D&D (2024) One D&D Cleric & Revised Species Playtest Includes Goliath

"In this new Unearthed Arcana for the One D&D rules system, we explore material designed for the next version of the Player’s Handbook. This playtest document presents the rules on the Cleric class, it's Life Domain subclass, as well as revised Species rules for the Ardling, the Dragonborn, and the Goliath. You will also find a current glossary of new or revised meanings for game terms."

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WotC's Jeremey Crawford discusses the playtest document in the video below.

 

[niklinna]

No, it doesn't. Plenty of things are good in different ways for different people, depending on their preferences. There's not just one good option that renders every other option bad by contrast. That's as true for RPGs as it for ice cream flavors, or clothing styles, or anything else people can have an opinion on.

Well, yes, it does.The entire point of opposing qualities is the opposition. But neither is universal—good and evil are always in a context of good/evil to whom and for what reason?

 

[Micah Sweet]

No, it's "there are parts of previous settings that aren't well thought out and it makes the settings worse, here's the result if you do the exact opposite of that and put thought into the parts of other settings that were traditionally not done well."

Do you know that's what was intended for Eberron, or do you just feel that's what the result was? This all feels very much like your opinion presented as objective fact.

 

[JEB]

Well, yes, it does.The entire point of opposing qualities is the opposition. But neither is universal—good and evil are always in a context of good/evil to whom and for what reason?

So if vanilla ice cream is good, chocolate and strawberry and every other flavor must be evil?

 

[Scribe]

So if vanilla ice cream is good, chocolate and strawberry and every other flavor must be evil?

Or is it Ice cream is good, and Steak is evil?

 

[Incenjucar]

Eberron is an attempt to follow some elements to a possible logical conclusion and to take other elements and try them from a different angle, while trying to make a home for as many standard elements as possible.

 

[Faolyn]

I really don't think that a cornerstone of Eberron was, "previous settings were bad, so let's make one that's good". That is extremely dismissive of all setting work in D&D previous to Eberron. I doubt that was what Keith Baker had in mind.

Levistus didn't say that Eberron's design said the other settings were bad; they said that Eberron looked at the stuff that was bad in other settings and tried to fix it.

No D&D setting is perfect, and they all have a lot of flaws. For instance, in the Realms, there are so many super-high level NPCs around that the PCs often feel insignificant next to them. As someone, somewhere online once joked, in Greyhawk, when you reach level 10, you become the ruler of your own keep and lands. In the Realms, when you reach level 10, you do fetch-quests for Elminster. And this is a problem in other settings as well.

So Eberron has made it so that NPCs are not very high level and don't dominate the world, and NPC actions aren't going affect the world in game-changing ways--that's what the PCs are there for.

 

[Levistus's_Leviathan]

Do you know that's what was intended for Eberron, or do you just feel that's what the result was? This all feels very much like your opinion presented as objective fact.

I would be very surprised if Keith Baker said that no aspect of Eberron was designed because he thought that he could improve upon parts of other settings (the Superman stays out of Gotham problem that's rampant on Toril, the religion problems that many other settings have, etc). There are many parts of Eberron that are obviously designed as "let's take a part of the assumed lore of D&D and aspects of other settings, and deconstruct and subvert them in better ways". Not that that's a bad thing. I think Keith Baker has proven that he's very good at doing that.

Eberron is an attempt to follow some elements to a possible logical conclusion and to take other elements and try them from a different angle, while trying to make a home for as many standard elements as possible.

As @Faolyn said, there are parts of the setting that changed aspects of other worlds for reasons that aren't just "the logical conclusion of how D&D is designed". That is a major part of the setting's design, but there is also a reason why the setting has no metaplot or high-level benevolent spellcasters that could do the adventures instead the PCs. There are parts of Eberron that were definitely designed as a "let's take that bad thing from a different setting, and either change it to make it better or ignore it completely".

 

[niklinna]

So if vanilla ice cream is good, chocolate and strawberry and every other flavor must be evil?

It seems to me you are committing a serious category error.

 

[Micah Sweet]

I would be very surprised if Keith Baker said that no aspect of Eberron was designed because he thought that he could improve upon parts of other settings (the Superman stays out of Gotham problem that's rampant on Toril, the religion problems that many other settings have, etc). There are many parts of Eberron that are obviously designed as "let's take a part of the assumed lore of D&D and aspects of other settings, and deconstruct and subvert them in better ways". Not that that's a bad thing. I think Keith Baker has proven that he's very good at doing that.

As @Faolyn said, there are parts of the setting that changed aspects of other worlds for reasons that aren't just "the logical conclusion of how D&D is designed". That is a major part of the setting's design, but there is also a reason why the setting has no metaplot or high-level benevolent spellcasters that could do the adventures instead the PCs. There are parts of Eberron that were definitely designed as a "let's take that bad thing from a different setting, and either change it to make it better or ignore it completely".

I see Eberron as far more "different" than "objectively better", but as I've said before, the story of a setting is more important to me than how easily it facilitates a special group of player-controlled heroes running around.

Just more proof of how out of step I am, I guess.

 

[JEB]

It seems to me you are committing a serious category error.

Not really. There are multiple flavors of campaign settings, just as there are multiple flavors of ice cream. Whether or not someone considers a particular one "good" doesn't require the others to be "bad" by contrast. It's just different tastes and preferences. You can even consider more than one "good" in different ways, and none of them "bad".