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Do
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We Begin we we begin with Origins right appropriately enough we begin at the
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beginning and so this under tarkana is the first and what's going to be a
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series of Unearthed Arcana articles that come out every month or so over the
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course of not only the next year but probably the next year and a half or so where we're
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going to present different pieces of the player's handbook but with brand new
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content then also familiar content but with new elements
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updates and this is the chance for DND fans to let us know what they think to
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really lend their voice to the chorus of DnD fans that will be really letting us
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know where they want us to go next with this game that many of us have been
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playing for decades and so many people have been playing since the 5th edition
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players handbook came out in 2014. and so with this first one we thought
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why not start at the start and that is uh figuring out where your character in
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d d where did they come from and so when we say your character origin that's what
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we're talking about what in your back story helped shape who you are and was
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formative for you before you became an adventurer your adventuring life is largely
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expressed by your character class and so character classes we'll get to in some
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upcoming anarch Arcana articles in this one we're going to be looking at
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three main elements that together Express who you were in the earliest
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stages of your life and that is your character's race your character's background as well as whatever feat that
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you get as part of that background because yes one of the new things here
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which some of our recent d d books have already signaled was coming and many fans have already guessed coming that
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everyone's background will now give them a first level feat but we'll talk more
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about Feats I think a little later in the video so to begin since this is about Origins
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let's start with race so your character's race in d d represents your ancestry in many ways
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when you make your character you decide are is your character a member of the human race or one of the game's
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Fantastical races various race options have appeared in many of our books over the last eight
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years now is our time in this under turkana to revisit our old friends the races that
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are in the player's handbook and so here we're going to be able to look at all of us together as d d fans the latest
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versions of humans elves dwarves and others
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many familiar aspects of those races are still here many of the traits that
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people have been using for the last eight years they're right here on the page
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but then there are also new traits and some of those traits that we've been all using in our characters have new options
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great example of this in the dwarf you still have stone cunning
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but now a dwarf as long as they're in contact with stone in some way whether
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they're standing on it touching it dwarves now a certain number of times per day can give themselves Tremor sense
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meaning they can sense through the Earth itself if there are creatures nearby
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moving objects we're really leaning into
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the Mythic stories of each of the race options in the game and looking for ways
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to make them sort of the version truest to themselves like some something that
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we would talk about while working on them is we want this dwarf to be the dwarfiest dwarf right right we want the
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elf to be the elfiest elf and so we've been looking at ways of not only
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maintaining continuity with with what sort of the general silhouette of that
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race option is in the 2014 Players handbook but again bring some new elements to the foreground give you some
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more fun things that you'll be able to do during play so that's another element
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people are going to see in the races that ones that maybe in the past didn't
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have an active ability something they could do during play now there they
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might have one and so the dwarf's Tremor sense is an example of this now the dwarf has something that there they can
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use that makes them feel dwarfy and will have usefulness and Adventures uh while
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also having some of the familiar traits that they had before the resistance to
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poison for instance right still here I love the narrative hook of that just because if you're a minor if you are a
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tunnel Digger like in a war you are extremely sensitive to vibrations yes
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you're just Ultra aware all the time so that's that's perfect for that uh playable race exactly and uh you will
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get to see things like that uh in all of them where we took something that was
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there before and often it's just we turned up the volume what can we do to this to make it even more fun uh give a
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new dimension of play for people as they play their dwarf they're halfling their
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gnome what have you uh in some cases
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there are also options where before there were none one example I'm really
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excited about is uh if you play a tiefling you now have several really
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interesting choices choices that we began exploring years ago in modern canaan's Tome of foes and
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now lean into here in the the this UA for the Player's handbook and that is
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when you create a tiefling you decide what your infernal Legacy is I'm sorry
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your fiendish legacy and one of those options is infernal but your legacy also
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might be Abyssal or a a new third option which we're calling cathonic which has
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to do each of these options has to do with different lower planes and so
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infernal means you come your your legacy is connected to lawful evil planes if
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you pick cathonic it's neutral evil planes and if you pick up Bissell chaotic evil planes now of course the
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tiefling's moral Outlook is is not connected to this sort of origin of
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their mystical powers which are shaped those Powers by this
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choice so if you want the tiefling you have already in the 2014 player's
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handbook choose the infernal Legacy and you're going to see you have the
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familiar abilities although you have a little more now because now in addition to the magical abilities you had before
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you now also have the Firebolt can't trip because you're going to be able to
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hurl fire thanks to the Legacy that you have because that's very much the the
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fire and the the pits and the Flames are basically what evokes that type of uh uh
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setting for anything of infernal exactly whereas if you pick Abyssal you have a
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completely different set of spells that you that you have in you innately and
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then also your damage resistance is different so infernal tieflings have the
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resistance to fire that tieflings have in the 2014 Players handbook whereas Abyssal and cathonic teeth links have
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other damage resistances this sort of structure of giving you
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choices that maybe you didn't have before is something you'll see in a variety of places not only in this under
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tarkana but in future ones as well now there's another fun choice that
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tieflings will have that they didn't have before and it's also a choice that humans have in this unarth Arcana and
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that is their size if you are a human or a tiefling you're now going to be able
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to decide whether you are medium as they are in the 2014 player's handbook or
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small because first off in the real world there are humans who are small and so we
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want to make sure that's now an option in the game as well and when it comes to
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tieflings we added that option because some of the games iconic fiends are
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actually quite little yeah and and so we thought how fun would it be to see more
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height variants in tieflings a theme then that we carry over into a brand new
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race that is also in this on our tarkana would you like to talk about that yes I
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would love to so these are very unique week yes so in this on Earth Arcana we introduce a race
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that we're calling the ardlings ardlings are also a people of the outer Plains
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like tieflings and like asamar who appear in Monsters of the Multiverse
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and ardlings are associated with three different groups of upper planes
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you'll see there's a parallelism here tieflings are associated with sort of
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three through the three main segments of the lower planes ardlings are associated with the three main segments of the
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upper planes they can be smaller medium just like tieflings and all of their
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abilities are themed around you know the heavens and whatnot but also visually
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they are really going to stand out because one thing that sets ardlings
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apart from say their asamar cousins is they all have the the face of an animal
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and what we're doing here is we're really leaning into the fact that going all the way back to first edition many
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of the game's celestials don't actually look like Angels many of the game celestials from The Game's long history
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and I'm thinking here of cardinals Hound archons many of the avatars of specific
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Gods many gods themselves in not only dnds pantheons but General mythology yes
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but also in in human mythology have the visages of animals and so that that is
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true of the ardlings where when you make one of these folk who can trace their
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lineages to the upper planes you also decide uh what animal appearance you
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have whether you know you're a bear or a lion or a cat or an eagle uh that that
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is going to make it so that when when you're walking down the street people are going to know there's something
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special about you especially when you then also temporarily Sprout your spectral Wings To Go on short short
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little bouts of flight so this will also be the first time that we have introduced a a race with limited flight
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in the player's handbook right and we saw that in a previous UA as well but
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yeah this limited flight because flight can flight is an interesting thing yes and and this flight definitely is just
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for little bouts because uh the ardlings do not have physical Wings all the time
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but they can Channel their connection to the upper Plains to temporarily have these
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luminous wings that they use to you know maybe reach a heart a a hard to reach
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place I I like to imagine that you know some of them especially with their their animal features might sometimes just use
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this ability to get that cat stranded up there in the tree uh yeah nothing nefarious
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although although just as tieflings determine their own moral compasses this
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is true of artlings as well so uh just because you know Grandma might have been
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from Mount Celestia doesn't mean you're ardling shares the moral Outlook of that plane
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so you could play a Sinister ardling and I think it would be quite interesting to
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see that in in people's games in the years ahead oh yeah I'm already going to I'm playing a bat ardling a hundred
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percent you have Unleashed my my bat humanoid bat fantasy already unknowingly
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so I'm very excited for this and and I can't wait to find out if your bat artling is uh from the uh exalted
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Heavenly or idyllic oh wow interesting yeah no that that will require some
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thought yeah and because because just as in the tiefling that choice then uh
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gives your character different magical abilities themed to
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the the sort of group of planes that your character's Legacy is connected to so one of the races that is included
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right from the get is in the player's handbook for 2024 presumably is the orc
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so the orc is another new race for the
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Player's handbook that appears here and people who have monsters of the Multiverse will see this orc is the orc
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from that book and we've decided that because for many many years the orc has
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been playable it's long past time for the orc to graduate to the player's
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handbook right and so many people play them yes and and you know take take
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their place uh next to uh this other cast of characters so I'm excited that
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uh Orcs are are now going to be there in the games core rulebook but man
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tiefling's got there first I know we also have
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backgrounds and backgrounds have become so much more important than they were
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before yes uh and not only more important but also more customizable
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than they've ever been before and more narrative weight yes this is this is an important fact it's super important
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about your character exactly um and this this emphasis on narrative
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is something that people will also see uh glimmers of also back in the race
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section of the same UA because uh something that we offer to players now
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officially this is something people have been doing in their you know their games for many years uh
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in a sort of story space between your race choice and your background choice
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we encourage you to consider the possibility that your character
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might have parents of different humanoid kinds your one parent might be a dwarf
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the other one might be a halfling one parent might be a human and the other one might be an orc some of these
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pairings the game has embraced in the past we're now opening it up so to
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encourage people to realize many pairings are possible and when you do it what you do is you choose one of those
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basically you choose the parent that gives your character your game traits right but then you can mix together the
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visual qualities of the two to determine how your character looks and so you're you're kind of you have you have two
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options to draw from for the aesthetic of your character and then again you choose which one is giving you your
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special traits your characters size and speed that sort of thing and like
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you said players have been doing this so for so long like my own wife plays a
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gnome half Goblin a noblin right like this is very common you just
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have to choose the the stats that you want to go with right yeah and and so again another example of us providing uh
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new ways of experiencing the game we're all already playing
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so now let's go from that to then the background yeah let's get into the
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backgrounds and backgrounds are really exciting for me because of how we
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essentially deconstructed them into their component parts examined each part and then reassembled
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them and so the first thing that people are going to see is that the default option
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now for your background is to build your own
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in the 2014 Players handbook we had a bunch of backgrounds you could choose
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from and then we had a rule that said if you want to customize a background here's how you do it we've essentially kind of
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reversed the priority order where Now the default
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is build your own background and we tell you exactly how
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or choose one of the sample backgrounds that we provide that were built using
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the rules that we just gave you for building a background and so what those
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rules include are some choices for your character that can be very meaningful
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for you not only in terms of your character's story but also in terms of
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your character's abilities because first off speaking of abilities
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one of your choices in background is where you're going to put a floating
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plus two and a plus one to your ability scores people are already familiar
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who've been playing d d with Tasha's cauldron of everything as well as some of our other recent books like Monsters
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of the Multiverse that allow you to have a plus two and a plus one that you
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decide where they go in your characters so this is going to feel familiar but
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what's different is now that we're working on revising the player's handbook itself where those bonuses now
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live in this play test material is in the background section and it makes
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sense because you've been doing this this is your background this is like the life that you have led this is why you
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are more dexterous this is why you have you're stronger because you lifted great
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sword like you were a soldier you know this this kind of equates exactly because background is all about what
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have you been doing yeah for all for all the years before you became an adventurer it it it has a meaningful
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effect on your character's stats and now if you choose one of the pre-made
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backgrounds people will see we've we have chosen what those ability score bonuses are connected to the story of
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the background but if you use the default option which is building your own just as you can in
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Tasha's cauldron of everything you can put that plus two in that plus one or
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three plus ones wherever you want just as you can with tashas but and the
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reason why we're doing it sort of both ways where if you do build your own you decide where they go or if you choose a
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pre-made background we decide where they go because we also know there are many players who don't want to have to decide
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and so if you just like I pick soldier soldier tells me to increase these two
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stats in this way and then they're good to go it's sort of The Best of Both Worlds well and it illustrates the point
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very well yes and that and really many of the backgrounds uh that we provide
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are really just illustrations of how people can use the new background
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building system so ability scores are a part of it you
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just as you do now you uh in the 2014 Players handbook you'll also get two
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skill proficiencies uh you get a tool proficiency you get a language uh you
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also get a starting package of equipment and uh Even in our deconstruction and
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rebuilding process even all those equipment packages uh have been examined because we're embracing uh this build
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your own approach one of the things we needed to do was make it so that all the backgrounds have equipment packages of
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the same value yeah because in the 2014 Players handbook they didn't and so now
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if people like add up how you know the cost they'll see oh all the backgrounds
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have equipment packages worth exactly 50 gold pieces instead of just going for
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criminal or Noble right right and uh
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one of the main reasons why we've done that is to empower this build your own
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approach yeah so then the other thing you get in your
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background and we touched on it earlier in our talk and it is in my mind the
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most exciting new piece of background and that is you also get a first level feat
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so in that statement there are a few things for me to unpack first off I just talked about a feat and gave it a level
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that's critical because people are going to see not only in this under tarkana but in the upcoming Unearthed arcanas
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over the next year plus they're going to see Feats appearing and
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every feet will have a level on it the way to think of a feat is a feat is
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essentially a class feature that doesn't belong to a single class and Justice
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class features have levels Feats are now going to have levels that makes a lot of sense and and so there's a there are
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several reasons for this one because we're really embracing Feats
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in certain parts of this play test process backgrounds being
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one of one of the main parts of the game where we're doing that we want to make sure that feat selection
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is not overwhelming and one way for us to make it so that it's not overwhelming is to break Feats
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up into smaller groups and one of those ways that we're doing that is with levels so for instance if
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something in the game tells you go pick a first level feat then you know immediately well then I can ignore all
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the Feats in this book that are for fourth level that are for 20th level or any other level that might be on the
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feets instead you can just focus in on the first level ones and this allows
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those Universal traits that don't belong to any specific class to have a variance
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of power that fails like more in tune with your leveling up exactly like it
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allows you not to like I'm just picking from the same pool of Feats as I've always done like no that you can get a
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feat that is much more uh strong yeah well not only that but also something
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people are going to see is that when you examine the first level Feats in this Unearthed Arcana if you're familiar with
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the Feats that have been in the game in the last eight years some of them have in addition to including some sort of
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special benefit have often also included a plus one to one of your ability scores
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right you'll notice reading this document none of these Feats have a plus one to an ability score and that's
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intentional because that is actually one of the signs that you're looking at a first level feat because when you see
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some of the higher level feeds in our upcoming on Earth arcanas some of those
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Feats will still have a plus one to a particular ability score but again one
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of the signs of a first level feed is they don't include that and because first level feeds are not
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meant to change your ability score because when you're building your
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character there are already other things that are manipulating your ability scores right that those initial factors
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whereas when you move forward and you start hitting other levels you are faced with the do I increase my ability stats
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or do I go with feet right this kind of softens that as well of like well you're
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still getting a benefit with some of these feeds well you're not only getting a benefit but it's a benefit your character didn't have before right this
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is this is a pure addition that we're providing now for everybody and we have
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that in mind as we decide what qualifies as a first level feed and what doesn't uh basically anything that's going to
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dramatically increase uh character power in some way people are not going to see
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as a first level feat uh that that is the domain of higher level Feats where
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uh the game's math can handle adjustments to raw power most first
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level Feats are about increasing a character's versatility and speaking to
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different key backstories and you'll see that these Feats are you know
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they all are featured in at least one of the sample backgrounds in this document
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so you can also see looking at the sample backgrounds how to match
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first level feeds with background if you decide to build your own background and
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again if you don't want to you just grab one of these pre-made backgrounds and the background just feeds you a
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particular feat for instance if you if you pick the Sailor you're gonna get
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Tavern brawler and and the reason for that is because in the little story that we provide for the Sailor it's because
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on your on your long Journeys you have spent a whole lot of time in taverns you
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know in different ports of call and uh and in the process you've gotten really
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good at participating in brawls whereas like criminal you get alert I believe
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yes because that makes sense yes because you want to be very alert yeah look out
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for the the soldiers of the crown or whatever exactly exactly and uh
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people are going to see that alert which is a returning feat has new functionality uh yeah and uh I'm super
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excited about this whole approach that we're taking with backgrounds of it's all about
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building character your character's story and making certain meaningful game mechanic
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choices that reflect the story you have in mind for your character and each of the sample backgrounds that
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we provide are really there to inspire you to show you the kinds of backstories that you
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can have for your character so that's why you're going to see again not only some returning backgrounds uh like
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Soldier like sailor uh uh acolyte but you're also going to see brand new ones
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like cultist uh Pilgrim and a number of
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others all meant to show a different aspect of of a character's life that
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could have been formative in who they are yeah and it's such a good uh it helps for a point of inspiration how you
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role play your character as well yeah yeah and add like the meaningfulness of the backgrounds like backgrounds were
29:15
always cool before but now it's like okay this is this has a lot of them it has it has a lot of
29:21
oomph because its background is also where you can express your character's
29:29
culture where your character is from some of those elements that used to
29:35
exist in some of our character races those elements now exist in background
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that migration of sort of cultural culturally encoded elements migrating to
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background is a philosophy that informs
29:55
a number of the design decisions in this particular UA it's why for instance to
30:01
go back to one of our race options if you look at the dwarf in this unarth Arcana the dwarf does not have uh
30:10
Mountain dwarf and Hill dwarf as sub options anymore
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and there's a reason for that it's because those options were only cultural for dwarves
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in our DND worlds those are really cultural designations that different
30:28
dwarf communities have taken on and also in some DND worlds those names don't
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appear at all right yeah and unlike say elves who actually have
30:40
different mystical abilities based on their connections with different environments you know whether it's wood
30:46
elves who have particular magical abilities because of their connection to primeval forests or drow who have you
30:55
know their magical abilities because of the Millennia they've spent in the magic saturated underdark
31:02
dwarves don't have those associations and so instead of having a choice which
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was again cultural and culture now is reflected by background we focused in on
31:14
let's make the dwarf the dwarfiest dwarf and so in a few cases where maybe before there was an there's an option that's
31:21
not there anymore really often the option is just moved someplace else and so any of the
31:28
cultural cues that a person before was searching for in say their dwarf character they can now
31:36
replicate those and often with more oomph in the background system for
31:42
instance if you want to really Lean Into You know the the fairy tale dwarf who
31:49
not only has all the characteristics we expect of a dwarf but you know also is like a minor and some and you know this
31:56
sort of thing that I encourage people to go pick the laborer background where you're going to get all the stuff you
32:03
would expect for a character who's really leaning
32:08
into that archetype this all connects to Monsters of the Multiverse as well absolutely so
32:16
anything that you're seeing here is designed to play side by side with
32:23
books you have already and that includes recent books like Monsters of the Multiverse so the dwarf for instance
32:32
that you see in this on Earth Arcana is meant to exist in the game side by side
32:37
with the dwargar that appears in Monsters of the Multiverse the elf in
32:43
this UA is designed to stand side by side with the sea elf aladrin and Shadow
32:50
Kai who are in Monsters of the Multiverse same with gnomes where we
32:55
have we have the sort of the player's handbook gnome that we're looking at here and then we have the additional
33:01
gnome option of the deep gnome in Monsters of the Multiverse so really
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when you look at the player's handbook version of something it is that is the
33:13
most sort of like archetypal Universal version the most common
33:18
version that you're going to see all of those other versions that we have
33:23
particularly in a book like Monsters of the Multiverse which we designed to be a big collection of options that would
33:31
then be able to stand shoulder to shoulder with the options in the new
33:36
core Rule books you then when you put them all together have this amazing family of options and
33:45
these new options don't take away those but instead in many ways
33:52
create some when you look at one and look at the other it really then
33:57
highlights even more what's special about each of the options this pipe test
34:02
material is meant to work and the future product that future players handbook very nicely with the books that already
34:09
exist exactly now there's a lot we could say about the Feats that you're getting
34:15
from those backgrounds correct and uh I'm really excited for people to read
34:22
through all of them to see what's going on in these feats rather than going through each one of
34:29
them uh as much as I would love to because there's so many people there's a lot to look at there's so many fun
34:36
things in these new Feats really what I'd love to do is talk briefly about some of the philosophy behind the
34:42
decision making here I've already talked a bit about some of the things that
34:47
distinguish a first level feat from higher level feeds uh there's another thing uh that informs
34:54
some of the decisions we made about the Feats here and that is first I'll talk about
35:02
Feats we revised and then I'll also talk about brand new Feats so
35:08
whenever we were revising a feat that already existed in the 2014 Players
35:14
handbook and made the determination that it was going to become a first level feat we not only wanted to make sure it was
35:21
delivering something with very clear functionality and clear value
35:28
we also wanted to make sure that the feet is useful to the people who most
35:34
are typically would want to take it here's what I mean by that if you look at the Healer feet in the
35:40
2014 player's handbook you read the title and you think hey I'm playing a life cleric I'm a Healer right
35:48
that's probably a feat I want to take but then if you read it not very beneficial no because that feat
35:55
was actually written for a person who maybe doesn't have any healing ability
36:00
right so we have kind of uh turn that on its head uh and we have now
36:08
made it so that this feat is beneficial to people who are already healers while
36:13
also providing a healing ability to somebody who lacks it so
36:19
that's the kind of the needle we're threading in a lot of these that maybe a feat that before
36:25
seemed to be calling to a particular type of character but then didn't connect with that character at all we
36:31
have now made it so that it is beneficial for that kind of character like many life clerics are now going to
36:37
want to take the Healer feet but then also many non-spell casting
36:42
characters I think might be drawn to the Healer feat because of their characters
36:48
back backstory because of the battle medic ability right that is now in the
36:55
Healer feet that allows you to actually heal somebody using a healer's kit and you'll see that
37:03
again and again in these Feats things that are either going to be beneficial
37:09
for the individual character who we expect would be attracted to the
37:14
feet or beneficial to the whole party here's an example of that in the alert
37:20
feet now first level feet that again the criminal has
37:28
not only do you get a bonus to your initiative role
37:34
but you also now have an ability when initiative is rolled you and another
37:39
member of your party can swap initiative which is amazing I love it and and this
37:46
that ability alone is going to make many groups like oh we are so happy if somebody has alert because we have all
37:53
playing d d been in that situation where like if only this particular character was able to go earlier exactly yeah and
38:01
and so now the character who is because this alert feed is designed to
38:06
mean this is the person who is exceptionally ready to jump into action and can help one of their buddies do so
38:14
and that's another yeah that's another example of like alert was a very like
38:19
for my character only feet like like I just want to be first right
38:24
now you have the option to like pass that on to someone else in your group and be a good party member exactly if
38:29
given the option but yeah like that's that's lovely that's that dual purpose for all these Feats yeah and then and
38:36
and then the brand new Feats are designed to
38:42
fill some character type gaps that existed before gaps that really came to
38:49
mind for us as we were designing the sample backgrounds what's an example of
38:54
one of the new Feats so musician right is one of the new Feats and with the
39:01
musician feat you can not only gain proficiency with three musical
39:07
instruments of your choice and sort of getting the three tool proficiencies used to be a function one of the
39:14
optional functions of the skill defeat but now you get a more flavorful version
39:19
of that not only in the musician feet but also elsewhere so you get to choose three musical
39:25
instruments that you're proficient with but then you also have the ability that
39:30
whenever you finish a short or long rest you can give inspiration to a number of
39:37
people who hear you play a song on one of your instruments and the number of people who can gain
39:45
inspiration is affected by your proficiency bonus so in other words the higher level you get it scales rather
39:52
obviously yeah and and so you know in any group we're like gosh
39:57
we'd really love to have sort of inspiration in our pocket ready to go and for anyone watching who doesn't know
40:03
what inspiration is because a lot of groups don't use it that's essentially having um advantage in your pocket ready
40:10
to use when you need it right uh and so a person with the musician feet using
40:16
this inspiring song can give people inspiration
40:21
so this brand new feat is not only filling a gap in our previous feat list
40:28
but it's also doing exactly what I was talking about earlier about the Healer feat and that is
40:34
it will be useful to also someone who's already a musician most most notably the
40:39
bar the bar because this ability to whenever you finish a rest to give
40:45
certain number of people of inspiration is not an ability that Barda has so this
40:51
combines really nicely with a Bard's kit so you can become the most Barty barred
40:57
or you can play a fighter who also on occasion takes out a loot yeah who
41:04
before battle placed this beautiful song and everyone is like now I'm ready to go
41:09
yeah that's perfect yeah and and and again that is the philosophy here
41:15
throughout is how can we make uh people who again want a taste of something they
41:21
don't have happy but then also make the people who already have the thing also happy magic initiate does this too magic
41:29
initiate like some of the Feats we've published in the past year or two now tells you hey not only do you get some
41:37
spells that you can cast for free but if you already have spell slots you
41:42
can use them to cast these spells too and we we saw this in the evolution of like tashas and other books where
41:49
that you you very key much keyed into the fact that like yeah I got this first level spell but like I can't upcast it
41:56
with magic initiatives right so it's a little like frustrating if that scale if that spell can scale up if you like use
42:04
a higher spell slot and now you can do that yeah if you want to hush rebuke someone right I love doing uh you can do
42:12
so now defeat also uh has been given broader
42:19
functionality because people are going to see uh in this feat a reference to
42:26
something that is new yeah let's talk about that let's talk about I assume
42:31
you're talking about spells and how they're defined yes so not only does the
42:36
magic initiate feat uh refer to what we're about to talk about but there there are references to it elsewhere in
42:43
the dock one of those being in the high elf and that is we now refer to three
42:50
new spell lists there is an Arcane spell list a Divine spell list and a primal
42:56
spell list in our work over the last few years as
43:02
we've been preparing start unveiling this material we realized that as the game expands as
43:10
there are new subclass options uh also with you know the introduction of a class like the artificer
43:18
with Feats with magic items with a variety of things that give you access
43:24
to spells there has been a growing need for us to have a new type of spell list
43:31
and that is a spell list that isn't tied to a particular class but is instead
43:37
tied to really the source of your magic right um and so in this case Arcane
43:45
spells are all about manipulating the background magic that's in the entire Multiverse Divine spells uh as people
43:53
would expect come from either gods or the Realms of the Gods and then Primal
44:00
spells are about drawing on the magic that is in not only sort of the elements
44:07
but also in the spirits of Nature and the way the way we sort of divided is
44:12
divine is really magic pulling from the Outer Planes Primal is pulling from the
44:18
inner planes and Arcane is pulling from sort of the Multiverse writ large
44:24
and so now rather than us directing you for certain Spell choices in particular
44:31
contexts like you know the previous magic initiate was like all right go
44:36
pick from the spell list of one of these particular classes which then suddenly
44:42
the moment we introduce a new class like artificer right then then we need a
44:47
whole new feat for that yeah this feat now grows with the future of the game
44:54
because now any time that we introduce a spell the spell itself will have for you
45:03
a tag that tells you if it's Arcane Divine or Primal or a mix because some
45:09
spells as people are going to see in some of our upcoming on our tarcana fall into multiple categories this is going
45:16
to have a tremendous payoff not only for like oh this later supplement added a new Arcane spell I have access to to the
45:25
Arcane spell list I can now have access to that spell without it having to route
45:31
through a particular class uh much more elegant solution yes and it
45:39
it also is another uh it has another purpose for us it's a way for us to take
45:45
this notion of these sources of magic which are mentioned at least Arcane and
45:50
divine are in the 2014 Players handbook but now we actually sort of give them
45:55
rules teeth rather than just sort of being a story rapper because Arcane and divine and then occasionally Primal when
46:02
it has been mentioned have really just been a flavor wrapper now they actually have substance in the game itself that
46:09
there is a list that you can go look at and go here are the sort of universal
46:15
Arcane spells here are the universal Divine spells and so on now people will
46:21
have to wait for upcoming under tarkanas to see how classes use those lists
46:27
because classes are going to use those lists but classes are also going to have access to spells that go beyond the
46:35
those Universal lists but again that's for that's for future us to talk about
46:41
uh and but again I think I think already this is super exciting being able to
46:47
reveal um these again these new types of spell lists that provide a tremendous amount
46:54
of flexibility for characters not only that will be able to be made with this series of unarth Arcana articles but
47:02
also that will be able to be made in the future yeah it is a very exciting time uh this
47:09
is a very weighty UA we're going to be doing this often this year uh
47:16
uh somewhat semi-monthly but yeah not not necessarily not necessarily strictly
47:24
defined yeah in terms of timing but we have a lot of uas coming out this year we need a lot of player feedback and
47:33
there is so much in this UA that we could talk about yes I know we do we
47:39
we everything and we could have made this a three hour video and and there are
47:46
before we sign off on this video yeah there are a couple other gems in this UA
47:52
I would love to go ahead go ahead yeah I uh I am I'm eager to hear so first I
47:58
encourage people in the rules glossary to look at not only the revised
48:04
definitions of a couple of our conditions they're also going to see there's a new condition that's in play
48:10
the slowed condition and people are going to see in the upcoming on Earth arcanas uh updates to a number of the
48:18
game's conditions so I'm excited to see what people think about that also I encourage people to take a look
48:25
at the new rules for inspiration because we've decided that rather than
48:32
inspiration being connected to essentially just the DM awarding people
48:37
for particular character choices instead inspiration is going to be
48:44
something you can reliably get whenever you roll a 20 on an ability check saving
48:50
throw or attack roll we wanted a way to feed people
48:56
inspiration through the system itself and we love this idea of when you have a
49:02
spectacular success you're inspired by it you bolstered by it and that can
49:08
start creating this sort of Snowball Effect yeah uh and that's what we're going for we've also uh tweaked the rule
49:17
on Inspirations so that it's still the same that you can only ever have one instant of of inspiration you don't get
49:23
the stockpile inspiration it's not you either have it or you don't but we've now made it so that if something in the
49:30
game gives you inspiration and you already have it you can then immediately give it to one of the other characters
49:37
in your group oh that's fantastic uh and it's likely that people are going to
49:43
have it because you get it by Rolling a 20 and one of the new traits of humans
49:48
in the game is humans whenever they finish a long rest have inspiration and so every human in your
49:56
group is going to start every adventuring day with inspiration and that means then if the human gets
50:02
inspiration and already has it they can then give inspiration to somebody else I think there's going to be a really fun
50:08
sort of you know inspiration flowing around yeah in the party
50:14
and what people are going to see as they actually experience this in play
50:20
what the system is intentionally doing is encouraging you to use the inspiration because there's more is
50:27
coming uh it's just like really yeah I don't know what I'm gonna need this exactly and it's we we often when we're
50:35
assessing different parts of the system uh if we see something that ends up getting hoarded so much that it actually
50:42
almost never sees use yeah that to us tells we need to change something so
50:48
that this actually becomes a fun part of play and not something that just gets marked during your character sheet and
50:54
then you forget about it is this the moment that I use it that that kind of almost anxiety like right like I've been
50:59
in Somalia you and I have been in so many one shots where it's like well I never used it yeah yeah exactly it's
51:05
gone forever whereas we want to make it easy for people to say yes yeah to say yes I'm going to use my inspiration uh
51:13
because it's likely more is coming right around the corner the gang of natural 20 thing is so exciting because like you
51:19
that's such a cinematic moment or like a great narrative moment of like I I've been very successful and now I have a
51:26
little bit left over and that could you could roll another 20 it could keep going and going and going and and to see
51:33
a game where like something like that happens I mean the odds are are
51:39
not high but they're higher now to see something like kind of amazing at the
51:44
table yeah yeah that's very very fun so critical hits have changed as well can you elaborate on on that
51:51
we are experimenting in this on Earth Arcana with a new take on the critical
51:57
hit so in addition to Rolling a 20 now feeding you inspiration whether it's an
52:04
ability check saving thrower attack roll we've now specified that if it's an
52:10
attacker and you roll a 20 it's also a critical hit as you would expect but what's different here is it's
52:19
only a critical hit if you were attacking with a weapon or an unarmed strike
52:24
now in most cases in our game that was already the case in actual play
52:32
because most spells in the game trigger saving throws rather than involving an
52:38
attack roll so spells scoring Critical Hits was a more sort of rare occurrence
52:44
than weapons scoring them but we're exploring this option and
52:50
again I really want to emphasize this is a great example of a play test giving us the chance to experiment with something
52:56
remember this is not set in stone right exactly uh we we want to see what does
53:06
the community think and how does this play out for them because what we're really trying to do is carve out a
53:13
clearer space for essentially Spell
53:18
operations on one side and weapon and unarmed strike operations on the other
53:24
and the critical hit was already confusing for a number of people because
53:30
I've actually lost count over the last eight years the number of times I've been asked by the community can spell
53:38
score a critical hit so funnily this this experiment in this UA will function for
53:46
many groups the way they were already playing because many groups had doubt that spells could actually critical even
53:51
though they could right and so now we're experimenting with well just what if they can't and this is a function of
54:00
weapon use and unarmed strike use which then also allows for us to do
54:05
greater Clarity because then it's there's not that fuzziness before of like take the dice that were involved in
54:12
the attack and roll them twice no now we Zoom way in it's take the weapon or the
54:17
unarmed strikes dice and roll them a second time now of
54:22
course people know that some people don't have dice for their unarmed strikes but monks and others absolutely
54:28
do and we wanted to make sure this critical hit option was available for them in addition to characters who rely
54:35
more on weapons now there's an additional Nuance here the way we have
54:41
worded this experimental rule it is only player characters who score Critical Hits
54:48
now I need to unpack that well it's kind so first
54:55
uh critical hits for Monsters often play out in
55:02
uh strange unsatisfying or terrifying ways and I'll
55:09
unpack I'll unpack those first they can be terrifying higher level terrifying is fine
55:16
first level terrifying can mean the character is gone uh so crits are extremely dangerous at
55:23
low levels for player characters you know that bug bear critting your first level character might mean that's
55:30
it your character is on on its on their way to the Grave yeah uh
55:35
and but then other times because of how a
55:41
monster's damage expression is built a monster critical hit can feel
55:47
unsatisfying uh and the DM might say there was a crit but the math doesn't
55:53
really deliver the punch that you you were expecting when the DM said that
56:00
also because a lot of DMS use static damage our crit role where you're
56:05
rolling a die a second time there's friction between that rule and how
56:10
monsters are actually designed and then there's a further reason that we're experimenting with this and that
56:16
is Monster's actually already have their own built-in crit like mechanic
56:25
and that is the recharge mechanic we use recharge abilities to deliver
56:31
those scary massive strikes right think
56:37
of the dragon's breath weapon when that happens everyone has put on notice and that is
56:42
the scary moment the DM decides when to use it so the DM
56:48
can make an informed decision when to crank up the difficulty in a battle the
56:55
DM has no control over a critical hit now uncertainty is also fun because we like
57:00
DMS being surprised but that's where the recharge role comes in because the DM wants the DM decides to essentially
57:07
press the things are going to get real big of the button back they're not sure
57:14
when they get the button back yeah yeah and so there is already this element of uncertainty purposefully built into the
57:21
recharge mechanic and so what we're exploring is this notion of really
57:28
monsters don't need crits because they have crits in another form and that is in recharge abilities and those the DM
57:36
has a bit more control over even though it's not total control because again once you use the DM doesn't know when
57:42
it's coming back uh that is that that modicum of control
57:47
is more in keeping with what we expect for a dungeon master and so we're exploring the crit as it's
57:54
essentially a special ability of player characters of occasionally they score
58:01
these surprisingly good hits that deal more damage than uh the weapon or
58:07
unarmed strike would normally deal uh this is this is a rule I I am very keen
58:14
to get feedback on and hope people will try it out in their game and
58:21
then we'll see where we go next Once once we get the feedback on it related to Rolling the D20 there's also another
58:28
significant thing in the rules glossary that uh I encourage people to take a
58:34
look at and that is we have decided to embrace how many
58:40
groups actually play and that is when you roll a 1 or a 20 for an ability
58:46
check saving thrower attack roll right a one is an automatic failure and a 20 is an automatic success
58:53
it will surprise some people watching that that's a change because I yeah I know because I've been doing it I don't
58:59
know for like 10 years yes uh because for yeah anyone who might not know previously a 20 meeting on
59:06
automatic success in a one meeting on automatic failure was only a function of the attack role right not of ability
59:13
checks and saving throws but what we have seen over the last eight years is
59:18
more and more groups use that rule for all of the D20 tests and we decided
59:25
rather than having the rules being in friction with how people actually play
59:31
the game let's update the rules so that the game plays the way people expect it to well
59:38
that's what's so much it was in this first play test material is much of that yes of how people
59:45
actually play or want to play because we over the last eight years through the
59:52
many uh surveys that people have filled out that have been valuable to our work
59:57
we've been listening we've been paying attention we watch streamed games we constantly play DND and all of that
1:00:05
feedback all of that play all of that observation has fed into what people are
1:00:12
seeing in this unearth Arcana and what they're going to see in the months ahead there there's two sides of the play test
1:00:18
material like this is a moment in time where like all of everyone's feedback has led to this play test material and
1:00:25
your feedback after this is going to lead to the final version so be sure to
1:00:31
play test absolutely because this is not the final version everything here is subject to change uh
1:00:39
this is really this UA in particular is our hello yeah hello we're listening yeah yeah and
1:00:47
the feedback that then the community provides in response will help determine
1:00:55
what parts of this make it into the new core books what parts do we set to the
1:01:02
side and what parts do we keep but change and so what everyone is going to
1:01:07
see just like with the DND Next process almost 10 years ago you're going to see an evolution
1:01:14
in these playtest materials in the game itself
1:01:20
also the exciting thing I think for everyone is you're going to be able to use all of these playtest stocks with
1:01:27
your existing core books we have designed these docs so that you can take
1:01:32
each one and other than the places where we tell you all right you know that thing in your book well here's here's an
1:01:39
update to it otherwise all this material works with the core books you already
1:01:44
have meaning the uas that are ahead will be very
1:01:50
targeted rather than it being like here is a cross-section of the of the entire game right instead we're going to drill
1:01:57
into one piece because that piece will now work with the books you have already
1:02:04
and so that's why you know in in coming ones we're going to drill deep on particular classes and then eventually
1:02:10
we'll drill deep on particular spells as we build this it's almost like we're
1:02:17
building a mosaic that in the end and you know once all the pieces are in
1:02:22
place you will get a glimpse of what the new core books are going to look like this has to be very exciting for you
1:02:29
like beyond the rules and the play test this is like a very exciting time to be a d d fan yeah and to be making DND yeah
1:02:36
yeah no it's it's wonderfully exciting uh because we're able to take something
1:02:42
that we love feed the passion that we in the community have had for it over the last
1:02:48
eight years feed all the conversations we've had internally that we've had with
1:02:54
fans out in the world and take all of that and let it flow into the game
1:02:59
itself so that it can move now into its its
1:03:05
next generation it's perfect I am excited for I'm very
1:03:10
excited for this video and for many more to come over the next few years yeah yeah excellent all right and uh
1:03:17
people will get access to this UA uh on D beyond.com yes that is also where you
1:03:24
get to play test and that will be coming out sometime after this video first
1:03:30
lands so for this particular one uh later today you should get access
1:03:36
to that I think that's it right yeah okay we're not going to be busy at all
1:03:42
thank you so much thank you
0:12
We Begin we we begin with Origins right appropriately enough we begin at the
0:18
beginning and so this under tarkana is the first and what's going to be a
0:25
series of Unearthed Arcana articles that come out every month or so over the
0:30
course of not only the next year but probably the next year and a half or so where we're
0:36
going to present different pieces of the player's handbook but with brand new
0:43
content then also familiar content but with new elements
0:49
updates and this is the chance for DND fans to let us know what they think to
0:57
really lend their voice to the chorus of DnD fans that will be really letting us
1:04
know where they want us to go next with this game that many of us have been
1:09
playing for decades and so many people have been playing since the 5th edition
1:15
players handbook came out in 2014. and so with this first one we thought
1:22
why not start at the start and that is uh figuring out where your character in
1:31
d d where did they come from and so when we say your character origin that's what
1:36
we're talking about what in your back story helped shape who you are and was
1:43
formative for you before you became an adventurer your adventuring life is largely
1:51
expressed by your character class and so character classes we'll get to in some
1:57
upcoming anarch Arcana articles in this one we're going to be looking at
2:03
three main elements that together Express who you were in the earliest
2:11
stages of your life and that is your character's race your character's background as well as whatever feat that
2:20
you get as part of that background because yes one of the new things here
2:25
which some of our recent d d books have already signaled was coming and many fans have already guessed coming that
2:33
everyone's background will now give them a first level feat but we'll talk more
2:38
about Feats I think a little later in the video so to begin since this is about Origins
2:44
let's start with race so your character's race in d d represents your ancestry in many ways
2:53
when you make your character you decide are is your character a member of the human race or one of the game's
2:59
Fantastical races various race options have appeared in many of our books over the last eight
3:06
years now is our time in this under turkana to revisit our old friends the races that
3:14
are in the player's handbook and so here we're going to be able to look at all of us together as d d fans the latest
3:21
versions of humans elves dwarves and others
3:26
many familiar aspects of those races are still here many of the traits that
3:34
people have been using for the last eight years they're right here on the page
3:39
but then there are also new traits and some of those traits that we've been all using in our characters have new options
3:47
great example of this in the dwarf you still have stone cunning
3:52
but now a dwarf as long as they're in contact with stone in some way whether
3:59
they're standing on it touching it dwarves now a certain number of times per day can give themselves Tremor sense
4:06
meaning they can sense through the Earth itself if there are creatures nearby
4:12
moving objects we're really leaning into
4:17
the Mythic stories of each of the race options in the game and looking for ways
4:24
to make them sort of the version truest to themselves like some something that
4:30
we would talk about while working on them is we want this dwarf to be the dwarfiest dwarf right right we want the
4:37
elf to be the elfiest elf and so we've been looking at ways of not only
4:42
maintaining continuity with with what sort of the general silhouette of that
4:48
race option is in the 2014 Players handbook but again bring some new elements to the foreground give you some
4:56
more fun things that you'll be able to do during play so that's another element
5:02
people are going to see in the races that ones that maybe in the past didn't
5:07
have an active ability something they could do during play now there they
5:12
might have one and so the dwarf's Tremor sense is an example of this now the dwarf has something that there they can
5:19
use that makes them feel dwarfy and will have usefulness and Adventures uh while
5:26
also having some of the familiar traits that they had before the resistance to
5:31
poison for instance right still here I love the narrative hook of that just because if you're a minor if you are a
5:38
tunnel Digger like in a war you are extremely sensitive to vibrations yes
5:44
you're just Ultra aware all the time so that's that's perfect for that uh playable race exactly and uh you will
5:53
get to see things like that uh in all of them where we took something that was
5:59
there before and often it's just we turned up the volume what can we do to this to make it even more fun uh give a
6:07
new dimension of play for people as they play their dwarf they're halfling their
6:12
gnome what have you uh in some cases
6:18
there are also options where before there were none one example I'm really
6:23
excited about is uh if you play a tiefling you now have several really
6:30
interesting choices choices that we began exploring years ago in modern canaan's Tome of foes and
6:38
now lean into here in the the this UA for the Player's handbook and that is
6:44
when you create a tiefling you decide what your infernal Legacy is I'm sorry
6:49
your fiendish legacy and one of those options is infernal but your legacy also
6:55
might be Abyssal or a a new third option which we're calling cathonic which has
7:02
to do each of these options has to do with different lower planes and so
7:08
infernal means you come your your legacy is connected to lawful evil planes if
7:16
you pick cathonic it's neutral evil planes and if you pick up Bissell chaotic evil planes now of course the
7:23
tiefling's moral Outlook is is not connected to this sort of origin of
7:29
their mystical powers which are shaped those Powers by this
7:35
choice so if you want the tiefling you have already in the 2014 player's
7:41
handbook choose the infernal Legacy and you're going to see you have the
7:47
familiar abilities although you have a little more now because now in addition to the magical abilities you had before
7:54
you now also have the Firebolt can't trip because you're going to be able to
7:59
hurl fire thanks to the Legacy that you have because that's very much the the
8:06
fire and the the pits and the Flames are basically what evokes that type of uh uh
8:13
setting for anything of infernal exactly whereas if you pick Abyssal you have a
8:19
completely different set of spells that you that you have in you innately and
8:26
then also your damage resistance is different so infernal tieflings have the
8:31
resistance to fire that tieflings have in the 2014 Players handbook whereas Abyssal and cathonic teeth links have
8:39
other damage resistances this sort of structure of giving you
8:45
choices that maybe you didn't have before is something you'll see in a variety of places not only in this under
8:53
tarkana but in future ones as well now there's another fun choice that
8:59
tieflings will have that they didn't have before and it's also a choice that humans have in this unarth Arcana and
9:05
that is their size if you are a human or a tiefling you're now going to be able
9:10
to decide whether you are medium as they are in the 2014 player's handbook or
9:16
small because first off in the real world there are humans who are small and so we
9:22
want to make sure that's now an option in the game as well and when it comes to
9:28
tieflings we added that option because some of the games iconic fiends are
9:34
actually quite little yeah and and so we thought how fun would it be to see more
9:39
height variants in tieflings a theme then that we carry over into a brand new
9:46
race that is also in this on our tarkana would you like to talk about that yes I
9:53
would love to so these are very unique week yes so in this on Earth Arcana we introduce a race
10:01
that we're calling the ardlings ardlings are also a people of the outer Plains
10:08
like tieflings and like asamar who appear in Monsters of the Multiverse
10:14
and ardlings are associated with three different groups of upper planes
10:21
you'll see there's a parallelism here tieflings are associated with sort of
10:27
three through the three main segments of the lower planes ardlings are associated with the three main segments of the
10:34
upper planes they can be smaller medium just like tieflings and all of their
10:40
abilities are themed around you know the heavens and whatnot but also visually
10:47
they are really going to stand out because one thing that sets ardlings
10:53
apart from say their asamar cousins is they all have the the face of an animal
11:02
and what we're doing here is we're really leaning into the fact that going all the way back to first edition many
11:09
of the game's celestials don't actually look like Angels many of the game celestials from The Game's long history
11:17
and I'm thinking here of cardinals Hound archons many of the avatars of specific
11:23
Gods many gods themselves in not only dnds pantheons but General mythology yes
11:30
but also in in human mythology have the visages of animals and so that that is
11:37
true of the ardlings where when you make one of these folk who can trace their
11:43
lineages to the upper planes you also decide uh what animal appearance you
11:49
have whether you know you're a bear or a lion or a cat or an eagle uh that that
11:58
is going to make it so that when when you're walking down the street people are going to know there's something
12:04
special about you especially when you then also temporarily Sprout your spectral Wings To Go on short short
12:12
little bouts of flight so this will also be the first time that we have introduced a a race with limited flight
12:19
in the player's handbook right and we saw that in a previous UA as well but
12:26
yeah this limited flight because flight can flight is an interesting thing yes and and this flight definitely is just
12:33
for little bouts because uh the ardlings do not have physical Wings all the time
12:39
but they can Channel their connection to the upper Plains to temporarily have these
12:45
luminous wings that they use to you know maybe reach a heart a a hard to reach
12:51
place I I like to imagine that you know some of them especially with their their animal features might sometimes just use
12:58
this ability to get that cat stranded up there in the tree uh yeah nothing nefarious
13:05
although although just as tieflings determine their own moral compasses this
13:12
is true of artlings as well so uh just because you know Grandma might have been
13:18
from Mount Celestia doesn't mean you're ardling shares the moral Outlook of that plane
13:24
so you could play a Sinister ardling and I think it would be quite interesting to
13:31
see that in in people's games in the years ahead oh yeah I'm already going to I'm playing a bat ardling a hundred
13:38
percent you have Unleashed my my bat humanoid bat fantasy already unknowingly
13:44
so I'm very excited for this and and I can't wait to find out if your bat artling is uh from the uh exalted
13:53
Heavenly or idyllic oh wow interesting yeah no that that will require some
13:59
thought yeah and because because just as in the tiefling that choice then uh
14:05
gives your character different magical abilities themed to
14:10
the the sort of group of planes that your character's Legacy is connected to so one of the races that is included
14:17
right from the get is in the player's handbook for 2024 presumably is the orc
14:25
so the orc is another new race for the
14:30
Player's handbook that appears here and people who have monsters of the Multiverse will see this orc is the orc
14:38
from that book and we've decided that because for many many years the orc has
14:44
been playable it's long past time for the orc to graduate to the player's
14:50
handbook right and so many people play them yes and and you know take take
14:57
their place uh next to uh this other cast of characters so I'm excited that
15:03
uh Orcs are are now going to be there in the games core rulebook but man
15:09
tiefling's got there first I know we also have
15:15
backgrounds and backgrounds have become so much more important than they were
15:20
before yes uh and not only more important but also more customizable
15:28
than they've ever been before and more narrative weight yes this is this is an important fact it's super important
15:34
about your character exactly um and this this emphasis on narrative
15:40
is something that people will also see uh glimmers of also back in the race
15:48
section of the same UA because uh something that we offer to players now
15:55
officially this is something people have been doing in their you know their games for many years uh
16:01
in a sort of story space between your race choice and your background choice
16:06
we encourage you to consider the possibility that your character
16:12
might have parents of different humanoid kinds your one parent might be a dwarf
16:18
the other one might be a halfling one parent might be a human and the other one might be an orc some of these
16:25
pairings the game has embraced in the past we're now opening it up so to
16:32
encourage people to realize many pairings are possible and when you do it what you do is you choose one of those
16:40
basically you choose the parent that gives your character your game traits right but then you can mix together the
16:48
visual qualities of the two to determine how your character looks and so you're you're kind of you have you have two
16:55
options to draw from for the aesthetic of your character and then again you choose which one is giving you your
17:02
special traits your characters size and speed that sort of thing and like
17:08
you said players have been doing this so for so long like my own wife plays a
17:13
gnome half Goblin a noblin right like this is very common you just
17:20
have to choose the the stats that you want to go with right yeah and and so again another example of us providing uh
17:29
new ways of experiencing the game we're all already playing
17:35
so now let's go from that to then the background yeah let's get into the
17:41
backgrounds and backgrounds are really exciting for me because of how we
17:49
essentially deconstructed them into their component parts examined each part and then reassembled
17:56
them and so the first thing that people are going to see is that the default option
18:04
now for your background is to build your own
18:09
in the 2014 Players handbook we had a bunch of backgrounds you could choose
18:14
from and then we had a rule that said if you want to customize a background here's how you do it we've essentially kind of
18:22
reversed the priority order where Now the default
18:28
is build your own background and we tell you exactly how
18:34
or choose one of the sample backgrounds that we provide that were built using
18:40
the rules that we just gave you for building a background and so what those
18:47
rules include are some choices for your character that can be very meaningful
18:54
for you not only in terms of your character's story but also in terms of
18:59
your character's abilities because first off speaking of abilities
19:04
one of your choices in background is where you're going to put a floating
19:10
plus two and a plus one to your ability scores people are already familiar
19:17
who've been playing d d with Tasha's cauldron of everything as well as some of our other recent books like Monsters
19:23
of the Multiverse that allow you to have a plus two and a plus one that you
19:29
decide where they go in your characters so this is going to feel familiar but
19:35
what's different is now that we're working on revising the player's handbook itself where those bonuses now
19:42
live in this play test material is in the background section and it makes
19:48
sense because you've been doing this this is your background this is like the life that you have led this is why you
19:53
are more dexterous this is why you have you're stronger because you lifted great
19:59
sword like you were a soldier you know this this kind of equates exactly because background is all about what
20:06
have you been doing yeah for all for all the years before you became an adventurer it it it has a meaningful
20:14
effect on your character's stats and now if you choose one of the pre-made
20:21
backgrounds people will see we've we have chosen what those ability score bonuses are connected to the story of
20:28
the background but if you use the default option which is building your own just as you can in
20:35
Tasha's cauldron of everything you can put that plus two in that plus one or
20:40
three plus ones wherever you want just as you can with tashas but and the
20:47
reason why we're doing it sort of both ways where if you do build your own you decide where they go or if you choose a
20:52
pre-made background we decide where they go because we also know there are many players who don't want to have to decide
20:58
and so if you just like I pick soldier soldier tells me to increase these two
21:05
stats in this way and then they're good to go it's sort of The Best of Both Worlds well and it illustrates the point
21:10
very well yes and that and really many of the backgrounds uh that we provide
21:15
are really just illustrations of how people can use the new background
21:22
building system so ability scores are a part of it you
21:27
just as you do now you uh in the 2014 Players handbook you'll also get two
21:32
skill proficiencies uh you get a tool proficiency you get a language uh you
21:39
also get a starting package of equipment and uh Even in our deconstruction and
21:45
rebuilding process even all those equipment packages uh have been examined because we're embracing uh this build
21:53
your own approach one of the things we needed to do was make it so that all the backgrounds have equipment packages of
22:01
the same value yeah because in the 2014 Players handbook they didn't and so now
22:07
if people like add up how you know the cost they'll see oh all the backgrounds
22:12
have equipment packages worth exactly 50 gold pieces instead of just going for
22:18
criminal or Noble right right and uh
22:24
one of the main reasons why we've done that is to empower this build your own
22:30
approach yeah so then the other thing you get in your
22:35
background and we touched on it earlier in our talk and it is in my mind the
22:41
most exciting new piece of background and that is you also get a first level feat
22:47
so in that statement there are a few things for me to unpack first off I just talked about a feat and gave it a level
22:56
that's critical because people are going to see not only in this under tarkana but in the upcoming Unearthed arcanas
23:02
over the next year plus they're going to see Feats appearing and
23:07
every feet will have a level on it the way to think of a feat is a feat is
23:13
essentially a class feature that doesn't belong to a single class and Justice
23:18
class features have levels Feats are now going to have levels that makes a lot of sense and and so there's a there are
23:26
several reasons for this one because we're really embracing Feats
23:31
in certain parts of this play test process backgrounds being
23:38
one of one of the main parts of the game where we're doing that we want to make sure that feat selection
23:45
is not overwhelming and one way for us to make it so that it's not overwhelming is to break Feats
23:52
up into smaller groups and one of those ways that we're doing that is with levels so for instance if
23:59
something in the game tells you go pick a first level feat then you know immediately well then I can ignore all
24:05
the Feats in this book that are for fourth level that are for 20th level or any other level that might be on the
24:12
feets instead you can just focus in on the first level ones and this allows
24:18
those Universal traits that don't belong to any specific class to have a variance
24:25
of power that fails like more in tune with your leveling up exactly like it
24:31
allows you not to like I'm just picking from the same pool of Feats as I've always done like no that you can get a
24:38
feat that is much more uh strong yeah well not only that but also something
24:44
people are going to see is that when you examine the first level Feats in this Unearthed Arcana if you're familiar with
24:51
the Feats that have been in the game in the last eight years some of them have in addition to including some sort of
24:57
special benefit have often also included a plus one to one of your ability scores
25:02
right you'll notice reading this document none of these Feats have a plus one to an ability score and that's
25:10
intentional because that is actually one of the signs that you're looking at a first level feat because when you see
25:16
some of the higher level feeds in our upcoming on Earth arcanas some of those
25:22
Feats will still have a plus one to a particular ability score but again one
25:27
of the signs of a first level feed is they don't include that and because first level feeds are not
25:34
meant to change your ability score because when you're building your
25:40
character there are already other things that are manipulating your ability scores right that those initial factors
25:46
whereas when you move forward and you start hitting other levels you are faced with the do I increase my ability stats
25:53
or do I go with feet right this kind of softens that as well of like well you're
25:59
still getting a benefit with some of these feeds well you're not only getting a benefit but it's a benefit your character didn't have before right this
26:05
is this is a pure addition that we're providing now for everybody and we have
26:12
that in mind as we decide what qualifies as a first level feed and what doesn't uh basically anything that's going to
26:20
dramatically increase uh character power in some way people are not going to see
26:26
as a first level feat uh that that is the domain of higher level Feats where
26:31
uh the game's math can handle adjustments to raw power most first
26:38
level Feats are about increasing a character's versatility and speaking to
26:44
different key backstories and you'll see that these Feats are you know
26:52
they all are featured in at least one of the sample backgrounds in this document
26:58
so you can also see looking at the sample backgrounds how to match
27:03
first level feeds with background if you decide to build your own background and
27:10
again if you don't want to you just grab one of these pre-made backgrounds and the background just feeds you a
27:16
particular feat for instance if you if you pick the Sailor you're gonna get
27:22
Tavern brawler and and the reason for that is because in the little story that we provide for the Sailor it's because
27:29
on your on your long Journeys you have spent a whole lot of time in taverns you
27:35
know in different ports of call and uh and in the process you've gotten really
27:40
good at participating in brawls whereas like criminal you get alert I believe
27:46
yes because that makes sense yes because you want to be very alert yeah look out
27:51
for the the soldiers of the crown or whatever exactly exactly and uh
27:57
people are going to see that alert which is a returning feat has new functionality uh yeah and uh I'm super
28:06
excited about this whole approach that we're taking with backgrounds of it's all about
28:12
building character your character's story and making certain meaningful game mechanic
28:20
choices that reflect the story you have in mind for your character and each of the sample backgrounds that
28:28
we provide are really there to inspire you to show you the kinds of backstories that you
28:35
can have for your character so that's why you're going to see again not only some returning backgrounds uh like
28:42
Soldier like sailor uh uh acolyte but you're also going to see brand new ones
28:48
like cultist uh Pilgrim and a number of
28:53
others all meant to show a different aspect of of a character's life that
29:01
could have been formative in who they are yeah and it's such a good uh it helps for a point of inspiration how you
29:08
role play your character as well yeah yeah and add like the meaningfulness of the backgrounds like backgrounds were
29:15
always cool before but now it's like okay this is this has a lot of them it has it has a lot of
29:21
oomph because its background is also where you can express your character's
29:29
culture where your character is from some of those elements that used to
29:35
exist in some of our character races those elements now exist in background
29:43
that migration of sort of cultural culturally encoded elements migrating to
29:50
background is a philosophy that informs
29:55
a number of the design decisions in this particular UA it's why for instance to
30:01
go back to one of our race options if you look at the dwarf in this unarth Arcana the dwarf does not have uh
30:10
Mountain dwarf and Hill dwarf as sub options anymore
30:15
and there's a reason for that it's because those options were only cultural for dwarves
30:22
in our DND worlds those are really cultural designations that different
30:28
dwarf communities have taken on and also in some DND worlds those names don't
30:34
appear at all right yeah and unlike say elves who actually have
30:40
different mystical abilities based on their connections with different environments you know whether it's wood
30:46
elves who have particular magical abilities because of their connection to primeval forests or drow who have you
30:55
know their magical abilities because of the Millennia they've spent in the magic saturated underdark
31:02
dwarves don't have those associations and so instead of having a choice which
31:09
was again cultural and culture now is reflected by background we focused in on
31:14
let's make the dwarf the dwarfiest dwarf and so in a few cases where maybe before there was an there's an option that's
31:21
not there anymore really often the option is just moved someplace else and so any of the
31:28
cultural cues that a person before was searching for in say their dwarf character they can now
31:36
replicate those and often with more oomph in the background system for
31:42
instance if you want to really Lean Into You know the the fairy tale dwarf who
31:49
not only has all the characteristics we expect of a dwarf but you know also is like a minor and some and you know this
31:56
sort of thing that I encourage people to go pick the laborer background where you're going to get all the stuff you
32:03
would expect for a character who's really leaning
32:08
into that archetype this all connects to Monsters of the Multiverse as well absolutely so
32:16
anything that you're seeing here is designed to play side by side with
32:23
books you have already and that includes recent books like Monsters of the Multiverse so the dwarf for instance
32:32
that you see in this on Earth Arcana is meant to exist in the game side by side
32:37
with the dwargar that appears in Monsters of the Multiverse the elf in
32:43
this UA is designed to stand side by side with the sea elf aladrin and Shadow
32:50
Kai who are in Monsters of the Multiverse same with gnomes where we
32:55
have we have the sort of the player's handbook gnome that we're looking at here and then we have the additional
33:01
gnome option of the deep gnome in Monsters of the Multiverse so really
33:07
when you look at the player's handbook version of something it is that is the
33:13
most sort of like archetypal Universal version the most common
33:18
version that you're going to see all of those other versions that we have
33:23
particularly in a book like Monsters of the Multiverse which we designed to be a big collection of options that would
33:31
then be able to stand shoulder to shoulder with the options in the new
33:36
core Rule books you then when you put them all together have this amazing family of options and
33:45
these new options don't take away those but instead in many ways
33:52
create some when you look at one and look at the other it really then
33:57
highlights even more what's special about each of the options this pipe test
34:02
material is meant to work and the future product that future players handbook very nicely with the books that already
34:09
exist exactly now there's a lot we could say about the Feats that you're getting
34:15
from those backgrounds correct and uh I'm really excited for people to read
34:22
through all of them to see what's going on in these feats rather than going through each one of
34:29
them uh as much as I would love to because there's so many people there's a lot to look at there's so many fun
34:36
things in these new Feats really what I'd love to do is talk briefly about some of the philosophy behind the
34:42
decision making here I've already talked a bit about some of the things that
34:47
distinguish a first level feat from higher level feeds uh there's another thing uh that informs
34:54
some of the decisions we made about the Feats here and that is first I'll talk about
35:02
Feats we revised and then I'll also talk about brand new Feats so
35:08
whenever we were revising a feat that already existed in the 2014 Players
35:14
handbook and made the determination that it was going to become a first level feat we not only wanted to make sure it was
35:21
delivering something with very clear functionality and clear value
35:28
we also wanted to make sure that the feet is useful to the people who most
35:34
are typically would want to take it here's what I mean by that if you look at the Healer feet in the
35:40
2014 player's handbook you read the title and you think hey I'm playing a life cleric I'm a Healer right
35:48
that's probably a feat I want to take but then if you read it not very beneficial no because that feat
35:55
was actually written for a person who maybe doesn't have any healing ability
36:00
right so we have kind of uh turn that on its head uh and we have now
36:08
made it so that this feat is beneficial to people who are already healers while
36:13
also providing a healing ability to somebody who lacks it so
36:19
that's the kind of the needle we're threading in a lot of these that maybe a feat that before
36:25
seemed to be calling to a particular type of character but then didn't connect with that character at all we
36:31
have now made it so that it is beneficial for that kind of character like many life clerics are now going to
36:37
want to take the Healer feet but then also many non-spell casting
36:42
characters I think might be drawn to the Healer feat because of their characters
36:48
back backstory because of the battle medic ability right that is now in the
36:55
Healer feet that allows you to actually heal somebody using a healer's kit and you'll see that
37:03
again and again in these Feats things that are either going to be beneficial
37:09
for the individual character who we expect would be attracted to the
37:14
feet or beneficial to the whole party here's an example of that in the alert
37:20
feet now first level feet that again the criminal has
37:28
not only do you get a bonus to your initiative role
37:34
but you also now have an ability when initiative is rolled you and another
37:39
member of your party can swap initiative which is amazing I love it and and this
37:46
that ability alone is going to make many groups like oh we are so happy if somebody has alert because we have all
37:53
playing d d been in that situation where like if only this particular character was able to go earlier exactly yeah and
38:01
and so now the character who is because this alert feed is designed to
38:06
mean this is the person who is exceptionally ready to jump into action and can help one of their buddies do so
38:14
and that's another yeah that's another example of like alert was a very like
38:19
for my character only feet like like I just want to be first right
38:24
now you have the option to like pass that on to someone else in your group and be a good party member exactly if
38:29
given the option but yeah like that's that's lovely that's that dual purpose for all these Feats yeah and then and
38:36
and then the brand new Feats are designed to
38:42
fill some character type gaps that existed before gaps that really came to
38:49
mind for us as we were designing the sample backgrounds what's an example of
38:54
one of the new Feats so musician right is one of the new Feats and with the
39:01
musician feat you can not only gain proficiency with three musical
39:07
instruments of your choice and sort of getting the three tool proficiencies used to be a function one of the
39:14
optional functions of the skill defeat but now you get a more flavorful version
39:19
of that not only in the musician feet but also elsewhere so you get to choose three musical
39:25
instruments that you're proficient with but then you also have the ability that
39:30
whenever you finish a short or long rest you can give inspiration to a number of
39:37
people who hear you play a song on one of your instruments and the number of people who can gain
39:45
inspiration is affected by your proficiency bonus so in other words the higher level you get it scales rather
39:52
obviously yeah and and so you know in any group we're like gosh
39:57
we'd really love to have sort of inspiration in our pocket ready to go and for anyone watching who doesn't know
40:03
what inspiration is because a lot of groups don't use it that's essentially having um advantage in your pocket ready
40:10
to use when you need it right uh and so a person with the musician feet using
40:16
this inspiring song can give people inspiration
40:21
so this brand new feat is not only filling a gap in our previous feat list
40:28
but it's also doing exactly what I was talking about earlier about the Healer feat and that is
40:34
it will be useful to also someone who's already a musician most most notably the
40:39
bar the bar because this ability to whenever you finish a rest to give
40:45
certain number of people of inspiration is not an ability that Barda has so this
40:51
combines really nicely with a Bard's kit so you can become the most Barty barred
40:57
or you can play a fighter who also on occasion takes out a loot yeah who
41:04
before battle placed this beautiful song and everyone is like now I'm ready to go
41:09
yeah that's perfect yeah and and and again that is the philosophy here
41:15
throughout is how can we make uh people who again want a taste of something they
41:21
don't have happy but then also make the people who already have the thing also happy magic initiate does this too magic
41:29
initiate like some of the Feats we've published in the past year or two now tells you hey not only do you get some
41:37
spells that you can cast for free but if you already have spell slots you
41:42
can use them to cast these spells too and we we saw this in the evolution of like tashas and other books where
41:49
that you you very key much keyed into the fact that like yeah I got this first level spell but like I can't upcast it
41:56
with magic initiatives right so it's a little like frustrating if that scale if that spell can scale up if you like use
42:04
a higher spell slot and now you can do that yeah if you want to hush rebuke someone right I love doing uh you can do
42:12
so now defeat also uh has been given broader
42:19
functionality because people are going to see uh in this feat a reference to
42:26
something that is new yeah let's talk about that let's talk about I assume
42:31
you're talking about spells and how they're defined yes so not only does the
42:36
magic initiate feat uh refer to what we're about to talk about but there there are references to it elsewhere in
42:43
the dock one of those being in the high elf and that is we now refer to three
42:50
new spell lists there is an Arcane spell list a Divine spell list and a primal
42:56
spell list in our work over the last few years as
43:02
we've been preparing start unveiling this material we realized that as the game expands as
43:10
there are new subclass options uh also with you know the introduction of a class like the artificer
43:18
with Feats with magic items with a variety of things that give you access
43:24
to spells there has been a growing need for us to have a new type of spell list
43:31
and that is a spell list that isn't tied to a particular class but is instead
43:37
tied to really the source of your magic right um and so in this case Arcane
43:45
spells are all about manipulating the background magic that's in the entire Multiverse Divine spells uh as people
43:53
would expect come from either gods or the Realms of the Gods and then Primal
44:00
spells are about drawing on the magic that is in not only sort of the elements
44:07
but also in the spirits of Nature and the way the way we sort of divided is
44:12
divine is really magic pulling from the Outer Planes Primal is pulling from the
44:18
inner planes and Arcane is pulling from sort of the Multiverse writ large
44:24
and so now rather than us directing you for certain Spell choices in particular
44:31
contexts like you know the previous magic initiate was like all right go
44:36
pick from the spell list of one of these particular classes which then suddenly
44:42
the moment we introduce a new class like artificer right then then we need a
44:47
whole new feat for that yeah this feat now grows with the future of the game
44:54
because now any time that we introduce a spell the spell itself will have for you
45:03
a tag that tells you if it's Arcane Divine or Primal or a mix because some
45:09
spells as people are going to see in some of our upcoming on our tarcana fall into multiple categories this is going
45:16
to have a tremendous payoff not only for like oh this later supplement added a new Arcane spell I have access to to the
45:25
Arcane spell list I can now have access to that spell without it having to route
45:31
through a particular class uh much more elegant solution yes and it
45:39
it also is another uh it has another purpose for us it's a way for us to take
45:45
this notion of these sources of magic which are mentioned at least Arcane and
45:50
divine are in the 2014 Players handbook but now we actually sort of give them
45:55
rules teeth rather than just sort of being a story rapper because Arcane and divine and then occasionally Primal when
46:02
it has been mentioned have really just been a flavor wrapper now they actually have substance in the game itself that
46:09
there is a list that you can go look at and go here are the sort of universal
46:15
Arcane spells here are the universal Divine spells and so on now people will
46:21
have to wait for upcoming under tarkanas to see how classes use those lists
46:27
because classes are going to use those lists but classes are also going to have access to spells that go beyond the
46:35
those Universal lists but again that's for that's for future us to talk about
46:41
uh and but again I think I think already this is super exciting being able to
46:47
reveal um these again these new types of spell lists that provide a tremendous amount
46:54
of flexibility for characters not only that will be able to be made with this series of unarth Arcana articles but
47:02
also that will be able to be made in the future yeah it is a very exciting time uh this
47:09
is a very weighty UA we're going to be doing this often this year uh
47:16
uh somewhat semi-monthly but yeah not not necessarily not necessarily strictly
47:24
defined yeah in terms of timing but we have a lot of uas coming out this year we need a lot of player feedback and
47:33
there is so much in this UA that we could talk about yes I know we do we
47:39
we everything and we could have made this a three hour video and and there are
47:46
before we sign off on this video yeah there are a couple other gems in this UA
47:52
I would love to go ahead go ahead yeah I uh I am I'm eager to hear so first I
47:58
encourage people in the rules glossary to look at not only the revised
48:04
definitions of a couple of our conditions they're also going to see there's a new condition that's in play
48:10
the slowed condition and people are going to see in the upcoming on Earth arcanas uh updates to a number of the
48:18
game's conditions so I'm excited to see what people think about that also I encourage people to take a look
48:25
at the new rules for inspiration because we've decided that rather than
48:32
inspiration being connected to essentially just the DM awarding people
48:37
for particular character choices instead inspiration is going to be
48:44
something you can reliably get whenever you roll a 20 on an ability check saving
48:50
throw or attack roll we wanted a way to feed people
48:56
inspiration through the system itself and we love this idea of when you have a
49:02
spectacular success you're inspired by it you bolstered by it and that can
49:08
start creating this sort of Snowball Effect yeah uh and that's what we're going for we've also uh tweaked the rule
49:17
on Inspirations so that it's still the same that you can only ever have one instant of of inspiration you don't get
49:23
the stockpile inspiration it's not you either have it or you don't but we've now made it so that if something in the
49:30
game gives you inspiration and you already have it you can then immediately give it to one of the other characters
49:37
in your group oh that's fantastic uh and it's likely that people are going to
49:43
have it because you get it by Rolling a 20 and one of the new traits of humans
49:48
in the game is humans whenever they finish a long rest have inspiration and so every human in your
49:56
group is going to start every adventuring day with inspiration and that means then if the human gets
50:02
inspiration and already has it they can then give inspiration to somebody else I think there's going to be a really fun
50:08
sort of you know inspiration flowing around yeah in the party
50:14
and what people are going to see as they actually experience this in play
50:20
what the system is intentionally doing is encouraging you to use the inspiration because there's more is
50:27
coming uh it's just like really yeah I don't know what I'm gonna need this exactly and it's we we often when we're
50:35
assessing different parts of the system uh if we see something that ends up getting hoarded so much that it actually
50:42
almost never sees use yeah that to us tells we need to change something so
50:48
that this actually becomes a fun part of play and not something that just gets marked during your character sheet and
50:54
then you forget about it is this the moment that I use it that that kind of almost anxiety like right like I've been
50:59
in Somalia you and I have been in so many one shots where it's like well I never used it yeah yeah exactly it's
51:05
gone forever whereas we want to make it easy for people to say yes yeah to say yes I'm going to use my inspiration uh
51:13
because it's likely more is coming right around the corner the gang of natural 20 thing is so exciting because like you
51:19
that's such a cinematic moment or like a great narrative moment of like I I've been very successful and now I have a
51:26
little bit left over and that could you could roll another 20 it could keep going and going and going and and to see
51:33
a game where like something like that happens I mean the odds are are
51:39
not high but they're higher now to see something like kind of amazing at the
51:44
table yeah yeah that's very very fun so critical hits have changed as well can you elaborate on on that
51:51
we are experimenting in this on Earth Arcana with a new take on the critical
51:57
hit so in addition to Rolling a 20 now feeding you inspiration whether it's an
52:04
ability check saving thrower attack roll we've now specified that if it's an
52:10
attacker and you roll a 20 it's also a critical hit as you would expect but what's different here is it's
52:19
only a critical hit if you were attacking with a weapon or an unarmed strike
52:24
now in most cases in our game that was already the case in actual play
52:32
because most spells in the game trigger saving throws rather than involving an
52:38
attack roll so spells scoring Critical Hits was a more sort of rare occurrence
52:44
than weapons scoring them but we're exploring this option and
52:50
again I really want to emphasize this is a great example of a play test giving us the chance to experiment with something
52:56
remember this is not set in stone right exactly uh we we want to see what does
53:06
the community think and how does this play out for them because what we're really trying to do is carve out a
53:13
clearer space for essentially Spell
53:18
operations on one side and weapon and unarmed strike operations on the other
53:24
and the critical hit was already confusing for a number of people because
53:30
I've actually lost count over the last eight years the number of times I've been asked by the community can spell
53:38
score a critical hit so funnily this this experiment in this UA will function for
53:46
many groups the way they were already playing because many groups had doubt that spells could actually critical even
53:51
though they could right and so now we're experimenting with well just what if they can't and this is a function of
54:00
weapon use and unarmed strike use which then also allows for us to do
54:05
greater Clarity because then it's there's not that fuzziness before of like take the dice that were involved in
54:12
the attack and roll them twice no now we Zoom way in it's take the weapon or the
54:17
unarmed strikes dice and roll them a second time now of
54:22
course people know that some people don't have dice for their unarmed strikes but monks and others absolutely
54:28
do and we wanted to make sure this critical hit option was available for them in addition to characters who rely
54:35
more on weapons now there's an additional Nuance here the way we have
54:41
worded this experimental rule it is only player characters who score Critical Hits
54:48
now I need to unpack that well it's kind so first
54:55
uh critical hits for Monsters often play out in
55:02
uh strange unsatisfying or terrifying ways and I'll
55:09
unpack I'll unpack those first they can be terrifying higher level terrifying is fine
55:16
first level terrifying can mean the character is gone uh so crits are extremely dangerous at
55:23
low levels for player characters you know that bug bear critting your first level character might mean that's
55:30
it your character is on on its on their way to the Grave yeah uh
55:35
and but then other times because of how a
55:41
monster's damage expression is built a monster critical hit can feel
55:47
unsatisfying uh and the DM might say there was a crit but the math doesn't
55:53
really deliver the punch that you you were expecting when the DM said that
56:00
also because a lot of DMS use static damage our crit role where you're
56:05
rolling a die a second time there's friction between that rule and how
56:10
monsters are actually designed and then there's a further reason that we're experimenting with this and that
56:16
is Monster's actually already have their own built-in crit like mechanic
56:25
and that is the recharge mechanic we use recharge abilities to deliver
56:31
those scary massive strikes right think
56:37
of the dragon's breath weapon when that happens everyone has put on notice and that is
56:42
the scary moment the DM decides when to use it so the DM
56:48
can make an informed decision when to crank up the difficulty in a battle the
56:55
DM has no control over a critical hit now uncertainty is also fun because we like
57:00
DMS being surprised but that's where the recharge role comes in because the DM wants the DM decides to essentially
57:07
press the things are going to get real big of the button back they're not sure
57:14
when they get the button back yeah yeah and so there is already this element of uncertainty purposefully built into the
57:21
recharge mechanic and so what we're exploring is this notion of really
57:28
monsters don't need crits because they have crits in another form and that is in recharge abilities and those the DM
57:36
has a bit more control over even though it's not total control because again once you use the DM doesn't know when
57:42
it's coming back uh that is that that modicum of control
57:47
is more in keeping with what we expect for a dungeon master and so we're exploring the crit as it's
57:54
essentially a special ability of player characters of occasionally they score
58:01
these surprisingly good hits that deal more damage than uh the weapon or
58:07
unarmed strike would normally deal uh this is this is a rule I I am very keen
58:14
to get feedback on and hope people will try it out in their game and
58:21
then we'll see where we go next Once once we get the feedback on it related to Rolling the D20 there's also another
58:28
significant thing in the rules glossary that uh I encourage people to take a
58:34
look at and that is we have decided to embrace how many
58:40
groups actually play and that is when you roll a 1 or a 20 for an ability
58:46
check saving thrower attack roll right a one is an automatic failure and a 20 is an automatic success
58:53
it will surprise some people watching that that's a change because I yeah I know because I've been doing it I don't
58:59
know for like 10 years yes uh because for yeah anyone who might not know previously a 20 meeting on
59:06
automatic success in a one meeting on automatic failure was only a function of the attack role right not of ability
59:13
checks and saving throws but what we have seen over the last eight years is
59:18
more and more groups use that rule for all of the D20 tests and we decided
59:25
rather than having the rules being in friction with how people actually play
59:31
the game let's update the rules so that the game plays the way people expect it to well
59:38
that's what's so much it was in this first play test material is much of that yes of how people
59:45
actually play or want to play because we over the last eight years through the
59:52
many uh surveys that people have filled out that have been valuable to our work
59:57
we've been listening we've been paying attention we watch streamed games we constantly play DND and all of that
1:00:05
feedback all of that play all of that observation has fed into what people are
1:00:12
seeing in this unearth Arcana and what they're going to see in the months ahead there there's two sides of the play test
1:00:18
material like this is a moment in time where like all of everyone's feedback has led to this play test material and
1:00:25
your feedback after this is going to lead to the final version so be sure to
1:00:31
play test absolutely because this is not the final version everything here is subject to change uh
1:00:39
this is really this UA in particular is our hello yeah hello we're listening yeah yeah and
1:00:47
the feedback that then the community provides in response will help determine
1:00:55
what parts of this make it into the new core books what parts do we set to the
1:01:02
side and what parts do we keep but change and so what everyone is going to
1:01:07
see just like with the DND Next process almost 10 years ago you're going to see an evolution
1:01:14
in these playtest materials in the game itself
1:01:20
also the exciting thing I think for everyone is you're going to be able to use all of these playtest stocks with
1:01:27
your existing core books we have designed these docs so that you can take
1:01:32
each one and other than the places where we tell you all right you know that thing in your book well here's here's an
1:01:39
update to it otherwise all this material works with the core books you already
1:01:44
have meaning the uas that are ahead will be very
1:01:50
targeted rather than it being like here is a cross-section of the of the entire game right instead we're going to drill
1:01:57
into one piece because that piece will now work with the books you have already
1:02:04
and so that's why you know in in coming ones we're going to drill deep on particular classes and then eventually
1:02:10
we'll drill deep on particular spells as we build this it's almost like we're
1:02:17
building a mosaic that in the end and you know once all the pieces are in
1:02:22
place you will get a glimpse of what the new core books are going to look like this has to be very exciting for you
1:02:29
like beyond the rules and the play test this is like a very exciting time to be a d d fan yeah and to be making DND yeah
1:02:36
yeah no it's it's wonderfully exciting uh because we're able to take something
1:02:42
that we love feed the passion that we in the community have had for it over the last
1:02:48
eight years feed all the conversations we've had internally that we've had with
1:02:54
fans out in the world and take all of that and let it flow into the game
1:02:59
itself so that it can move now into its its
1:03:05
next generation it's perfect I am excited for I'm very
1:03:10
excited for this video and for many more to come over the next few years yeah yeah excellent all right and uh
1:03:17
people will get access to this UA uh on D beyond.com yes that is also where you
1:03:24
get to play test and that will be coming out sometime after this video first
1:03:30
lands so for this particular one uh later today you should get access
1:03:36
to that I think that's it right yeah okay we're not going to be busy at all
1:03:42
thank you so much thank you
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