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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[Marandahir]

If 6E would do away with the hard connection between "days" and rests, I would be very happy.

The only sensible way to support both fast- and slow-paced campaigns, say:

• your mission is to clear out the goblin caves. Expect one combat encounter every five minutes or so
• your mission is to cross the Big Desolate Desert. Expect one combat encounter every week or so

Is to simply ignore everyone that goes "you always need one night to regain spells, everyone knows that, and any other notion is completely unrealistic".

Obviously the game should give the GM the ability to state that for the first adventure, a long rest requires, say, twenty minutes of downtime, while for the second adventure, a long rest requires you to find an oasis and spend three days there. (Or some such)

This is almost to the level that it merits inclusion on my earlier list.

They already did… what were Per-Day features are now Per-Long-Rest. There are optional plug-in guidances in the Core Rules and Rules Expansions for changing up what as Long Rest means. It may not be outright stated, but you could easily redefine the time-lengths of rests based on the game-play loop and spatial-temporal zoom of the game in a given session/adventure/pillar of gameplay.

Though now I have been exposed to AngryGM's Tension Dice mechanic for tracking time and risk and complications, and I'm never going back. I'd love that sort of thing to be part of the 2024 DMG.

 

[mamba]

The only sensible way to support both fast- and slow-paced campaigns, say:

• your mission is to clear out the goblin caves. Expect one combat encounter every five minutes or so
• your mission is to cross the Big Desolate Desert. Expect one combat encounter every week or so

Is to simply ignore everyone that goes "you always need one night to regain spells, everyone knows that, and any other notion is completely unrealistic".

Are you not resting during your one week trek through the desert? That seems far more unrealistic than the one long rest per day rule. That basically is what humans have been doing for centuries

I am all for keeping long rest and getting rid of short rest as a recharge mechanic altogether, unfortunately that does not appear likely to happen with the 2024 rules. If Kobold or Cubicle 7 do that, I switch in an instant

 

[mamba]

If you lament this like I do then we're in agreement

I lament the lack of more drastic changes, I don’t think we are looking for the same changes however

 

[UngainlyTitan]

What works in 5E is the core balance between casters and warriors. It is, in my mind, completely superior overall to any other edition of D&D or Pathfinder, but there is ample room for improvement. What I would have liked is a new edition filling the biggest gaps in 5E.

• The game doesn't offer nearly enough customization for veteran gamers. By far the most pressing issue is: once you've decided your class and sub-class, that's basically it except for spell selection. 17 levels is much too many without a new major life path choice.
• The game has completely abandoned the value of gold
• WotC doesn't seem to have the self-confidence to revitalize the high levels

This has nothing to do with the self confidence of the designers and everything to do with marketing.
On thing that is clear at this stage is that WoTC is very marketing and market research driven.

A 6th Edition where you start by
...compressing most (if not all) level 12-19 non-spell abilities; giving them out over perhaps levels 9-12, and then inventing new actually powerful stuff to hand out at actual high levels. Either that, or admit defeat by making the PHB cover only levels 1-12. This does have one benefit: any subsequent book (to cover high-level play) would be judged on its ability to actually make high levels work. By bundling together high levels with the base levels, as WotC has done forever, they can hide mediocre high level rules in plain sight
...adding at least a second tier to subclassing, so at level 10 or 12 or so you can branch out in a new direction, including ones suitable for more epic high level play... These should ideally be completely independent of your earlier choice of subclass and class!
...re-issuing a new edition of Magic Item Compendium would go a loong way of making D&D useful for me without loads of homework

The problem of high level play from a marketing and sales perspective is that, everyone wants to start at level 1 and campaigns naturally break up at around the time taken to reach level 12 to 15. The level are as compressed as they come. One levels up at a pretty rapid clip in the modern game. So much so, I have had people wanting a slightly slower level progression to "enjoy the ride".

Edit: To clarify, this natural campaign end means that WoTC believe that material produced for high level play will not sell. Maybe they are right.

If high level play is to gain traction, then I think someone would have to successfully market adventures that begin from level 7 and level 12, to
demonstrate that there is a market there and perhaps one will see Wizards take notice of it.

Eidt: To elaborate, I think that to create a market for high level play that is worth Wizards time, starting at high level needs to be normalised.
May be the VTT play will do that.

 

[tetrasodium]

Long Rest recharge characters are flatly superior to Short Rest recharge or no recharge characters in absolutely the vast majority of plausible/possible situations in 5E.

So, no, that's actually a weak point of 5E, not a strength. It's nowhere near as bad about that as 3E was but also not as good about that as 4E was.

Ironically despite that it was easier for the GM to balance differing levels of charop in 3.cx than in 5e. Sure there were limits& there was only so much that could be done if a bulid went out of its way to be awful but the system had hooks on the metaphorical scale for the GM to hangtheir thumb. Between expected magic item churn, prereqs, body slot & bonus type conflicts/stacking & a tendency for PCs to engage in some form of weapon specialization beyond half ythe table saying "I'll only use x because it's objectively best in literally every way" with the other half saying similar for Y.

As @mamba mentioned, short rests as written as a recharge mechanic can't die soon enough

 

[Marandahir]

This thread alone show how important it is for WotC to thread the needle between people who want Short Rests to die a fiery death, people who want Long Rests to die a fiery death, people who want Vancian recharge mechanics to die a fiery death, people who want one or multiple or all of these things to remain in the game as they are, and people who want one or multiple or all of these things to be revised in some way to rebalance them.

We're not a representative sample, no, but we are a very good anecdote of how the player base community can see the same things and come to wildly different conclusions of what will "fix" the game (including do-nothing because it's already perfect as is).

 

[Ruin Explorer]

This thread alone show how important it is for WotC to thread the needle between people who want Short Rests to die a fiery death, people who want Long Rests to die a fiery death, people who want Vancian recharge mechanics to die a fiery death, people who want one or multiple or all of these things to remain in the game as they are, and people who want one or multiple or all of these things to be revised in some way to rebalance them.

We're not a representative sample, no, but we are a very good anecdote of how the player base community can see the same things and come to wildly different conclusions of what will "fix" the game (including do-nothing because it's already perfect as is).

Maybe I'm blind but I'm not really seeing ANYONE who is "pro Short Rest" here.

Or anywhere else, particularly.

People disagree as to how exactly Short Rests should be changed or eliminated, but it's a surprisingly close to unanimous agreement that "1 hour Short Rests" suck.

 

[Micah Sweet]

If 6E would do away with the hard connection between "days" and rests, I would be very happy.

The only sensible way to support both fast- and slow-paced campaigns, say:

• your mission is to clear out the goblin caves. Expect one combat encounter every five minutes or so
• your mission is to cross the Big Desolate Desert. Expect one combat encounter every week or so

Is to simply ignore everyone that goes "you always need one night to regain spells, everyone knows that, and any other notion is completely unrealistic".

Obviously the game should give the GM the ability to state that for the first adventure, a long rest requires, say, twenty minutes of downtime, while for the second adventure, a long rest requires you to find an oasis and spend three days there. (Or some such)

This is almost to the level that it merits inclusion on my earlier list.

That would be an explicit shift to a much more gamist mindset than any non-4e edition has espoused.

It seems to me that what a lot of people here actually want is a game much closer to 4e than what we have. That's fine, but I think we would all benefit from that opinion being presented upfront. The biggest conflict that I see amongst veteran players is between those who prefer the direction 4e went with the game and want a return to that philosophy, or further, and those who prefer something like what we have, or like pre-4e philosophies (if not necessarily the actual rules).

 

[Marandahir]

Maybe I'm blind but I'm not really seeing ANYONE who is "pro Short Rest" here.

Or anywhere else, particularly.

People disagree as to how exactly Short Rests should be changed or eliminated, but it's a surprisingly close to unanimous agreement that "1 hour Short Rests" suck.

I know I'm not the only one here who has espoused a preference for 1-hour short rests. Not going to dig back through 26 pages of this thread and all the other threads that have touched on this to find and cite the others who have seemed to support it. I also think they can speak well enough for themselves.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

That's fine, but I think we would all benefit from that opinion being presented upfront.

I think that's not reasonable to ask for, but not perhaps for the reasons you might think.

Rather, this isn't a pre-existing opinion. A lot of the people who have expressed ideas that you're describing as '4E-like' are not people who actually think "I want a game that's more like 4E".

Rather, they're seeing the problems or limitations 5E has, and looking for solutions, and a lot of those solutions are naturally quite game-ist. I wouldn't say there's any real difference in game-ist-ness between that idea and "regain 100% of HP on a Long Rest" though. Neither is remotely simulationist. In fact, if anything, what he's describing is closer to narrativist, rather than game-ist.