D&D (2024) Jeremy Crawford Gives an Overview of the New Unearthed Arcana

The upcoming Unearthed Arcana playtest packet for One D&D gets a preview from WotC's Jeremy Crawford. This is apparently the largest of these playtest packets so far, and the biggest Unearthed Arcana they have ever done, at 50 pages long.

It contains 5 classes, new spells, new feats, a revised rules glossary, and the new weapon mastery system.

​

 

[darjr]

Can we please leave the compatibility arguments to the thread about it?

 

[Charlaquin]

Interesting that they say “this is the most fun I ever had as a fighter” and “this gives the fighter round by round interesting things to do” like they are admitting the problem.

I can’t wait to read the design notes

Color me skeptical. Unless they’re getting much bigger changes than have been teased so far.

 

[Willie the Duck]

Interesting that they say “this is the most fun I ever had as a fighter” and “this gives the fighter round by round interesting things to do” like they are admitting the problem.

Have they not acknowledged that this revision is attempting to rectify perceived issues with the games as it is? That's a serious question-- I thought they had, but now can't pull any specific instances to mind.

Do you think it was the druid itself, or is that the druid revealed how incapable people are of understanding the concept of "early draft"? WotC is all, "Ok, we misjudged the fragile emotional state of long-time players. No more throwing half-finished ideas out there for public comment."

There's enough blame to go around, there. The fanbase overreacted (particularly the part of the fanbase that love the notion that the devs are clueless), but at the same time the Druid that got to UA seemed genuinely incomplete for even 'play this and tell us what works' level playtesting. Someone speculated that someone was told to 'fix wildshape, the pick-anything-from-beasts-list is a problem, as is the proliferation of extra HP' and so they fixed those, but then didn't then look to see if the resultant druid (and moon druid) as a whole filled any given roles or the like.

Martials, in general (and yeah, I can see why Monk might take longer), could be less controversial. People generally agree on what we want them to be, and what problems need to be addressed (balance vs. other options at high levels, OOC, more interesting in-combat decisions), if not how best to do it. With the druid, they were running up against ill-defined 'what even is this class supposed to be?' issues, along with whether there were problems needing to be solved in the first place.

 

[WanderingMystic]

Color me skeptical. Unless they’re getting much bigger changes than have been teased so far.

Well I for one have never had fun playing a basic fighter so I can easily see how anything would be more fun than what is already in the 2014 fighter class. Whether it is actually as much fun as any other class or there's much fun as another Marshall class remains to be seen

 

[Bolares]

Do you think it was the druid itself, or is that the druid revealed how incapable people are of understanding the concept of "early draft"? WotC is all, "Ok, we misjudged the fragile emotional state of long-time players. No more throwing half-finished ideas out there for public comment."

The internet will aleays overreact. But even that is useful for their playtest cycle.

 

[Clint_L]

I'm very interested to see what they've done with fighter and barbarian. Both classes are similar in that it is widely agreed that they are powerful enough, but tend to be one-dimensional, depending on sub-class choice. Then again, that's what some players like about them. So it's tricky balancing act and I really look forward to seeing the approach WotC is taking.

 

[Parmandur]

My guess is monks will have stances which will allow them to apply different mastery traits to unarmed attacks. So say the Savage Whirling Monkey Stance will allow them to apply cleave while the Iron Mountain Ox will allow them to apply push. Names totally my invention, though there SHOULD be a stance called Savage Whirling Monkey.

Since WotC has committed to de-Orientalizing the Monk, this is very much not happening. In fact, I'd wager they holding back sp they can do a more targeted test of whatever changes they are making to remove Orientalism from the Class.

As far as Mastery, they said previously that the Monk's unique deal is getting Mastery for Simple Weapons, while fighters and Barbarians focus on Martial.

 

[Gladius Legis]

Crawford is REALLY hyping up that +1 avg. damage over any other sword-and-board user in the game.

That doesn't fill me with a whole lotta confidence about this UA.

 

[Bolares]

I dint like the feat option to give everyone some weapon mastery.

Do you think that will step too much on the martial’s toes?

 

[Amrûnril]

Given that the goal of weapon masteries is to add tactical options, it seems odd to have masteries (eg. flex) that act as a simple damage increases. Perhaps this is intended as a way for players to "opt out" of added complexity, but limiting it to specific weapons makes it harder for it to serve that purpose.

It also seems odd for the monk to be highlighted as a class that will make use of weapon mastery. This is a class that (outside particular subclasses) is specifically designed around unarmed combat. I worry this is an example of the developers forcing similarities in class groups to the detriment of unique class identities.