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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[Hussar]

Haste, various smites, and well, any damaging spell cast from hiding... they all have the exact same function as extra attacks and sneak attacks.


You do realize that Level Up was supposed to be backwards compatible, right? And thus the phrasing was "identical" to mollify people who expected spells.


And that's a point of favor for spells? Why not just get rid of rangers and tell people to play fighter/druids instead?


There is literally every single difference in the world.

Casting animal friendship on a tiger is something that two non-ranger classes, one archetype, and two races can do. Managing to befriend a tiger simply by understanding animals is something that only rangers can do.

If every class can cast spells, then magic itself becomes boring and non-special. I don't know about you, but I want magic to feel magical, not mundane.

Sorry. We lost that argument when they buried 4e. Having a suite of class unique powers which meant that not only every class but every character was distinct got taken out behind the barn.

Now powers=spells.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

This is probably pointless, but: how often did Van Helsing cast magic?

Roughly the same as any of the fictional inspirations for the Paladin.

So, if a person wanted to play a highly skilled outdoorsman who could accomplish things like calming the wild horse down, minor healing, befriending a wolf, knowing weaknesses of creatures, and other rangery-stuff...the answer has to be spells. D&D spells, mind you, with their VSM components and shared spell lists. There's no room to play the skilled archetype from imagination and many pieces of media?

Using magic is, thematically, a skill. Not in terms of what things are called in dnd mechanics, sure, but using magic is a thing that you train, practice, and get better at.

hat seems unnecessarily limiting, especially since the spell-using ranger could be part of a subclass.

No, it really couldn't be. Spell casting subclasses are not the same sort of thing at all. The Ranger's spellcraft is already too constricted and anemic in the 2014 version.

The point of the Ranger's toolkit is to cover nearly any situation they're likely to encounter. In the world of dnd, it's nonsensical to imagine that any of them would just...turn away such a valuable tool.

 

[Faolyn]

Now powers=spells.

Which is both boring and makes magic mundane.

 

[Faolyn]

The point of the Ranger's toolkit is to cover nearly any situation they're likely to encounter. In the world of dnd, it's nonsensical to imagine that any of them would just...turn away such a valuable tool.

In that case, they shouldn't be limited to nature/hunting-type magic. They should have access to any sort of magic, whatever helps them be crazy-prepared.

 

[Minigiant]

In that case, they shouldn't be limited to nature/hunting-type magic. They should have access to any sort of magic, whatever helps them be crazy-prepared.

They used too.

0e and 1e rangers had both Divine and Arcane magic.

 

[Minigiant]

Which is both boring and makes magic mundane.

This is exactly what I was thinking earlier. It makes spells feel more and more mundane, to the point that having classes do things without the aid of spells feel exceptional. I don't like seeing class features and racial abilities just give you access to a spell. A little of this is fine, but it is becoming more common. One D&D is not going to be hugely different from 5e, but it's adding to the trend.

It's that way because again a noticeable percentaage ofthe community wont allow it otherwise.

Look at the DMGr ules for tracking. If the quarry walks on bare floor without actual an obvious trail, tracking is impossible. Meaning you need actual magic to break the rules to continue. 3e made a killng creating spells to break the limits of mundane rules.

And since D&D is flooded with magical rulebreakers starting at level 5, you end up in either a magical arms race or blatantly supernatural PCs.

 

[Levistus's_Leviathan]

But how much repetition are you willing to suffer for this?

Warlock invocations are a mix of class features, ribbons and access to spells (sometimes free to cast, sometimes using a spell slot). Even with all that, most of the warlock abilities are tied firmly to the spell section. It might be flavorful to give warlocks Eldritch Sight, bards Song of Revealing Dweomers, clerics Prayer of Arcane Insight and rangers Sense Unnatural Auras, but how many different ways do you need to detect magic? Are they each going to repeat the rules or (like the warlock does now) just refer back to the wizard spell anyway?

I'm just saying that multiple systems with different names and units adds complexity, and rules bloat for the benefit of extra immersion. Is that worth the trade?

I would make them more or less specific to each individual class and have ties between class groups. For example with Martials, Fighters would get battlefield control maneuvers (tripping attack, pushing attack, disarming strike), monks would get debilitating maneuvers (like grappling strike, slowing strike, eventually stunning strike), barbarians would get melee AoE maneuvers (slashing whirlwind, earthtremor, charging attack, etc).

The classes' different "Invocations" would be specific to them. Artificers have a feature similar to Invocations (Infusions), and none of them replicate spells. Every class would have a unique style of Invocation-like features.

 

[Bill Zebub]

Look at the DMGr ules for tracking. If the quarry walks on bare floor without actual an obvious trail, tracking is impossible. Meaning you need actual magic to break the rules to continue. 3e made a killng creating spells to break the limits of mundane rules.

Which, to me, is an argument for preternatural* senses. Wolverine was a Ranger.

*Do you like how I avoided the words magical, superhuman, and supernatural?

 

[Remathilis]

Because the way to do the thing Aragorn does in D&D is spells. Even in the martial heavy 4e, many of the iconic Rangery things are magic.

In the Past, WOTC would attempt to create other subsystems to sell to fulls of different styles to closer match what they want. Those subsystems we're always magical (invocations, infusions, truenaming, pact magic, shadow magic, totems, infusions,) but you had options.

That's GONE in 5e and OneDnD.

It's spells and things that refer to spells

But how many of those systems were good? Psionics took how many tries to do across 2e, 3e, and 4e? Incarnum wasn't well received. Neither was Tome of Magic. Neither TSR nor WotC ever managed to make a non-spell magic system that ever caught on. I guess WotC just feels spells are a better received version of 4e powers and treat them as such.

 

[Cadence]

They used too.

0e and 1e rangers had both Divine and Arcane magic.

While they had variety, it doesn't feel like they would be considered "1/2 casters". They had a grand total of 1 spell at 8th level, and grew to 10 spells (4 1st, 4 2nd, 2 3rd at) at 17th level. And they had to learn the MU spells the hard way, and couldn't read scrolls to do it.

It's that way because again a noticeable percentaage ofthe community wont allow it otherwise.

Look at the DMGr ules for tracking. If the quarry walks on bare floor without actual an obvious trail, tracking is impossible. Meaning you need actual magic to break the rules to continue. 3e made a killng creating spells to break the limits of mundane rules.

In 1e to track underground they "must have observed the creature to be tracked within 3 turns (30 minutes) of the commencement of tracking and the ranger must being tracking at a place where the creature was observed." So being hard to track is a recent thing.

The 5e quote about tracking is balanced earlier in the paragraph by "No roll is necessary in situations where the tracking is obvious." How are they supposed to be tracked on bare stone when they don't leave a trail? In any case, Bare stone has a base DC of 20. And then it feels odd that leaving a trail of blood only changes it by 5. Bleh!