D&D (2024) Jeremy Crawford Gives an Overview of the New Unearthed Arcana

The upcoming Unearthed Arcana playtest packet for One D&D gets a preview from WotC's Jeremy Crawford. This is apparently the largest of these playtest packets so far, and the biggest Unearthed Arcana they have ever done, at 50 pages long.

It contains 5 classes, new spells, new feats, a revised rules glossary, and the new weapon mastery system.

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[mamba]

Why retain the property if it's intended to be outclassed?

because not everyone will have the mastery

Normal properties should still be relevant even with these masteries to encourage more comboing and the creation of interesting combat tactics. Besides it's a very boring mastery one more point of damage and now you can use shield. Hooray.

Not saying this cannot be improved

 

[Neonchameleon]

No Arcane Classes video yet? I am surprised.

It's not like they need to do much tbh. They've two very popular classes there - and a third that they worked out how to fix by the time they brought Tasha's out.

My suggestions:

Sorcerer:

• Full access to arcane (wizard) spells - although remaining a Spells Known caster
• Bring subclasses up to Tasha's standards (i.e. two more spells known per level, coming from the subclass)
• (I know they've said they want all Warlocks to Chaos Bolt - the subclass should change what it does)

Warlock:

• Ditch the half of Invocations that are terrible and add new ones that are good
• Subclass at 3, Pact Boon at 2. Pact of the Blade gives medium armour and shield proficiency and cha to attacks with extra attacks based on Warlock level. (Make Talisman core just because - and probably a "twisted healing" pact boon because people might sell their souls for that)
• Eldritch Blast is free - and each subclass gets an alternative to EB. Possibly you get Eldritch Blast or Eldritch Strike for a melee multiattack.

Wizard:

• More interesting subclasses

 

[Yaarel]

It's too bad dazed and stunned and such are so powerful, because weapons could do that. But, just too powerful.

Maybe. The Bloodied Condition becomes officials.

Then effects like Dazed and Stunned only become possible when the target is Bloodied, thus it becomes more possible to land solid blows.

This helps keep combat more realistic − and better balanced and more fair.

It is especially helpful for nonlethal combat in urban settings.

 

[WanderingMystic]

That just tells me that versitile is already too bad at its job and needs a boost instead of being written out of the system.

Thanks to the dueling fighting style it has always been worse to use a versatile weapon in two hands. Honestly with their decision to grant the dueling style a +2 to damage not only has versitle never been useful but also there is no reason to not use a shield which limits some things thematically.

I have never thought that the small boost to a two handed weapon over the +2 ac by wielding shield is worth while so I don't mind as much that the majority of the 1 handed non light weapons don't have as exciting weapon masteries.

 

[ZetaShift]

because not everyone will have the mastery


Not saying this cannot be improved

Yah and I'm hoping properties in general improve since they're very barebones. But as of rn the Flex property is easily the most boring one and doesn't really offer anything interesting.

 

[Yaarel]

Which weapons deserve "plot protection", to make them intentionally slightly better than other weapons? It depends on the culture of the setting.

Personally, I want circa 1000 Norse weapons to be effective:

• Sword (same as knightly arming sword and Celtic spatha, but different from the longsword)
• Spear (hunting)
• Axe (wood)
• Bow (hunting)
• Knife (utility)

I want the circa 1300 Versatile Longsword to be worthwhile for freehand grappling or extra damage.

I dont especially care about the Renaissance Greatsword, but maybe anime fans enjoy this as a "buster sword"? Likewise I dont care about the Renaissance Rapier. I would rather have the proper knightly arming sword to do the 1d8 finesse damage along with a shield. The Renaissance stuff can get distracting, but I am actually ok with a certain city featuring Leonardo Di Vinci Renaissance flavor as part of a local setting flavor.

I want the Shortsword to be effective, for the flavors of Germanic seax, Roman gladius of gladiator combat, Greek Ksiphos, and so on.

I want to see a katana − namely a Versatile Finesse weapon − be effective.

I would like see nets and bolos be more effective for combat, because fun.



The weapons that have the best gaming mechanics are the ones that the players choose. The prominence of certain weapons is enormously vital for the overall flavor of the game.

When you imagine the "default" medievalesque vanilla D&D setting:
• Which weapons come to mind?
• Which weapons do you care about, that you want to make sure are prominent and are good choices mechanically?
• Are there any weapons that you find distracting, that maybe dont make them so great?

 

[Mirrorrorrim]

The weapons that have the best gaming mechanics are the ones that the players choose. The prominence of certain weapons is enormously vital for the overall flavor of the game.

You're not wrong.

 

[Charlaquin]

If a higher-level Longsword Master wants to use a different Mastery effect, they can still use the basic Versatile aspect of the longsword. That is more versatility, not less.

This point is pretty compelling to me. Flex could certainly be useful as an always-applicable backup to a more impactful but situational mastery. If only there was more than one class that had the option to do it, and you didn’t have to be “high level” (which generally means >10th, and therefore unlikely to come up in most campaigns and only relevant for a relatively short portion of the ones where it does).

 

[Charlaquin]

It would be if there were mechanics to make it a good choice. Something that could e.g. give an unarmed attack as a bonus action.

One level of monk, I guess?

 

[The Myopic Sniper]

So from what they are saying is that right now it is in their internal playtesting phase. Everything else in their internal phase got a pass the monk did not. So it souns like until the first playtest if happy with something it is not moving on to the public playtest

There was a debate in some of the Facebook RPG groups (and I am sure elsewhere) over the past couple of weeks about the new "Spirit Points" for the Monk. Some Asian American gamers found the term particularly problematic as well as renewed debate about the appropriateness of a Monk class overall.

It could be WOTC decided to send all their work back to the sensitivity readers to look into name changes for spirit points, certain features and address the newest rounds of concerns about the class in general.