Sharpshooter Vs. The Forge Domain subclasses which ones
he thought were incredibly successful
and which ones missed the mark great
example of feedback affecting where
we’re going to take design are two
subclasses that we’ve done in the last
few months one of them was the sharp
suitor for the fighter we got the
feedback in we looked at the
satisfaction level and it was quite low
low enough that after looking at the
subclass we thought really as a design
for the game the official game this is a
dead end people can still use the
unearthed Arcana sharpshooter that we
sent out in their home games if they dig
it it works for their group it’s fun for
them but given the low level of
satisfaction that piece of design is
unlikely to ever appear officially in
the game in contrast satisfaction for
the cleric subclass of the forge domain
was so high that we had to then pause
and consider where in our upcoming
product schedule could we find a place
to include this because satisfaction is
crazy high people loved it and so that’s
a case of that satisfaction and then
also the reading and then also the
written feedback that we received
pushing us to look at this thing and see
hmm where can we place this where can
this show up in a later book to really
become a part of the game itself the
Sharpshooter I think that pun intended
missed the mark partly because it did
something that sometimes rubs players
the wrong way and that is it was
stepping on other people’s turf the
Sharpshooter I think had a bit too much
of the Sharpshooter feet in it in
addition to sharing the feets name which
never would have survived into print we
would have changed the sub
his name it had a little too much of I
think what people consider to be the
Rangers turf it felt I think for people
too much of a kind of an amalgamation of
things they’d expect to see elsewhere in
the game or that they were already
seeing elsewhere in the game because
often when people get a new option even
if it has parts that they’re familiar
with they want to feel overall that
there really is something fresh there
and I think the Sharpshooter again it
suffered from a variety of things maybe
didn’t feel quite fresh enough maybe
using a bit too many familiar parts and
encroaching on other on the turf of
other options that were already in the
game the forge domain in contrast filled
a gap that people suddenly noticed and
it’s funny sometimes people will
communicate a gap to us they’ll say
here’s the thing I want in the game that
the game is not currently giving me
please give it to me other times we’ll
introduce something say in unearthed
Arcana and people will realize this is a
gap I wasn’t aware of but now that
you’re filling it I noticed it and I’m
glad you’re filling it and the forge
domain actually is something we had
originally experimented with including
in the fifth edition players handbook at
the time we were coming at it from a
slightly different story angle it was
the creation domain at the time and it’s
sort of dead ended in our design cycle
as we were writing the fifth edition
players handbook so we put it on the
shelf
and we walked away from for a while but
then when we were working on this
current series we brought it back we re
skinned it we came at it from the angle
of the forge particularly imagining the
many different blacksmith gods that
exist in the D&D multiverse because
pretty much almost every Pantheon and
the D&D multiverse has a blacksmith in
it and so and so we considered it was
actually a kind of a weird gap in our
domain system that we didn’t have a
domain that specifically spoke to the
smithing and the creation of things now
many of our Smith gods have been able to
rely on other domains like a number of
Smith god
often have sort of fire as a part of
their aesthetic so many of those gods
could be represented by the light domain
for example so there were places for a
cleric of a Smith God to go in terms of
domain but I think again the forge
domain really fits into a spot nicely
that we had left open and we knew this
again going all the way back to the
design of the the players handbook
because we had already started
experimenting with something like it
then but again feedback was really high
and so the forge domain has a good
chance of at some point appearing in the
book
you
#dungeonlife #dnd https://t.co/YtP6HdTHQP @thisdungeonlife— Todd Kenreck (@ToddKenreck) June 15, 2017