Dungeons & Dragons Playtests Four New Mystic-Themed Subclasses

Dungeons & Dragons has dropped their first Unearthed Arcana playtest of 2026, with four brand-new subclasses being tested. Today, Wizards of the Coast posted a Mystic Subclasses Unearthed Arcana playtest to D&D Beyond, featuring four magic-themed subclasses. The new subclasses include the Warrior of the Mystic Arts Monk subclass, the Oath of the Spellguard Paladin subclass, the Magic Stealer Rogue subclass and the Vestige Patron Warlock subclass.

The Warrior of the Mystic Arts is a spellcasting subclass that grants Monks the ability to cast Sorcerer spells up to 4th level spells. The Oath of the Spellguard is designed with protecting magic-casters in mind, while the Magic Stealer Rogue targets spellcasting and can empower their Sneak Attacks with magic stolen from nearby spellcasters. The Vestige Patron Warlock forms a bond with a dying god, with the god taking on a vestige form as a companion. The Vestige companion grows in power with the spellcaster. Notably, the Vestige Patron draws inspiration from the Binder from past editions of D&D.

There's no indication when or what this new Unearthed Arcana could be related to. There are several Unearthed Arcanas not currently attached to an announced D&D product, although two almost are certainly tied to a Dark Sun sourcebook.

You can check out the subclasses here. Feedback opens for the playtest on January 22nd.

 

[Parmandur]

I don't agree with that. Once you make it one big encounter due to the birds alerting all the other smaller encounters, you've gone from adventuring day math to one much higher and swingier CR combat which is how a lot of groups handle encounters outside of the adventuring day math.

Realistically, players aren't going to let the birds bring the whole camp on them. They will spend a resource to stop them first.

 

[SlyFlourish]

@Morrus or anyone. Is there a longer list of all the RPGs voted on with the number of votes?

 

[Morrus]

@Morrus or anyone. Is there a longer list of all the RPGs voted on with the number of votes?

There is not. I get asked this every year, and while its great to be in the top 10 or so, I don’t feel that it’s kind to do so for those further down the list. I could tell you who was bottom, with 0 votes (they didn’t even vote for themselves!), but I don’t feel that benefits anybody.

(It’s not like they even chose to enter—they had to be nominated by somebody else!)

 

[Zardnaar]

2014 ruleset. The party are level 15 and include a Celestial Warlock (chainpact healer), an Eldritch Knight, a Bear Totem Barbarian and a psychic rogue. They find themselves aboard Pietra Van Riese's ghost pirate ship, having royally cheated her much earlier in the campaign. They are missing their sorcerer, who was not involved in the double cross. Pietra is a souped up death knight with fathomer warlock abilities.
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She has about a dozen minions.
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Aside from missing their primary caster, what really gave the party problems was when the minions started landing grapples and jumping over the side of the ship holding PCs. This temporarily removed the warlock and barbarian for about two rounds, but the rogue and EK where eventually able to take her down, the EK with a sliver of hp remaining.

2014 kinda easier encounter building. But PCs will steamroll it even harder.

Encounter buildings always been an artform even in 3E snd 4E.

 

[SlyFlourish]

There is not. I get asked this every year, and while its great to be in the top 10 or so, I don’t feel that it’s kind to do so for those further down the list. I could tell you who was bottom, with 0 votes (they didn’t even vote for themselves!), but I don’t feel that benefits anybody.

(It’s not like they even chose to enter—they had to be nominated by somebody else!)

How about a list of all the games nominated? I know its in the voting page I think but I'd love to have a copy.

I want to know where my voted games showed up

 

[Paul Farquhar]

Realistically, players aren't going to let the birds bring the whole camp on them. They will spend a resource to stop them

Unless you are tracking arrows, not any resource that matters.

 

[Charlaquin]

Y’all are clearly demonstrating why WotC decided not to explain the adventuring day in the 2024 DMG. Nowhere in the 2014 DMG does it say you MUST have 6-8 encounters in a day, and if you aren’t putting those 6-8 encounters on the critical path through the adventure and providing time pressure to prevent the players from taking rests, you’re doing it wrong and your game is doomed. It’s an intentional part of the challenge that players won’t know how many encounters they’re going to need to face, and might accidentally use their resources inefficiently. They’re supposed to be able to decide to retreat and rest before having done 6-8 encounters if they feel they need to. The 6-8 encounter guideline tells you how much a typical party can handle not how much they need to be forced through. Yet, everyone still interprets it as a requirement and then gets mad about that requirement. So, they decided if everyone is going to misinterpret their explanation of how the system’s underlying math works and get angry at their own misinterpretation, may as well just not explain it. It’ll still be true that 4-5 PCs can handle 6-8 medium encounters between long rests if they get 1-2 short rests in-between, whether the DM consciously knows that or not.

 

[SkidAce]

2014 kinda easier encounter building. But PCs will steamroll it even harder.

Encounter buildings always been an artform even in 3E snd 4E.

Agreed. Encounter building has been an artform in D&D from the begining.

 

[Hussar]

Not really "since inception". There was no "you should have X many encounters per day" in early D&D. None of the old adventures were designed around a particular number of encounters.

This would very much be news to any old school player. How much ink is spilled on things like time keeping and how long your light sources last? How many times have we been told that it was impossible to rest in an adventure and you always had to go back to town, which meant that the dungeon restocked and encounters got harder?

Over and over again, we've been told how old adventures were absolutely on a ticking clock and the whole point was to keep pushing forward because retreat and resting meant that your next expedition would either be that much harder or the baddies would just pick up their treasure and leave.

There might not have been a specific number of encounters, but, funnily enough, if you look at the old adventures, it always seemed like there were about six or eight encounters before you could get somewhere to rest up and restock. I mean, good grief, look at the Caves of Chaos. Or Temple of Elemental Evil. There's a reason the Moat house has that many encounters. Against the Giants or any other big dungeon crawl were always designed around the assumption that the PC's would need to fill their tanks periodically. And conveniently enough, the adventures almost always provided a place for that to happen.

 

[Hussar]

The funny thing is, the best fix in D&D for this is to base things around the encounter. That solves all these problems. But, people absolutely hated it, so, we're stuck. Because if you balance around encounter, apparently, it's impossible to do random encounters or simple encounters (neither of which is actually true, but, that didn't stop people for endlessly repeating it).

So, we're stuck on the basic time being the day. Which means you have all these problems. It's not like these are new problems. We knew about these issues back in the 3e days. That's why 4e went to Encounter Balance. But, again, because everyone apparently hated that, we're not allowed to have that anymore. So, we get the balance that everyone wanted. Yay us.

It's hillarious to see someone like Mearls now pushing the idea of 1-3 encounters per rest period after watching him absolutely trash the exact same cycle ten years ago.