D&D (2024) New One D&D Playtest Includes 5 Classes & New Weapon Mastery System

The latest playtest packet for One D&D has just landed, and features five classes (Barbarian, Fighter, Sorcerer, Warlock, and Wizard) and the new Weapon Mastery system.

In this new Unearthed Arcana document for the 2024 Core Rulebooks, we explore material designed for the next version of the Player’s Handbook. This playtest document presents the rules on the Weapon Mastery property, updates to weapons, new and revised spells, several new feats, and five classes: Barbarian, Fighter, Sorcerer, Warlock, and Wizard. You will also find an updated rules glossary that supercedes the glossary of any previous playtest documents.

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[Baumi]

I like the Weapon Tables, except Nic because this means that Two-Weapon Fighting needing a bonus action is back again (except when you sue Nick).

Fighter and Barbarian looks fine.

Why do Arcane users are the only ones who don't know all their spells and get complicatied with know/prepared vs slot? Shouldn't be Arcane the best CASTERS in the game? Anyway this is not a big deal, but I would have liked to see the easier and more flexible Preparation that the Cleric, Bard and Co has.

Wizard looks remarkable good, I really like the new Book Spells.

Sorcerer still boring and way to few Metamagic Points at low levels. The fixed spells are also a bit strange. At least they fixed some of the Metamagic Options and Sorcerers have now quite a few more Spells known.

Warlock a half Caster??? I know keeping them at short Rest Casters would have been hard, but making them Half-Casters is not how I would have envisioned them. On the other hand we finally have a pure Gish if we want (d8 HD, Medium Armor, Pact of the Blade) . Eldritch Blast is fixed now (increases only with Warlock Levels), Hex is strange since it only boosts one damage per turn, that sound very week to me. Mystic Arcanum is now more of a core Feature of the warlock, but you would give up all your Invocations to become a pure caster but would still be a weak one since your lower levels would lag behind and get only a few highter slots and fewer prepared Spells.

Btw still hate the new Grapple Mechanic (need attack, a save and a calculated DC on the fly). Also the popular new Exhaustion is gone.

 

[DarkCrisis]

I really hope/hoped they would change the Barbarian class name Berserker or something.

If they can change Thief to Rogue they can change Barbarian. How do you train to become a barbarian? "I'm training to be less civilized".

 

[Neonchameleon]

As I said, I'm not concerned about the volume of the spells, it's a diminishment in the quality (i.e. level) of the available spells.

I'm not arguing about whether or not the change is good, but saying Pact Magic and half-casting were pretty much identical is incorrect.

And the thing is the Warlock was really good at not needing low level slots thanks to invocations. Instead they got things like Eldritch Blast cast at level 5 with Agonizing Blast being about equal to Scorching Ray (a second level spell) or Silent Image or Disguise Self at will.

They had their own way to handle the volume. This has given them more volume (which they had) while removing the quality.

 

[OldSchoolGamerGirl]

That's why you take the new Mystic Arcanum invocation, which gives you access to the same level spells as a full caster at the same level.

gee a tax on the caster to get what they used to have

 

[Parmandur]

I understand all that. I'm simply objecting to the statement that pact magic and half-casting are pretty much the same. They aren't, they're actually strikingly different, even if the overall volume of spell levels/points expended in similar.

And that's fair, though I much prefer this Warlock as Swing Player between full caster and Gish.

 

[fluffybunbunkittens]

Now, while they are busy removing short rests from everything else, the Fighter Action Surge remaining reliant on it looks really weird...

 

[MatthewJHanson]

First reactions:

A bunch of the new spells feel like the should be class features. Scribe scroll most of all.

They did what to the Warlock?

The warlock player in my game is not going to be happy to lose her powerword kill.

 

[Bacon Bits]

Personally, by "backwards compatibility" I mean, you can continue to use the 2014 Warlock in the same game that your friend uses the 2024 Warlock, and the game will work fine.

This is always 100% what WotC and TSR before it have meant by "backwards compatible." It confuses me a little that people don't understand that. It's exactly what it meant with 4e & Essentials. It's exactly what it meant with 3e and 3.5. It's exactly what it meant with 1e and 2e. It's exactly why the Monster Manual was the same for OD&D, B/X, and AD&D.

All you need to do to take a short rest is spend 1 hour not engaged in strenuous activity.

“We just chill for an hour.” What are they gonna do? Send monsters to attack you? Kill them with your cantrips, then try again.

By this logic, you should never need to rest at all. After all, you'll just handle the monsters with your cantrips, right?

The idea that you should assume an ambush is going to be manageable is metagame thinking of the bad sort. You're making decisions thinking the game is going to act like a game. That's wrong for one because your character doesn't know that to be the case, and wrong for two because the DM doesn't have to do that at all.

After the game. Before the game.

At some point, if you're not happy, you need to say so. The DM is not God or Daddy or the Table King, they're just another person at the table and if they're causing problems, like everyone else, they need a sitting down and a talking to.

At the same time, the DM is also supposed to create a believable dungeon. "We can rest for an hour wherever and whenever," isn't really credible. It's not an MMO where the mobs wait patiently for you to get into aggro range 2-3 at a time. Even if the PCs have rope trick or tiny hut, if you clear 5 rooms of a 12-room goblin stronghold dungeon, why would the remaining 7 rooms of goblins not organize a defense, set up traps, etc.? Why should they continue to obey the encounter-building rules? Or if they're losing, why wouldn't they just take their stuff and leave?

Like either the game is about attrition, in which case resting should have potential costs and risks. Alternatively, the game should not be about attrition, in which case recovery should be automatic between encounters. This whole half-way thing where you need to rest but you can always do it whenever you want doesn't really work.

And if you're trying to say that you can rest but that getting ambushed is an inherent risk... well, that's not really being honest to the complaint that the DM won't let you rest. The danger and additional risk is exactly what they mean by "the DM won't let it happen"!

 

[Maxperson]

Really? To my mind, the DM is totally in charge of rests.

“Can we take a short rest?”

“No, it’s too dangerous, too many monsters, etc”.

Believe me, we’ve tried.

Quite literally every DM I've played with(including me) has limited short rest benefits to twice in-between long rests.

 

[Neonchameleon]

That's why you take the new Mystic Arcanum invocation, which gives you access to the same level spells as a full caster at the same level.

As the box-outs explain, all of the invocations that let you cast a spell 1/day have been rolled into Mystic Arcanum, and warlocks now have access to the whole Arcane list. So a lot of things you might have used invocation slots on before are now part of that same mechanical implementation. But if you want, you can be less of a caster if, for example, you're going Pact of the Blade. It's more versatility.

So what you're saying is that the new Mystic Arcanum replaces the old invocations that no one bothered to take because they were just bad choices? And that you can burn all your invocations to not keep up with a caster of the same level due to a lack both of flexibility and volume?