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.

​

 

[Parmandur]

They could pay less attention to the 70% threshold and do what they feel is right regardless.

But, what if they feel it is right to please the greatest number of players and keep the game healthy...?

 

[doctorbadwolf]

See @CapnZapp you point at WotC being unwilling to change because they want to milk the fandom.

I disagree.

They can’t make any changes because any changes are immediately rejected by a very loud cadre of fans who cannot bear the idea that WotC isn’t catering solely to them.

So WotC proposes a change and it gets shot down. WotC doesn’t innovate because they aren’t permitted to.

They changed plenty with 4e, which was a commercial success. But it made fan divisions into near rabid sectarian screeching over martial healing and whatnot.

But also like…I don’t really understand why folks want D&D specifically to innovate and reinvent itself. Let D&D just be D&D.

It’s not like other publishers aren’t making wildly different games, including games based on thier vision of what D&D “could be”, or D&D with a more specific theme, etc.

 

[Parmandur]

They changed plenty with 4e, which was a commercial success. But it made fan divisions into near rabid sectarian screeching over martial healing and whatnot.

But also like…I don’t really understand why folks want D&D specifically to innovate and reinvent itself. Let D&D just be D&D.

It’s not like other publishers aren’t making wildly different games, including games based on thier vision of what D&D “could be”, or D&D with a more specific theme, etc.

Heck, the OGL and CC mean that anyone can even innovate D&D.

 

[Mirrorrorrim]

Potayto potahto. We’re largely in agreement. The market will not allow any big changes. Heck the market won’t even allow psionics.

But yeah, any actual deviation a la book of nine swords or a psionics handbook is only going to come from outside of DnD.

Which means, as a permanent dm, I’m never going to see it because players have zero interest.

Of course you'll be able see it. You just said it. The design can come from "outside of DnD." I translate that to mean "3rd party content creators for D&D."

If a particular design is so desired, and so easy, but not so popular that Wizards is compelled to fit it to their release plan, then 3rd parties can create it if they've not already done so. It is said by many here on ENWorld that 3rd party designers are as talented as Wizards designers (many say way more talented than them). Even Wizards designers are fans of their peers in the industry, and are likely looking forward to seeing how 3rd party designers innovate design and fill in the blanks that Wizards doesn't have planned.

If there are good designs out there, but people don't know about them, spread the word! Make threads in the appropriate areas and call them out so they get seen by more people.

If a particular design isn't being worked on by anyone, something is missing. But what? Is it actually not popular/lucrative enough to invest design time into? Is historical design between editions so messy and incompatible that the community cannot agree on what they want out of it (a la 'psionics'?) Is it actually hard to do well? If any of those are real challenges that are assumed by 3rd designers, then it is also a losing prospect for Wizards to invest design time into as well.

Wizards will explore design on something when they think they may have a good opportunity to market a quality product. When their psionics UAs did not get enough interest or approval, they probably recognized they are not in the right time and place to do it. Also, if they decided that Dark Sun will not be reprinted for whatever reason, that would have killed or slowed down any incentive to invest time into psionics. While psionics can and does exist in some way in the Realms or Eberron, it is not ubiquitous like it was in Dark Sun. It isn't "needed." Wizards would need a new IP focus or adventure to attach psionics to. If that doesn't fit into their schedule, we aren't going to see it until they can fit it in.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Absatively.

I mean, it's not like when I mention the idea of a mythic fighter, the next three posts are all immediately raising the flag that a mythical fighter ABSOLUTELY MUST BE MAGICAL. But, sure, I'm the one being totally unreasonable. So, you'll not be raising the point again in the future I take it? Since we're moving on now and all.

Mythical is supernatural, because it is beyond reality. I honestly don't see a way to do it without calling out the supernatural stuff. If you do, and it isn't, "just ignore it, because why and how don't matter", I would be interested.

Or we could actually try to make the class, and stop sniping at each other.

 

[Remathilis]

I LIKE non-magical classes.

It isn't that the game "needs" them. It's that the game offers better variety if it can be played without forcing the world to be intensely magical, like the D&D movie.

You're of course free to argue WotC should just shed all the players interested in low magic fantasy. What I don't feel is very compelling, however, is the argument we should drop low magic because it isn't "needed".

Cheers!

D&D stopped being low magic sometime during second edition at the absolute latest, and arguably even before then depending on how you define it. Certtainly, since 2000 on, low magic is the last term I used to describe default setting D&D and the fact that any DM trying to run D&D as low magic has to high-houserule it to the point it no longer resembles the PHB is testament to the fact.

What we have now is a divide between "low magic" classes (fighter, rogue, and maybe barbarian) and high magic classes (pretty much everyone else), the latter doing wahoo gonzo stuff practically from level 1. Which is where the disparity comes from. We could fix this be severely limiting magic: either is size (akin to the 1 sleep spell 1e magic-user) or scope (4e style everything is an attack or ritual magic) but I don't imagine either will fly with the D&D audience at this point, so the only solutions is to give the "low magic" classes high magic OR accept that they will be sub-par forever.

And if the cost for that is the loss of "low magic" D&D, I'm more than willing to pay that price. There are so many better systems that do low magic well, D&D can afford to go all high magic.

 

[Vaalingrade]

WotC flat out tells us to not worry about their products. Don't use them as-is. Change them. And yet so many of us just can't do that. We HAVE to use what they give us for whatever inane reason...

'We paid for a functional product and expect a functional product' is an inane reason?

You know, no other RPG hides or has to hide behind this excuse of Rule 0.

The closest I've seen any community get to this outside D&D is the gearhead community that looks down on people buying a decent car when they could 'simply' buy a 1000 dollar Honda and sink weeks into tuning it up and buying custom parts.

 

[Remathilis]

If they make changes that aren't rock solid accepted by the community, they hate gamers, are incompetent, don't know what they're doing, etc. If they don't make changes and listen to the community, they are uncreative, boring, only doing it to chase the dollar. They absolutely cannot win this. No matter what, they are doing the wrong thing.

But that's every fandom, especially in the age of the internet. Go hang out with Star Wars fans or comic book fans or video game fans. That mantra repeats over-and-over again. Its why franchises are stuck playing the greatest hits. Why the characters don't progress. Why we get reboots and requels and fanservice cameos. And D&D has the extra burden of its fans mostly being a bunch of amateur game designed with delusions they understand RPGs better than the companies that publish them because they created some houserule.

When it comes to this WotC is no different than any other major company with a legacy brand.

 

[Micah Sweet]

D&D stopped being low magic sometime during second edition at the absolute latest, and arguably even before then depending on how you define it. Certtainly, since 2000 on, low magic is the last term I used to describe default setting D&D and the fact that any DM trying to run D&D as low magic has to high-houserule it to the point it no longer resembles the PHB is testament to the fact.

What we have now is a divide between "low magic" classes (fighter, rogue, and maybe barbarian) and high magic classes (pretty much everyone else), the latter doing wahoo gonzo stuff practically from level 1. Which is where the disparity comes from. We could fix this be severely limiting magic: either is size (akin to the 1 sleep spell 1e magic-user) or scope (4e style everything is an attack or ritual magic) but I don't imagine either will fly with the D&D audience at this point, so the only solutions is to give the "low magic" classes high magic OR accept that they will be sub-par forever.

And if the cost for that is the loss of "low magic" D&D, I'm more than willing to pay that price. There are so many better systems that do low magic well, D&D can afford to go all high magic.

Agreed. There are plenty of versions of D&D that can do the kind of magic levels I want. WotC abandoned that path a long time ago.

 

[mamba]

But, what if they feel it is right to please the greatest number of players and keep the game healthy...?

I was talking of cases where there is no clear preference, not of going against clear majorities.

If the proposal gets, say 60% approval, then I believe there is a pretty strong case that whatever the current solution is, does not have 70% approval. So the proposal needing 70% to replace something that does not have it either, is not great imo.

If your proposal gets 45 - 65% approval, then maybe you have not found the right solution yet (and maybe it will turn out that no solution gets past 65%, so that is the right one…), but you have definitely identified a problem you should be looking into.

And if in the end two solutions get roughly 50% each, then take the one you, as the game designer, think is better. You are supposed to be the designer, act like it.

Yet what do we get? The opposite of that, the proposal does not meet the threshold, so things stay as they are, the very opposite of looking into it