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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[Stalker0]

Disagree, that's an overly philosophical and disconnected-from-reality take. It's like saying to a bunch of people who have been harassed by the police "Well, I've always found the police to be terribly nice, so your anecdotes are nothing but that haha!". The reality is, if a bunch of people's "anecdotes" (an insulting and dismissive word used for experiences that others had, I note, a word that vanishes the moment they approve of an "anecdote") line up, and they do here, they should be considered to have more weight than otherwise.

That is unfortunately a common human bias that often doesn't play out in stats.

We humans tend to exaggerate our initial experiences. If I'm told X....well X is probably true. If my first experiences are Y....it takes a lot of evidence to convince me Y isn't true.

The truth here is.... all of these anecdotes are taken from a limited sample of the dnd gaming population, and often a very selective one (such as enworld forum goers as a group.....or people they post their dnd games on youtube group). That is a very biased platform to assess your entire community.

The only group I am aware of that has taken a concertive effort to gain stats about the entire dnd gaming community is WOTC....and even their sampling is biased (after all their surveys rely on people willing to go their home page on the internet). Only they could really say with any measure of conviction how often people are actually using short rests, and even then the evidence would have to be decently strong to overcome some of the biases inherent to their methods.

Getting to the real statistical truth of something is often quite challenging.

 

[FitzTheRuke]

Disagree, that's an overly philosophical and disconnected-from-reality take. It's like saying to a bunch of people who have been harassed by the police "Well, I've always found the police to be terribly nice, so your anecdotes are nothing but that haha!". The reality is, if a bunch of people's "anecdotes" (an insulting and dismissive word used for experiences that others had, I note, a word that vanishes the moment they approve of an "anecdote") line up, and they do here, they should be considered to have more weight than otherwise.

Yeah, I sometimes feel annoyed by the idea that all anecdotes are equally dismissible. For example, I've seen it used to dismiss my 30 years of experience selling comics and games, as if that counts for nothing! (There is often a confusion that because something doesn't count for everything that it counts for nothing. There is space in-between!)

I don't think WotC have any data on this.

I have never seen a survey question relating to it, have you? It's impossible to track via D&D Beyond. So all they could have is what, secret surveys that none of us have ever seen? Seems a little conspiratorial. Given they've never asked about it, which is actually surprising, I think it's highly likely this is a blindspot the designers have.

I think they KNOW that 1-hour rests aren't working, but for some reason, they can't seem to justify changing it. I think that they were starting to work on it (which is why they started to reduce the number of class abilities that recharge on it, with the idea of - mostly - spending hit dice remaining) but then, perhaps as part of "backwards compatibility" or simply because the rollbacks didn't "delight", they decided to cut it.

It would have helped if they'd playtested actually changing the timing of a short rest, and checking how it scored!

 

[DEFCON 1]

In a bold and surprising move, the version that goes to print has short rests take 99 minutes, while long rests take 15 minutes. A sidebar in the surprise mechanics deals with shocked and confused players as well as characters.

So long as they call the short rest '1 hour and 39 minutes' and not '99 minutes', I'm good with that.

 

[DEFCON 1]

It would have helped if they'd playtested actually changing the timing of a short rest, and checking how it scored!

I don't have enough of the 5E adventure books to be able to check... but I wonder if perhaps in a lot of them they actually say things like 'A short rest of an hour' in them (rather than just 'short rest')? Such that changing the default time in the 5E24 game would just end up possibly confusing people who own those books (and/or are looking at compatibility?) The new PHB says short rests are 10 minutes, all the other adventure products WotC have produced previously have all said 'short rest of an hour'?

I have zero idea if that is even a thing or if its a possible reason why WotC might be reticent to change the default length of a short rest... but I'm just spitballing out ideas here. You'd figure there'd have to be some reason (unless of course the most obvious reason being that most people they have received word from has never had issues with the 1 hour short rest.)

 

[Micah Sweet]

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.

The rules can be upgraded on the fly. I do it all the time. So do many DMs.

And how much of a "quality of life upgrade" it actually is is very much dependent on the individual.

 

[fluffybunbunkittens]

I have zero idea if that is even a thing or if its a possible reason why WotC might be reticent to change the default length of a short rest...

The real reason is that someone might point out that having actually short short rests is 'just like DnD4'. They can't take that risk.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Disagree, that's an overly philosophical and disconnected-from-reality take. It's like saying to a bunch of people who have been harassed by the police "Well, I've always found the police to be terribly nice, so your anecdotes are nothing but that haha!". The reality is, if a bunch of people's "anecdotes" (an insulting and dismissive word used for experiences that others had, I note, a word that vanishes the moment they approve of an "anecdote") line up, and they do here, they should be considered to have more weight than otherwise.

I don't think WotC have any data on this.

I have never seen a survey question relating to it, have you? It's impossible to track via D&D Beyond. So all they could have is what, secret surveys that none of us have ever seen? Seems a little conspiratorial. Given they've never asked about it, which is actually surprising, I think it's highly likely this is a blindspot the designers have.

In which case it's not going to be solved at the WotC level, and will need to be dealt with by individual tables.

As it should be.

 

[GMforPowergamers]

after the last few playtests my group had lost faith in this playtest. I had not even down loaded this one right away. However a buddy told us "Hey it's more like just a revision now, look at how they rolled back stuff" so we picked it up.

Overall I still have my fears, but I like this playtest best so far.

 

[Micah Sweet]

The real reason is that someone might point out that having actually short short rests is 'just like DnD4'. They can't take that risk.

This is what I'm talking about. If you want WotC going forward to pattern their version of the game more on 4e than otherwise, just say so.

 

[Zaukrie]

Maybe some sort of risk/reward table for short rests; you can recharge a portion of your SR pool or heal some HP in proportional ranges from 10m to 1 hr, but 1 HR recharges all of it, but the longer the rest, the higher the rate of risk of a complication arising (perhaps longer SRs add dice to the tension pool if you're using AngryDM's mechanic there). That's all house rules though, but I'm interested in how WotC can balance SRs in core, at least in this thread.

Using hit dice to recharge things would work for me.