D&D (2024) One D&D Expert Classes Playtest Document Is Live

The One D&D Expert Class playest document is now available to download. You can access it by signing into your D&D Beyond account at the link below. It contains three classes -- bard, rogue, and ranger, along with three associated subclasses (College of Lore, Thief, and Hunter), plus a number of feats.

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[TwoSix]

Several spells have switched spell schools; most notably, all the cure spells are now Abjuration.

 

[Weiley31]

Yes, it is under "light" in the glossary.
You can also use dual wielding with crossbows (if you have a way to automatically load them).

And I just rechecked the Dual Wielding Feat and it's been buffed/made better in that update ALSO applied to Weapons that are non-light now as the feat makes them count as Light Weapons. Awesome!

 

[Ruin Explorer]

Ah Crossbow Expert finally no longer great for casters. Good.

Oooh Durable doesn't suck.

LOL sad obsession with drawing and stowing weapons from WotC continues, despite the fact that maybe 5% of D&D groups enforce that even partially.

Epic Boon of Luck shows WotC still too dim too understand why they made their Bard changes. Jesus wept guys, don't eliminate the nonsense of "before you know if you succeed or fail" then just reanimate it as a Feat. Absolute idiocy.

Grappler is okay I guess - at least it's not a disaster zone.

Mounted Combatant now follows RSPCA/ASPCA guidelines and lets YOU take a hit for the mount (this is basically reversing a 3E/PF situation), and generally seem like a pretty great Feat if you can fit a horse into the dungeon (perma-advantage against medium and small creatures).

Ritual Caster seems dumb and like they were flailing around. Just delete it guys, or make it actually not suck like 4E.

Sentinel - Does this no longer require a Reaction or is that implied by Opportunity Attack. Hmmm. Big if intentional.

Shield Bash - No bonus action cost but still going defiantly with the Sage Advice approach.

Speedster - For god's sake rename this Feat.

 

[TwoSix]

Hunter Ranger's lv10 feature is just 'you can cast this completely normal spell one time'. Just to show how much WotC cares about Ranger.

They nerfed Thief's Fast Hands. Of course they would, when the whole reason to pick that subclass was for bonus action item use.

The Hunter Ranger 10 feature is actually really interesting. Being able to "downcast" a spell is an entirely novel mechanic.

 

[TwoSix]

And I just rechecked the Dual Wielding Feat and it's been buffed/made better in that update ALSO applied to Weapons that are non-light now as the feat makes them count as Light Weapons. Awesome!

To be clear, only one of the weapons can be non-Light. So you can do Longsword/Shortsword but not 2 Longswords.

 

[TwoSix]

There's a Magic Action that stands in for the 2014 Cast a Spell action; it also accounts for using an action to activate a magic item. I'm inclined to say this should also stand in for the action you can take as part of the effect of certain spells - e.g. call lightning.

Yea, we haven't seen spells yet, but I bet a lot of them are going to be changed to "As a Magic Action, you can...."

 

[Ruin Explorer]

If the full potential of the rogue is gated behind readying an action to attack as a reaction, something is very wrong.

LOL wth? That's a weird thing to make up.

I'm talking about the fact that they got SA on OAs and so on.

Also they didn't buff Rogues significantly, certainly not at lower levels (unlike Bards). So you can't use the "they can buff it!" argument until they do. At least the Light thing means the nerf is a lot smaller than it initially seemed, dual-wielding to ensure a hit lands still makes sense.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

Wow they finally quantized social checks. A great leap forwards for Bardkind, though it still has hilarious disclaimers on Hostile.

 

[Weiley31]

To be clear, only one of the weapons can be non-Light. So you can do Longsword/Shortsword but not 2 Longswords.

That can be easily ignored/house ruled!

 

[delericho]

I've never actually seen this in play.

You're lucky; I have.