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. https://www.dndbeyond.com/sources/one-dnd

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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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Minigiant

Legend
Supporter
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.
The 3e subsystems were good. They were just hampered by the mess that was the 3e base rules.

5es core rules are good as they are built to be expanded on.

However WOTC's goal is popularity via simplicity. So there aren't subsystems for Nature, Survival, Medicine, Althetics, or Performance checks.
 

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Hmmm, both:

Mainline charisma, seduce things, lots of bluff, and deception...

I am beginning to see a parallel here... :LOL:
On a slightly more serious note, this was kind of my point, there's like this amusing superficial similarity, but the idea that a dude who inspires people and whose main deal is casting spells is "like James Bond" is pretty wack.

Bond's actual main deal I note is luck - it's literally expressed in the first film, I forget the exact line, but it's alluded to almost immediately that he's very lucky. And then throughout pretty much all the pre-Craig films we see that over and over, Bond often just blunders his way into things, rarely does any actual spycraft, gets into these incredibly dangerous situations and again often gets out of them by luck rather than judgement or skill, and constantly bumps into women who find him attractive and are willing to do unreasonable things to help him, or to delay killing him (even though, very often, objectively, he's not that hot). It's also why most of the casino games he prefers are games of chance, not skill (pre-Craig, again).

I dunno if he even has a high CHA when it comes down to it - he's rarely able to convince anyone of anything outside of romance, doesn't seem like a natural leader, and so on (I mean, I'd definitely say it's above-average though).

He's kind of one of those characters that actually only works properly in an RPG where the PCs have some narrative control, because of the luck factor often involving third parties appearing conveniently. Sorry been listening to a podcast about Bond recently, so had a lot of thoughts!
 
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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.
I feel like the issue with Psionics is an artificial one.

3E drastically changing the basic approach to Psionics was not something it had to do. It wasn't "Oh 2E failed so we must do this...", it was just the designers deciding that they knew better, and going for a weirdly X-Men-themed Psionics system that was a terrible match for Psionics-style magic in fantasy literature (which there is an absolute ton of note, albeit it's basically never called psionics, it just works like it). They could easily have stuck pretty close to the 2E approach.

4E did Psionics the same way it did everything else, essentially, so that was unarguably successful unless you objected to the fundamental 4E AEDU setup. You can't really count that because it's not a "different take" in a meaningful sense.

5E's Mystic approach was also fine. Literally all it needed was balance tweaks. But the ludicrous 70% threshold nailed it, a threshold which would also have deleted Bard or Wizard or Warlock if they'd been proposed as new classes, I note. Honestly I doubt "full-caster Bard" has 70% approval from the same people who voted on the Mystic (which was back before 5E got the massive population boost). Hell I'm not even sure the existence of the Warlock class does.

So Psionics has really only been done seriously as it's own system twice - 2E and 3E. And it worked fine both times. Or at least as well as Vancian casting - if you think that's fine, this was certainly fine.

The whole idea of "caught on" and "attempts" here is deeply misleading. That's simply not how it works. Especially as a lot of classes have seen drastic changes over the years, and no-one is critiquing them for similar reasons.

Re: Psioncist as a spell-point caster, whilst I think it's a pretty sad approach, I'd certainly prefer it to the idiotic approach 5E has had so far, where they just half-heartedly try something and then immediately give up, or try and jam it into other classes as a subclass. If Psionicists had their own spell list, didn't use V or M components, and had some modified spells/cantrips, I think it could be viable. Better to have weak representation than just skipping it apart from subclasses as 5E did.
 

However WOTC's goal is popularity via simplicity. So there aren't subsystems for Nature, Survival, Medicine, Althetics, or Performance checks.
There probably should be, though, and I'd surprised if they didn't expand on those a bit just like they expanded on social stuff in this playtest (which was technically just making something player-facing and more straightforward but still).

Also there absolutely are subsystems for Athletics checks, not sure what you're talking about there.
 

Minigiant

Legend
Supporter
There probably should be, though, and I'd surprised if they didn't expand on those a bit just like they expanded on social stuff in this playtest (which was technically just making something player-facing and more straightforward but still).

Also there absolutely are subsystems for Athletics checks, not sure what you're talking about there.
Athletics lose Grappling so it's just Jumping and ignoring difficult terrain when moving, swimming, or flying.

The rules for movement are even more wonky now and it kept needs a system for combinations of running, jumping, climbing and swimming.

Plus a Athletics grappling subsystem for wrestling would be cool. However that will never happen in base rules. Through it would finally display the rules for tightening your belt of giants strength and suplexing a dragon.
 


UngainlyTitan

Legend
Supporter
On a slightly more serious note, this was kind of my point, there's like this amusing superficial similarity, but the idea that a dude who inspires people and whose main deal is casting spells is "like James Bond" is pretty wack.

Bond's actual main deal I note is luck - it's literally expressed in the first film, I forget the exact line, but it's alluded to almost immediately that he's very lucky. And then throughout pretty much all the pre-Craig films we see that over and over, Bond often just blunders his way into things, rarely does any actual spycraft, gets into these incredibly dangerous situations and again often gets out of them by luck rather than judgement or skill, and constantly bumps into women who find him attractive and are willing to do unreasonable things to help him, or to delay killing him (even though, very often, objectively, he's not that hot). It's also why most of the casino games he prefers are games of chance, not skill (pre-Craig, again).

I dunno if he even has a high CHA when it comes down to it - he's rarely able to convince anyone of anything outside of romance, doesn't seem like a natural leader, and so on (I mean, I'd definitely say it's above-average though).

He's kind of one of those characters that actually only works properly in an RPG where the PCs have some narrative control, because of the luck factor often involving third parties appearing conveniently. Sorry been listening to a podcast about Bond recently, so had a lot of thoughts!
I have always thought of James Bond as the "Shake the tree" move. I imagine the discussion in M's office something like "What is this bloke's deal, seems fishy" "Dunno! Why don't we send in Bond and see who shoots at him"
 

I have always thought of James Bond as the "Shake the tree" move. I imagine the discussion in M's office something like "What is this bloke's deal, seems fishy" "Dunno! Why don't we send in Bond and see who shoots at him"
Pretty much, yeah. And his luck means he constantly stumbles (and it really is stumbling a lot of the time, no real intentionality) across stuff, and his smarm and disruptiveness means bad guys get irrationally fixated on him (maybe that is high CHA, just of a perverse kind lol?) which causes them to make unnecessary moves/mistakes. Literally like 30-50% of the pre-Craig movies, if the main bad guy had just ignored Bond, let Bond do whatever, they'd have succeeded at their plot.
 

Hussar

Legend
There probably should be, though, and I'd surprised if they didn't expand on those a bit just like they expanded on social stuff in this playtest (which was technically just making something player-facing and more straightforward but still).

Also there absolutely are subsystems for Athletics checks, not sure what you're talking about there.
What subsystem is there for Athletics checks? You roll a d20, add athletics, succeed or fail. Full stop. That's the full scope of the Athletics skill, exactly the same as any other skill.
 

Hussar

Legend
looks at hundreds of pages of spells

Yeah, it's not simplicity they're going for. Selectively supporting certain archetypes, sure. That is by design.

But, again, you don’t really have a bunch of subsystems. Most spells are mechanically identical. Roll a save and deal x or y. Or roll an attack and deal x. Doesn’t matter what class casts it, most of the spells are pretty much the same thing.

Heck I would t mind if they rolled attack cantrips together and made them all one.
 

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