D&D (2024) New Unearthed Arcana Playtest Includes Barbarian, Druid, and Monk

The latest Unearthed Arcana playtest packet is now live with new barbarian, druid, and monk versions, as well as new spells and weapons, and a revised Ability Score Improvement feat.

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WHATS INSIDE

Here are the new and revised elements in this article:

Classes. Three classes are here: Barbarian, Druid, and Monk. Each one includes one subclass: Path of the World Tree (Barbarian), Circle of the Moon (Druid), and Warrior of the Hand (Monk).

Spells. New and revised spells are included.

The following sections were introduced in a previous article and are provided here for reference:

Weapons. Weapon revisions are included.

Feats. This includes a revised version of Ability Score Improvement.

Rules Glossary. The rules glossary includes the few rules that have revised definitions in the playtest. In this document, any underlined term in the body text appears in the glossary.

 

[Charlaquin]

The Rules Glossary hasn't changed for several playtests, those are just the total list of core rule changes slated for the new books.

Yep, and hiding still makes you literally invisible

 

[Henadic Theologian]

The Conjuration changes sound promising. Wildshape? Still polishing the turd.

To those who liked the Conjuring Spells, it's sucks, it's a strict down grade the removes all the things that were fun and appealing about the OG versions.

They were variants of Spirit Guardians.

I'd prefer they just keep those spells like they are, except change them to an action to cast and increase the CR of Conjure Celestial if they are going to nerf the Coautl.

I'm giving all these Spells, except the new ones 1.

 

[Henadic Theologian]

Good news. Those are in there too. They are called Summon X.

They worked very differently from the Conjure Spells, and really don't replace all the elements of the Conjure Spells, like the ability to summon medium fey.

The nerf to the utility and fun of
Conjure Celestial alone is huge.

 

[Henadic Theologian]

Because the Tasha's Summoning Spells are being put in the PHB, and do conjuration better, but they also want to keep all the Spells in the PHB by name at least, I guess. So they are rewriting these to not be just worse versions of the Summon Spells.

They weren't worst, many of the Conjure Spells had better utility then Summon X that were 90% combat focused.

 

[Pauln6]

Did cure spells really need a buff?

I set the default level 1 as 2d8 and 2d4 but I have not been doubling them for every spell level

 

[Henadic Theologian]

The point is obviously to eliminate the conjure spells as originally written, which were problematic in a lot of ways. But if they just cut the spells entirely, people will object. So instead, they designed entirely new spells and gave them the same name, to try to sneak the removal of the original conjure spells past people’s radar.

And that won't work because if you like the OG Conjure Spells, your going to hate these Spells.

 

[BookTenTiger]

They weren't worst, many of the Conjure Spells had better utility then Summon X that were 90% combat focused.

I agree, I wish they had kept Summon spells as combat, and Conjure as utility. Make it kind of like Find Familiar. You can conjure an animal to help you climb, scout, sniff out threats, guide you through the wilderness... But it won't fight for you. To me that would be a much more interesting Conjure spell.

 

[Kobold Avenger]

I'm fine with the Conjure spells changing, looking up a bunch of creatures by CR you're stuck with having to make a lot of decisions that will slow the game down. And I'm someone who played a Summoner in Pathfinder 1e rules, who had to carry around a printout of all creatures summonable by the spells. So there's a reason I much prefer the Summon spells from Tasha which are coming to the PHB.

 

[Henadic Theologian]

I agree, I wish they had kept Summon spells as combat, and Conjure as utility. Make it kind of like Find Familiar. You can conjure an animal to help you climb, scout, sniff out threats, guide you through the wilderness... But it won't fight for you. To me that would be a much more interesting Conjure spell.

That's the perfect way to deal with Summon vs Conjure Spells, Summon us combat primary and Conjure is utility primarily.

I don't know why WotC didn't think of that simple solution.

 

[Nightfly]

This is my favorite playtest packet yet. Monk looks great -- ki points (or, ahem, discipline points) have effectively been doubled, which automatically makes the monk massively more fun and strong. Druid seems to be finally in a good spot, assuming that the PH will have enough options for wildshape. Barb isn't that much different but didn't need to be. The small changes to barb are all nice ones. The fixes to healing and summoning are just delightful.

Basically this packet fixed everything I was upset about (monks are weak and bland, druid wildshape was ruined in a previous packet) and also fixed stuff I didn't realize I ought to have been upset about (healing spells suck, too many summoned critters). This is GOOD.

I would happily play this version of D&D, right now, tomorrow, with no tweaks. I feel so much better about 5.5e now.