D&D (2024) New One D&D Playtest Document: 77 Pages, 7 Classes, & More!

There's a brand new playtest document for the new (version/edition/update) of Dungeons of Dragons available for download! This one is an enormous 77 pages and includes classes, spells, feats, and weapons.

Unearthed Arcana Playtest

Unearthed Arcana Playtest Materials Get Unearthed Arcana playtest content, try it out in your game, and provide feedback! Check back regularly for ...

www.dndbeyond.com

In this new Unearthed Arcana document for the 2024 Core Rulebooks, we explore material designed for the next version of the Player’s Handbook. This playtest document presents updated rules on seven classes: Bard, Cleric, Druid, Monk, Paladin, Ranger, and Rogue. This document also presents multiple subclasses for each of those classes, new Spells, revisions to existing Spells and Spell Lists, and several revised Feats. You will also find an updated rules glossary that supercedes the glossary of any previous playtest document.

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[FitzTheRuke]

I'm experimenting with the first short rest is one minute, the next fifteen, then an hour. Then it resets to one, etc. It's more complicated than WotC would do.....

That's kind of fun. Definitely too complicated for a Book Rule, but good for a Table Rule.

Remember when the Next Playtest had short rests as two snacks and dinner? (Two 15 minute & one hour rest per day.) It might have been fiddly, but it made a lot of sense.

 

[FitzTheRuke]

Curious, how did you handle the spell list change? And did it have a major effect on the character's identity?

That is a GREAT question, because it was the thing that I found the hardest to make decisions on. In the end, because Bards were mostly Arcane before, I decided to keep Arcane as her spell list. She lost all her healing, but she didn't use it all that much (We have a Cleric AND a Paladin in the party!) so it wasn't all that big a change. She also mostly used Healing Word before, so a pep-talk that grants HP or a pep-talk that grants Inspiration, story-wise, is pretty much still a morale-boost either way, so it's not too disruptive to her ID.

I think if I had switched her to Primal or even Divine it would have made her seem too different, as cool as those ideas are.

 

[Parmandur]

I'm experimenting with the first short rest is one minute, the next fifteen, then an hour. Then it resets to one, etc. It's more complicated than WotC would do.....

Interesting approach: Monks and Warlocks really would become trouble if they were able to cheese Short Rests too much, hence the hour mark, but this could prevent the other problem of Monks and Warlocks being hobbled by an insufficient number of Short Rests to keep up

 

[Micah Sweet]

I think making it officially 10 or 20 minutes would be a big deal and improve the real-terms balance situation between Short Rest and Long Rest characters, because people would be vastly more willing to take them.

My experience is the main reason players don't take them isn't because they don't need them, or mean Long Rest characters are stopping them or whatever, but because it seems nigh-insane for the party to suddenly stop the adventure for AN HOUR (a really proper lunchbreak!) in the middle of things, where 10 or 20 minutes to bind wounds and so on would be fairly plausible. It just seems really weird. And to do that MULTIPLE TIMES IN A DAY? Absolute arrant insanity.

We played one campaign where it was 20 minutes a while back, and we took far more Short Rests just because like, they actually made sense. It feels like metagaming of a cheesy kind of take the one-hour ones.

Official is meaningless. Tables should just decide what rules they want to use, and play accordingly. A desire to see it in the WotC book is merely, in my opinion, an attempt to pressure folks to follow a preferred option by putting in the product 5e players are most likely to read.

 

[UngeheuerLich]

For those that weren't around last time:

In 2003, WotC released edition 3.5, promising to "fix" the problem of 3rd Edition.

Of course, what they ended up doing was to... not fix any of the fundamental flaws of that edition*, while changing around a thousand little things, mostly with no great effect once minmaxers learned how to adapt. For most people, the biggest impact was having to remember exactly how the old and the new spell or effect was different.

*) compare how 5E genuinely improved upon the two main flaws of 3E: creating NPCs was exceptionally fiddly and time-consuming; quadratic wizards vs linear fighters. In this the most crucial regard 5E was a true and thorough upgrade.

Is this what we're getting in 2024 as well?

A lot of talk which in the end amounts to... not any real improvement at all? Basically just more of the same 5E, only with a lot of annoying switching around of the details to obscure the fact nothing has really changed?

Apples and oranges.

3 years vs 10 years.

And even then, you did not have to upgrade. All fixes were freely available through the SRD.

I played for 1 or 2 years before I upgrade my PHB to 3.5 for convenience...

And even then: why shouldn't you pay for a quality of life upgrade. It is not software that can be upgraded on the fly.
3.0 was totally functional. 3 years of fun for 90 dollars. In my case for about 15 people. Only 2 of which bought their own PHB.
I am really astonished once again how greedy roleplayers are.
They want everything for free.

 

[Vael]

4e having 5 min Short Rests work, because it is baked into the system's assumptions that all Encounter powers are recharged each time initiative is rolled. 5e is not built on that assumption, it's more a short rest between 2 encounters, but that's not a play pattern that fits with a significant percentage of tables, including my experience with 5e. So I'm left feeling like 5 min is too short and an hour is too long, so I'd prefer a compromise of 20-30 minutes. If one were to use Pathfinder's exploration system, I'm told they use 10 minute turns, so having a short rest eat up 2-3 exploration "actions" feels about right to me, but I'm not super wedded to the notion.

 

[UngeheuerLich]

4e having 5 min Short Rests work, because it is baked into the system's assumptions that all Encounter powers are recharged each time initiative is rolled.

And this is what ultimately led us to abandon the system. Because every encounter felt the same and inconsequential and ultimately a waste of play time.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

4e having 5 min Short Rests work, because it is baked into the system's assumptions that all Encounter powers are recharged each time initiative is rolled.

To be clear to anyone confused, Encounter powers in 4E did not recharge when initiative was rolled, they recharged when you took a Short Rest.

So I'm left feeling like 5 min is too short and an hour is too long, so I'd prefer a compromise of 20-30 minutes.

30 minutes still feels excessive dramatically. I'd put it as 20 minutes so because that's more in line with people's lived experience of a "short break".

 

[Parmandur]

but that's not a play pattern that fits with a significant percentage of tables

I mean...what data do we have to suggest that, really...?

 

[Gradine]

I like Short Rests...

I'm definitely a fan of having Short Rests that don't break up the narrative flow as much as an hour would.