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.

Unearthed Arcana Playtest

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[Micah Sweet]

It is often used as a pejorative.

A pejorative isn't necessarily a moral failing either. It just means, "thought of negatively". Are all negative things immoral?

 

[Ruin Explorer]

Wait a minute.
HEROIC INSPIRATION
When you have Heroic Inspiration (also called Inspiration), you can expend it to give Yourself Advantage on a d20 Test. You decide to do so immediately after rolling the d20.
Am I misreading this, or is this saying that you declare you're using inspiration after you roll? So it's effectively a reroll?

This is how it is worded BUT the problem is that the "immediately after" timing is a very tricky/annoying timing, because it's essentially a second or two. So I think the whole thing is badly-worded. It doesn't match with the general 1D&D approach in this playtest which is to eliminate weird timings like that. But it's the right direction.

 

[darjr]

A pejorative isn't necessarily a moral failing either. It just means, "thought of negatively". Are all negative things immoral?

I didn’t say it was.

 

[Rabulias]

No I haven't, and it's Level Up... a game specifically written to be an "Advanced" 5E. If WotC wanted to make their own game more complicated or have more systems in place they could, but they choose not to.

Note that "advanced" in Level Up is not always more complex; sometimes it's just... a different take on 5e. IMO, some of Level Up's changes are more streamlined, some more detailed/crunchy, and some are about the same level of complexity as core 5e.

 

[darjr]

I wonder if guidance is a way to eat up reactions, at least in part?

 

[Parmandur]

If they want to test 48 subclasses, all the classes, and everything else they mentioned AND correct errors and things people don't like, they will need to pick up the pace of UA releases considerably.

Well, it would seem that we're likely to see the three other Class Groups in the coming months, which would take us through the end of the year with 12 core Subclasses leaving 36 to test in the following 9 months or so alongside the rest ofntheir roadmap. And that's before the ~6 months of flex time Crawford foresaw. Seems doable if they do big batches of Subclasses by Group after nailing down the Core Class.

 

[Minigiant]

They tried to fix the 2014 Ranger features multiple times. It didn't work. So now they're transitioning more towards having Rangers be primal spellcasters to give them a bigger mechanical/thematic niche

I fixed the 2014 Ranger features back in 2012.

WOTC being unable to design Favored Enemy doesn't mean No one can design it well.

 

[Levistus's_Leviathan]

I fixed the 2014 Ranger features back in 2012.

Can you time travel?

WOTC being unable to design Favored Enemy doesn't mean No one can design it well.

Or: newer players don't want the ranger's main traits to be nonmagical, so WotC has changed the class design to reflect that.

 

[Minigiant]

Can you time travel?

I designed a flavorful and balanced version of Favored Enemy and Favored Terrain before 5e was announced back on the old WOTC forums then refined it when DND Next was announced when the community was clamouring for "+2 damage vs dragons again". The idea was massively popular on the forums and I heavily suspect the 5e copied it to create most of the 2014 Hunter subclass.

Ranger having bonus damage to injured foes, bonus attacks vs hordes, bonus damage to all large creatures, bonus damage to all humanoids, bonus speed, swim speed, climb speed, resist charm, resist fear, resist elements, anti magic tactics, antiwarriot tactics, anti sneak tactics, defense vs groups defense vs solos. Etc etc.

Thought of all that back when 4e was buzzing.

Or: newer players don't want the ranger's main traits to be nonmagical, so WotC has changed the class design to reflect that

Many do. Many don't.

The issue is WOTC has tunnel vision on the class design at times.

 

[Levistus's_Leviathan]

Many do. Many don't.

The issue is WOTC has tunnel vision on the class design at times

I'm pretty sure WotC has data on this. They did that big Class survey this year, remember? Where they asked everyone to review all of the features that the PHB classes got. And also asked how old the people who took the survey were and what edition was their first.

I think that they're changing the ranger class based on that feedback. We're the ones with "tunnel vision". WotC are the ones sitting on a hill with data about all of us.