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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[Incenjucar]

Tbh, maybe I'm just not old enough, but I don't get this experience. I have a pretty large pool of people I could tap to make a game happen, both veterans and people who haven't played but have vocalized interest. And I also do work full time at the ol' 9-5, so I get the burnout and everything that comes with ending the day. But...idk. I've never had a problem finding people willing to play and willing to get a lil' freaky with the rules. Unironically sorry that's the case for you man, hope you find your group too.

<insert Simpsons "it will happen to you" meme>

Just the nature of a very full life. I'm actually in an excellent location, with multiple game bars just down the road, so I'm luckier than most, but time is a factor that defies location. I'm already spending my time working on a D&D class, procrastinating about updating a game I developed and finishing a second one, helping people playtest their video games, helping friends move, helping family move, helping people with personal life stuff, etc. etc. etc. while staying on top of the cutting edge of my industry. I don't need even more work to do for my hobby.

 

[Shardstone]

<insert Simpsons "it will happen to you" meme>

Just the nature of a very full life. I'm actually in an excellent location, with multiple game bars just down the road, so I'm luckier than most, but time is a factor that defies location. I'm already spending my time working on a D&D class, procrastinating about updating a game I developed and finishing a second one, helping people playtest their video games, helping friends move, helping family move, helping people with personal life stuff, etc. etc. etc. while staying on top of the cutting edge of my industry. I don't need even more work to do for my hobby.

True but, can you really not play the vanilla game and be satisfied? I get wanting to be MORE satisficed, right, but since your time is pretty hard to come by these days, it's kinda third party or bust, no?

 

[Incenjucar]

True but, can you really not play the vanilla game and be satisfied? I get wanting to be MORE satisficed, right, but since your time is pretty hard to come by these days, it's kinda third party or bust, no?

Playing what you find to be a worse version of something that's already flawed does not make for a fun time when you can't turn off designer mode.

I've been looking into the other offerings, but they have their own flaws, and it's all so very exhausting to figure out which kind of bug I want floating in my soup, no matter how hungry I am.

 

[Shardstone]

Playing what you find to be a worse version of something that's already flawed does not make for a fun time when you can't turn off designer mode.

I've been looking into the other offerings, but they have their own flaws, and it's all so very exhausting to figure out which kind of bug I want floating in my soup, no matter how hungry I am.

Well, I'm not sure any platonic ideal exist, but if it does, its unique to each and every person and requires a lot of experimenting with different games to find. Good luck!

 

[Yaarel]

Playing what you find to be a worse version of something that's already flawed does not make for a fun time when you can't turn off designer mode.

I've been looking into the other offerings, but they have their own flaws, and it's all so very exhausting to figure out which kind of bug I want floating in my soup, no matter how hungry I am.

You have to pick the poison that you can live with.

 

[rooneg]

Okay, so I’ve just skimmed through like five pages of stuff, and I’m not going to go back and reply to precisely the parts of the conversation I’m replying to, but regarding the whole “it takes 70% approval to make a change, and there are certainly things in the game already that wouldn’t make the cut via those rules”, yeah, that’s almost certainly true. It also doesn’t really matter though.

WotC isn’t in the position of building a game from scratch where all elements of it score the highest on an approval metric. They’re in the position of revising a bizarrely over the top successful game that they accidentally created, one that turned out to be weirdly well suited for the zeitgeist it was released into. It’s done so much better than they had any reason to believe it would, and it continues to sell strangely well. In that world, if you’ve convinced yourself you need to change it AT ALL then the most important thing to do is make sure you don’t break it. In the face of that, there are worse ways than ensuring that changes you do make are over the top popular.

Now personally, I don’t think they need to be that conservative with the changes they make. I like a lot of the stuff that I think is likely to end up on the cutting room floor. But even so I’m not sure I wouldn’t do precisely the sort of thing they’re doing right now if I was in their position, because it really is pretty darn hard to be sure you’re not going to kill the golden goose.

 

[Maxperson]

That's also why they still mix and match material in books so hard: only releasing books that have wide appeal avoids situations like Magic of Incarnum.

Not everything has to be a winner. Only releasing products that often repeat information from other books and have very little crunch to them is also a turn off for a lot of people. At this point I barely care to know what products are coming out. I'm too disillusioned.

 

[Maxperson]

Eh, if you could afford a host of books, maybe. The bewildering array of product offering smeant that I never bought anything for 3E: anytime I was interested in a book, there were always a half dozen books I was also interested in, and they cancelled each other out and I bought nothing.

Entirety of 3E: I bought the PHB.

5E: I literally have every book.

When I bring up that the older generations have the most disposable income, a lot of people keep telling just how much money young people have to toss at D&D books, so they do have enough money to afford a host of books. Since I can and they have I'm told as much or more than me, they can do it to!

 

[Maxperson]

No one? Really? I'd say that there are a hell of a lot of people asking for the update. Some folks wouldn't mind if the update went further than it does, but, I've pretty much never heard anyone who claims that this update is unnecessary at all.

Good grief, ten years and a bajillion play hours later, you figure that there shouldn't be an update? I rather hope that this 10 year cycle keeps up forever. I don't mind rebuying the core books every ten years. Won't bother me in the least. While I am critical of some of the changes being made - mostly critical because I think they should make more extensive changes than they are- at no point have I thought that this is an "update that no one asked for".

I'll say it then. They didn't need to update the game at all. Their glacially slow crunch release rate means that they haven't yet explored a tenth of what they could make for 5e that would be fun and cool. They don't need to be changing things up.

They're doing it so that they can be doing something big for the anniversary and to grab more money.

 

[Parmandur]

Not everything has to be a winner. Only releasing products that often repeat information from other books and have very little crunch to them is also a turn off for a lot of people. At this point I barely care to know what products are coming out. I'm too disillusioned.

Yet I'm still buying them, and the evidence from Amazon and other book sellers suggests that other people are, too. We are now looking at a decade with no real change in WotC product release strategy, even with new core books coming. That is extraordinary when you consider how they had mass layoffs and complete product line overhauls every few years in the Aughts.

Assuming that any buyer only has the core books is great, it's pri-consuner because it doesn't hamfistedly try to use books to sell each other which has been a problem for D&D before. A handful of reprints here and there is a small price to pay for me as a regular customer for that overall pro-consuner move. I really don't mind that I own 4 books with Goliath stats, if it helps other people who failed to buy one particular splat published in 2015.