D&D (2024) New One D&D Playtest Document: 77 Pages, 7 Classes, & More!

There's a brand new playtest document for the new (version/edition/update) of Dungeons of Dragons available for download! This one is an enormous 77 pages and includes classes, spells, feats, and weapons.

Unearthed Arcana Playtest

Unearthed Arcana Playtest Materials Get Unearthed Arcana playtest content, try it out in your game, and provide feedback! Check back regularly for ...

www.dndbeyond.com

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 updated rules on seven classes: Bard, Cleric, Druid, Monk, Paladin, Ranger, and Rogue. This document also presents multiple subclasses for each of those classes, new Spells, revisions to existing Spells and Spell Lists, and several revised Feats. You will also find an updated rules glossary that supercedes the glossary of any previous playtest document.

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[Chaosmancer]

It unfortunately has a much wider impact. For some reason knowing to wield that single short sword over the hand axe grants access to the Crossbow Expert, Dual Wielder, Charger, Great Weapon Master, Mage Slayer, Polearm Master, Sentinel, and Sharpshooter feats.

If the player chose an Eladrin over their Dragonborn which lets them regain the martial weapon proficiency through trance they regain access to all of these. There’s now an entire chunk of capabilities locked off to picking specific species unless you multi-class. This cannot be good.

Yikes! I didn't realize so many feats had been made martial weapon only.

 

[Parmandur]

I wouldn't necessarily hold onto that idea myself.

Personally I can certainly see WotC having plenty of changes to the game that they are intending to make and do not feel the need to put or keep them in the playtest packets, especially if they are minor. So for instance at some point in the future they might decide "Okay, we've decided now how we're going to have the Death Save system work" and then they remove it from further playtest packets because there's nothing new they need to get from us players about how we "feel" about them. And it doesn't then mean they've "reverted back" to 5E14 just because it doesn't show up anymore.

Now I could fully be wrong about that. Maybe the packets are indeed a "living document" of exactly the full count of all changes happening. But the fact that these recent packets don't include all the older backgrounds and feats they had in previous packets leads me to believe that what we have in Packet 6 is not the only changes to 5E24 we are getting.

Feats, Classes, Species and Backgrpund options are not core rules. The Rules Glossary in Packet 6 contains everything that WotC is still considering for the core rules of the game, as wx0licitly stated in the packet.

 

[Micah Sweet]

To me 2e is the bigger change, because entire classes appeared and disappeared. The underlying system was largely compatible regardless however


Maybe, a tad too late for that however

It's never too late for superior nomenclature.

 

[Chaosmancer]

I suspect they would argue that it's not a nerf, because it now applies to damage types, rather than "spells", so could protect you against general monster abilities and so on, but even if you buy that line, which I'm not entirely sure I do, it's thematically at-odds with the Ancients deal. Stopping magic makes sense because they mess with the Fey/Fiends - most of whom don't even use those damage types (though to be fair quite a few Fey use Psychic damage).

Yeah the "but that isn't a spell" line was aggravating when I was playing my ancient paladin. I could see wanting to change that into something less divisive.

But Radiant, Necrotic and Psychic are such rare damage types, it is going to be an aura that rarely does anything. Hmm, you know, maybe just add poison damage to the list? That would bump it up almost immediately, and fit the natural theme by making your allies resistant to venom.

I notice Abjure Foes is at a much higher level and much, much weaker than Turn the Faithless. The only advantage is you can choose to target potentially any enemy and also inflicts dazed, but there's now a (low) target limit, it's level 9 instead of level 3, so will barely/never be seen rather than regularly seen in most campaigns, and whilst it causes Frightened, still, there's no longer a requirement for creatures to move away and to have to use the Dash or Dodge actions. Instead it can sort of hang out trying to grub some damage from somewhere to break the effect. Worse than that even, it can keep attacking normally if it has ranged attacks, even if you're right in its face, just with Disadvantage. So it's gone from an extremely hard CC which basically took out Fey and Fiends for the duration, and sent them vast distances away, to an easily exploitable condition that effectively just temporarily applies Disadvantage. It's not a huge deal but seems like a change for the sake of change more than anything else.

I never really saw Turn the Faithless used, except against a fiend once. It did alter that fiend fight, so I can see missing it. But I will sacrifice it on the altar of having a better form of Nature's Wrath, which is more generally useful and more iconic.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Yeah the "but that isn't a spell" line was aggravating when I was playing my ancient paladin. I could see wanting to change that into something less divisive.

But Radiant, Necrotic and Psychic are such rare damage types, it is going to be an aura that rarely does anything. Hmm, you know, maybe just add poison damage to the list? That would bump it up almost immediately, and fit the natural theme by making your allies resistant to venom.



I never really saw Turn the Faithless used, except against a fiend once. It did alter that fiend fight, so I can see missing it. But I will sacrifice it on the altar of having a better form of Nature's Wrath, which is more generally useful and more iconic.

Why would you need to sacrifice anything, especially if the ability sacrificed is very situational?

 

[Parmandur]

I thought it was said if a rule didn't show up in the glossary then you revert back to the 2014 rule? I could be wrong though.

Yup, the Rules Glossary represents the changes to the core engine of the game, and it has gotten progressively smaller over rthe test, and anything that doesn't appear in the latest Rupes Glossary isn't happening (some of the critical weirdness from the first few packets, for example). Anything not in those 6 pages is coming from 2014 into 2024. And those Glossary changes aren't written in stone yet.

 

[tetrasodium]

Cunning strike will be balanced, not removed, before the 24 PHB hits.

And even if it isn't, that's fine. I played a thief in 2e and 3e to high level. I remember the days the mage could do my job sneaking and lockpicking better than me. I remember sitting out fight after fight as we fought undead, constructs and other immune to crit creatures. If the wizard and cleric want to cheer ME on as sidekicks while I do the cool stuff for a change, I'll consider that payment for 40 years of karma

karma.

Like when they were going to stop using the gm as the boot's fulcrum for short rest class balance until they decided simply changing it from "until you finish a short or long rest, at the end of which you draw all of your expended ki back into yourself" to "until you finish a Short Rest or Long Rest, at the end of which you regain all your expended points." was good enough? It seems they have already given up on pretending to balance things

And when they said these initial playtests were going to be about character-focused material, you didn't hear them say that because...?

The GM and the GM's players are playing together, it's too late to start considering the needs of & role of the GM as a bolt on after plater stuff is nailed down.

 

[Chaosmancer]

Why would you need to sacrifice anything, especially if the ability sacrificed is very situational?

Because every paladin seems to be going from getting two channel divinities at level 3, to one. So if I have to have one or the other, I'm getting the other.

Also note that Turn the Unholy has been gone from the Devotion Paladin every time it has been presented in the playtest.

The only one keeping both of their channels is technically Glory, and that is because they are spending Inspiring Smite in addition to a smite spell, so they need something else to balance it for when they aren't smiting.

 

[Parmandur]

Uh-huh, and you can summarize the 3.5E core rules changes in a far, far smaller space. Click the link I added if you want WotC-made proof. Feats are core rules, now, anyway, that's another change. They're no longer "optional".

Now, I don't think personally that 3.5 represented that huge a shift, since I learned to play with a Frankenstein's monster 3.x hodgepodge that mixed and matched stuff all the time (we also played 3.x with Threatre of the Mind and what I now know re a bunch of AD&D-isms imported by my friends, so 5E was an easy sell). However, that 40 page small type document represents some really gnarly changes, like those to Skills.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

Sorry, guess I showed my privilege and spoke for too many people. :/

Nah it’s such a common thing I’m not gonna fault you for it. Everyone extrapolates their community to all communities to some degree.