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.

​

 

[Azzy]

The paragraph you reference says thusly;

Right, I even posted it in another thread.

"The fighter is a warrior, an expert in weapons and, if he is clever, tactics and strategy. There are many famous fighter from legend: Hercules, Perseus, Hiawatha, Beowulf, Siegfried, Cuchulain, Little John, Tristan, and Sinbad. History is crowded with great generals and warriors: El Cid, Hannibal, Alexander the Great, Charlemagne, Spartacus, Richard the Lionheart, and Belisarius. Your fighter could be modeled after any of these, or he could be unique. A visit to your local library can uncover many heroic fighters."

Nothing there says mythic. It says famous and heroic.

Except several of the examples for inspiration that it gives are from mythology and are, well, y'know... mythic.

Further, it puts Hercules on par with Alexander the Great, who is very much at different power levels.
I'm not arguing the fighter shouldn't have some access to supernatural abilities, but I am saying that there is very little precedent for it from older editions.

I'm not claiming that the rules themselves give the precedence. What I claim is that the 2e PHB book gives several legendary and mythic characters as sources for inspiration for fighter characters (I've elsewhere described this as a "broken promise"—a serious mismatch of what it sells and what it actually delivers).

 

[Micah Sweet]

That's the problem. The fighter is currently a supernumerary. There isn't just one way to fix this. I see two:

• Ignore combat balance. Combat is where the fighter is king - and the fighter gets at least a 50% damage buff so their weapons do more realistic damage and adds their proficiency to AC so it's useful. The fighter is "realistic" - but when fighting a fighter they bring their foes into their world
  • Subclass: The Mundane. At low level they get things like advantage on saves vs magic. At high level they bring everyone else into their world and start enforcing realistic physics on dragons that get too close.
• Let the fighter into the same world as everyone else. Where at tier 2 they do get to kick iron doors off their hinges and possibly leap small buildings in a single bound. And by tier 4 can kick in the gates of hell and arm wrestle the Tarrasque

Frankly I don't care which answer is chosen. But as things stand (and, worse, as you wish to make them) the fighter is a realistic person in a gonzo world, and a fish out of water with none of the advantages.

I'm good with either one, although if you're going with option 2 I feel it would be better off as a separate class. I really miss the old days when fighters were legitimately better at fighting than other classes.

And I'm not trying make fighters a realistic person in a gonzo world. I'm saying that, according to existing narrative and pretty much mechanics as well, that's what they are. It certainly wasn't my doing. If you want to change that, change the narrative, and then change the rules to suit. You have my blessing on this if you want or need it.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

Exactly! Cleric's get Divine Intervention, which brings on the flavor of having a GOD come in and help you (or any celestial force) at the higher levels, and Ranger is getting Conjure Barrage...it just feels uneven.

Conjure Barrage and Volley are cool btw, I like them, but I think these levels should have two features, not one. I guess you get new spell levels though so, I suppose that is meant to count for everything.

Yeah while I like both spells, it’s just not as exciting as it could be.

They could be part of a low level feature that gives ranger only spells at every spell level.

1: Ensnaring Strike and Hunters Mark

2: lot of candidates. I doubt Pass w/o trace would make it past the survey as exclusive to one class sadly…a lot of the candidates I wouldn’t want exclusive. Maybe a bespoke new spell that does some sort of thing that rangers have done in the past but can’t currently?

3: Conjure Barrage

4: Freedom of Movement

5: Conjure Volley

 

[doctorbadwolf]

People -- especially Gen Zers and Younger Millennials -- seem to forget that we had dial-up AOL in the 90s, and even Elder Millennials grew up on the internet.

Idk if we grew up on the internet. Elder Millenials whose parents had money, maybe. We didn’t have a computer at home until I was in high school.

 

[Neonchameleon]

If fighters used to be able to kill multiple ogres quickly and now cannot, it seems they've become decidedly  less "gonzo" by your definition.

No they haven't. If you cut someone's throat with a sword and they die that is realistic. Ogres are made of flesh, not steel. And not even that tough flesh. Realism has an element of brutality.

 

[Neonchameleon]

I'm good with either one, although if you're going with option 2 I feel it would be better off as a separate class. I really miss the old days when fighters were legitimately better at fighting than other classes.

And I'm not trying make fighters a realistic person in a gonzo world. I'm saying that, according to existing narrative and pretty much mechanics as well, that's what they are. It certainly wasn't my doing. If you want to change that, change the narrative, and then change the rules to suit. You have my blessing on this if you want or need it.

And I'm saying that nowhere in the fluff or the rules is there any support for a level 5 fighter of any edition being even vaguely realistic. Anyone who can, unarmoured, survive the luckiest possible hit with an axe and be still standing isn't even on nodding terms with realism. Neither is someone who can recover from the worst possible beating they can survive in a month and be out of bed on the first day isn't realistic.

AD&D fighters weren't realistic. They were John Wick - and they made The Bride from Kill Bill seem grounded. 5e fighters are in a party of The Avengers - and you'd barely let them be Hawkeye.

 

[Levistus's_Leviathan]

No, that wasn't me.

Okay. My mistake, then.

I'm fine with people being capable of supernatural stuff. But the default for classes without explicit supernatural abilities is that they are, at most, at an action hero level of shenanigans. If you want more, change the narrative, or you'll keep having these arguments.

And this doesn't address the problem that if you require nonmagical classes to be more "realistic" than magical ones, there's going to be a problem with how the classes are balanced and treated.

For the record, you don't have to have magic to do cool stuff in 5e. Fighters and rogues have no inherent supernatural narrative in Level Up, for example, and both are capable of doing a lot of cool stuff.

I am not familiar with Level Up, and it isn't the 5e that I'm talking about. We're talking about the WotC version.

 

[kapars]

It’s going to be tough explaining to my Monk playtester that she no longer knows how to use a short sword and by virtue of that can no longer be a Mage Slayer. It seems like a rather arbitrary and punitive change on their part?

 

[cbwjm]

It’s going to be tough explaining to my Monk playtester that she no longer knows how to use a short sword and by virtue of that can no longer be a Mage Slayer. It seems like a rather arbitrary and punitive change on their part?

Why does not being able to use a short sword prevent her from being a mage slayer?

 

[Micah Sweet]

No they haven't. If you cut someone's throat with a sword and they die that is realistic. Ogres are made of flesh, not steel. And not even that tough flesh. Realism has an element of brutality.

I don't see how that is relevant to what we're discussing.