D&D (2024) First playtest thread! One D&D Character Origins.

[Ruin Explorer]

I mostly agree, though I think Skilled could prove pretty strong. A human with Skilled as their 1st level Feat will start with 6 skills before any granted from class! Humans will be incredible skill monkeys.

Being a skill monkey is not very helpful in 5E because so many skills come off INT/WIS/CHA and odds are, either none or one of those is high for any given character. If you have Skill Proficiencies but not the stats to back them up all you achieve is mildly irritating other players by slightly more often beating their specialised characters at rolls than the Barbarian rolling naked.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

Thinking about it more, less criticals is going to have an effect on minion hordes. A whole bunch of guys is likely to be a bit less effective now that they can't critical you... which I think is not a bad thing. I doubt we are going to be getting a bunch of low-level dudes with rechargeables, but maybe they'll find other ways of making them interesting without resorting just boosting damage. Also makes stuff that gives advantage to horde-ish foes less of a problem since you are going to get fewer damage spikes from crits.

If they're making any kind of effort to make encounter design easier or better, removing criticals from monsters would be a good move, frankly, yeah.

 

[Cadence]

So, is the Ardling a brand new thing and not in the OGL anywhere?

(If so, I'm kind of surprised there isn't some TM thing lurking around it).

 

[Haplo781]

I'm wondering if any spells will get a Psionic tag.

 

[rooneg]

Lucky - Choose to gain advantage, or force disadvantage after you've seen the result of the roll seems a little strong. Strikes me as a feat everyone is going to get.

The disadvantage is before you see the result of the roll, not after. The wording is different for the two options.

 

[Cadence]

I'm wondering if any spells will get a Psionic tag.

It feels like that will immediately cheese off 40-60% of everyone who wants psionics in the game (as a lot are firmly "psionics aren't spells").

 

[Charlaquin]

Aasimars seemingly still exist as they're depicted in MotM, they're just being more explicitly themed as "angel planetouched" - which they pretty much have always been in 5E, to be honest - while Ardlings are picking up the less human-looking "hound archon, guardinal, asuras, etc." type celestials.

Ardlings are currently my least-favorite part of the UA. I just don’t get them. Feels like they wanted a general anthro race in the PHB and also wanted an upper-planes counterpart to Tieflings in the PHB and used the existence of animal-like celestials to try to justify killing both birds with one stone. But the end result feels incohesive to me. Why does my catgirl character have the ability to grow wings? Something, something, upper planes. Meh. Just put Aasimar in and make a new general anthro race.

 

[Haplo781]

It feels like that will immediately cheese off 40-60% of everyone who wants psionics in the game (as a lot are firmly "psionics aren't spells").

As opposed to being cheesed off that psionics effectively don't exist?

 

[Zaukrie]

I like that everyone gets a feat at level 1. I'd like even more choices. I like my pcs to feel unique more.....

 

[Cruentus]

So , the only way to get the materials is to register on DnD Beyond, and the only way to create an account is to use your google or apple account? Am I missing something?