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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Quickleaf" data-source="post: 9253805" data-attributes="member: 20323">Right, I have no special insight.I'm just thinking about similar UA leadtime to products that have come from WotC in the past, like the 2016 exploration UA which had a year or more leadtime prior to the November 2017 publication of XGtE. The question is about public/external playtesting. They definitely can do their own internal testing process, tighten that up, cut corners here or there to meet their deadline. External playtesting is different, and you can see that in the lead time required for past books where public UAs were released.Basically, I'm using their own metrics from the recent past of this edition, to evaluate their timeline with the upcoming 2024 books. Obviously, there may be flaws in my assessment. For one example, maybe they've vastly improved / streamlined their external playtesting process since Tasha's Cauldron of Everything.I replied to someone else about this, but I don't think it's all or nothing – it's not about excluding or including spells, it's about how to include that legacy content without disrupting/shutting down a potential avenue for enjoying the game. The changes in the Tiny Hut spell over the editions are a perfect microcosm of the bigger issue, as I mentioned upthread.Sure, I can dig in deeper... EDIT: Apologies for the length of my reply...I think the UA8 Barbarian's Level 9: Brutal Strike is a fair example. On the surface, it sounds like the kind of thing a player would love, building off of Reckless Attack to give more choices! Now you can deal 1d10 more damage, or push the target 15-feet and close the gap without provoking, or you can briefly reduce their speed by 15 feet. What's not to like?I'll go through each of these three use cases of Brutal Strike and why they would benefit from playtesting specifically against the redesigned monsters...Brutal Strike: Damage ExampleI'm going off memory that dual weapon fighting in the UA is (paraphrasing), as it's not in UA8 and I don't want to dig through to find it... "when you engage in two-weapon fighting, you can make a bonus attack with your offhand weapon as part of the Attack action"OK, what does this look like on a dual-wielding barbarian, multiclassed into Fighter for Action Surge, under the effects of a haste spell? Well, the bonus damage from Brutal Strike in that case would be 1d10+1d10 (dual weapon attacks) + 1d10+1d10 (Extra Attack with dual weapons) +1d10 (Haste extra attack) + 1d10+1d10 (Action Surge, dual weapon attacks) + 1d10+1d10 (Action Surge, Extra Attack with dual weapons) = +9d10 damage or 49.5 additional damage.But what does the actual damage look like, not just the additional damage compared to 2014 Barbarian? Something like this...assuming no magic items... (1d8+5+1d10) x 5 + (1d6+5+1d10) x 4 = 75 + 56 = 131Will that potential for greater damage than the 2014 barbarian affect how monsters facing 9th+ level PCs are designed? I don't know, I haven't playtested it andI haven't seen any redesigned monsters.I'm not cherry-picking, literally finding the first things that I see from the current Unearthed Arcana and that spring up on Kobold Fight Club when I search for a CR 9 monster... ok... Abdominable Yeti has 137 hit points. So the 2024 barbarian with a (barbarian 9/fighter 2 build) and caster support reasonable at that level could potentially kill this monster in one round with slightly above average rolls or a magic weapon... something very unlikely for a 2014 Barbarian. Is that an issue? Maybe. Maybe not. It is a difference between 2014 and 2024 though.Brutal Strike: Push 15-feet ExampleWhat happens when a PC can regularly push 15 feet multiple times per turn? A 30 foot net push is completely within the realm of possibility, and as you can imagine from the extreme example above, you could get a lot more than that.We've never seen that kind of consistent really big pushing in 5e, barring some exceptional build perhaps. What does that look like in play? Are there new sorts of "counters" we need to think about with monsters intended to play as mini-bosses or have a more enduring presence in dangerous terrain? For example, in 2014 monsters we hardly see any at all that say "reduce forced movement to this monster by X", in fact no immunity or resistance covers forced movement. There's also no saving throw involved, so Legendary Resistances won't save the Death Knight from that 500-foot drop. Does this use of Brutal Strike mean the designers need to consider implementing that in some cases? I don't know, maybe.Brutal Strike: Hamstring Blow ExampleWhat happens when a PC can regularly reduce a monster's Speed to 0? Does that make for fun and dynamic fights? Or does it contribute to the sense of "grind" by making the fight more static / "stand there and trade blows?" Yes, that question can be answered by playtesting with 2014 monsters.However, what if there are certain skirmisher monster that we feel shouldn't be subject to this, or should be less subject to this speed reduction? The aforementioned quickling might be an example, or maybe there are other monsters we have planned in our adventure path where this would utterly neuter the intended design of the encounter. Again we have a question of are there new sorts of "counters" we need to think about? There's no resistances/immunities to speed reduction. There's no save, so Legendary Resistances don't apply. It seems to affect fliers like dragons, so now it looks like the barbarian can knock dragons out of the sky with a thrown weapon and then utterly lock them down, and the dragon has no recourse. Is that a fun dragon fight or do we need to playtest new dragon designs with counters to effects like Hamstring Blow?Bonus Round - does more choice in-play lead to longer player turns, and if so, should that influence how monsters are redesigned?EDIT: This is a further downstream concern, but the trend I see in the UA class redesigns is for more choices during play... I wonder if this means greater handling time on player turns, as even just a little bit can be compounded over a session. If that's the case, does part of the monster design imperative for 2024 become designing monsters to quicken monster turns compared to handling time of 2014 monsters? That's a much more complex question, and reaches far beyond the focus of looking at Brutal Strike, but it's one that really can only be answered by playtesting.</blockquote>

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