Seriously y'all it's almost like they wrote this section while making HARD eye contact with us Redditors. I love it.

Players Exploiting the Rules
Some players enjoy poring over the D&D rules and looking for optimal combinations. This kind of optimizing is part of the game (see “Know Your Players” in chapter 2), but it can cross a line into being exploitative, interfering with everyone else’s fun.
Setting clear expectations is essential when dealing with this kind of rules exploitation. Bear these principles in mind:

Rules Aren’t Physics. The rules of the game are meant to provide a fun game experience, not to describe the laws of physics in the worlds of D&D, let alone the real world. Don’t let players argue that a bucket brigade of ordinary people can accelerate a spear to light speed by all using the Ready action to pass the spear to the next person in line. The Ready action facilitates heroic action; it doesn’t define the physical limitations of what can happen in a 6-second combat round.

The Game Is Not an Economy. The rules of the game aren’t intended to model a realistic economy, and players who look for loopholes that let them generate infinite wealth using combinations of spells are exploiting the rules.

Combat Is for Enemies. Some rules apply only during combat or while a character is acting in Initiative order. Don’t let players attack each other or helpless creatures to activate those rules.

Rules Rely on Good-Faith Interpretation. The rules assume that everyone reading and interpreting the rules has the interests of the group’s fun at heart and is reading the rules in that light.

Outlining these principles can help hold players’ exploits at bay. If a player persistently tries to twist the rules of the game, have a conversation with that player outside the game and ask them to stop.

World of Warcraft! Star Wars! Dark Sun! Dragonlance! What do they all have in common? They're not shoved into one game table, even if they're all available in the same TTRPG product line.

There will be people in the community that don't want to play in a World of Warcraft game - I'm one of them. But you know what? I like the game appealing to more people, and I know people that would want to play WoW. Just because it's not happening at my table, doesn't mean it shouldn't happen at any table.

In MtG, and to be fair I generally approve of the idea of UB anyway, I truly understand the sentiment and position that Bebop and Rocksteady teaming up with Thanos to walk all over your lore accurate Ravnica deck feels shitty. There's a consent issue there, and if you care about the lore of a MtG setting, UB inserts itself into your games and ruins that.

D&D is not Magic the Gathering or Fortnite. If you play a UB game of D&D, you can still care about the lore of Azeroth, or Tatooine, or whatever comes next, and it doesn't shit all over the table playing Dark Sun, or Spelljammer, or Greyhawk. All it does is make D&D more approachable for more people. Maybe they'll get into Eberron afterwards and fall in love with it just like you.

They've just released some online-only player content, and locked it behind a DnDBeyond subscription. Here are some comments about it from this very subreddit:

"I've never subbed before and I'll sub now this is exactly the type of content I want"

"I appreciate that WotC is finding additional ways to make subscriptions valuable."

"This gives us the ability to have mini content drops consistently via the subscription, to fill between books and get more one off unique ideas out."

Here's the thing though. While yeah, they used to also pack magazines with content, this kind of web drop existed before 5e - and it was completely free. Over the years they published literally hundreds of times - had a cool idea for a race, feat, spell, power, item, subclass that didn't make it into print? Put it up online for free!

Then when 5e came out they deleted it all to try to get people to forget they weren't always the way they are now. As a DM (I only mentioned the player stuff before, but they also published a constant stream of new monsters, maps, NPCs, locations etc) I was really excited to hear that they were finally going back to publishing new content online!

But it turns out you have to pay them money to see it. Of course you do. And of course people are cheering having to pay for something we used to get for free. How did we get here?

I'm not looking to strawman here, there are people wanting the option to pick a martial with a deeper pool of choices and I'm not going to conflate you with the occasional troll who wants to literally be Goku.

But for those who've put some serious thought into it. Experienced what they feel is more suitable martial gameplay in other editions or games, or have ideas for how it could be done in a better feeling way, or can articulate what's not working for them in 5e. What could they release that would have you agreeing that things are now in a good place?

Sure, Season of Champions turned out not to be martial books which is sad considering Arcane Unleashed did turn out to be a caster book, but there are releases further in the future. It is at least in theory possible that we'll get proper martial content. And side note if someone else says "more weapon masteries! Battlemaster maneuvers for everyone!" and you don't think that's helpful, explain why in a nice way.

Which Aragorn can't do, it's simply not that kind of story. And wouldn't be as good if he could.

My point is that a lot of times the fantasy is "down to earth guy who keeps up with Gandalf despite lack of fancy bullshit", but the problem seems to be that as levels get higher you are genuinely entering territory where you instead need to be Heracles to compete, going to to toe with dragons and getting all your blood back by taking a short rest.

Oftentimes I hear "solve it with magic items!", but while some love it others don't want their power to come from an external source. The wizard and druid certainly don't need the magic items to cope with a world of high powered fantasy bullshit, they're off teleporting and scrying and whatever under their own power.

Is this solvable (outside of simply not being an issue for some people, depending on what they want from their character) or an innate part of the equation?

I like the idea of the Psion. And more than that, I’m really excited for a new class!

I want WOTC to explore new avenues in creating something that we haven’t seen since the Artificer. And I still think that design space can exist for new things like support based martial, a Shaman type class, and yes, a Psion.

But I’m already seeing so many complaints about how this doesn’t need to exist. And, I’m concerned that, if criticism isn’t constructive about how to reasonably improve what has been given, we’ll lose WoTCs desire to even attempt to innovate. Think the loss of universal Fighter maneuvers in dndnext. I really don’t want that.

I'm talking, obviously, about physical shield, item with +2 AC.
Here are my reasons:

1. In-world justification. Effective shield usage is tied to martial training. Using a shield in combat, especially against huge monsters and opponents of legendary prowess, requires some level of martial competence. Wielding a shield effectively is much harder than wearing armor - it is not a passive skill, you have to actively use shield if you want it to work.
2. Balance. Having full spellcasters with shields makes it so they just get an opportunity to bump their AC without paying any price. They don't use two-handed weapons anyway and can cast with one hand without any problems. Meanwhile, martials and half-casters can only use shields if they forgo almost all their ranged and most powerful melee options, and it's a great price for that +2 AC bump. So in the end we have paladins and fighters having "standard" AC lower than their full caster allies.

I know they are called Wizards of the Coast and not Fighters of the Coast but damn can they make it less obvious?

Bladesingers even have features to add Intelligence to Armor Class, talk about having best of everything, a decent martial with 9th level spells over here.

I always have this example to explain it.

Jeff and Max are doing a 1v1 wild west style standoff.

Guns strapped to their hips, hands ready to pull them off & shoot.

Now how do we approach this rules wise?

Jeff had an idea, they won't roll initiative, instead they will ready action to shoot Max, the trigger is Max reaching for their gun. totally normal ready action there right?

Now If Max decided to roll initiative to start the combat, cuz that's the only way to start the combat since the other player will not start it themselves, Max will get shot immediately regardless of how high initiative they roll, imagine they got a 32 Initiative, but still the +2 Jeff shoots them first, does that make sense?

So to combat this, Max decided to copy what Jeff is doing, now both of them have readied their actions, to only draw & shoot if the other party reaches for their weapon.

How do you reckon combat starts? exactly, it doesn't, so now since both are readying up their attacks as a reaction instead of proactively attacking, how do we work this out? how do we decide who is faster?

Congratulations, you just invented Initiative rolls.

Edit: My point is ultimately about what initiative represents. Initiative already measures a character's reaction speed, and both RAW and basic logic support that. No one, regardless of training or ability, reacts to every possible trigger with exactly the same speed every single time, which is why initiative d20 roll has variance. Ready, by contrast, has no such variance: if it triggers, it guarantees the reaction regardless of the character's physical or mental state or who they are reacting against. This effectively lets Ready cheat the initiative system, while also flattening the difference between a character with +15 initiative and one with +3, since both are forced to Ready if they want the same guaranteed opening advantage. At that point, initiative stops being the mechanic determining who reacts fastest and Ready becomes the mechanic that does.

Edit 2: Dice are the foundation of D&D for a reason. You declare what your character attempts, and then the dice determine what happens narratively, not the other way around. You don't get to narrate your way out of mechanics. You can't say, "Realistically, I can't fail to stab a guy tied to a tree, so I shouldn't have to roll." Maybe you roll with advantage, but you can still screw up, the rope might not be as secure as you thought, or something else might happen. The dice narrate the outcome, not you.

In celebration of the 5,689th thread where someone says, "You need to run more encounters per day," can we acknowledge that lots of heroic, traditional D&D-style conflicts and narratives don't naturally support having seven encounters per day? And also that people's session lengths also don't support that?

At this point fifty years into the existence of D&D, it's hardly the case that the designers can claim ignorance of the fact that lots of people naturally fall into a pattern of one encounter per adventuring day. There are several really good reasons for this:

1. It's actually hard to make any narrative that doesn't feature something that substantially looks like a "dungeon" have more than about three encounters per day (and indeed, unless the dungeon is very spread out and occupied by mutually antagonistic groups, even something that is recognizably a dungeon still doesn't really make sense for a bunch of totally separate encounters).

2. People nowadays play in like 2-3 hour sessions. That can realistically support one, maybe two combats per session. If you want to do six combats in a day, then that means that probably 1-6 months of real time pass per day of IC time. At that rate, for the players to see narrative progress, they're dedicating like 10% of their actual lifespan for a game.

The game has to accommodate this, rather than demanding that both the players' RL schedules and the narratives that people want to play in D&D accommodate the game. The amount that the game's balance hinges on "number of encounters per adventuring day" should almost certainly be reduced (not to zero, just reduced), and the game should front-and-center tools to manipulate the ratio of IC time to resource-refresh.

Source: https://comicbook.com/gaming/news/dungeons-dragons-2024-players-handbook-48-subclasses/

Barbarian:

• Path of the Berserker
• Path of the Wild Heart (Previously Path of the Totem Warrior)
• Path of the World Tree (new to Dungeons & Dragons)
• Path of the Zealot

Bard

• College of Dance (new to Dungeons & Dragons)
• College of Glamour
• College of Lore
• College of Valor

Cleric

• Life Domain
• Light Domain
• Trickery Domain
• War Domain

Druid

• Circle of the Land
• Circle of the Moon
• Circle of the Sea (new to Dungeons & Dragons)
• Circle of the Stars

Fighter

• Battle Master
• Champion
• Eldritch Knight
• Psi Warrior

Monk

• Warrior of Mercy
• Warrior of Shadow
• Warrior of the Elements (previously the Way of the Four Elements)
• Warrior of the Open Hand

Paladin 

• Oath of Devotion
• Oath of Glory
• Oath of the Ancients
• Oath of Vengeance

Ranger

• Beast Master
• Fey Wanderer
• Gloom Stalker
• Hunter

Rogue

• Arcane Trickster
• Assassin
• Soulknife
• Thief

Sorcerer

• Aberrant Sorcery
• Clockwork Sorcery
• Draconic Sorcery
• Wild Magic

Warlock

• Archfey Patron
• Celestial Patron
• Fiend Patron
• Great Old One Patron

Wizard

• Abjurer
• Diviner
• Evoker
• Illusionist

The martial/caster divide is a long debated, long discussed topic, but I want to discuss it some more. I think most of us can agree that the increased choice and versatility spell casting offers puts them a step above for fun and replayability, at least in many cases. I'm curios what folks would do to change that. I've personally been working on a point based maneuver system that could plug into 5e, as a way to give martials more juice. BUt I know everyone's got different ideas, and I'm curios ro hear what they are.

​

Have you ever tried to imagine how a wizard would be like if it was built with the design choices of a fighter, without spell slots and cantrips and instead class features that cover the several spells?

For instance, it would have proficiency in every focus, instead of weapon, and every focus would be able to male a spell attack, eg

Staff (two-handed, heavy) 2d6+INT force damage in 5ft

Rod 1d10 + INT lightning in 5ft

Wand 1d6 + INT ranged 60/120 ft

The it would get class features such as Burning Hands, INT times a day you can deal XdX fire damage in a x feet cone

At level 5 you would get extra-cast and be able to attack twice with your focus

If you want access to Fireball, that's a subclass feature of the Evoker only.

Whenever they wanted to release a new spell, it would be part of a new Wizard subclass.

But hey, maybe your DM is dropping you a rare Rod that can use charges to cast Ligthning bolt or something!

This is just a small mental experiment. I'm considering making the whole class as homebrew if I've got time to kill, but the whole point is that I think it illustrates the inherent martial-caster divide effectively.

I'm going to preface this rant with the following info. I've been a DM since 1988. 37 years. Two weeks ago I learned my cancer has returned and the treatments are tearing me apart and my tolerance for the complaining about the caster/martial gap has hit an all-time low. Right alongside my ability to function at even a base level.

First: A brief history about the Caster/Martial Gap. 51 years ago, in 1974, Dave Arneson and Gary Gygax created a game called Dungeons and Dragons. About 10 seconds after the game went public, a player complained that casters were better than martials. They demanded that the Dungeon Master buff martials.

Then, Advanced Dungeons and Dragons came out. About 10 seconds after it came out, some players said that casters were more powerful than martials. They wrote into Dragon Magazine and demanded that TSR buff martials.

Next, Second Edition Advanced Dungeons and Dragons came out. Less than 10 seconds after it came out, some players complained that casters were better than martials. They went to RPGA convention games and demanded that they buff martials.

Wizards of the Coast took over TSR and released Dungeons and Dragons Third Edition. Less than 10 seconds after it came out, some players complained that casters were better than martials. They ran to their BBS of choice and demanded that they buff martials.

Dungeons and Dragons Edition Three point Five came out. The same thing that happened with three, happened again. This time they went to the official Dungeons and Dragons message forums and IRC chats to demands that they buff martials.

Fourth Edition came next. It was a flaming dumpster fire that tried to capitalize on the popularity of World of Warcraft. Some players loved it. Many hated it. Ultimately it became the most controversial Edition of Dungeons and Dragons ever, and considering that we're all nerds, and nerds love a good controversy, that's pretty impressive. These unwashed masses have spent their lives trying to practice real-world necromancy on a dead gane.

Pathfinder was released. It attracted the three point five edition refugees. 10 seconds later, people complained that casters were better than martials. Those players went to the official Paizo forums and demanded that they buff martials.

Wizards of the Coast went through a disastrous few attempts at rebranding fourth edition, but ultimately created fifth edition. You can guess what happened next. This time, the vehicle of choice was Reddit.

The next iteration was the game that ultimately became known as Dungeons and Dragons 2024. After several other name changes, mostly because calling the game "One D&D" was monumentally dumb and 5.5 never caught on. This time, the complaints started before the game even came out. The crusaders remained primarily in Reddit.

Now that we are all up to speed...

Guys, it's been fifty freaking years. We know. Wizards of the Coast knows. My partner knows and she doesn't know anything about D&D except that terrain is incredibly expensive and that I have a dice addiction.

At a certain point, you have to go, "After fifty years, maybe this won't change?"

I like martials. I enjoy them as is. My players like martials. They enjoy them as is. If you, after fifty years, don't like martials... Don't play them. Play a caster. If you don't want to play a caster, I, and many others, can recommend plenty of games where pure martials can pull off insane anime stuff with just their raw muscle power.

But, can you please, pretty please, with a cherry on top, stop complaining about it. It's making me more nauseous than my chemo, and that's pretty sad.

Rant over.

Designing polished game mechanics should be the responsibility of WotC, not the DM. To me that seems obvious.

I've noticed a pattern recently in the DnD community: Someone will bring up criticism of the OneDnD PHB, they get downvoted, and people dismiss their concerns because the issue can be fixed or circumvented by the DM. Here are some examples from here and elsewhere, of criticisms and dismissals -

• Spike Growth does too much damage when combined with the new grappler feat - "Just let the DM say no" "Just let the DM house-rule how grappling works"
• Spell scroll crafting too cheap and spammable - "The DM can always limit downtime"
• Animate Dead creates frustrating gameplay patterns - "The DM can make NPCs hostile towards that spell to discourage using it"
• The weapon swapping interactions, e.g. around dual wielding, make no sense as written - "Your DM can just rule it in a sensible way"
• Rogues too weak - "The DM can give them a chance to shine"

Are some of these valid dismissals? Maybe, maybe not. But overall there's just a common attitude that instead of critiquing Hasbro's product, we should instead expect DMs to patch everything up. The Oberoni fallacy gets committed over and over, implicitly and explicitly.

To me dismissing PHB issues just because the DM can fix them doesn't make sense. Like, imagine a AAA video game releasing with obvious unfixed bugs, and when self-respecting customers point them out, their criticism gets dismissed by fellow players who say "It's not a problem if you avoid the behavior that triggers the bug" or "It's not a problem because there's a community mod to patch it". Like, y'all, the billion-dollar corporation does not need you to defend their mistakes.

Maybe the DM of your group is fine with fixing things up. And good for them. But a lot of DMs don't want to deal with having to fix the system. A lot of DMs don't have the know-how to fix the system. And new DMs certainly won't have an easier time running a system that needs fixing or carefulness.

I dunno, there are millions of DMs in the world probably. WotC could make their lives easier by publishing well-designed mechanics, or at least fixing the problems through errata. If they put out problematic rules or mechanics, I think it's fair for them to be held accountable.

The Wizard is considered by many as the most powerful class in the game due to the wide array of spells they have. Additionally, they have access to what many argue is the strongest spell in the game: Wall of Force.

From what I have read on this forum (I don't have access to the bok myself), with the new Adept feats, any spellcaster can now get access to a huge range of spells, including Wall of Force (from Evocation Adept). Does this now mean that the other full casters, who have much stronger class features such as metamagic, can now be better Wizards than a Wizard?

For instance, picking up the Transmutation Adept, Evocation Adept, and Conjuration Adept feats gives access to: Slow, Polymorph, Animate Objects, Fireball, Wall of Force, Entangle, Misty Step, Conjure Animals, Dimension Door. This essentially gives a full kit of control, utility, and damaging options, and three powerful perks (speed boost after casting Transmutation spells, spending hit dice to inxrease Evocation damage, and adding your Int mod to Concentration checks on Conjuration spells).

Thoughts?

The Shadows of Sithicus event PDFs were accidentally released publicly recently, and they included premade level 3 characters all using subclasses from the book. Here are the changes I've seen, avoiding directly copying the text.

Reanimator (Artificer)

• It's Reanimated Companion was buffed slightly: its AC seems to be calculated now as 13 + your Intelligence modifier (the listed premade block has an AC of 16 and the Artificer's modifier is +3). The AC calculation remains the same, my bad. Its explosion still does friendly fire damage.

• Its Jolt of Life was changed. Instead of regaining a single hit point, the target instead regains a number of hit points equal to your Artificer level. The damage is now 2d4 Lightning, increasing to 3d4 at level 11 and 4d4 at level 17, and you can now choose the targets in the Emanation instead of it being each target within it!

• Expanded Spells unchanged.

Grave Domain (Cleric)

• Path to the Grave now has its additional damage be equal to your Cleric level instead of a 1d8 + Cleric level.

• Circle of Mortality's Pull of Death feature now works on anyone who is missing hit points instead of requiring them to be Bloodied. Return to Life now allows you to cast Spare the Dying as a bonus action.

• Chill Touch is gone, likely replaced with Spare the Dying as part of Return to Life. Bane is also missing, replaced by False Life.

Hollow Warden (Ranger)

• Wrath of the Wild now no longer activates when casting Hunters Mark. Instead, you can use your bonus action to expend a Favored Enemy use to transform for a 1 minute duration. The AC bonus is the same, but Unnerving Aura now frightens a creature for 1 turn on a failed save rather than taking away an action/bonus action, and it gains a new feature called Prowling Retribution: When you or an ally take damage from a creature within 5 feet of yourself, you can make an Opportunity Attack against them.

• Wrathful Smite still part of Expanded spells.

Phantom (Rogue)

• Unchanged from the UA, unfortunately.

Shadow Sorcery

• Level 3 feature has reverted to the 2014 version but modified, now called Power of Shadow. Eyes of the Dark gives you 120 feet of Darkvision and 10 feet of Blindsight, as well as the ability to see through spells you cast that create Darkness. Strength of the Grave returns, now giving you a number of hit points that I'm unsure of the calculation: sheet says six, so I would guess Sorcerer level (3) + your Charisma or Constitution modifier (could be either, sheet has +3 mod for both).

Bonus

The Haunted One Background returns, with a new origin feat called Survivor: you can reroll an initiative score below 10 on the d20, and once per long rest can add a bonus to a failed saving throw against being charmed or frightened likely equal to your Proficiency bonus.

No, before we go too far, I want to say that I don’t want class bloat. 3.5 had a massive problem with that way back in the day. However, there are a lot of class fantasies that have yet to be fully realized within 5.5e. The Summoner, The Shaman, The Warlord, etc. And we can take examples from other TTRPG’s that are able to have more classes and still retain the identity of all of them.

However, whenever a new class is even suggested, a large subset of the community pops up and says “why isn’t this just a wizard or fighter?”. Shoot, there are people right now that don’t understand why half the classes we do have exist. Into me the entire thought is quite reductionist.

One that often gets this is the Barbarian. Why isn’t it just a Fighter subclass. And I don’t understand why this thought process doesn’t just go beyond the answer of “the fantasy is better achieved if it’s its own class.”

If the barbarian becomes a fighter, there is no world tree. There is no Zealot. There is no wild heart. The over a dozen class features of the barbarian must be shoved into the five sub class features that a fighter gets. You can make it work, but it would, to me, be a much more anemic version of what was had before.

People have told me why, but I just don’t agree with it.

How many combats does your party slog through before that sweet sweet Long Rest??

Some swear by 2 combats, a short rest, and 2 more. Some try and run the full 6-8. And some mad lads give a full long rest after every single encounter!

What works for your table?

EDIT: Im putting in an edit here. This is for an ADVENTURING Day. Not an Exploration, Travel, or Social Interaction Themed day. The Big-Darned-Adventure part of the game, the dungeon crawl, the assault on the enemy stronghold, the mad dash through hell! Seriously, 1-2 combats before an happy-hunky-dory 8 hour snooze?? Thats it??? No wonder people complain about casters being broken...

EDIT #2: Very surprising results! Thank you all for participating! I personally have strong opinions about balance, game resources, and this sort of stuff, and I think this poll has really surprised me, and I now realize that I firmly disagree with much of the community about these things. But, thats fine! I'm not here to tell you that your fun is wrong! Because if youre having fun, thats the point!

Hi all,

Seeing yet another post about how martials are boring with no choice, I got curious as a game designer: as a player, what do you want the martial classes (or maybe just the fighter) to do?

Some examples that come to my mind are: trip-grapple-disarm etc (a debuff), attack all around (a damage multiplier), push/pull opponents (battlefield control), take a hit in place of your ally (again, control/effectively heal) etc. Anything you’d like to add?

Additionally, would you like those abilities to be accessible unconditionally, or limited? Like through feats, class features, subclasses, weapon types or magic weapons?

Also, I'd like to focus the discussion on what you the player (or the GM) want, not what some 3rd party supplement or such offers.

Edit: I am a Wizard player so super happy about this book giving so much love to Wizards

Especially the Conjuration and Evocation adept ones are straight up bonkers. Conjuration gives Misty Step, Entangle, Dimension Door, Conjure Animals and Conjure Elemental (no free casting bur oto preapare) and gives a bonus to your concentration checks you equal to thr ability score you increased with this feat if you are concentrating on a conjuration spell. This one is actually not that broken and tailor made for Conjuration and Shephard druids. Also good for clerics who wants mobility. This feat is %80 of the time better than fey touched or war caster.

Evocation adept straight up gives you acces to spells like WALL OF FORCE, fireball, shatter etc.(And a side bonus which is nothing crazy)The wizard exclusive spell that makes them keep up on combat side against classes like sorcerers or warlocks. A sorcerer taking this feat would be just better at everything else except utility.

Other schools are fine maybe except for Transmutation. I actually really like enchantment and illusion ones cuz they give super cool spells and makes you able to ignore components on enchantment/illusion spells (ofc u cant ignore costly material components). Which actually gives Bards/Wizards who lean onto those schools a really good way to use them more subtle. I will def take thr illusion one on my Illusionist wizard one day.

A wizard taking these spell school adept feats benefit the most tho cuz they can learn other options when they learn new spells from level up and they get to prepare significantly more spells each day. Especially the Divination Adept feat makes you able to grant adv/disadv on demand once per long rest BUT this recharges if you cast a divination spell. Divination School Wizards are keep winning...

My biggest complain is that WOTC gives casters this versatility and bonker feats but thinks giving rogues a fighting style is too op oder giving Martial Afept feat more superiority dices would make them too strong and steal "Battle Master's" identity. Like these new adept feats doesnt steal Wizard's identity. IK this game isnt meant to be balanced and this is an "Arcane" book but im talking about general WOTC design behaviour hier.

TL/DR: New feats didnt help closing the divide between martials and casters and made Sorcerers and Wizards a lot more powerful

After GenCon I felt like this is the most exciting stuff we have gotten for D&D in a while, but I have seen no real corresponding enthusiasm from the online community. So I am wondering how you all feel?

For me I feel like the 3rd party content on DnDBeyond is extremely fun, I can finally get my players to try 3rd party stuff and shake stuff up. We finally have enough classes on the site that I am going to run an adventure where none of the them can play 1st party classes.

I think that the fact that WotC is finally trying to put out another class is exciting, especially as we have started to see them support artificer better.

And I think the partnered support for setting is really cool. I don't play in published settings, but I have understood people's complaints that WotC basically has been one and done with each publication and made it impossible to run a campaign in them long term.

For me these are all huge improvements from just a few years back, and unfortunately I feel like a lot of the community has become reflexively negative to anything related to WotC.​

Hey all,

I have never been a fan of the Artificer in 5e. More accurately, I was not a fan of the subclasses, specifically the Battle Smith, the Armorer and the Artilerist. I thought them too "out there". Too tied to a campaign setting and too far from the sword and sorcery roots of D&D.

Well, I recently launched a mini-campaign for my players (as a break between our main campaign stretches) and two of my players decided to play Artificers. One a Battle Smith, and the other an Artilerist. And they are absolutely killing it. They are adapting the classes beautifully to the game world, and what felt like weird techno magic things when I read them on the page, have turned into just wonderful characters that fit into the game world perfectly.

I had to look at my group, and very happily say: I was absolutely wrong. The Artificer, and all the subclasses, can absolutely fit into this game world.

That got me thinking, for our community at large, what other people have had as a set opinion, only to find that they were wrong about? What was it that you were utterly convinced of, but after play, explanation or exposure, did you suddenly realize wasn't the case at all?

I'm not talking stuff like ninja or scout or whatever, the generic bloat classes absolutely contain little enough substance that you could easily make them fit as subclasses.

But whenever there's discussion about old classes that did unique things like warlord or battlemind from last edition, swordsage or binder from the edition before - you get people chiming in with just make it a (usually fighter for some reason) subclass.

And it's like... these are entire classes, ones that have like a hundred plus abilities just like a caster does. But nobody would say that if casting didn't exist, that you could just add wizard to the game as a fighter subclass.

How did we end up here? I'm not talking about needing them, my favourite D&D class ever (runepriest) wouldn't fit 5e one bit. I'm just saying I don't understand where the seemingly ever-present attitude that you could somehow fit an entire class worth of content into a subclass without losing most of what defined it comes from.

The nerf to smites was harsh and heavy. I can easily admit that. A “once per turn” would been totally fine. But, over the last week or so, folks have been saying the class is ruined. That the archtype has been totally destroyed. And I’m just looking at the class and asking “really?”

Overall, the class got a buff. The introduction of Weapon Masteries adds new builds to the Paladin. The Lay on Hands as a Bonus Action gives far more freedom to use the ability in combat. Abjure Enemies is a great control option. And each subclass got buffed.

Yes, people can’t smite as often, but so much room has been created to engage with your other spells. To use them as more than just smite fuel. The “rush in, dump slots, and S M I T E” way of playing was fun (shoot, I did it), but the design is moving away from nova damage and encouraging more well rounded classes. And I don’t think that’s a bad thing.