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."

Claim Unearthed Arcana now! - D&D Beyond

www.dndbeyond.com

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

 

[Faolyn]

1) Metaplots change the setting without input from the players. This is bad because it takes agency away from them whenever the metaplot updates.

This exactly.

Although it might be amusing to have a metaplot that advances only after player polls. A literal choose-your-own-adventure.Put out a poll every X months, the next book either includes an extended timeline that takes the results into consideration or is an adventure that works its way to those results.

Would it actually work all that well? I have no idea. But it could be very interesting.

 

[Faolyn]

Is the starting point of a setting always the best version of the setting? No.

Care should be taken with settings that now is actually interesting.

Does a metaplot interfere with a homebrew game (which is what most players game in)? No.

Is a GM required to use  any element of a setting (metaplot or no) at their own table? No.

Then there is zero point in buying the books, which means that there is zero point in WoTC producing and selling the books.

The vast, vast majority of people buy gaming books because they hope to actually be able to use something from the books at their own table.

And how could they? Its all just stuff, that you can use or not. Why would its ignorable existence be an issue for anyone?

Because if it's not useful to me in some way or another, it means I don't buy it. If enough people share my point of view on the matter, then that's bad for D&D as a whole.

A book that's steeped in metaplot is, especially nowadays, not useful. Why should anyone spend the money to buy something if they have to ignore the majority of it? Who has the money for that? If I actually want to read D&D fiction, there are a zillion novels--many of which I can get for free from the library or cheap at a used book store--and over 11,400 English-language D&D fanfics on Ao3. There are nearly 200 there tagged Strahd von Zarovich alone. And that's not counting all the D&D-based fiction on other sources, or webcomics or live plays or other such things. I don't need to pay a penny to read a D&D story.

 

[Faolyn]

Every bloody thread.

Can you all take your weeing contest about which setting is bestest and contain it to a single thread? Eberron, Ravenloft, Metaplot, Dragonlance, and Canon are NOT part of this playtest. The Cleric and Three Races are. Yet half this thread are the same people who show up in every thread arguing about the same things like what they is going to change the other's hearts and minds. Some people want to dig into these changes, discuss the mechanics, figure out what the heck Ardlings are supposed to do, etc.

Ardlings--and I will forever want to spell their name with two as, like aardvark and aarwolf--are beast lord, the PC species. There need to be more cleric cantrips if they're going to have the ability to switch 'em out all the time. Personally, I think they'd do better with druidcraft instead of thaumaturgy.

 

[Micah Sweet]

This exactly.

Although it might be amusing to have a metaplot that advances only after player polls. A literal choose-your-own-adventure.Put out a poll every X months, the next book either includes an extended timeline that takes the results into consideration or is an adventure that works its way to those results.

Would it actually work all that well? I have no idea. But it could be very interesting.

Legend if the Five Rings did this, based on tournament wins for the CCG.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Care should be taken with settings that now is actually interesting.


Then there is zero point in buying the books, which means that there is zero point in WoTC producing and selling the books.

The vast, vast majority of people buy gaming books because they hope to actually be able to use something from the books at their own table.


Because if it's not useful to me in some way or another, it means I don't buy it. If enough people share my point of view on the matter, then that's bad for D&D as a whole.

A book that's steeped in metaplot is, especially nowadays, not useful. Why should anyone spend the money to buy something if they have to ignore the majority of it? Who has the money for that? If I actually want to read D&D fiction, there are a zillion novels--many of which I can get for free from the library or cheap at a used book store--and over 11,400 English-language D&D fanfics on Ao3. There are nearly 200 there tagged Strahd von Zarovich alone. And that's not counting all the D&D-based fiction on other sources, or webcomics or live plays or other such things. I don't need to pay a penny to read a D&D story.

I've used plenty of elements from setting material. I just don't play in the settings themselves. That utility, and the story, are enough for me. Its no different than cannibalizing pieces of an official adventure.

 

[Neonchameleon]

Is the starting point of a setting always the best version of the setting? No.

If it isn't then the setting designers haven't started at the right place. Of course you can always improve a setting - but the best way of doing this is by re-writing it using a new edition as an excuse to redevelop it rather than by forcing a metaplot on it and making it worse for everyone trying to use it to play in.

Does a metaplot interfere with a homebrew game (which is what most players game in)? No.

So anyone not playing a homebrew game is having badwrongfun? And the books literally published to provide a setting should not be used for their stated purpose?

Is a GM required to use  any element of a setting (metaplot or no) at their own table? No.

And GMs who want to use a setting for its stated purpose have a much harder time doing so if there is metaplot because then they have to do a whole lot more curation, undermining much of the point of using an established setting.

I don't play in an official setting. Short of a Dragonlance game back in high school, and a couple of short Ravenloft games, I have never done so. But I bought and read a lot of setting books, and I bought and read a lot of novels, and magazine articles, and I enjoyed the heck out of most of them. At no point did they at all affect my playing or running at the table in a negative way, which is what so many people tell is the most important thing.

So all material should be tailored to you when you explicitly do not use settings for their stated purpose. And because you refuse to use settings for their stated purpose people who do use it the way it was intended should have their experience harmed?

And how could they? Its all just stuff, that you can use or not. Why would its ignorable existence be an issue for anyone?

Being blunt so is 5e Ravenloft. And metaplot does far more harm to the settings it's inflicted on than 5e Ravenloft has to classic Ravenloft.

The big difference is that 5e Ravenloft is a reimagining. Metaplots, by their evolving nature while claiming to be the same setting literally tell DMs and players that the way they are picturing the setting is wrong.

I don't know why 5e Ravenloft, which has an ignorable existence, is a problem for you. But if you have a problem with it surely by analogy you can see why others have issues with the far more intrusive nature of metaplot?

 

[Aldarc]

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".

Despite common internet parlance, Eberron was not created Sola Keith Baker. Bill Slavicsek and James Wyatt were extremely influential on the lore development of Eberron, and they also incorporated elements they liked from other settings that were submitted, such as (supposedly) Rich Burlew's death-worshipping elves. This is important to keep in mind IMHO because Eberron was shaped based upon what WotC's staff wanted out of the setting. The core nugget was Keith Baker's but WotC had a LOT of their own input into the setting. The setting that Keith Baker pitched to WotC is not the setting as published.

The thing here is that the Dawn War Pantheon's approach to religion is almost diametrically opposed to that of Eberron. Eberron starts out by assuming that the gods never manifest and might not even exist, but there are a collection of them that are worshipped and that the faith provides the power. What sort of gods would be worshipped? (And you've got the classic Greek/Roman "these two gods are really the same", fitting the gods of other cultures to theirs). Eberron theology is basically polytheistic of the sort we saw in ancient societies in the real world where we're pretty sure that the gods do not in fact exist.

Meanwhile in the Dawn War pantheon the gods are a fact. They exist. Atheism is basically non-viable. The pantheon was made up about half of pre-existing deities (although The Raven Queen, Erathis, Zehir, Melora, Ioun, and Torog were all new). It then starts with them as powerful people who are forced to work together by outside threats - and then gives most of them relationships with each other. Whereas Eberron is based on the Polytheistic pantheons we've seen in the real world the Dawn War takes pretty huge and obvious inspiration from the Greek Gods inside the stories. They start from fundamentally incompatible points but both work because they commit.

Yeah, the Dawn War pantheon is far more mythic (if not nearly post-apocalyptic) in its scope. The pantheon seems to take cues from Greco-Roman gods, the then popular Scarred Lands RPG setting, and the Chaoskampf motif of ancient mythology. The Dawn War gods are not necessarily the "greatest hits" of gods but also the divine survivors of the aforementioned war. The setting is Points of Light all the way down.

My problem with the Dawn War pantheon is that the gods are all things that PCs might worship, not ones that should logically exist. I'm forever annoyed they didn't include gods of agriculture or hearth and home or things like that. They could have used Yondalla.

The Forgotten Realms gods are very badly done, but at least they remembered that not every one of them has to be PC-friendly. (Although I was in a game once that included a paladin of Chauntea.)

The Dawn War gods represent the survivors of the Dawn War. (Many other lesser deities became Exarchs.) I think that an implicit assumption of 4e was that epic level PCs would achieve apotheosis to become the new gods in the setting and fill in the cracks left by the Dawn War.

I do have an expanded/altered version of the Dawn War pantheon that I often use for my Nentir Vale campaigns, which does incorporate Yondalla, for example, as a goddess of the hearth and regarded as the child of Pelor and Erathis, a child of the sun's warmth and civilization. And it also adds a god of the hunt and psychopomps with something of a gender-swapped Hades/Persephone story.

 

[Henadic Theologian]

The playtest Goliaths are too close to giants for their 3E pantheon to really work. They either need a new one or adopt the giant one somehow.

Or for their OG Pantheon to be Goliath aspects of the Giant Pantheon.

 

[Micah Sweet]

If it isn't then the setting designers haven't started at the right place. Of course you can always improve a setting - but the best way of doing this is by re-writing it using a new edition as an excuse to redevelop it rather than by forcing a metaplot on it and making it worse for everyone trying to use it to play in.

So anyone not playing a homebrew game is having badwrongfun? And the books literally published to provide a setting should not be used for their stated purpose?

And GMs who want to use a setting for its stated purpose have a much harder time doing so if there is metaplot because then they have to do a whole lot more curation, undermining much of the point of using an established setting.

So all material should be tailored to you when you explicitly do not use settings for their stated purpose. And because you refuse to use settings for their stated purpose people who do use it the way it was intended should have their experience harmed?

Being blunt so is 5e Ravenloft. And metaplot does far more harm to the settings it's inflicted on than 5e Ravenloft has to classic Ravenloft.

The big difference is that 5e Ravenloft is a reimagining. Metaplots, by their evolving nature while claiming to be the same setting literally tell DMs and players that the way they are picturing the setting is wrong.

I don't know why 5e Ravenloft, which has an ignorable existence, is a problem for you. But if you have a problem with it surely by analogy you can see why others have issues with the far more intrusive nature of metaplot?

I dislike 5e Ravenloft because it officially ended pre-5e Ravenloft, and I liked that story. It's clearly an emotional reaction for me.

Look, I'm allowed to like metaplots, and wish the game I grew up with and loved still had them. I would feel no different is there was no more new Star Wars, or Star Trek, or Marvel comics. That's what the metaplots of D&D were to me, and until quite recently, even if they weren't really being continued, I could still imagine they were. Now, they explicitly aren't.

WotC decided that what I enjoyed most about D&D wasn't worth continuing, and when I complained, most of what I hear is that what I like is, "bad for the game" and shouldn't have ever been there in the first place, and I should just get over it. And apparently being angry about that is unreasonable.

Why should I feel bad about wanting things in the game that I like? I'm not the one taking things away.

 

[shadowoflameth]

The statement on D&D Beyond promises backward compatibility to adventures and to Suplements, but it's the PHB that is being playtested for changes. Specifically, changes to characters. (race, class, subclass, and to play rules for PCs.). It has been rightly pointed out here that the promise of backward compatibility was only to the adventures and supplements but given what's being tested, shouldn't characters and races be backward compatible with what we have?