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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[Maxperson]

See @CapnZapp you point at WotC being unwilling to change because they want to milk the fandom.

I disagree.

They can’t make any changes because any changes are immediately rejected by a very loud cadre of fans who cannot bear the idea that WotC isn’t catering solely to them.

So WotC proposes a change and it gets shot down. WotC doesn’t innovate because they aren’t permitted to.

They already did. In 3.5 martial classes that achieved supernatural skills via martial means had magical abilities that transcended the mundane. They did it once. They can do it again and give martial classes fun stuff. It allowed them to do impossible things with their swords, muscles, etc.

 

[DEFCON 1]

'We paid for a functional product and expect a functional product' is an inane reason?

Yes. Because your "functional product" is functional for only one person. You. Every single other poster here would find a myriad of things within your "functional product" that they though sucked and would not want WotC to incorporate.

And WotC knows this just as much as we do. So they'll fix some bits and bobs from a list they've collected that people have said they've had problems with for these past nine years, but they aren't going to go out of their way to design some mythical "functional product" that only works for a handful of people.

Especially considering I suspect most people already know 5E to completely "functional" (as in able to be used to produce a perfectly fine D&D experience), it's just not as good as they'd wish it to be.

 

[Maxperson]

Potayto potahto. We’re largely in agreement. The market will not allow any big changes. Heck the market won’t even allow psionics.

But yeah, any actual deviation a la book of nine swords or a psionics handbook is only going to come from outside of DnD.

Which means, as a permanent dm, I’m never going to see it because players have zero interest.

If you were playing 3.5 which had both and the players had zero interest, would you see it? If your players have no interest, I'm not seeing how the existence of those things makes a difference.

 

[Remathilis]

Agreed. There are plenty of versions of D&D that can do the kind of magic levels I want. WotC abandoned that path a long time ago.

To be fair, WotC didn't abandon as much as refocus. TSR wanted D&D to be everything from a floor wax to a dessert topping. It did that by rewriting and rewriting the rules to the point it was an incomprehensible mess. WotC attempted for the most part to keep the game consistent and focused on what it considered the core game play loop. I will never fault WotC for picking a style and sticking with it, even if it wasn't the style I always wanted.

 

[Parmandur]

If the proposal gets, say 60% approval, then I believe there is a pretty strong case that whatever the current solution is, does not have 70% approval.

I wouldn't make any case based on a lack of data: WotC knows how the current solutions have scored across a decade, and how the proposal ranked. And soon theybwill know hoebthisnproposal rates.

 

[Micah Sweet]

To be fair, WotC didn't abandon as much as refocus. TSR wanted D&D to be everything from a floor wax to a dessert topping. It did that by rewriting and rewriting the rules to the point it was an incomprehensible mess. WotC attempted for the most part to keep the game consistent and focused on what it considered the core game play loop. I will never fault WotC for picking a style and sticking with it, even if it wasn't the style I always wanted.

Oh, I don't "blame" them, per say. I just preferred an open game that can be molded the way we want it to what WotC decided would sell the most copies.

 

[mamba]

I wouldn't make any case based on a lack of data: WotC knows how the current solutions have scored across a decade, and how the proposal ranked. And soon theybwill know hoebthisnproposal rates.

I am not making a case for anything specific here, just for always requiring a 70% approval running into some scenarios that do not work very well with that approach

I also do not like the arguing from ‘WotC knows best, they have all this data’ when we do not have that data, so cannot confirm or deny that claim. If they did, then we would not need a playtest to begin with.

 

[Parmandur]

I am not making a case for anything specific here, just for always requiring a 70% approval running into some scenarios that do not work very well with that approach

I also do not like the arguing from ‘WotC knows best, they have all this data’ when we do not have that data, so cannot confirm or deny that claim. If they did, then we would not need a playtest to begin with.

It's not an argument that WotC has more data, that's just a fact: they have years of massive surveys of the 2014 options, every couple of years they would do surveys similar to these playtest surveys. They have data on pain points, and now have A-B testing on solutions to pain points. That doesn't mean they "know best"...but they have the most data, and can make comparisons.

 

[tetrasodium]

.

I am not making a case for anything specific here, just for always requiring a 70% approval running into some scenarios that do not work very well with that approach

I also do not like the arguing from ‘WotC knows best, they have all this data’ when we do not have that data, so cannot confirm or deny that claim. If they did, then we would not need a playtest to begin with.

I've got to agree. The 70 percent thing even makes it harder for the gm to wrench the game away from half heartedly standing in conflict with either recovery pattern over to standing firmly on either side. As soon as the gm tries to pull it the extra hypothetical 5% from the earlier hypothetical mentioned of 65% either way the gm is going to be forced to crash through someone's nugget of gold. Done enough times the gm is going to quickly face a table of players united in the idea that it doesn't matter why it was done or how much better it could be because they all agree that nerfs were handed down.

When that happens the players stonewall around "wotc designed it this was because it was the most fun, they did all kinds of surveys and such.... Your house rules can't be fun".

 

[mamba]

It's not an argument that WotC has more data, that's just a fact: they have years of massive surveys of the 2014 options

I am not saying they don’t, my point was that saying something must be popular because WotC did it and they have all this data is flawed, when we have no way of confirming what the data says or whether it even is relevant to the case in question.

This is an unverified assumption at best, I would like more than that