Matters not. What matters if they recognize these issues the community has pointed out over the years and _fix_ them. From what I've seen, I don't have any hope that they will.
For me, the biggest problem facing 5e was balance, and they have put that on the backburner (like they always do). I know it is not as important for new players, because if you pick your spells and feats more or less at random, the game is not that unbalanced. If you know what you are doing though, balance goes out the window, and so far they have done nothing to address this. They also haven't provided true playtests, the original playtests for 2014 had little scenarios to play through. Which meant you got a slice of the game, a few classes, a few monsters, a few spells, but you could see the whole vision. What I really wanted to see from one dnd was. - a rebalancing of subclasses, so there wasn't clear superior subclasses for each class. - a rework of problematic spells, both those that were too powerful, those slows the game too much, and also those that are never cast because they just don't deliver. We have seen very little work on the spells. - some actual good advice on spell selection, (eg. try not to have too many spells that do the same job, make sure not all your spells require concentration etc.) - a general buff to the non-casters. (they did get buffed, but so did casters, and then it is not really a buff).
They need to bring up martial classes on par with casters. A martial character shouldn't need a 25K gold magic item just to sort of keep up with the casters as far as damage output from mid game on. They should get additional damage dice for hits as they level up. Getting multi attack doesn't quite cut it.
The basic natural creature transformation ability used by druids. This has always had many advantages without upgraded features later on. The ability to conceal yourself as being a low intelligence creature, escape from danger, gather information in remote locations, and recover lost hit points. Its overpowered in some respect, but then again polymorph other, and polymorph self were 4th level spells in 1e. The same level druids got their creature transformation ability at 7th level. 5e druids get it at 2nd level.
the Revised PHB is gonna be great! sure there will be some thngs we dont like, and some thingsd we love, but an overall improvement, and clarification on rules that weve had over a decade to real life playtest.
Great video as usual, except one thing is sticking with me. you said that UA 6 Bard is the Bardiest bard, and i can't disagree more. UA 6 Bard is not a jack of all trades and master of none - it is a master of all trades and better monk that monks. UA 6 bard needs to be hard redesigned to be a little bit of a lot of stuff, not the best of everything all at once.
I appreciate the compliment! Also, that's a totally fair take. I can absolutely see where you are coming from, particularly in relation to just being the best Monk... that needs to be addressed.
LOL.. 5E is still as basic as shit. Im going back to Pathfinder 1e because 5E is too simple. Our DM also created his own game system because 5e is too simple. If you think its complicated.. Thats 100% you, not the game.
@@Ddog72Very similar story here. I'm getting my group to try out PF1e because a lot of problems they had with 5e I noticed were essentially fixed in PF1e (yes I was technically that guy, but I prefer people try other systems instead of trying to "fix" something that wasn't really made to handle the changes). I'm also the one in my group making my own system. Lol
@@Ddog72uhh.. I don’t recall saying I thought D&D 5e was complicated, I said it is becoming too crunchy and is now too complex to be a streamlined game, especially after WOTC hired a Paizo designer. Clearly understanding words is a YOU problem.😂🤷🏻♂️
I disagree that they were designing it for VTT, but I had a similar thought when the experts first appeared, where the bard and ranger spell lists were the arcane and primal respectively but with certain schools removed. I thought well this would be real easy digitally, as you just filter out those schools, but when I made a character pen and paper-esque (digital sheet but manual entries of features and such) I realized that it was such a drag to actually go through and see what spells I wanted to take while trying to ignore the ones that didn't fit, leading me to just copy and paste the spell list and remove the invalid schools to focus on what to take. I dont think that was designing for VTT but instead designed by someone who had a digital-friendly thought process. Nothing else has stood out to me as overly digital catering, so Im confused as to where the sentiment came from if not this. Additionally there is precedent of a spell list being a school-restricted version of anothers, being arcane trickster and eldritch knight with the wizard's spell list.
I think the most insane thing is they said that old subclasses can not be played with 5e '24, but you can do it the other way. I thought this was "cross play" why limit it?
Obviously in the end it will be a very minor evolution version, which I think is a good thing, too. Was it different we would have not just players being unhappy with changes (that always happens and as it really cannot be avoided I think it should be ignored as much as possible), but also that we need to adjust tooling (anything from VTTs to just making new condition markers for the physical table), and introducing new problems. If you have working system, maybe even a good one, it is a good idea to try to do small incremental steps instead of trying a revolution without needing to do one. If they persist in fixing some of the most problematic spells (Conjure many) I am pretty happy. I am worried about some things (such as Warlock maybe even getting better as one level dip for almost every future "build", or now Rogue not being the only real Skills expert anymore), but in balance I think it is improving a good system, with very few things getting worse. I am actually more concerned (by far) about the quality of adventures. Not only was Spelljammer very high in the worst publications in the decade, but also do they not really work with the Adventuring Day concept in pretty much any of their publications -- despite it being a bedrock balancing assumption to make the resources work (if they don't have that concept be central to their writing they need to get rid of Short Rest, which I think they did discuss, but obviously it did not happen).
No one really expects the classes to be perfectly balanced in all aspects of the game, but each class should be better than the other classes at something and right now casters are better than martials at everything. Better AoE damage, better single target damage, better at social encounters, better disguises, better at infiltration, better at getting past traps... and the limitations on casters are not enough to make up for it. I find the only way to "balance" it in my game is to make an aggressively anti-magic world where wands of counterspell and anti-magic fields are common...
I know this kind of tangential, but the Hunter's Mark spell in 5e hasn't been lauded as a great spell, especially as you gain higher levels. It didn't scale up, and required concentration, and thus there were always more impactful concentration spells you can cast. In the experts UA, Hunt'er's Mark now scales up, but it's scaling is not great, and still doesn't make it a worthwhile spell to concentrate on throughout your ranger's career. This is why having the spell with no concentration with the Favored Foe feature was a big improvement to the usability of the spell. Now that has been rescinded in UA 6 with it now requiring concentration once again, once again it is not worth using a spell slot on a spell that ultimately is not that good.
@@zackmyers805 Which I actually don't mind, as the potential for multiple triggers makes it busted on other classes like Fighter, so I'm fine with them reigning it in. And honestly, I don't mind trading the no-Concentration for Free Uses/Day as that is infinitely more useful imo, especially if they get their Smite-Like Spells to work like the new Smites, then it would finally work roughly the way it should have been from the start.
The playtest is just bad and its impossible to playtest considering the rules are released piecemeal and incomplete. Nothing about the game is hype. Which explains why the onednd reddit is very sleepy. Especially for the most popular ttrpg system ever.
1D&D is not really about VTTs. D&D already did an edition for a VTT and it was called D&D 4th edition! The idea of making a VTT was already being talked about near the end of 2nd edition in some spaces thanks to games under SSL’s Dragonlance. And by 3.5 even WotC was thinking it was a good idea considering all the other games that had come out. Thus the 4th edition (there is a lot more history here but this is already a wall of text). For those that think that 1D&D was needed to code the core mechanics of the game I recommend they look at what Baldar’s Gate 3 operates with 5th edition rules. While it is true they made some minor changes you have to be a rules lawyer to point out Larian mods. I say this, my distaste for VTT’s done by major companies is really because it stifles creativity and makes the game more of cash grab then it needs to be. I highly doubt WotC will be content to be just “competitive” and an “option” with current VTTs. The person Hasbro allows to run the brand has illwill to the players thinking of this as live service from what was said before. But technically, a VTT is possible and doable now for WotC. This revision is likely more to do with the 50th anniversary of the game (anniversary books have been done before )with respectable profit taking the any cash grab VTT.
the problem i have is with varied depth for example the druid or wizard vs the fighter i would like to play a fighter with as many abilities as a wizard has spells, consider that if you think that's to many abilities, welp there's your answer for if the wizard has to many class abilities tough my biggest gripe is probably with DEX being to strong and defining the game in a not fun way PS just a reminder DND will always claim the have more players than they have for the sake of investors and its vague enough that people can claim otherwise
They already made an edition where the fighter could have as many options as a wizard. That’s what frustrates me about 5E and OneD&D. They had a lot of good ideas in 4E, solutions to long standing problems, and they pissed them all away instead of iterating on and streamlining that system.
I'm gonna be the guy who's defending the backwards compatibility. To me it was very clear from the start that this is a refined 5th edition, not a brand new edition. So I think it's better for me as a consumer to be able to use the 5e books I already own without needing to fiddle around with or throw out every subclass not in the 2024 PHB to fit them into the new versions of the classes. So I actually liked that subclass feature levels were no longer uniform, as I found that completely pointless, unless they were planning for a way to take subclass features from other classes It also makes sense from a business standpoint, as what's the point of releasing new books when they'll just become irrelevant next year? Had this been a
If Hasbro/Wizards where smart they would look at GURPS, and take that system and make into a d20 engine. S0 you could make the character you want to play with a point buy system.
I don't see how you couldn't just homebrew this instead. Or just play the GURPS system. When you start suggesting that one system be like another, you are basically saying "there shouldn't be multiple systems when everyone should just play this one". It's like saying that there should only be 1 chocolate company because there should only be one way to make chocolate (no matter the cocoa percentage and other additives for taste/texture). But that's not the case. And that doesn't lend itself to innovation or the need to improve. Because there are multiple systems/ways of doing things, each is forced to figure out how to improve rather than how to stagnate.
Yeah powerful things can be fun. But also dumb failures can be fun to. Sometimes things like failure can breed interesting changes in the narrative or combat that you didn't think about.
I think the larger issues I've had with this playtest is WotC releasing something that may need a few tweaks and instead of listening to community feedback, they look at the satisfaction score and just pitch the idea. Rolling back to individual class spell lists, dropping the better exhaustion rules, even the movement and jumping mechanics were promising. They didn't make their requirements for what would stay known to the public before already reviewing playtest 1, and I find their overall satisfaction score system incredibly uninformative. As an aside, the free castings of Hunter's Mark need to scale with your Ranger. They give you what are essentially free casts of a cantrip, so have it actually level like one. Same with Hex for Warlocks. If the Paladin's Divine Smites have different effects and spell requirements, do the same for Hunter's Mark and Hex.
As long as my $500 worth of DM materials, and books don't become obselete overnight, i'll be perfectly happy. Also, I hope they don't change the cover art system. I don't want my D&D books to start looking like my PS3 collection
The casual D&D users can't, won't and don't want to hit the limits of the system. Nobody playing basketball in the park concerns themselves with NBA rules of fouls. If the system is good and sound for powerusers, casual ones can only benefit. Yes, people online make up overdesigned and silly stuff. Part of why an open playtest might kill good ideas, due to the users not being as good at game design as the game designers. The whole "bardiest bard" and "dwarfiest dwarf" was there early on, but recent playtests have little of that ideology and often use features from other classes to add to another. Puglist is a monk-fighter and World Tree Barbarian is a Druid-Barbarian, these of course are subclasses. It is disappointing when one of the best things about playtest 7 is an Archfey rework and people are happy about an average subclass. JC proclaims in the annoucement video that Fey of course means "teleportation and charms" in 5e - this is all the feywild has to offer? If power is not the focus, why can we not get some unique, interesting or creative design instead? The spellists are gone by the way. With the weapon mastery have playtested it, it's just a rider effect and not particularly interactive apart from Topple having the DM roll saves like crazy. I think many are upset at sheer failures in math. If a change is just a downgrade when everyone expected a buff or is even framed as a buff in the documents or interviews. Core rules reworks like making dual-wielding better for example, were big wants from an update to 5e. Which was there in early playtests, Dual wielding, heavy strength and finesse weapons were exceptionally close and offered real diversity and choice. Sadly it seems the people reworking these core rules were not working the ones that made weapon mastery and all these great changes were abandoned to make room for weapon masteries, which instead of offering diversity likely just add another filter to reach "the right choice". Talking about onus on the DM, with them saying that MPMM was envisoned to be used with the 2024 rules and hence it is unlikely we will see a rebalancing of statblocks outside of what we have seen in MPMM. Did WotC account for everyone seemingly having advantage all the time on everything or is it going to be like the last 10 years were DMs have to know the players classes, competency and homebrew monsters to challenge their players as opposed to having any solid guidance from what the CR system should be?
I think the main issue is their play tests are just bad. They are disorganized, they don;t explain the intent, and are really hard to actually use. Hey you have one play test class, are the spells the same, its playing with old classes when it doesn't match up is that the intent, if it is better is that the intent, who knows. They can say we aren't concerned about power levels but when playing in a group the power level effects how the class feels in play. If the character feels overshadowed constantly the class wont feel good. There is nothing thematically wrong with the monk, it runs around punching people with mystic power. It just is weak as heck so it does not feel good. As an aside I find the 6UA bard the least bardiest bard so far. They are the omega mage who happens to sing on the side. And no the 6UA favored enemy is just worse, 4 free castings of a spell I'll never cast isn't a value.
My group has an alchemist jug. Now they always start giving vine when they meet new people. Or killing frogmonster by coatting its pool with oil, and basically suffocated it until it got onto surface to breath, and then burned it to a crisp.
@@Nastara by that I mean wotc tried to make every class, every ability balanced so no-one felt left out or over/under powered - The problem was that for example the abilities for each class were the same, but given a different name. Meaning that by making them all similar the very things that made them unique we gone.
Having looked through One DND, wow I am impressed. A lot of issues I had with the game were removed or changed, a lot of classes and subclasses became so much cooler. Martials are actually getting close to spellcasters now because now a fighter wont get instantly shut down by any mental save above a 23 due to revamped abilities such as indomitable. Yes warlocks lost some invocations which makes you less unique then before, but in general warlock became so much stronger then it was in 5e. Damage overall got nerfed which I think its a very good change since now monsters wont struggle to get past round 2 without homebrewing them. Overall im very happy with how wizards are doing things
Am I the only one who thinks, PLAY IT OR DON'T? If anyone doesn't like the new rules, it's not like 5e stops existing.. hell, there are still large communities with 2nd Ed groups. Or play 5e, keep the rules you like, change the ones you don't. 🤷
You are certainly not the only one, it was actually my main take away from the end of the video if I remember correctly lol. I’m excited, I like new things and change and I am looking forward to seeing what’s going to happen and for those that don’t, they can still play 5e or any previous edition for that matter!
ohh eme gee, i walked away from adnd for warhammer rpg. Walked away from 3.5 for mordheim. don't doubt ill walk away from 1dnd aberrant crap nugget also at this point. Any GW Rpgs going on???? What a lark.. when the 5e, the 1dnd and the BG3 homebrewers all come to logger heads, Welllll, I'll be judge in the couthouse square and watching along (De Sadian like)
Considering that One D&D isn't even a thing yet, I don't think the question "Was it worth it" is even relevant. This video was 5 months ago, at the time of this comment, and they're STILL working through changes and finalizing things. So how can you make a video "was it worth it" when it hasn't even been a thing? That'd be like saying "I considered becoming a father. Was it worth it" but you're not a father yet and the only thing you'd said up to that point is "let's have kids". Just sounds dumb.
Ha, well, not sure I would go that far :P. In that move, WotC was turning their back on the people that made the game the powerhouse that it has become. Was there an overreaction? Maybe, who am I to say? Was that move "right" from an ethical and community perspective, absolutely not.
ADnD has been terrible since the production of 2nd edition. And every edition after that have been more and more video game-like. In the old days of gaming, video games designers tried to make games function like role-playing games. Now, table top game designers try to make their role-playing game more like a video game.
Unfortunately WotC has ruined One D&D over the last few months with their treatment of their players. I will stick to 5e and 3.5 or other RPGs all together.
Or even better don't even give them any money, as all of their rules are for free online. A character builder where I don't have to buy individual books to unlock them in the character builder? Who would have thought that possible. Weridly, the rules being free has lead me to buying more books from them.
The crunch they are adding is bad crunch, but they're blurring character roles and removing all flavor. Choice doesn't matter. The Ranger's favored terrain can change after a long rest, so it's not even really relevant, so long as they know where they are going to be. The weapons mastery sucks, because it adds another BS feature that isn't needed and again, with masteries changing after a long rest, it's a choice that doesn't really matter. The new subclasses feel like multiclasses, the dance bard being the biggest offender. The spells don't have any flavor, they're just three lists, no schools within arcane, no limitations on other classes as to what is allowed or not, just pick from list a or b or c. The wording is mostly pushing for video game (actually, DnD Beyond) code friendly rules. They're doubling the book prices (at least with bigby's) when inflation is absolutely killing discretionary spending for the majority of americans (and players in other countries). The hard part is that as anotehr youtuber said (and I watched today), is that DnD is gentrifying, and hasbro/WoTC is more than happy to lean into it, much like they are doing to MtG. Nothing about this OneDnD is really fun to me.
So far, no, it has not. Also yes, imo you need to be downright dumb to not be able to, at the very least, grasp the fundamentals of 5e and that goes a long way to make a game popular and in my opinion that is a good thing, although I do not like the fact that simplifying things removed the wacky weird stuff that you could pull off if you were well versed enough on DnD
I like how you deleted my comment on your monk video even though it was literally completely non aggressive and only me trying to help you understand why you are so wrong about the game. To respond to the points that you made in response to my comment I just want to say your belief that the creators of DnD can make a game that is both based around short rests, dungeon crawling, and a slow resource drain and story, no management of anything, and 1-2 encounters a day. Is absolutely ridiculous and you would have to have no understanding of game mechanics and or balancing to say such absurd thing. I'm not even saying that what you want from DnD is bad but it lacks any sense of a historical perspective so I would like to give you some. The game that you wanted actually already existed it was called 4th edition and had a lot of good ideas but was hated by the community at large AND the community had actually started taking a huge interest in old dnd that they didn't have I'm talking about the Old School Renaissance. What is old DnD about? Almost 0 story and a bunch of prep for a slow drain of your resources. My point to all of this is that WoTC can't "fix" anything without making a new game from the ground up ie 6th edition. They can not tweek the monk until it's "good" because it is already good within its context instead they must break the monk completely so that it can fit within a new game but then it's completely not backwards compatible and then they can't be completely iterative like they want. Telling people they no longer have spell lists based on their class is already big change and complicates the game more because it's not about ease but rather trying to keep their current player base. This is because a game that's existed as long as 5e has with as much homebrew it has makes it really hard to move to another system. One DnD could be an easier game in a new system but that's a risk they won't take
I think people don't get one thing : tabletop RPGs are no video games. So as much as i get the "fun" factor (and others), it has to have limits. Because it's not a video game where you can smash buttons and have flashy skills. A tabletop RPG should also not be too balanced (because life is not balanced) and certainly not a miror of our modern societies (because we're talking about Antiquity-Medieval-Renaissance western topoi). A tabletop RPG is a simulation of life in another world. If fun is the primary factor one should play videos games or board games. And there is nothing wrong with that. But designers should stop paying attention to the real vocal minority which is not who you think it is: the real vocal minority is in fact all these "trendy Stranger Things i buy the books without even opening it BUT i'm pretty vocal about what D&D should be".
It seems like when they do come up with good ideas they end up getting dropped because of them trying to please the fan base. It might be better if they had less input from the public instead of trying to create something by committee.
Yeah, product by committee rarely turns out well. What I am hoping is they are using their own oversight to say something like "well the playtesters like these *ideas* so how can we take that feedback and make it broadly applicable". Obviously, it's all speculation though.
I dunno how many new ideas they came up with that they dropped, but I definitely agree that god I miss the early attempts where it was least dramatically more experimental than it is now.
I kinda wish they would diversify their writing staff and be willing to commit to more experimentation. It’s otherwise so safe and clearly trying to pull a fraction of an audience that is already playing it.
See, the thing is, D&D has a pretty large community. That means many, many players. And that means that there's never a majority of people agreeing on something. And to complicate things further, most of those people have no shard of an idea of how game design works, they just pretend that they know.
Maybe but they came up with a lot of really really bad ideas as well.
@@AhglockSome were and some were good ideas implemented poorly. They failed to recognize the difference and just scrapped everything that got blow back instead of trying to improve them.
Having gone through the change from AD&D to 2nd Edition, this is very different and refreshing in that I get a say in the change. Even though it is very diluted among the other survey submissions, it is still a new sensation.
Honestly, I think they wanted to publish something new to coincide with the 50th anniversary.
What im looking for is not power per say, its customizability and experimentation. I want open features that interact with one another in exciting new ways. I feel like one dnd is taking a step further away from that direction, which was already fairly lacking in 5e.
Yeah, I would absolutely be here for that. It's a design direction they haven't really explored much for sure.
This is my feeling as well. I'd rather they make divine smite 1d4s instead but allow me to combine it with other features to create my own way of hit than the current implement where it's basically isolated from any other feature of the game. But what's worse, all this only means they do not plan to update combat design rules to account for party build. They rather remove interactions and emergent gameplay that provide a proper framework to help DMs balancing the game regarding the different possibilities for a party.
@@InsightCheck An example of interactions being made less interesting is how more and more features are being changed to being once per turn. It makes the interaction binary and therefore leaves no room for experimentation.
Id rather have 1d8 per hit than 2d8 once per turn, sure 2d8 might be more powerful, but its less interesting to play with.
@@BlueFrenzy Odd, my original reply didnt go through. Anyway, yea I totally agree.. I get the sense they really wanna put features in small boxes to avoid them having unexpected results.. imo thats just making the entire system blander. Yea, they should patch game breaking things like the wish/simulacrum interaction, but otherwise, let people experiment.
Playing Baldurs Gate 3 has also opened my eyes to how much more fun the system is if we remove some of the needless restrictions we have on things like two weapon fighting for example. Is having handcrossbows viable for two weapon fighting balanced? Probably not, but who cares, its intuitive and cool and makes for some interesting interactions.
Per se*
It has been fun playtesting all their new rules, but I have to say that as they walk back a lot of their proposed changes, I wonder more and more if people will really think 2024 > 2014 + Xanathar's + Tasha's. For me, I could homebrew in Weapon Masteries (for example) and not buy $180 worth of books. I really think Monsters and the Monster action economy is where the biggest gains are, though, and we haven't even seen what they're doing to monsters, so it might be that the PHB and DMG aren't worth it, but maybe the MM will be.
We have seen what WotC is going to do with monsters. See Monsters of the Multiverse.
Yeah this is a totally fair point. Will it be "worth" it to buy the new books if a lot of the changes end up resembling to a high degree their 2014 counterpart. I guess we just have to wait and see what the next 4-5 UAs offer.
I've personally left D&D for other games. However I still don't want the game that I started with decades ago to fail, I notice that once again the playtest seems to have largely abandoned DM's. Outside of the weapon specializations and a few minor tweaks, I don't recall seeing anything that actually helps DM's. They're coming up quick on that 2024 deadline and we've had only one rambly video about broad basics of what they might have in the DMG, and none of it seemed to address some very key issues. It all sounded like more 'advice' without any rules.
While I agree that player classes needed work, and spells and abilities needed a fair bit of new paint as well, I've always felt like this was the edition that largely told DM's to just make it up themselves. Monsters and modules created with the credo of 'assume the party never has magic items' was always baffling to me. I know it was done to artificially make magic items feel more powerful, and to cut back on the 'golf bag of swords' problem that I've personally never seen happen in any edition, but it chain reacted into a CR system that is completely broken and needs an extensive overhaul. An overhaul that won't happen because they have crippled their design space by having to make it all backwards compatible.
I'd personally love to see more rules to help free up DM's workspace to focus on more creative things. Rules on crafting magic items, rules on economy, rules on creating settlements and what kind of populace and level of equipment one might find there (3rd edition did this incredibly well). Rules on actually creating monsters and enemies with the same formulas they use internally, and not the thrown-together mess that's in the old DMG.
I'd like to think DM's will get more support. But I thought that for the five years that I played 5e and barely anything really came of it. Maybe they have a really big DMG update in the pipeline but we'll just have to see.
So for me personally the whole One-D&D playtest would have been a wash if I still actively played the system. I mainly run games, so I wouldn't have much to test.
Though we know very little about what it will look like, aside from using Xanathar's as a base and some restructuring to the mess of chapters in the current book, it has been confirmed that there will be a new DMG which will also have at least one public playtest. I would LOVE to see more and hope we do but that's the stuff I am also really excited to see.
May I want to know if by other games you meant TTRPGs or video games?
Because that mindset of "Make the GM figure it out" for problems in the system, is pretty toxic and puts a bunch of work to the GM, and only seen in 5e, I saw a bunch of other systems much easier to GM
Definitely agree that backwards compatibility is a frustrating part of all of this. If they just committed to a new edition they could do so much to streamline the game like they keep saying they want to. By keeping it backwards compatible they have to bring over a lot of stuff that will make the game more difficult for new players. I personally am going to stick with Pathfinder second edition because I love that game but 5th edition got me into role playing so a new edition that brings more people into the hobby would be wonderful.
I think One D&D is a mixed bag marked by the issues of Base 5e. Seems like every time they're brought up, people complain about Hunter's Mark being a Spell even though it's because they can't just change it to not be one easily, whereas Divine Smite being a Spell too being criticized when it's honestly better for being made the same as the other Smite Spells. Thus, I feel like many people just don't think about it all through the lens of making One D&D directly from Base 5e and refining the rough edges without making it impossible to play with previous adventure books. That said, I still hope they fix the Feat/ASI system by splitting them apart, meaning you get a Feat and Ability Score Increase, so that 1st Lvl Feats are still usable and there is no longer a problem with Feats removing the ability to max out Ability Scores, I think it'd be balanced enough while adding actual options and depth without hefty sacrifices. Also, I will always advocate to change 1st Lvl HP to +Con Score over +Con Mod to help make 1st Lvl more playable and NOT have your character be made of paper mache.
I think you've got a pretty accurate assessment here. I think many of us, including myself, certainly had loftier expectations for what One D&D would become despite the designers telling us otherwise the entire time. After a year, I think most people are accepting that, as you say, it's really about smoothing out the rough edges while not obsoleting old content. While I can't say I wasn't "hoping" for more, I'm not disappointed either.
HP being + Con Score sounds interesting. Would definitely help the early game a lot but would certainly have balance implications down the line. An interesting thought though!
@@InsightCheck Adding +Con Score to HP shouldn't be too much of a big deal down the line, when your normal HP would be big anyway and the Con Score bonus is small by comparison, it just helps drastically improve durability at low levels when you're very squishy and can be killed a little too easily from experience, especially in the pre-made adventures (looking at you Phandelver).
@@halozoo2436Additionally, you're with a party, not flying solo. If you're flying solo, there are sidekicks. But it's about using your literal wits (hoping you have some real-life wits and aren't just hoping the DM is kind) and character abilities to make it through encounters.
Also, keep in mind that adventuring is dangerous and not for the faint of heart. It's kind of like saying "anyone should be able to be a coal miner because what's the big deal?". Coal Mining is dangerous and hundreds, or even thousands, of people are injured or die for that profession.
D&D is meant to be fun but dangerous. If your character is walking out of the gate with 20+ HP, then where's the challenge? Goblins have max 12. Orcs are 22. Your level 1 isn't about to try to face down an Orc. Sorry Legolas wannabe. Legolas and Aragorn had a lot of time training and "leveling" to be able to take down orcs. And even in things like Lord of the Rings there was plenty of character death.
Put simply, fighting is dangerous. And just because you have magic doesn't necessarily make you "strong" or able to wield it effectively. Plenty of anime about fantasy worlds/games/genre that prove this point. Want to see what it might be like to be in a D&D campaign? Watch Goblin Slayer. Very visceral and very realistic if you think about it from a "damn, being an adventurer is not joke and takes planning and thought".
Lastly - one well placed arrow to the dome or check is probably going to end most people. No matter how much you think you've trained. If that goblin scores a crit, it is what it is. You're level 1, it's not like you just spent a year playing this character.
1st edition ADnD runs smoothly even today. The newer editions just make more problems for short lived campaigns.
Personally, I hope each classes get something useful and distintive to each classes.
For example, I hope Druid features to lean more into spect of Nature Magic or Elemental Magic rather than copy/paste from Cleric's Cantrip/Melee enhencements.
That would be great and I do think that updates like that are really on the table. They've talked at length about how they want the classes to feel distinct and unique, and, even though they have missed the mark a few times we also got stuff like Cunning Strike recently which is quite distinct for Rogue! I hope we get some more like that.
Personally I think they just need to round out the Spell List with more ways to call up plants, earth and storms to attack foes and control the battlefield. Also, their Damaging Cantrips need an overhaul as Produce Flame needs its Range doubled or even quadrupled so they can actually fight at a decent range compared to Thorn Whip which wants to be shorter ranged, plus the addition of new earth, lightning and thunder Cantrips to attack from a distance with. As for the Cleric similarities, I don't mind them too much as it does work, I just want a better Potent Cantrip upgrade that isn't a slap in the face.
I think people forget how hard it is to have both mechanical depth and simplicity. In a lot of cases to achieve one you have to sacrifice the other, not to say its impossible to have a balance of low skill floor and high skill ceiling, but to achieve that is so much harder then a few simple changes. Something like that in a single player experience is hard, and in a multiplayer one? Especially one as open ended as DnD is quite the feat.
And the fact of the matter is, most players dont have time to spend to parse out a bunch of sifferent rulings, go through hundreds of feats and abilities to develop the exact character they want or min/max for a high power campaign. Most players just want to have an excuse to get together and mess around with some friends, and that is just as valid. And if players want more depth, then there are other systems to introduce them too, and it may be less overwhelming as they already have some base level knowledge on ttrpgs so a simple system can be a gateway to more complex ones as well.
For me, I think the ONED&D process was important and needed.
5E was so culturally significant, but more and more the flaws and cracks were revealed so much more. The way people played has changed dramatically and the game should change to reflect its culture. The revelation of 5Es flaws and WotC+Hasbro’s ickiness and stagnation is also revealed and more indies needed representation.
I think my biggest issue in their design direction is that they aren’t actually making the game welcoming to new players. It’s obvious that the critiques and test audiences are extremely well versed in D&D. It should be simpler yet more balanced and expressive, not pushing a feature bloat per level and chargen. It should learn from PF2Es strengths and flaws, and D&D4Es, and modern conventions such as theater of the mind compatibility and QA clarity.
Yeah, for as much grief as people give it for being "too easy" or things like that, there probably still is a lot they could do to enhance the new player experience.
@@InsightCheck Frfr. I really believe that in terms of depth and complexity D&D is a 7/10 since modern games tend to be so much more clear and streamlined, and even though PF2E is my beloved I’m kinda frustrated at it for remaining so clunky and deep that some people are uneasy making that jump to new games.
The problem that WotC is stuck with is at it's core, D&D is not new player friendly. That was never really the original developer intent, every system up to and including 3.5 was designed to be intricate, complex, and rules heavy. You either were interested with that, or D&D wasn't for you, it was never trying to have broad appeal. It was designed as a wargame/simulation first, narrative device second, if at all.
They tried to make the game drastically more new player friendly with 4e, and 4e was hated by older players for how much of a departure it was from "real D&D", and also didn't really succeed at making a truly simple system. So then 5e comes along, takes the core mechanics from 3.5, and just takes a machete to them. Static bonuses are axed in favor of advantage/disadvantage, specific rules on situations are replaced with "DM discretion", skill points and BAB are replaced with proficiency bonus. But this doesn't make 5e a simple system, it makes it a complex system with half of the pieces removed, and some of the simplifications from 4e grafted in. As a direct result, 5e is the most broken version of D&D released so far. It however did manage to be not completely offensive to older players while also being simple enough for most new players. It was also the current edition of D&D for most of the last decade of a TTRPG boom.
I maintain that if 5e was just a generic TTRPG rather than being an edition of D&D, it would see little to no play. It has no core appeal. If you want a deep combat system with interesting mechanical choices, 5e is a shallow puddle of wildly unbalanced options. You can make some interesting builds, but even if you do, your in combat actions will get repetitive very quick. If you want a flexible, narrative-driven system, 5e is still heavily reliant on high-crunch, HP-depletion combat, and next to no noncombat rules outside of "make a skill check against a DC". The only thing 5e does successfully is be a middle ground between dozens of different preferences. It is the TTRPG expression of the quote "A good compromise is when both parties are dissatisfied"
Ideally, there would have just been a 6th edition with a tangible core design goal, a solid idea of what it is trying to be. But WotC doesn't want to risk butchering the cash cow of 5e for an uncertain new edition, so they're doing this weird half measure. They claim backwards compatibility while clearly making changes that, at the very least, wildly unbalance older content.
@@craftyfirestormdude, I’m being genuine when I say that this is the best explanation for 5E and it’s problems (and why I don’t like it) I’ve probably ever seen.
5E is too light to be crunchy, and too crunchy to be light, yet never felt like a satisfying middle ground.
@@tasty_wind4294Man I also loved so much that I printed to use it as basis later, or to just remind, it was so truthful that is satisfying to read
Wow I did not realize you had under 100k subs. The production value of your videos are amazing and that doesn’t even begin to mention the content! Been subbed for a couple of weeks now I think and I loved every video of yours I’ve seen! Keep it up!!
You just made my week, thank you so much!!
I pressed X to doubt @3:50 mark. "They had a small design team mistakes will happen." WotC isn't some Indie Game developer. They are a billion dollar corporation. They, probably, were told to rush out a new edition because 4e was doing poorly (lower than expected sales) so they went off and recreated 3.5e but Simplified... and took a few ideas from 4e and threw them on top... They didn't take the time to properly vet the interactions nor did they spend the time to actually make rules for many things and just went, "let the DM figure this out."
My point is this, they had the money, they had the resources, they had the time. They just _refused_ to use them. Do not give them a benefit of the doubt where none exists.
Yes, mistakes happen. Sometimes it happens because they were overlooked, or they editors missed the mistake. For example, PF2e has had many problems with items when it first released. The shield block reaction was causing expensive magical shields to break on a regular basis, tools to craft items were to bulky to carry around for the Alchemist, and the bulk limits Paizo used was quickly found to be too impractical, so they made an errata to backpacks to remove 2 bulk worth of items in them all within the first several months of release. Except for shields, they are getting fixed in the Remaster.
The point is, for large complex games like D&D 3.0 through 5e, and soon One D&D and Paizo's Pathfinder and Starfinder games, these oversights are expected. What isn't expected is _bad_ game design. Which 3.5e Simplified with Aspects of 4e Thrown on Top does _have._ Who thought it was a good idea to make "Advantage" and "Disadvantage" so easy to get, nullifying many other things the players _could_ do? Hell, why do those things even exist? Oh... right... they wanted to distance themselves from _math_ and rolling dice is something the intellectually challenged can do on their own. Or abandoning entire systems from 3.5e and just telling the DMs to wing it (item system!).
What I was hoping WotC would do is to fix their game design... but marketing wants the game to be "backwards compatible"... so fixing the game isn't going to happen. After a single year... all they have shown was changing things regarding the classes, seeing what's popular, what's not popular without touching the core mechanics of the game which _do_ need to be worked on.
For what it's worth, a large company does not necessarily equal a large and flush team for any given project. Apple's Maps team was famously extremely underfunded after its bomb of a launch, the Diablo and StarCraft teams at Blizzard were shells of themselves for years while other projects took priorities. Neither of us know definitively what the truth is, I am choosing to take the statements from people who were there at face value. The point is though that it is far from unheard of for billion dollar companies to have smaller and less well funded teams.
Also, both I and they were speaking in relative terms. It's not to say that "hey here is 10 million dollars, go make a game" isn't a lot of money. But If they now have a budget of say 50 million, that's a substantial difference in what can be accomplished.
@@InsightCheck,
Pointing out how AAA video game developers mistreat their staff... doesn't support your position.. in fact it detracts from it.
Relative to the Indie Game Companies... 10 million is a _lot_ of cash... especially if the designers are using already created rules. Most of their work was already done. Which is why _those_ companies can produce better quality games than WotC did with 5e.
As I said, WotC rushed this product out of the door... while giving the design team two objectives:
1. Get the 3.5e Players to buy WotC products, again.
2. Simplify the game so more people will be interested in playing the game... as most people dislike Math... it was the math that the design team tried to remove... from a tactical _skirmish_ game. *Rollseyes*
The most difficult thing for Jeremy and Co. to do was come up with the math. Once they figured out the math, all they had to do was copy and paste spells/actions/abilities from previous editions and modify them to make them fit with the new math. They choose to simplify things even further _and_ add 4e mechanics which don't work with 3.5e rules. *Shrugs*
They could have completed their tasks... and refused to. Either through lack of time or through incompetence. Matters not. What matters if they recognize these issues the community has pointed out over the years and _fix_ them. From what I've seen, I don't have any hope that they will.
So your issue is with the C-suite, not the designers. Could've just said that, and I'd have agreed with you
For me, the biggest problem facing 5e was balance, and they have put that on the backburner (like they always do).
I know it is not as important for new players, because if you pick your spells and feats more or less at random, the game is not that unbalanced.
If you know what you are doing though, balance goes out the window, and so far they have done nothing to address this.
They also haven't provided true playtests, the original playtests for 2014 had little scenarios to play through. Which meant you got a slice of the game, a few classes, a few monsters, a few spells, but you could see the whole vision.
What I really wanted to see from one dnd was.
- a rebalancing of subclasses, so there wasn't clear superior subclasses for each class.
- a rework of problematic spells, both those that were too powerful, those slows the game too much, and also those that are never cast because they just don't deliver. We have seen very little work on the spells.
- some actual good advice on spell selection, (eg. try not to have too many spells that do the same job, make sure not all your spells require concentration etc.)
- a general buff to the non-casters. (they did get buffed, but so did casters, and then it is not really a buff).
They need to bring up martial classes on par with casters. A martial character shouldn't need a 25K gold magic item just to sort of keep up with the casters as far as damage output from mid game on. They should get additional damage dice for hits as they level up. Getting multi attack doesn't quite cut it.
@@johnmartin122187 to be fair they have nerfed some of the most powerful spells in the most recent playtest. So that is an improvement.
The basic natural creature transformation ability used by druids. This has always had many advantages without upgraded features later on. The ability to conceal yourself as being a low intelligence creature, escape from danger, gather information in remote locations, and recover lost hit points.
Its overpowered in some respect, but then again polymorph other, and polymorph self were 4th level spells in 1e. The same level druids got their creature transformation ability at 7th level. 5e druids get it at 2nd level.
the Revised PHB is gonna be great! sure there will be some thngs we dont like, and some thingsd we love, but an overall improvement, and clarification on rules that weve had over a decade to real life playtest.
Great video as usual, except one thing is sticking with me. you said that UA 6 Bard is the Bardiest bard, and i can't disagree more. UA 6 Bard is not a jack of all trades and master of none - it is a master of all trades and better monk that monks. UA 6 bard needs to be hard redesigned to be a little bit of a lot of stuff, not the best of everything all at once.
I appreciate the compliment! Also, that's a totally fair take. I can absolutely see where you are coming from, particularly in relation to just being the best Monk... that needs to be addressed.
Once upon a time D&D 5e was streamlined and fun to run. It is now a very crunchy game and complex to run. I call it Pathfinder 7.
LOL.. 5E is still as basic as shit. Im going back to Pathfinder 1e because 5E is too simple. Our DM also created his own game system because 5e is too simple. If you think its complicated.. Thats 100% you, not the game.
@@Ddog72Very similar story here. I'm getting my group to try out PF1e because a lot of problems they had with 5e I noticed were essentially fixed in PF1e (yes I was technically that guy, but I prefer people try other systems instead of trying to "fix" something that wasn't really made to handle the changes). I'm also the one in my group making my own system. Lol
@@Ddog72uhh.. I don’t recall saying I thought D&D 5e was complicated, I said it is becoming too crunchy and is now too complex to be a streamlined game, especially after WOTC hired a Paizo designer.
Clearly understanding words is a YOU problem.😂🤷🏻♂️
I disagree that they were designing it for VTT, but I had a similar thought when the experts first appeared, where the bard and ranger spell lists were the arcane and primal respectively but with certain schools removed. I thought well this would be real easy digitally, as you just filter out those schools, but when I made a character pen and paper-esque (digital sheet but manual entries of features and such) I realized that it was such a drag to actually go through and see what spells I wanted to take while trying to ignore the ones that didn't fit, leading me to just copy and paste the spell list and remove the invalid schools to focus on what to take.
I dont think that was designing for VTT but instead designed by someone who had a digital-friendly thought process. Nothing else has stood out to me as overly digital catering, so Im confused as to where the sentiment came from if not this. Additionally there is precedent of a spell list being a school-restricted version of anothers, being arcane trickster and eldritch knight with the wizard's spell list.
It is a bizarre sentiment that I never really understood either, but it's all over in the subreddit and in comments all over.
I think the most insane thing is they said that old subclasses can not be played with 5e '24, but you can do it the other way. I thought this was "cross play" why limit it?
Obviously in the end it will be a very minor evolution version, which I think is a good thing, too. Was it different we would have not just players being unhappy with changes (that always happens and as it really cannot be avoided I think it should be ignored as much as possible), but also that we need to adjust tooling (anything from VTTs to just making new condition markers for the physical table), and introducing new problems. If you have working system, maybe even a good one, it is a good idea to try to do small incremental steps instead of trying a revolution without needing to do one.
If they persist in fixing some of the most problematic spells (Conjure many) I am pretty happy. I am worried about some things (such as Warlock maybe even getting better as one level dip for almost every future "build", or now Rogue not being the only real Skills expert anymore), but in balance I think it is improving a good system, with very few things getting worse.
I am actually more concerned (by far) about the quality of adventures. Not only was Spelljammer very high in the worst publications in the decade, but also do they not really work with the Adventuring Day concept in pretty much any of their publications -- despite it being a bedrock balancing assumption to make the resources work (if they don't have that concept be central to their writing they need to get rid of Short Rest, which I think they did discuss, but obviously it did not happen).
No one really expects the classes to be perfectly balanced in all aspects of the game, but each class should be better than the other classes at something and right now casters are better than martials at everything. Better AoE damage, better single target damage, better at social encounters, better disguises, better at infiltration, better at getting past traps... and the limitations on casters are not enough to make up for it.
I find the only way to "balance" it in my game is to make an aggressively anti-magic world where wands of counterspell and anti-magic fields are common...
They aren’t really better at single target damage but that rarely matters when you can control the battle with one spell anyways.
I know this kind of tangential, but the Hunter's Mark spell in 5e hasn't been lauded as a great spell, especially as you gain higher levels. It didn't scale up, and required concentration, and thus there were always more impactful concentration spells you can cast.
In the experts UA, Hunt'er's Mark now scales up, but it's scaling is not great, and still doesn't make it a worthwhile spell to concentrate on throughout your ranger's career. This is why having the spell with no concentration with the Favored Foe feature was a big improvement to the usability of the spell. Now that has been rescinded in UA 6 with it now requiring concentration once again, once again it is not worth using a spell slot on a spell that ultimately is not that good.
Not only that, Hunter's Mark only triggers once per turn
@@zackmyers805 That too. (i had forgotten about that in my comment.)
@@zackmyers805 Which I actually don't mind, as the potential for multiple triggers makes it busted on other classes like Fighter, so I'm fine with them reigning it in.
And honestly, I don't mind trading the no-Concentration for Free Uses/Day as that is infinitely more useful imo, especially if they get their Smite-Like Spells to work like the new Smites, then it would finally work roughly the way it should have been from the start.
The playtest is just bad and its impossible to playtest considering the rules are released piecemeal and incomplete.
Nothing about the game is hype. Which explains why the onednd reddit is very sleepy. Especially for the most popular ttrpg system ever.
I appreciate your thoughtful analysis that is free from emotions.
Thank you, I really appreciate that :)
You mean bias
Nailed it ;)
@@Hirotoro4692 well sure, that too. But I definitely meant free from emotion.
I genuinely miss the days where d&d was for smart creative people.
I think the people paying attention never thought it was any where close to the first image.
1D&D is not really about VTTs. D&D already did an edition for a VTT and it was called D&D 4th edition!
The idea of making a VTT was already being talked about near the end of 2nd edition in some spaces thanks to games under SSL’s Dragonlance. And by 3.5 even WotC was thinking it was a good idea considering all the other games that had come out. Thus the 4th edition (there is a lot more history here but this is already a wall of text).
For those that think that 1D&D was needed to code the core mechanics of the game I recommend they look at what Baldar’s Gate 3 operates with 5th edition rules. While it is true they made some minor changes you have to be a rules lawyer to point out Larian mods.
I say this, my distaste for VTT’s done by major companies is really because it stifles creativity and makes the game more of cash grab then it needs to be. I highly doubt WotC will be content to be just “competitive” and an “option” with current VTTs. The person Hasbro allows to run the brand has illwill to the players thinking of this as live service from what was said before. But technically, a VTT is possible and doable now for WotC. This revision is likely more to do with the 50th anniversary of the game (anniversary books have been done before )with respectable profit taking the any cash grab VTT.
Lol. Not a chance. CEO of Hasbro has literally said it's under monetized. Where do you think they're gonna generate money, lmao
the problem i have is with varied depth for example the druid or wizard vs the fighter
i would like to play a fighter with as many abilities as a wizard has spells,
consider that if you think that's to many abilities, welp there's your answer for if the wizard has to many class abilities
tough my biggest gripe is probably with DEX being to strong and defining the game in a not fun way
PS
just a reminder DND will always claim the have more players than they have for the sake of investors
and its vague enough that people can claim otherwise
They already made an edition where the fighter could have as many options as a wizard. That’s what frustrates me about 5E and OneD&D. They had a lot of good ideas in 4E, solutions to long standing problems, and they pissed them all away instead of iterating on and streamlining that system.
Just make Initiative and ranged attacks Wis based.
I'm gonna be the guy who's defending the backwards compatibility. To me it was very clear from the start that this is a refined 5th edition, not a brand new edition.
So I think it's better for me as a consumer to be able to use the 5e books I already own without needing to fiddle around with or throw out every subclass not in the 2024 PHB to fit them into the new versions of the classes. So I actually liked that subclass feature levels were no longer uniform, as I found that completely pointless, unless they were planning for a way to take subclass features from other classes
It also makes sense from a business standpoint, as what's the point of releasing new books when they'll just become irrelevant next year?
Had this been a
If Hasbro/Wizards where smart they would look at GURPS, and take that system and make into a d20 engine. S0 you could make the character you want to play with a point buy system.
I don't see how you couldn't just homebrew this instead. Or just play the GURPS system. When you start suggesting that one system be like another, you are basically saying "there shouldn't be multiple systems when everyone should just play this one".
It's like saying that there should only be 1 chocolate company because there should only be one way to make chocolate (no matter the cocoa percentage and other additives for taste/texture). But that's not the case. And that doesn't lend itself to innovation or the need to improve. Because there are multiple systems/ways of doing things, each is forced to figure out how to improve rather than how to stagnate.
Yeah powerful things can be fun. But also dumb failures can be fun to. Sometimes things like failure can breed interesting changes in the narrative or combat that you didn't think about.
1000000000000%. Could not agree more :)
I think the larger issues I've had with this playtest is WotC releasing something that may need a few tweaks and instead of listening to community feedback, they look at the satisfaction score and just pitch the idea. Rolling back to individual class spell lists, dropping the better exhaustion rules, even the movement and jumping mechanics were promising. They didn't make their requirements for what would stay known to the public before already reviewing playtest 1, and I find their overall satisfaction score system incredibly uninformative.
As an aside, the free castings of Hunter's Mark need to scale with your Ranger. They give you what are essentially free casts of a cantrip, so have it actually level like one. Same with Hex for Warlocks. If the Paladin's Divine Smites have different effects and spell requirements, do the same for Hunter's Mark and Hex.
As long as my $500 worth of DM materials, and books don't become obselete overnight, i'll be perfectly happy. Also, I hope they don't change the cover art system. I don't want my D&D books to start looking like my PS3 collection
Oh man I hadn’t thought of the book art… I swear if they flip the text the other way…
I mean, if they're physical copies, you can still play 5e. Just because they're making updates doesn't mean you have to go along with them.
Gygax tried to frustrate min-maxers. WotC indulges them. The game is all about that now.
Does any of this solve the lack of GMs problem? It appears to be completely focused on the players.
The casual D&D users can't, won't and don't want to hit the limits of the system. Nobody playing basketball in the park concerns themselves with NBA rules of fouls. If the system is good and sound for powerusers, casual ones can only benefit. Yes, people online make up overdesigned and silly stuff. Part of why an open playtest might kill good ideas, due to the users not being as good at game design as the game designers.
The whole "bardiest bard" and "dwarfiest dwarf" was there early on, but recent playtests have little of that ideology and often use features from other classes to add to another.
Puglist is a monk-fighter and World Tree Barbarian is a Druid-Barbarian, these of course are subclasses. It is disappointing when one of the best things about playtest 7 is an Archfey rework and people are happy about an average subclass. JC proclaims in the annoucement video that Fey of course means "teleportation and charms" in 5e - this is all the feywild has to offer? If power is not the focus, why can we not get some unique, interesting or creative design instead?
The spellists are gone by the way.
With the weapon mastery have playtested it, it's just a rider effect and not particularly interactive apart from Topple having the DM roll saves like crazy.
I think many are upset at sheer failures in math. If a change is just a downgrade when everyone expected a buff or is even framed as a buff in the documents or interviews.
Core rules reworks like making dual-wielding better for example, were big wants from an update to 5e. Which was there in early playtests, Dual wielding, heavy strength and finesse weapons were exceptionally close and offered real diversity and choice. Sadly it seems the people reworking these core rules were not working the ones that made weapon mastery and all these great changes were abandoned to make room for weapon masteries, which instead of offering diversity likely just add another filter to reach "the right choice".
Talking about onus on the DM, with them saying that MPMM was envisoned to be used with the 2024 rules and hence it is unlikely we will see a rebalancing of statblocks outside of what we have seen in MPMM. Did WotC account for everyone seemingly having advantage all the time on everything or is it going to be like the last 10 years were DMs have to know the players classes, competency and homebrew monsters to challenge their players as opposed to having any solid guidance from what the CR system should be?
They need to de-nerf paladins and actually fix monks. Smh.
They should go back to different classes requiring different lvs of xp. Eradicating the idea of balance. Which is stupid.
I think the main issue is their play tests are just bad. They are disorganized, they don;t explain the intent, and are really hard to actually use. Hey you have one play test class, are the spells the same, its playing with old classes when it doesn't match up is that the intent, if it is better is that the intent, who knows. They can say we aren't concerned about power levels but when playing in a group the power level effects how the class feels in play. If the character feels overshadowed constantly the class wont feel good. There is nothing thematically wrong with the monk, it runs around punching people with mystic power. It just is weak as heck so it does not feel good.
As an aside I find the 6UA bard the least bardiest bard so far. They are the omega mage who happens to sing on the side. And no the 6UA favored enemy is just worse, 4 free castings of a spell I'll never cast isn't a value.
My group has an alchemist jug.
Now they always start giving vine when they meet new people.
Or killing frogmonster by coatting its pool with oil, and basically suffocated it until it got onto surface to breath, and then burned it to a crisp.
11:13 Wotc tried that - thats how we got 4th edition, and as a result pathfinder
You’re gonna have to explain that considering the closest you can get to an instant win button is a munchkin build in 3rd edition.
@@Nastara by that I mean wotc tried to make every class, every ability balanced so no-one felt left out or over/under powered - The problem was that for example the abilities for each class were the same, but given a different name. Meaning that by making them all similar the very things that made them unique we gone.
Having looked through One DND, wow I am impressed. A lot of issues I had with the game were removed or changed, a lot of classes and subclasses became so much cooler. Martials are actually getting close to spellcasters now because now a fighter wont get instantly shut down by any mental save above a 23 due to revamped abilities such as indomitable. Yes warlocks lost some invocations which makes you less unique then before, but in general warlock became so much stronger then it was in 5e. Damage overall got nerfed which I think its a very good change since now monsters wont struggle to get past round 2 without homebrewing them. Overall im very happy with how wizards are doing things
I played since 3.0
I love your vids
Thank you so much, I really appreciate that! :)
players begged D&D to fix apsect sof the game for 12 years and now that WOTC is tyring, the same peopel complain its amoney grab?? lol the hypocrisy
Am I the only one who thinks, PLAY IT OR DON'T? If anyone doesn't like the new rules, it's not like 5e stops existing.. hell, there are still large communities with 2nd Ed groups. Or play 5e, keep the rules you like, change the ones you don't. 🤷
You are certainly not the only one, it was actually my main take away from the end of the video if I remember correctly lol.
I’m excited, I like new things and change and I am looking forward to seeing what’s going to happen and for those that don’t, they can still play 5e or any previous edition for that matter!
ohh eme gee, i walked away from adnd for warhammer rpg. Walked away from 3.5 for mordheim. don't doubt ill walk away from 1dnd aberrant crap nugget also at this point. Any GW Rpgs going on????
What a lark.. when the 5e, the 1dnd and the BG3 homebrewers all come to logger heads, Welllll, I'll be judge in the couthouse square and watching along
(De Sadian like)
The game is just kitchen sink pastel fantasy anymore
Looks honestly really bad. Just a major homogenization of classes, and adds little to the player experience.
Considering that One D&D isn't even a thing yet, I don't think the question "Was it worth it" is even relevant. This video was 5 months ago, at the time of this comment, and they're STILL working through changes and finalizing things. So how can you make a video "was it worth it" when it hasn't even been a thing?
That'd be like saying "I considered becoming a father. Was it worth it" but you're not a father yet and the only thing you'd said up to that point is "let's have kids". Just sounds dumb.
Unequivocally yes. The OGL backlash was the stupidest thing in the history of D&D.
Absolutely, without question.
@@InsightCheck By stupidest thing I mean that people getting upset about it was stupid. The community were a bunch of fucking twats.
Ha, well, not sure I would go that far :P. In that move, WotC was turning their back on the people that made the game the powerhouse that it has become. Was there an overreaction? Maybe, who am I to say? Was that move "right" from an ethical and community perspective, absolutely not.
ADnD has been terrible since the production of 2nd edition. And every edition after that have been more and more video game-like. In the old days of gaming, video games designers tried to make games function like role-playing games. Now, table top game designers try to make their role-playing game more like a video game.
D&d sucks now. better BEFORE WOTC
Unfortunately WotC has ruined One D&D over the last few months with their treatment of their players. I will stick to 5e and 3.5 or other RPGs all together.
A completely valid take :)
@@InsightCheck I’ve been playing since 1AD&D, I’ve seen a few changes. One D&D might be good but still….
Play Pathfinder 2e instead, give your money to a company that dosn't hate you :)
Or even better don't even give them any money, as all of their rules are for free online. A character builder where I don't have to buy individual books to unlock them in the character builder? Who would have thought that possible.
Weridly, the rules being free has lead me to buying more books from them.
#ignore1dnd #5eforever
The crunch they are adding is bad crunch, but they're blurring character roles and removing all flavor.
Choice doesn't matter. The Ranger's favored terrain can change after a long rest, so it's not even really relevant, so long as they know where they are going to be.
The weapons mastery sucks, because it adds another BS feature that isn't needed and again, with masteries changing after a long rest, it's a choice that doesn't really matter.
The new subclasses feel like multiclasses, the dance bard being the biggest offender.
The spells don't have any flavor, they're just three lists, no schools within arcane, no limitations on other classes as to what is allowed or not, just pick from list a or b or c.
The wording is mostly pushing for video game (actually, DnD Beyond) code friendly rules.
They're doubling the book prices (at least with bigby's) when inflation is absolutely killing discretionary spending for the majority of americans (and players in other countries).
The hard part is that as anotehr youtuber said (and I watched today), is that DnD is gentrifying, and hasbro/WoTC is more than happy to lean into it, much like they are doing to MtG.
Nothing about this OneDnD is really fun to me.
Our group is still playing D20 and won't buy any of this
So far, no, it has not.
Also yes, imo you need to be downright dumb to not be able to, at the very least, grasp the fundamentals of 5e and that goes a long way to make a game popular and in my opinion that is a good thing, although I do not like the fact that simplifying things removed the wacky weird stuff that you could pull off if you were well versed enough on DnD
I like how you deleted my comment on your monk video even though it was literally completely non aggressive and only me trying to help you understand why you are so wrong about the game.
To respond to the points that you made in response to my comment I just want to say your belief that the creators of DnD can make a game that is both based around short rests, dungeon crawling, and a slow resource drain and story, no management of anything, and 1-2 encounters a day. Is absolutely ridiculous and you would have to have no understanding of game mechanics and or balancing to say such absurd thing.
I'm not even saying that what you want from DnD is bad but it lacks any sense of a historical perspective so I would like to give you some. The game that you wanted actually already existed it was called 4th edition and had a lot of good ideas but was hated by the community at large AND the community had actually started taking a huge interest in old dnd that they didn't have I'm talking about the Old School Renaissance. What is old DnD about? Almost 0 story and a bunch of prep for a slow drain of your resources.
My point to all of this is that WoTC can't "fix" anything without making a new game from the ground up ie 6th edition. They can not tweek the monk until it's "good" because it is already good within its context instead they must break the monk completely so that it can fit within a new game but then it's completely not backwards compatible and then they can't be completely iterative like they want. Telling people they no longer have spell lists based on their class is already big change and complicates the game more because it's not about ease but rather trying to keep their current player base. This is because a game that's existed as long as 5e has with as much homebrew it has makes it really hard to move to another system. One DnD could be an easier game in a new system but that's a risk they won't take
I think people don't get one thing : tabletop RPGs are no video games. So as much as i get the "fun" factor (and others), it has to have limits. Because it's not a video game where you can smash buttons and have flashy skills. A tabletop RPG should also not be too balanced (because life is not balanced) and certainly not a miror of our modern societies (because we're talking about Antiquity-Medieval-Renaissance western topoi). A tabletop RPG is a simulation of life in another world. If fun is the primary factor one should play videos games or board games. And there is nothing wrong with that. But designers should stop paying attention to the real vocal minority which is not who you think it is: the real vocal minority is in fact all these "trendy Stranger Things i buy the books without even opening it BUT i'm pretty vocal about what D&D should be".