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 ...

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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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[mamba]

You don’t see the difference between being able to recharge during a fight, and having to have relative safety and calm for at least long enough to catch your breath in order to recharge?

No, a 5 min short rest and an automatic recharge after each encounter is the same to me. 5 min is small enough to essentially always be available outside of an encounter. At that point I see very little practical difference to something just always being available.

I want none of this, in fact I do not want any skill recharge on short rest.

 

[FitzTheRuke]

I don't have enough of the 5E adventure books to be able to check... but I wonder if perhaps in a lot of them they actually say things like 'A short rest of an hour' in them (rather than just 'short rest')? Such that changing the default time in the 5E24 game would just end up possibly confusing people who own those books (and/or are looking at compatibility?) The new PHB says short rests are 10 minutes, all the other adventure products WotC have produced previously have all said 'short rest of an hour'?

I have zero idea if that is even a thing or if its a possible reason why WotC might be reticent to change the default length of a short rest... but I'm just spitballing out ideas here. You'd figure there'd have to be some reason (unless of course the most obvious reason being that most people they have received word from has never had issues with the 1 hour short rest.)

I have ALL the books and I don't recall an Adventure ever mentioning short rests at all, far or less what you describe. Also, I would think that they might take into account that some people might play with optional gritty mode, or whatever. I also don't think it would be all that confusing to note that it's been changed. But who knows what comes up behind-the-scenes. I'm not sure that I'd want to know.

 

[FitzTheRuke]

I think that's the whole deal.

To me, it just seems absurd that when WotC says that most people don't use Feats, thst is dismissed as ridiculous on the face of it...when that matches my entire experience of 5E. Like, just because WotC says their data doesn't match someone's personal experience doesn't mean the data is inaccurate.

You're right that it's a smaller per cent that plays with feats and even less with multiclassing (and when they do, it's generally not everyone at the table). It's not quite what I was talking about though. In fact, I was more speaking to the opposite: The frustrating tendency to assume that one's anecdotal experience is equally valid (or equally invalid) to expert opinion, if said expert doesn't "prove it" sufficiently.

The probelm with short rests isn't really their duration. 30 mins or half an hour or seven days or a year or 10 minutes or whatever, if your DM isn't actively considering them, you might not have a practical window for them. Just like long rests. The exact duration isn't what's holding them back (and is incredibly simple to change).

Long rests are just valuable enough to be actively considered and used by the DM in planning.

Arguably, if short rests were more valuable, they might be considered more. A short rest that was significant to everyone the party would, I think, be considered more as well.

But this isn't just short rests.

This is also an issue for downtime - a lot of tables don't use it because 10 days isn't space that their story or adventure design have really thought about giving the party.

This is also an issue for half of the equipment list, for encumbrance, for copper peices - a lot of tables don't use rope or rations or 10-ft poles or mirrors or bother with weights or small coins because the adventure is a cinematic story that occurs on an immediate timeline and doesn't have a lot of patience for faffing about with these more "dungeon survival" elements.

Most tables do what 5e was mostly designed well to do, and what 5e was mostly designed to do, in terms of adventures, was stories in which a plucky nakama saves the world. If you want those stories to include both overnight sleeps and momentary pauses, then both need to be doing something. Long rests are doing something big. Short rests are just...ignorable. So either nix them (leave them is as an optional rule or something), or give them teeth.

I think the general thrust of your argument has merit, but I also believe that many DMs would consider Short Rests more easily into their narratives if the were actually short. Like, short enough that you don't feel the need to have the guards change shifts during them.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Yes. To both.

But if you upgrade yourself on the fly, you don't have to pay anyway.

Denying new players a quality of life upgrade is a bit selfish, as we who own everything already won't buy new books anyway.

It is nearly as if some people think: if I don't get upgrades for free, noone should get them.

Again, you're making the assumption that this is in fact an upgrade, and further that it is one worth paying $50 for. The argument could also be made that, if you are actually a new player, then it isn't an upgrade anyway, but rather your first exposure to the system, a system with a lot of fans of the game from before that "upgrade" was released.

Your entire argument falls apart the moment you stop assuming that what you think is an upgrade is shared by everyone.

 

[Parmandur]

I have ALL the books and I don't recall an Adventure ever mentioning short rests at all, far or less what you describe. Also, I would think that they might take into account that some people might play with optional gritty mode, or whatever. I also don't think it would be all that confusing to note that it's been changed. But who knows what comes up behind-the-scenes. I'm not sure that I'd want to know.

I wouldn't be surprised if they make rhe dial-friendly nature of this even more clear in the next DMG, rather than buried in the dark esoteric hallways of the weird chapter near the end like theybdid in 2014.

 

[Micah Sweet]

The probelm with short rests isn't really their duration. 30 mins or half an hour or seven days or a year or 10 minutes or whatever, if your DM isn't actively considering them, you might not have a practical window for them. Just like long rests. The exact duration isn't what's holding them back (and is incredibly simple to change).

Long rests are just valuable enough to be actively considered and used by the DM in planning.

Arguably, if short rests were more valuable, they might be considered more. A short rest that was significant to everyone the party would, I think, be considered more as well.

But this isn't just short rests.

This is also an issue for downtime - a lot of tables don't use it because 10 days isn't space that their story or adventure design have really thought about giving the party.

This is also an issue for half of the equipment list, for encumbrance, for copper peices - a lot of tables don't use rope or rations or 10-ft poles or mirrors or bother with weights or small coins because the adventure is a cinematic story that occurs on an immediate timeline and doesn't have a lot of patience for faffing about with these more "dungeon survival" elements.

Most tables do what 5e was mostly designed well to do, and what 5e was mostly designed to do, in terms of adventures, was stories in which a plucky nakama saves the world. If you want those stories to include both overnight sleeps and momentary pauses, then both need to be doing something. Long rests are doing something big. Short rests are just...ignorable. So either nix them (leave them is as an optional rule or something), or give them teeth.

Yeah, I like all those things, which is why my 5e games don't feature a plucky nakama saving the world.

 

[Clint_L]

We don't handle short rests in terms of a specific, set time (e.g. 1 hour, 30 minutes, whatever). We handle them based on whether they make sense in the story. Because let's face it: any time you settle on is arbitrary anyway, so if you were going to allow a short rest, then you were going to just say that the party had an hour, 30 minutes, or whatever. So instead of asking whether they have an hour to spare, the players just ask if they have time for a short rest.

 

[MockingBird]

We don't handle short rests in terms of a specific, set time (e.g. 1 hour, 30 minutes, whatever). We handle them based on whether they make sense in the story. Because let's face it: any time you settle on is arbitrary anyway, so if you were going to allow a short rest, then you were going to just say that the party had an hour, 30 minutes, or whatever. So instead of asking whether they have an hour to spare, the players just ask if they have time for a short rest.

Same

 

[doctorbadwolf]

No, a 5 min short rest and an automatic recharge after each encounter is the same to me. 5 min is small enough to essentially always be available outside of an encounter. At that point I see very little practical difference to something just always being available.

I want none of this, in fact I do not want any skill recharge on short rest.

I get not liking short rests (kindof), but…they two things are very different. Like the 5-minute rest means you have to take a break between fights rather than press on indefinitely. That’s different from even “recharges at the end of an encounter” models, much less atwill recharge.

 

[Remathilis]

You're right that it's a smaller per cent that plays with feats and even less with multiclassing (and when they do, it's generally not everyone at the table). It's not quite what I was talking about though. In fact, I was more speaking to the opposite: The frustrating tendency to assume that one's anecdotal experience is equally valid (or equally invalid) to expert opinion, if said expert doesn't "prove it" sufficiently.


I think the general thrust of your argument has merit, but I also believe that many DMs would consider Short Rests more easily into their narratives if the were actually short. Like, short enough that you don't feel the need to have the guards change shifts during them.

I think the time/benefit ratio needs to be considered.

In 2014, every short rest gets a warlock his two highest spell slots back. Meaning every rest gives him two fireballs, banishments or similar. That is not trivial power and it needs a long rest period to balance it. If a short rest is 5 min, the warlock always walks in full strength and makes the wizard blush.

By contrast: the cleric refreshes a use of channel divinity. A nice feature, but not her primary power source. As long as she has spells, she can afford not recharging it and if she does, she's still more worried about her spell attrition. No cleric is going to say: "I'm out of spells, but I got full channel divinities. Let's rock." So her rests could be shorter and it doesn't affect her as much.

As a third example: the rogue has no need for short rests until 20th level. All they get out of it is HD. So their rests can be 5 min and it doesn't matter, they will go until out of HD and low on HP.

It's hard to balance how long a rest should be because every class gets different amounts of use out of it. Which is why I'd either like every class to have a great need for it (and balance it by being difficult) or have minor need (and make them short and snappy). But we're still stuck with some classes being too dependent and others not enough.