D&D (2024) New One D&D Playtest Document: 77 Pages, 7 Classes, & More!

There's a brand new playtest document for the new (version/edition/update) of Dungeons of Dragons available for download! This one is an enormous 77 pages and includes classes, spells, feats, and weapons.

Unearthed Arcana Playtest

Unearthed Arcana Playtest Materials Get Unearthed Arcana playtest content, try it out in your game, and provide feedback! Check back regularly for ...

www.dndbeyond.com

In this new Unearthed Arcana document for the 2024 Core Rulebooks, we explore material designed for the next version of the Player’s Handbook. This playtest document presents updated rules on seven classes: Bard, Cleric, Druid, Monk, Paladin, Ranger, and Rogue. This document also presents multiple subclasses for each of those classes, new Spells, revisions to existing Spells and Spell Lists, and several revised Feats. You will also find an updated rules glossary that supercedes the glossary of any previous playtest document.

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[mamba]

You are missing the point:

I replied to what you were writing

The point of any change is to increase that popularity. Equally popular but tepid doesn't even cut it, every change to the system needs to be more popular than the current equivalent option

if something gets 69% approval it is more popular than the current option. We can argue around the 50-60% mark, but 69 clearly is, I am also not sure I call that response tepid.

I get that the new option has to be more popular than the current one, nobody is arguing against that. I am not sure the current approach identifies all more popular options however, only the vastly more popular ones.

Whether this is by design or not, who knows, but we should be clear about what it does, and what it does not.

 

[Parmandur]

I replied to what you were writing


if something gets 69% approval it is more popular than the current option. We can argue around the 50-60% mark, but 69 clearly is, I am also not sure I call that response tepid.

I get that the new option has to be more popular than the current one, nobody is arguing against that. I am not sure the current approach identifies all more popular options however, only the vastly more popular ones.

Whether this is by design or not, who knows, but we should be clear about what it does, and what it does not.

Again, I am not sure where the disconnect is: the point I am making is that nothing currently in the 2014 rules us so unpopular that 69% is an improvement, to the best of our knowledge (back dueomg the alt-Ranger tests of 2015, I recall thwm sayong the base Rabger was in the 70% band of popularity, whixh made any change difficult). So a change that gets 69% doesn't meet the threshold of what is already there, across the board.

 

[Hussar]

Again, I am not sure where the disconnect is: the point I am making is that nothing currently in the 2014 rules us so unpopular that 69% is an improvement, to the best of our knowledge (back dueomg the alt-Ranger tests of 2015, I recall thwm sayong the base Rabger was in the 70% band of popularity, whixh made any change difficult). So a change that gets 69% doesn't meet the threshold of what is already there, across the board.

That's kinda the point though. Any change never has a chance to become popular. Simple inertia will keep the game static for years. Good grief, 20 years of AD&D, despite having absolutely baroque, archaic and frankly very bad mechanics but was still perfectly acceptable to the majority of gamers.

Because it doesn't have to be acceptable to the majority. It only has to be acceptable to 30% of gamers. You keep harping that rangers pass the 70% sniff test. We will never know because they never actually polled the Ranger for the release of Next. The UA version of the Ranger didn't actually look much like what was released.

But, so long as 30% of gamers don't mind the ranger, as written, it cannot change.

It's not about how popular it was in 2014. Who cares how popular it was then? Even if it did pass the 70% sniff test in 2014, we're talking about a gaming population that's what, 1/10th the size of now? But, again, despite the huge growth of the gaming population, we're beholden to those rules because the bar for making any adjustments is incredibly high.

So, we never actually get to see if a new version would be popular or not, because any change is automatically gated behind a UA - meaning that only a tiny slice of the hobby ever actually sees it - and further gated behind a very vocal body that rejects any change to the hobby.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

That's kinda the point though. Any change never has a chance to become popular. Simple inertia will keep the game static for years. Good grief, 20 years of AD&D, despite having absolutely baroque, archaic and frankly very bad mechanics but was still perfectly acceptable to the majority of gamers.

Because it doesn't have to be acceptable to the majority. It only has to be acceptable to 30% of gamers. You keep harping that rangers pass the 70% sniff test. We will never know because they never actually polled the Ranger for the release of Next. The UA version of the Ranger didn't actually look much like what was released.

But, so long as 30% of gamers don't mind the ranger, as written, it cannot change.

It's not about how popular it was in 2014. Who cares how popular it was then? Even if it did pass the 70% sniff test in 2014, we're talking about a gaming population that's what, 1/10th the size of now? But, again, despite the huge growth of the gaming population, we're beholden to those rules because the bar for making any adjustments is incredibly high.

So, we never actually get to see if a new version would be popular or not, because any change is automatically gated behind a UA - meaning that only a tiny slice of the hobby ever actually sees it - and further gated behind a very vocal body that rejects any change to the hobby.

The game literally changed during 5e.

 

[mamba]

Again, I am not sure where the disconnect is

You are comparing apples and oranges, or at least I believe so, that is the disconnect. A 69% approval for a change does not mean that fewer people like it than the current version, it means that 69% like it better than the current version.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

You are comparing apples and oranges, or at least I believe so, that is the disconnect. A 69% approval for a change does not mean that fewer people like it than the current version, it means that 69% like it better than the current version.

Well that isn’t true. It just means 69% like it.

It suggests that close to 69% like it better, but it doesn’t tell us that with any certainty.

 

[Parmandur]

That's kinda the point though. Any change never has a chance to become popular. Simple inertia will keep the game static for years.

I mean...don't threaten me with a good time...?

You keep harping that rangers pass the 70% sniff test. We will never know because they never actually polled the Ranger for the release of Next. The UA version of the Ranger didn't actually look much like what was released.

They tested everything in 2015, and them more recently.

 

[Parmandur]

You are comparing apples and oranges, or at least I believe so, that is the disconnect. A 69% approval for a change does not mean that fewer people like it than the current version, it means that 69% like it better than the current version.

....no. if 69% like something way, but 71% like it the way it was before, the prior way is preferred by more people. That's a 2% downgrade.

 

[mamba]

Well that isn’t true. It just means 69% like it.

It suggests that close to 69% like it better, but it doesn’t tell us that with any certainty.

ok, but as you said, it is very likely that close to 69% like it better. So saying that fewer people like the new version than the current one is almost certainly false. That was my point.

@Parmandur claimed that because it only got 69%, the current version which sometime ago got 71% approval is the more popular one, because that is the higher percentage of the two. I think this is almost certainly false.

 

[Parmandur]

Well that isn’t true. It just means 69% like it.

It suggests that close to 69% like it better, but it doesn’t tell us that with any certainty.

Well, not necessarily better: hence why Crawford said they backed off on some things that did OK by the numbers, but the qualitative feedback was "eh, I can live with this, I guess" for the positive responses.