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.

 

[Minigiant]

On the topic of Large goliaths....is there any real benefit to being Large in 5e? We've got increased carrying capacity and lifting heavy stuff, and the mixed benefit/penalty of a larger footprint in combat, letting you block more space but be surrounded and attacked by more people in melee. Outside of that, there's nothing intrinsic to being big that's actually helpful. The Enlarge/Reduce spell gives us +1d4 weapon damage and advantage on strength checks, but there's no real reason to assume any such benefit carries over to PC that are always big, and maybe a vague idea that they should have some kind of reach, but nothing in the rules that makes that intrinsically so.

From an adventure design perspective, all that being Large lets you circumvent is maybe lifting something that's too heavy for a medium PC? That just doesn't feel like it's going to come up enough, and it's easy to design around if it does. You might run into penalties for squeezing in combat in some places, but squeezing will explicitly allow a Large creature to fit anywhere a Medium one can walk normally. I suppose some adventures might have exceptionally small holes that a medium creature needs to squeeze through, but again, that feels easy to work around.

The impact feels frankly just quite small mechanically, and when it does come up, it's mostly a detriment to the PC. I think we're firmly in an aesthetic choice territory, given how size works in 5e, not a design or balance concern.

As written Large Form and Powerful Build stack for carry, push, drag, and lift.

And youcould keep a large size weapon in your bag of holding for another weapon die of damage.

 

[Levistus's_Leviathan]

On the topic of Large goliaths....is there any real benefit to being Large in 5e? We've got increased carrying capacity and lifting heavy stuff, and the mixed benefit/penalty of a larger footprint in combat, letting you block more space but be surrounded and attacked by more people in melee. Outside of that, there's nothing intrinsic to being big that's actually helpful. The Enlarge/Reduce spell gives us +1d4 weapon damage and advantage on strength checks, but there's no real reason to assume any such benefit carries over to PC that are always big, and maybe a vague idea that they should have some kind of reach, but nothing in the rules that makes that intrinsically so.

From an adventure design perspective, all that being Large lets you circumvent is maybe lifting something that's too heavy for a medium PC? That just doesn't feel like it's going to come up enough, and it's easy to design around if it does. You might run into penalties for squeezing in combat in some places, but squeezing will explicitly allow a Large creature to fit anywhere a Medium one can walk normally. I suppose some adventures might have exceptionally small holes that a medium creature needs to squeeze through, but again, that feels easy to work around.

The impact feels frankly just quite small mechanically, and when it does come up, it's mostly a detriment to the PC. I think we're firmly in an aesthetic choice territory, given how size works in 5e, not a design or balance concern.

I believe these are all the consequences that permanently being Large would provide for a PC:

• Occupy more space on the battlefield (so you can block off more of the map from your enemies while still allowing your allies to pass through it, you threaten more squares and have more spaces that enemies can reach you, your auras and radiuses are extended further than they would for Medium or smaller PCs, being more likely to allow your party's Rogue to Sneak Attack, etc).
• Increased carrying capacity
• Increased food consumption
• The ability to grapple and shove Huge monsters
• The immunity to being grappled or shoved by Small creatures
• The ability to wield Large weapons (which deal an extra damage die)
• The inability to squeeze into Small spaces.
• Only being able to ride Huge and larger mounts
• The ability to be mounted by Medium and smaller creatures
• Other various size/weight-related issues (not easily fitting through doorways, being more likely to break things, armor and weaponry costing more, etc)

That's not necessarily overpowered, and there are some pretty significant drawbacks, but overall that's a pretty significant buff to frontliner characters. In order to balance a large race, I really think "Your size is Large" kind of has to be the only racial mechanic that you'd get, because adding even more buffs on top of all of that would probably make the race a "must have" for Barbarians, melee Fighters/Rangers, Paladins, and other melee characters. A Goliath that was Large and had the magical "subrace" traits would easily be the best race in the game for warrior PCs.

 

[JEB]

I believe these are all the consequences that permanently being Large would provide for a PC:

• Occupy more space on the battlefield (so you can block off more of the map from your enemies while still allowing your allies to pass through it, you threaten more squares and have more spaces that enemies can reach you, your auras and radiuses are extended further than they would for Medium or smaller PCs, being more likely to allow your party's Rogue to Sneak Attack, etc).
• Increased carrying capacity
• Increased food consumption
• The ability to grapple and shove Huge monsters
• The immunity to being grappled or shoved by Small creatures
• The ability to wield Large weapons (which deal an extra damage die)
• The inability to squeeze into Small spaces.
• Only being able to ride Huge and larger mounts
• The ability to be mounted by Medium and smaller creatures
• Other various size/weight-related issues (not easily fitting through doorways, being more likely to break things, armor and weaponry costing more, etc)

That's not necessarily overpowered, and there are some pretty significant drawbacks, but overall that's a pretty significant buff to frontliner characters. In order to balance a large race, I really think "Your size is Large" kind of has to be the only racial mechanic that you'd get, because adding even more buffs on top of all of that would probably make the race a "must have" for Barbarians, melee Fighters/Rangers, Paladins, and other melee characters. A Goliath that was Large and had the magical "subrace" traits would easily be the best race in the game for warrior PCs.

Occurs to me this must be why goliaths don't get their embiggening until level 5, where these advantages are much less impactful than they'd be at level 1. And it's temporary, of course. Guess this is as close as they'll get to compensating with a penalty. (Funny enough, delaying Large size was my homebrew solution as well...)

 

[Greg Benage]

Seems like semantic quibbling over what counts as "backwards compatible." If I can pick up SCAG, Xanathar's, Tasha's, or any of the 5E Settong books and use the material with the 2024 Core books...that's backwards compatible. Having a formula for compatibility does not mean the material isn't compatible.

Backwards compatibility isn't especially important to me, but it seems like more than "semantic quibbling." I think 1D&D is clearly the same frame -- it's not a different game -- but pretty much everything we've seen in the frame has been changed, and in some cases the changes seem like a fundamental difference in design philosophy and objectives.

Like, it seems as though I would be able to bring a 5e GWM/PAM/Sentinel barbarian to 1D&D, or a 5e Lore Bard with Additional Magical Secrets at 6th level, or a 5e SS/XBE Hunter with Horde Breaker for the extra +10 damage attacks, or a 5e Twilight Cleric...or whatever...but is any of that stuff really going to be "compatible" with 1D&D? If what we mean is, "It'll work," then yes, and I'd even say it would be easy-to-seamless from a black-letter mechanics perspective. But it's not going to feel like it works very well. It's going to feel terrible for people choosing straight 1D&D options.

 

[Pedantic]

I believe these are all the consequences that permanently being Large would provide for a PC:

• Occupy more space on the battlefield (so you can block off more of the map from your enemies while still allowing your allies to pass through it, you threaten more squares and have more spaces that enemies can reach you, your auras and radiuses are extended further than they would for Medium or smaller PCs, being more likely to allow your party's Rogue to Sneak Attack, etc).
• Increased carrying capacity
• Increased food consumption
• The ability to grapple and shove Huge monsters
• The immunity to being grappled or shoved by Small creatures
• The ability to wield Large weapons (which deal an extra damage die)
• The inability to squeeze into Small spaces.
• Only being able to ride Huge and larger mounts
• The ability to be mounted by Medium and smaller creatures
• Other various size/weight-related issues (not easily fitting through doorways, being more likely to break things, armor and weaponry costing more, etc)

Yeah, that's more than I was expecting, though you could quibble about the ability to be mounted using the "has the appropriate anatomy" line. The grappling/shoving stuff is fun and interesting, but I don't think generally a significant increase in power, given the opportunity cost of giving up attacks. Really we're talking about the weapon damage die, which is basically somewhere between +6-8 average damage on attacks?

That's probably good enough to more or less demand taking if you're going to be mostly fighting with a weapon, unfortunately. Maybe they can get away by changing how large weapon damage works altogether.

 

[Levistus's_Leviathan]

Occurs to me this must be why goliaths don't get their embiggening until level 5, where these advantages are much less impactful than they'd be at level 1. And it's temporary, of course. Guess this is as close as they'll get to compensating with a penalty. (Funny enough, delaying Large size was my homebrew solution as well...)

Also, it's temporary growth. Carrying around a Large-sized weapon while Medium is going to be impractical, no matter how high Powerful Build makes your carrying capacity (unless it can magically shrink).

 

[Micah Sweet]

Yeah, that's more than I was expecting, though you could quibble about the ability to be mounted using the "has the appropriate anatomy" line. The grappling/shoving stuff is fun and interesting, but I don't think generally a significant increase in power, given the opportunity cost of giving up attacks. Really we're talking about the weapon damage die, which is basically somewhere between +6-8 average damage on attacks?

That's probably good enough to more or less demand taking if you're going to be mostly fighting with a weapon, unfortunately. Maybe they can get away by changing how large weapon damage works altogether.

Instead of large weapons, I'd instead allow them to use certain two-handed weapons with one hand.

 

[Levistus's_Leviathan]

Instead of large weapons, I'd instead allow them to use certain two-handed weapons with one hand.

I think someone earlier in the thread said that Pathfinder has oversized weapons just increase in damage size (so a Large Halberd would deal 1d12 damage instead of 1d10, and a Large Greatsword would deal 2d8 damage instead of 2d6, and so on). I think that's definitely better for balancing Large PCs than the "an extra damage die" rule in the DMG. And it would only increase the DPA (damage per attack) by 1-2 damage, instead of the current 2.5-6.5 increase.

 

[Parmandur]

Backwards compatibility isn't especially important to me, but it seems like more than "semantic quibbling." I think 1D&D is clearly the same frame -- it's not a different game -- but pretty much everything we've seen in the frame has been changed, and in some cases the changes seem like a fundamental difference in design philosophy and objectives.

Like, it seems as though I would be able to bring a 5e GWM/PAM/Sentinel barbarian to 1D&D, or a 5e Lore Bard with Additional Magical Secrets at 6th level, or a 5e SS/XBE Hunter with Horde Breaker for the extra +10 damage attacks, or a 5e Twilight Cleric...or whatever...but is any of that stuff really going to be "compatible" with 1D&D? If what we mean is, "It'll work," then yes, and I'd even say it would be easy-to-seamless from a black-letter mechanics perspective. But it's not going to feel like it works very well. It's going to feel terrible for people choosing straight 1D&D options.

We mean "it will work," yes. That's what Backwards compatible means. One may or may not like how it feels, but the math is in tact. As far as compatibility is concerned, the math is the only thing that matters.

 

[Pedantic]

We mean "it will work," yes. That's what Backwards compatible means. One may or may not like how it feels, but the math is in tact. As far as compatibility is concerned, the math is the only thing that matters.

So, basically anything that doesn't change the proficiency scale or 0-20 attribute scale and ASI timing is going to be called backwards compatible?