Tabletop Builds Discusses One D&D

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kobo1d: The goal of this thread is to experiment with a new type of article similar to the fivethirtyeight.com articles where they just have a slack discussion with long answers, edit it slightly, and post it to the site. Today we have a handful of Tabletop Builds writers and editors (a.k.a “carpenters”) joining us for a chat. 

The topic for this inaugural attempt is the first One D&D playtest packet, released about 24 hours prior to this discussion.

kobo1d: Carpenters, what was your first impression on the new rules after reading the PDF released yesterday?

Icebrick1: I have extremely mixed feelings. The changes were bigger than I thought they’d be, which does mean there is a lot of potential, but I can’t say the changes shown so far seem entirely positive.

The most troubling thing to me currently is how Crossbow Expert, Sharpshooter, Polearm Master, and Great Weapon Master are missing. It’s possible they will be added later or elsewhere, or martial classes will get new features to make up for it, but currently it seems like either martials will either have to wait until 8th level to get fully “online” or worse yet, they won’t get them at all.

That being said, there were some positive things. For example, I think backgrounds got a good change, and I like the idea of feats being separated by level. It’s hard to design features that are good for both level 1 and level 20 play, and splitting it by level opens up a lot of design space.

Lilith: I see this as the potential to integrate the notable martial feats into the classes

Weapons have been extremely boring and weapon of choice is practically irrelevant outside of these feats

So weapons and martial options are definitely due for a rework.

Soma: My first reaction was that I don’t think the PDF they provided is really a playtest. It’s clear that many conditions and basic rules have changed, but we only received a fraction of those changes. Is the idea that we can mix and match the character creation rules of One D&D with the…class options in the Player’s Handbook (2014)? None of that is very clear. We don’t even know how often feats are going to be available to PCs, so even playing past level 1 might result in redundant or pointless testing and subsequent feedback. 

I agree with Icebrick that the selection of 1st level feats was potentially disappointing. Do I think that martial class features making up for the losses of feats like Polearm Master and Crossbow Expert is possible? Yes, but I wouldn’t hang my hat on it based on the last eight years of 5E.

Lilith: The impact would be martial options being brought more on par with each other

Now whether it helps with “martial luls” is another thing.

Icebrick1: If the feats were removed because similar things are being added to the base class it would be great, since it is disappointing how hard martials are pushed into taking those two feats. It would be very nice if they were opened up so they could take other feats.

Lilith: I kinda like that we’re embracing the “free feat at 1” attitude, even if the feats given in background templates are extremely lame lmao 

they’re doing the approach of “pick feat that vaguely sound like it’d fit the bg” without giving a damn about what they do

and it’s not looking like feats are getting major overhaul

TauNeutrino: I agree with Soma here that the release format isn’t especially conducive to an actual playtest unless the changes to the base edition are extremely minor. Playtesting a game with presumably very different classes isn’t especially useful when we don’t know what those classes are, so this 20-page UA document being the basis for playtest with its own feedback survey seems strange. I’ll reserve judgment for when we actually see classes, I suppose. 

Audere: In terms of design philosophy, I think One D&D seems to be going further in the direction of the designers not worrying about exploitability. The most prominent examples to me are the trivially exploitable mechanic of gaining inspiration on nat 20s, and the new Alert feat which incentivizes having as many unique minions in the party as possible.

In other words, it looks to me like D&D is going further in the direction of being designed for comedy podcasts that don’t care about the rules, and for tables that play with a style similar to these podcasts. 

TauNeutrino: At this stage in the design process, I don’t know that it’s a lack of concerns with exploitability rather than an exploration of the design space, with ideas to tighten up the rules further in development. That said, I echo the concerns others have about the lack of martial feats at level 1. It could be that martial classes are changed (or casters and monsters are severely nerfed, I suppose) to compensate, but without information on the classes, there’s not much to say there – I doubt any feedback on martial feats will be at all useful when we don’t know what martial classes look like! That said, if they look like and have similar numbers to Player’s Handbook classes, I’m disappointed at the lack of damage options for low-level martials. 

The Pi Guy: My biggest issue with the current design in the playstest is definitely the fact that DCs are only between 5-30. I have no problem with the lower end, but having adventurers be simply incapable of doing a task that was harder than they already could achieve 5% of the time (thanks to the new critical success rules for checks and saves) at level 1 is wildly against my personal fantasy for the game. I wish we could bring back epic DCs from earlier editions where mundane characters could achieve extraordinary things like balance on a cloud with enough bonuses. Currently in 5E a player can get above a 30 on a check with just bardic inspiration, guidance, and any positive ability score modifier at level 1, and the numbers easily scale to above 40, into 50 or even 60 with sufficient buffing from abilities at high levels. The fact that they don’t seem to take this into account means many things that were previously difficult, but doable, you aren’t even allowed to roll against.

The most trivial examples of bad design that this causes are Constitution saving throws (no longer allowed to roll versus if the damage taken was 62 or above) and AC (you can’t hit an AC 31 creature anymore).

Lilith: I like how drag and carry is still completely undefined

arguing about moving a grappled thing has been a common pain point 

ANarcNamedJustin (Tabletop Builds editor): Yeah, grappling really needs better defining

Lilith: is this not like part 1/5 or something?

TauNeutrino: Being a part in a series is fine – but they’re collecting feedback on this, in a vacuum.

Xenken: The Nat 20 specific rules definitely feel a bit like a memetic snake eating its own tail. 

Icebrick1: I haven’t seen anyone react positively to the Critical Success and Failure rules, so I have hope they won’t last long. I agree that they’re bad, theoretically every check should have a chance of success and failure, but sometimes as a DM you will call for a check even when there isn’t. For a trivial example, avoiding waking up a sleeping giant might be a DC 8 Stealth check. This might be a reasonable chance of failure for the Paladin in heavy armor, but if it causes the Rogue with +9 Stealth to fail it’ll just feel terrible. In general, I believe that investments in skills should pay off.

Lilith: In terms of play test, you can definitely yoink a few isolated elements into your game

the parts that imply system change and therefore unusable is :leolul:

TauNeutrino: That’s true. And initial reactions to the races and such is probably what they’re going for. And at its bones – feats that come starting at level 1, have a level prerequisite, and are integrated into the base rules rather than being “optional” are a better system than we have in current 5E.

From what’s currently shown re: feats, I would speculate that ASI levels will give you both a feat and ASI, as the popular houserule, but I believe Crawford mentioned at one point that later level feats might be half-feats, which probably torpedoes that. 

Lilith: the specific feats are still ugh

Soma: Yes, Crawford mentioned that level 1 feats were set at an intentional and specific power level, and that no half-feats being available at level 1 was intentional. 

I suppose collecting gut-based reactions from people is a form of empirical feedback. I think I will push for testing new inspiration rules at my tables, for example, though not the new rules for critical hits, just to see how often it comes up. Of course, some of the “game features” have made inspiration a more “crunchy” thing, like humans regaining it on long rest and Musician giving it out to allies like Inspiring Leader—so it’s not going to be a 100% accurate representation of the new inspiration rules in play.

Xenken: Oh, the grapple taunt effect is cool!

I just hope melee is buffed to be more than just a mistake so that coolness means anything, especially since it’s been nerfed in every other way.

The Pi Guy: I don’t mind the alert change personally, but I do agree it’s odd that it creates a perverse incentive for you to add as many initiative rolls to a combat as possible, which is the opposite direction you want players to go for combat.

Lilith: so advantage/disadvantage are retroactive now?

Soma: @Lilith: No, they just haven’t been able to get Lucky right in 8 years.

TauNeutrino: I’m still disappointed that inspiration is max: 1 rather than max: 2. Making inspiration come at every nat 20 and not being able to bank a point up means you’re just spending it wherever it’s helpful rather than where it’s important to you, which feels counterproductive for a primarily roleplay-focused mechanic.

Lilith: pretty sure they’ve given up on “roleplay focused mechanic”

instead of literally anything that has to do with rewarding roleplay

or like defining what “acting in character” or flaw or whatever into a mechanic 

The Pi Guy: Well it’s no longer a roleplay focused mechanic, but I agree that stacking inspiration is one of the rules they should have added.

Lilith: it’s now just “nat 20 lul” 

and it not stacking at all is still gonna feel bad

TauNeutrino: Absolutely should be a cap, but 1 seems like the wrong cap for it. 2 or 3 would be ideal, in my opinion. That way it encourages proactive use while still wanting you to use it on things you really care about. 

Soma: Tau, I’m not sure if you’ve played with Hero Points in PF1E or 2E, but it’s capped at 3 in those games and I think that would be a good idea to steal.

TauNeutrino: It’s all burning wheel artha but worse anyway.

Jokes aside, haven’t played with PF2E hero points, but have with PF1E hero points. Three is a good limit, though they’re way too strong in PF1E, giving you extra offturn standard actions or recharging spell slots.

kobo1d: Bennies from Savage Worlds are my platonic ideal for similar effects.

Lilith: maybe a bit less bad if advantage is retroactive like lucky implies

The Pi Guy: No, inspiration specifically says you have to use it before the roll.

Lilith: lol then it’s about as poorly designed as old inspiration

TauNeutrino: This is a good thing if you want it to push character-focused play – precommitting to spending it on rolls that are important to you is essentially what makes Burning Wheel Persona so compelling. Well, that and a host of other things, but it’d be cheap if you could just use it after the roll – then you just use it whenever you fail on anything that could be a relevant failure.

I’d rather see inspiration as a rebound mechanic from natural 1s than as an exultation for natural 20s, if they’re going to tie it to rolls.

Would suck to be a halfling, I guess, but you can design around that 

Lilith: seems like “roleplay” is just given up on in terms of gameplay involvement tho

kobo1d: Ok so it sounds like very mixed reactions to the playtest packet as a whole. Discussion here is definitely hard with us all trying to intuit the 90% of the new material we can’t see from the 10% we can. In many cases, I would agree we just need to see more of the new system to realistically “playtest” the material. 

On the topic of Halflings Tau, one thing I noticed is that no one here seems to have mentioned the new Races. What do you think of the new approach, and did any of the new options strike you as particularly interesting or imbalanced?

The Pi Guy: The changes I’ve played with for inspiration are having it stack to no limit (fine, people don’t get enough for this to be a problem in standard 5e ruleset), having it be used after the roll (also fine, makes the effect much better but I prefer this to having it feel wasted), and both of the previous together with an extra ability to spend 10 inspiration on a level up (do not add this to the game)

Lilith: it lets you draw up a character a bit more freely, and that’s it

you get some aesthetics

the rest is your table figure it out

TauNeutrino: New races are largely fine I think. Don’t have especially strong opinions on them. Making background matter more is fun. Aesthetically more beneficial than anything. 

Lilith: make belief it

none of the changes involve any other aspect of roleplay

Soma: I think that the character creation process outlined in the packet is pretty well done, actually. Customizing Your Origin was always an option, but it was presented as the alternative not the default, and reversing it is a significant improvement. Wizards in general should be pushing “flavor is free” as much as possible. Equalizing background starting equipment costs shows that they are putting at least a little bit of thought into balance here, which is nice.

TauNeutrino: Funny how they switched up one set of stereotypes for orcs to another, though I don’t especially care to poke that hornet’s nest.

TauNeutrino: Agree with Soma here. The overall process is an improvement that makes me somewhat optimistic for later playtest packets, even if the content itself I’m ambivalent about.

Lilith: the “rp” feats just got a bit more concrete benefits, like lowered shop price and bonus numbers here and there

Xenken: “All Gladiators speak Orc” is definitely gonna make someone really mad.

TauNeutrino: I think they’re presented as example backgrounds as much as anything else.

The Pi Guy: I don’t particularly feel like the races are that interesting in this packet, none of these races make me excited to build a character unlike previous races have done for me. One buff I haven’t seen anyone speak about is that gnomish cunning works on all mental saves instead of mental saves against magic now.

Lilith: the races get a pass for “hey but you can swap any aspect of these templates”

Icebrick1: The races don’t excite me. They seem fine, but none make me excited to play them.

Tatersalad810: I skimmed a bit and the only thing I liked was the free feat at level 1 and the ASIs being moved to the background and not being tied racially.

Free feat at level 1 being the default for characters would open up a lot for both combat-oriented and RP-oriented players, especially now that some of the non-combat feats have better mechanic support as Lilith said. 

kobo1d: I agree with Pi and Icebrick, features you are really inspired to build around are in short supply so far in the character options presented.

Audere: Crafter seems hilarious. 20% discounts and 20% shorter crafting time? It couldn’t even be, I don’t know, 50% shorter crafting time? In what game does 20% of crafting time make a difference?

Tatersalad810: A game of players who had Saxon/Kumon math

kobo1d: Numbers pulled out of a hat, but we can’t even see the rest of the hat. Who could possibly know what the difference even is between 20% and 50% at this point? 

Lilith: a trend seems to be damage rerolls as opposed to damage bonuses 

Audere: Joy, more game slowdown.

kobo1d: Yes, I am not looking forward to multiple rerolls. Less impactful for virtual players than in-person though.

Tatersalad810: People who use FoundryVTT and automate all that are not going to like manually fixing the damage repeatedly. Great Weapon Fighter on my Paladin player slows down their turn enough.

kobo1d: WotC would rather reroll to add 1 damage in a messy way than increase a die size, and they would rather increase a die size than adding 1 because basic arithmetic is an antiquated design.

Tatersalad810: How much of this is due to those weird articles saying expecting players to do math is gate keeping?

Lilith: you can automate the rerolls in macros sure

yea when it’s like

1d4 damage

and then you get to reroll

and then another feature also lets you reroll

if it’s not macro automated

it’s so insufferable

I hated every single character with great weapon fighting

Soma: I think that in general, the writing around conditions, rules, mechanics, features…feels like an improvement. Have they still made mistakes? Yes. Is there still ambiguity around things? Yes. But they’re trying harder and the organization is much improved. 

kobo1d: Before we move on from races, any quick thoughts on the optimized picks?

The Pi Guy: Wood elf, human, gnome, probably in that order unless we have a significant change to pass without trace.

Icebrick1: I agree with Pi Guy, Wood Elf is strongest assuming pass without trace (and surprise) are the same, then Human, then Gnome.

TauNeutrino: I suspect there’s a surprise change from how the Incapacitated block is worded. If stealth-based surprise only results in them having disadvantage on initiative, pass without trace is still good, but not as incredibly broken as it is in base 5E. Otherwise, yeah, agree with Pi Guy. It’s possible we haven’t seen all the level 1 feats either, though, which would make human better.

Soma: 2014 PHB has 42 feats. 8 feats in this UA at level 1, if we assume a similar number for every 4 levels— that’s 48 feats. I’m not convinced we’re getting more feats unless they want to surpass the available player options from the 5E Player’s Handbook by a notable amount…perhaps the number of available feats shrinks per level?

TauNeutrino: I doubt there’ll be an equal number of feats for all levels. It generally makes sense to frontload these kinds of options. 19th level feats will rarely get played with! Sure, they’re aspirational, but the same argument applies to 16th level ones.

kobo1d: More level 1 feats could definitely push Human to the front. I will say that pass without trace seems anachronistic for a 2014 spell, let alone a 2023 spell…I have no confidence +10 flat bonus is here to stay and there’s a chance surprise is totally reworked too as Tau suggests. 

Icebrick1: It’s a minor thing, but I’m glad human looks like it will be good without requiring a variant option unlike in the PHB currently. 

Lilith: pwt now adds proficiency bonus to the rolls prof times 

kobo1d: We’ve touched on it a bit already but this is a great time to ask, which of the feats do you think are at the top of the heap right now for an optimized D&D One character?

The Pi Guy: I definitely think alert ends up being the default pick.

kobo1d: Lots of love for Alert, but also Lucky and Magic Initiate (Arcane) as well on the public Tabletop Builds discord.

Soma: Having at least one person with Alert seems very smart. With a four person party it shouldn’t be too hard for your “controller” to go first. Alert also incentivizes having lots of pets or familiars, which Pi Guy mentioned—that’s probably not good for table manners in a sense, especially with find familiar apparently on the arcane list as a whole?

Lilith: hm

on that note

summons have been getting the “go right after user” treatment

so it might not be an issue there

Soma: That’s a good point, they may have made efforts to prevent as many initiative rolls as possible for non-PCs. (I still think Alert is good though). 

Tatersalad810: I’m probably in the minority here but I liked the racial feats concept and wouldn’t mind something added at level 5 or another non-ASI level that allowed you to specifically pick a racial (or background given the trend) feat.

Tatersalad810: Course, if the racial feats aren’t balanced then one race just becomes the new S tier race.

TauNeutrino: PF2E does its ancestry system quite well in this regard.

Lilith: I actually like the pf2 feats quite a bit

 other than the clog problem, they’re equally impactful and abundant

so there’s many small customization points yea

The Pi Guy: One thing I’m interested in is if feats are level gated by class or by total level. There might be serious reasons to take a ranger beyond 5th if the good feats require you to be 16 levels in the same class.

Tatersalad810: I sincerely hope we don’t have “total level” continuing to be a thing like Eldritch Blast having 4 beams on a Warlock 1/Barbarian 19.

The Pi Guy: I do think we will for most cantrips, but I expect they single out EB as a class feature.

TauNeutrino: The whole eldritch blast thing is weird. Honestly, the sensible thing to do is maybe just make eldritch blast an option for the Attack action and give Warlocks extra attack scaling. Otherwise you have it being either as is or useless when multiclassing. 

kobo1d: (For anyone reading this that hasn’t already observed: eldritch blast was the only PHB cantrip or first level spell totally absent from the spell lists).

Luolang (Tabletop Builds editor): I think it’s interesting how this UA codifies what are some common or at least commonly talked about house rules: effectively, a starting feat, critical success and critical failure on ability checks and saving throws on a 1 or 20 respectively, and so forth. This itself is not a positive or negative slant, just an observation. Every race having a starting feat represents an overall increase in player character power, but this is putatively smoothed out by having feats themselves have level prerequisite requirements. My suspicion is that we won’t see level prerequisites beyond 4th or 8th level given that the designers are aware of the relative scarcity of T3 and T4 play and the adventures they’ve been releasing as of late also seem to cap off in T2 play. It’s difficult to assess whether or not this will be a positive force for the game or it may simply be different without necessarily being better or worse. It certainly changes the landscape in terms of optimization if certain kinds of key feats aren’t available until later levels, but again I think it’s difficult to assess whether this is a better or worse system without looking at as a whole. Hopefully later UA packages will deliver more context here.

The emphasis on customizing backgrounds is nice and giving backgrounds more oomph in this way I think could work out well. The grappled condition adding a pseudo-taunt like effect is neat, though the automatic saves to escape the condition I’m not as much a fan of. I personally have issues with a few of the changes incorporated in this document, such as the changes to critical hits or adding critical success / failure as a general mechanic for ability checks and saving throws as well. My biggest concern is that I’m not sure, given the current indication of some of the rules changes to come, if the backwards compatibility will be as smooth as advertised, as the nature of some of these rules makes it difficult to imagine it will be as modular as one might have hoped.

TauNeutrino: Ideally they would just remove by-level multiclassing, so they can actually give classes identity features at low levels. A return to 4e/pf2e-style multiclass feats would blend well with the feat revision, perhaps?

Lilith: other than the clog problem, they’re equally impactful and abundant

so there’s many small customization points

Soma: I think it would be fairly tragic for there to not be any higher level feats, especially for martials, who tend to get less and less as they level up as casters get access to higher level spells. It would also seem particularly lazy on Wizards’ part to introduce a level-gated feat system and then end it at 8…

TauNeutrino: My biggest problem with pf2e class feats (and 4e powers, for that matter), is that it’s not immediately obvious what the class does from first reading. You have to go through and look at a bunch of lists first. 

Lilith: ending at 8 makes some sense unless they plan to make higher tier play, well, playable

Luolang: I’m not quite sure I understand your response; the martials can still presumably pick feats later on? I was just thinking the highest level prerequisite might just end at 8th.

TauNeutrino: The casters get to pick better spells at higher levels. If they’re not level-gated into higher levels, the martials are picking worse feats then. It’s the base 5e problem where your first two feats are crossbow expert and sharpshooter and then every feat after that only gets worse and worse.

Xenken: In fairness, don’t spells make this mostly true for most classes? 

TauNeutrino: Point. This is how you get people thinking of cleric as a healbot because their good spells are buried deep in the spell list.

kobo1d: Or that hex is the best primary Warlock concentration spell 

TauNeutrino: Basic builds fighter took what, Tough as its 19th level feat? How exciting. Absolutely titillated for the highest level feat to be just… boring and bad.

Luolang: I guess I’m still not following. Wouldn’t the alternative be worse to make something like Sharpshooter or Crossbow Expert a 12th-level feat as opposed to a martial picking it up as early as possible? By level 4 or 8 or whatever.

kobo1d: @Tau That would probably be Fey Touched if we remade Basic Fighter today 🙂

TauNeutrino: The alternative would be giving them even stronger or at least more exciting things at 12th level. Lateral upgrades here are fine too: doesn’t have to be a straight damage upgrade. In-combat utility is the biggest thing martials are missing, and feats scaling some of that for martials into higher levels would be a big deal.

Luolang: Well supposing there are stronger feats, sure. I wasn’t supposing per se we’d be getting many more feats like that.

Soma: My thinking is that if level prerequisites drop off at 8th level, that means the rest of the available crop of feats is not going to be powerful. At a time when casters are going from mirage arcane to demiplane to true polymorph, martials are stuck…picking from the same pool of feats that were available at level 8 (under this hypothetical situation).

Luolang: Yeah, that’s my expectation. Though we may see some of those more potent spells get the 5.5 treatment. Like wall of force having hit points or something. 

The Pi Guy: I am really hoping for some off the wall tier 3 & 4 feats.

Xenken: I’m waiting with baited breath on what the new spells look like. Cause that really shapes everything else, doesn’t it? 

Soma: If a Wizard can cast true polymorph, I want my Barbarian to get a 16th level feat that’s in the same ballpark.

kobo1d: This is getting quite long, so since we are already talking about spells, as a final topic let’s bring it back to what they are doing with spells so far in the playtest. We don’t have a lot to go by here, but the Arcane/Divine/Primal spell list changes seem like they could be massive changes for the game. What do you think they are going for here? 

Icebrick1: It’s really hard to say. Wording implies that classes might get access to just all of one list, with some additional picks from other lists, and that would be a huge change, and one that I think would be very difficult to pull off without making all the classes feel very similar.

kobo1d: Bard and Warlock would seem to be big winners with Arcane access.

Lilith: it does streamline the spell list processes a lot more

the rest we have to look at how they actually write new spells

Luolang: That’s essentially my feeling as well. They say they’ll indicate how classes gain spells from a particular list or another. I think in terms of overall effect, it will bring a number of spellcasting classes into a similar par, but that can create a homogenizing effect like Icebrick notes.

Soma: Currently, the balance is 5 classes for Arcane, and then 2 each for Divine and Primal. Bard and Warlock could have gone into Occult or something similar for a 3/2/2/2 balance…though we’re dipping into PF2E territory again. 

Luolang: If this wasn’t D&D with the inherent weight of legacy and tradition, I almost would have envisioned – if this was a game built from the ground up – that you’d effectively collapse the spellcasting classes into a single class each.

kobo1d: The implication that Psionic could just be an overlapping set of the same spells with additions that multiple classes could access is interesting.

Luolang: With something like wizard, bard, and warlock as effectively subclasses. But obviously they’re not going to do that.

Lilith: if spell list / schools have a clearer identity it’d be excellent

we’ve seen “arcane” as doing literally everything, and “nature” as summons and tiptoe and some heal, divine is sg plus utility stuff, and the rest is budget arcane

Luolang: The biggest overall impact I think will be to the existing arcane casters, giving them a spell list to be on par with the wizard’s, is the main takeaway I think.

Soma: I agree, and opening up the entire 1st level Arcane list to Magic Initiate is huge as well.

TauNeutrino: Eh, Wizard got most of it anyway, though I suppose it’s ability-score independent now.

Luolang: This does raise a serious question I suppose in terms of the putative backwards compatibility, but that’s a different topic. Since a number of subclass features which grant an increased range of selectable spells have some awkward obsolescence.

kobo1d: Thank you all for your very opinionated responses to this first D&D One playtest. Before we cut this off: in one or two sentences, what is the most important thing you think our readers should ask WotC to clarify or otherwise change in this first set of rules? 

Audere: Whether any spellcasting at all or 1 hour or more of spellcasting breaks a long rest. Also make inspiration not stupidly exploitable with ball bearings or attacking rocks or similar. And in general make mechanics less easily exploitable.

kobo1d: Make rest casting even more explicit with clearer phrasing, or remove it from the game entirely.

Audere: but if you phrase it that way they’re more likely to remove rest casting instead of clarifying it in the direction that I like, and I like rest casting :V

Soma: I would stress to Wizards that this is not a functional playtest, and that to receive actionable feedback they need functional playtest packets.

TauNeutrino: I’m with Soma: I’d like to see a playtest packet with at least the first few levels of character classes. Ideally designed for a world without per-level multiclassing. 

Soma: The alternative is that Wizards released this packet specifically to test how people react to a combination of new rules and how the average table plans to incorporate them into existing 5E tables without any guidance, which is actually sort of genius if that is their plan going forward.

Tatersalad810: Give martial classes feats that grant unique abilities like 4e and make sure they scale with class level.

Lilith: Personally I want to see wotc take a proper stance on whether this is a roleplaying game or game where you’re encouraged to include make-believe acting. the streamlined aesthetic/thematic options are nice but they’re still leading nowhere new

Luolang: For myself personally, I hope that if WOTC is truly committing to One D&D being backwards compatible with 5e, then that they have a serious eye to that in terms of the kinds of changes being made as I worry some of the changes here are in tension with that stated goal so I think a serious re-evaluation of that may be in order. In terms of something I’d specifically like to see changed, I hope the proposed critical hit and critical failure / success rules aren’t retained.

TauNeutrino: Thanks, all! 

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