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.

 

[Misanthrope Prime]

Building around the encounter as the primary mode of challenge rather than the adventuring day can absolutely work, and 4e was an excellent example of that design done very well. Though, I find that the main drawback of that approach is it tends to mean you have to win every encounter or die (or critically injured or whatever if character death is off the table). The nice thing about the attrition model of difficulty is that retreating to recover offers a failure state other than death or knockout.

I was under the impression that this is, weirdly, still the design paradigm for 5e. Specifically, I think Crawford mentioned that the designers always assume that players will start combat with all of their resources at max- max spell slots, max HP, max class features per rest. They assume that you've lost no health or cast no spells between the entrance of the dungeon and the boss. That's basically designing only for the encounters, to me, and that may be both why many contemporary 5e players (especially those influenced by actual play podcasts) usually just do one big combat per session and dungeon crawling is an increasingly under-emphasized part of 5e, especially if we understand dungeon to mean "a physically restricted area of resource-draining encounters that the players cannot always leave and return or rest in".

 

[wizard71]

Oh look, more martial classes stealing from casters. Stop the madness already WOTC.

I am find it ironic both Charlequin and Wiley 32 find amusement in my disdain for turning martials into mini casters. I don’t share their sense of humor. I feel that it’s a distinct lack of imagination by WOTC and lazy copy paste of limited spell slots because the design team lacks creativity. Are martials so inept that they need better hit points, multiple attacks, core features, better weapons and armor PLUS spells and spell slots to compete with casters in robes without the weapons and armor, weaker health and the same spell slots? I think they should be laughing at martials ineptitude instead of me.

Oh look, more martial classes stealing from casters. Stop the madness already WOTC.

 

[Yaarel]

Building around the encounter as the primary mode of challenge rather than the adventuring day can absolutely work, and 4e was an excellent example of that design done very well. Though, I find that the main drawback of that approach is it tends to mean you have to win every encounter or die (or critically injured or whatever if character death is off the table). The nice thing about the attrition model of difficulty is that retreating to recover offers a failure state other than death or knockout.

Short rest seems a compromise. One can flee from a pair-shaped encounter, but the team might not find a safe place to refresh for an hour.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

Not really a given: there are people who don't play full Adventure Days, but I see no particular reason to assume that is normative.

Havent the designers even said that most people do not run full adventuring days?

Like in discussing why they were trying to rebuild the warlock, i think they said it pretty plainly.

A 6 encounter day is wild. Balancing the game around that...oof.

 

[Charlaquin]

I was under the impression that this is, weirdly, still the design paradigm for 5e. Specifically, I think Crawford mentioned that the designers always assume that players will start combat with all of their resources at max- max spell slots, max HP, max class features per rest. They assume that you've lost no health or cast no spells between the entrance of the dungeon and the boss. That's basically designing only for the encounters, to me, and that may be both why many contemporary 5e players (especially those influenced by actual play podcasts) usually just do one big combat per session and dungeon crawling is an increasingly under-emphasized part of 5e, especially if we understand dungeon to mean "a physically restricted area of resource-draining encounters that the players cannot always leave and return or rest in".

Strange, that’s the opposite of what I’ve heard; encounter design assumes the PCs don’t spend any resources, which is the same as assuming they’re out of them. And the PCs are favored to win without spending any limited resources, but they will definitely lose a good chunk of HP in the process. Which is exactly why PCs need to be worn down, so that they will be forced into the situation where they don’t have other resources to spend to clean up the fight before taking that damage. And it takes about 6 encounters to get them to that point. That flexible 2 in the 6-8 encounter estimate is to get through their hit points.

 

[Charlaquin]

Short rest seems a compromise. One can flee from a pair-shaped encounter, but the team might not find a safe place to refresh for an hour.

Short rests after every encounter are a very important part of how 4e is able to balance around individual encounters so effectively.

 

[Charlaquin]

Havent the designers even said that most people do not run full adventuring days?

Yes

Like in discussing why they were trying to rebuild the warlock, i think they said it pretty plainly.

The thing is, there’s nothing wrong with not doing a full 6-8 encounters every day. 6-8 encounters is what a party of 4-5 can handle, not what they MUST face. It’s a good thing that parties have the opportunity to decide to turn back and rest before they reach that point of maximum attrition. That’s how adventures are able to have fail states other than everyone in the party running out of HP.

A 6 encounter day is wild. Balancing the game around that...oof.

It has worked pretty well for the past decade.

 

[Parmandur]

Havent the designers even said that most people do not run full adventuring days?

Like in discussing why they were trying to rebuild the warlock, i think they said it pretty plainly.

A 6 encounter day is wild. Balancing the game around that...oof.

Yet they keep publishimg books with Dungeons with 6 or more fights...

 

[Hussar]

It’s easier to balance encounters and make them easier or harder, yes. But other than running out of HP, how exactly does one lose in an encounter-based challenge structure?

Umm, I'm not sure I understand the question. Regardless of the stucture, the only way to lose an encounter is to run out of HP. In an "adventuring day" paradigm, how do you lose an encounter?

And, frankly? Who cares? The odds of a group "losing" an encounter in any paradigm is vanishingly small. PC's almost never lose. That's the point. In a 6-8 Encounter Adventuring day, you're going to "win" 6-8 encounters. In an Encounter based system, you're going to win encounter. It's not any different. And, in both paradigms, you stop when you run out of ways of recharging your HP. In 4e, it was when you ran out of Hit Dice, in 5e, it's when you run out of spells.

In 5e, it's the casters that dictate pace more than anything. In 4e, the pace was dictated by the group and didn't really matter which classes you had on hand.

Back in my 3e days, when HP battery healing wands were so common, it was always the casters that dictated pacing. The casters are out of gas? Time to rest. We never ran into 5 minute working days because it took a lot longer than that for the casters to run out of gas.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

Yes

The thing is, there’s nothing wrong with not doing a full 6-8 encounters every day. 6-8 encounters is what a party of 4-5 can handle, not what they MUST face. It’s a good thing that parties have the opportunity to decide to turn back and rest before they reach that point of maximum attrition. That’s how adventures are able to have fail states other than everyone in the party running out of HP.

Oh, I know, trust me. But they have found that groups run so few encounters per day that many aren't taking short rests at all, which to me means probably less than 4 encounters.

It has worked pretty well for the past decade.

Has it? I haven't seen it, but I know you've said you actually play that way. I wonder how many groups actually enjoy the game when run that way, ie which of us is more normative. (I suspect that neither of us is ever accused of being normies in any other context!)

Yet they keep publishimg books with Dungeons with 6 or more fights...

I haven't seen any in the last several years that seem to be built on the assumption that anyone is pushing through the whole thing in one go.


Maybe someday we will get a version of the game that looks a lot like 5e but is balanced around short rests rather than long rests.