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.

​

 

[Hussar]

Rally racing isn’t the same thing as what Jeeps, Broncos, etc, are used for. To make a civic do that would involve rebuilding it.

Sure, but I never objected to that point. I objected to the claim that the editions of D&D are just the same game with different coats of paint.

Again, it depends on the altitude. An adnd character sheet and a 5e character sheet are bothe instantly recognizable as DnD character sheets. While a Savage Worlds (to pick a random example) is most definitely not.

And the non mechanical stuff is pretty translatable between editions.

If I say I’m playing a paladin, every knows I’m playing DnD. It’s part of the basic dna of the game. Whereas a Gurps character obviously isn’t.

Yes there are big differences within the DnD family but those differences are not as big as the differences between DnD and another system.

 

[DEFCON 1]

Rally racing isn’t the same thing as what Jeeps, Broncos, etc, are used for. To make a civic do that would involve rebuilding it.

Sure, but I never objected to that point. I objected to the claim that the editions of D&D are just the same game with different coats of paint.

Would you prefer we go a level deeper with our silly analogy then?

"All D&D editions are the same except for the body on top of the frame."
"All D&D editions are the same except for the brand of the car."
"All D&D editions are the same except for the manner of wheeled vehicular transportation."

Pick and choose whichever depth of distinction between types of vehicles you want in the analogy to satisfy your beliefs and make you feel better. But like @Hussar said... the differences are all still top-level compared to the differences between motorized vehicles and horses.

I personally do not care if I'm driving a Honda Civic, Ford Broncho, three-wheel dune buddy, or moped if every one of them gets me easily to the mall-- much moreso than any attempt at using a horse to do it. If I want to get to the mall (play D&D)... any of those wheeled vehicles are just fine and they all accomplish the same thing. And I'm certainly not going to ride a horse (use the World of Darkness system) to do it.

If you have a Camaro fetish and will only drive Camaros... that's cool, you do you. But don't get mad when the rest of us point out there's no real difference on the grand scale of your Camaro and a Hyundai.

 

[tetrasodium]

Again, it depends on the altitude. An adnd character sheet and a 5e character sheet are bothe instantly recognizable as DnD character sheets. While a Savage Worlds (to pick a random example) is most definitely not.

And the non mechanical stuff is pretty translatable between editions.

If I say I’m playing a paladin, every knows I’m playing DnD. It’s part of the basic dna of the game. Whereas a Gurps character obviously isn’t.

Yes there are big differences within the DnD family but those differences are not as big as the differences between DnD and another system.

I think you might be extending the original statement of "I don't see 3E, 4E or 5E as all that different. They are all pretty much the same game foundation" to the point that it's no longer being talked about in order to defend it by proxy.

The only group of d&d customers who aren't going to immediately notice the mechanical differences of a paladin in 2e 3.5e 4e & 5e are the ones who only read about the paladin rather than playing it at the table with others. For obvious reasons that group doesn't have as much need for it to work well in play where it will be subjected to the acid test of all the other rules.

Ignoring that acid test is how we get things like the sorlockadin and the other short rest nova classes designed to trivially invoke guaranteed 5mwd until they force some form of adversarial fiat. After kicking warlock off that cycle in packet 5 we have packet 6 showcasing monk still on it and the same acid supplied by rest rules in the glossary

 

[CapnZapp]

Everyone has their levels of change or what they think is different.

Personally I see little difference in the combat for example of 4E versus 3E. You move 30' or 6 squares... you roll a d20 and add your attack modifier... you do your weapon die of damage plus modifier... you attack people adjacent to you with weapons and some spells, other spells do damage in a certain diameter from a point... some attacks for people to move, fall down, get knocked back... some of your own movement allows others to attack you as you walk away... etc. Yes, the terms used are different and the modifiers are not one a 1-for-1 basis (3E uses BAB, 4E uses half-level), but the actual rolling and additions are the same, both causing damage numbers that both reduce the enemy's number of hit points.

And even outside of combat, 4E Skill Challenges are just standard DM adjudication of success except it's formalized in how many rolls the players are going to make and need to succeed in order to "get what they want" (rather than the DM determining for themselves which individual success rolls and fail rolls impact the narrative enough to get the player what they want.)

To me, all the editions of D&D and all of the clones like Pathfinder, OSRIC, etc. are all D&D at their foundation.

That's like "all roleplaying games are alike because in all of them we sit around a table and talk". If you want to relativize, so can I. To the point of utter meaninglessness.

Combat is hugely different between 4E and the editions that came before and after it. You basically must engage with a battlemat in 4E while 3/5E can easily be run much more loosely.

In a forum discussing the ins and out of basically just one game, expect and accept that changes that might seem small compared to, I dunno, a trip to the Moon, will deservedly be called "impactful", "major" and similar.

 

[CapnZapp]

But don't get mad when the rest of us point out there's no real difference on the grand scale of your Camaro and a Hyundai.

We're not getting mad when you want to talk about cars on a D&D forum. We point out the off-topic-ness of trying to make it a discussion point that 4E and 5E is less dissimilar than GURPS and a Camaro. At the very least, start your own discussion thread!

 

[DEFCON 1]

Combat is hugely different between 4E and the editions that came before and after it. You basically must engage with a battlemat in 4E while 3/5E can easily be run much more loosely.

As has been discussed... we all have differing opinions on the word "hugely" here.

 

[DEFCON 1]

We're not getting mad when you want to talk about cars on a D&D forum. We point out the off-topic-ness of trying to make it a discussion point that 4E and 5E is less dissimilar than GURPS and a Camaro. At the very least, start your own discussion thread!

That's not even close to following the analogy being used here.

 

[CapnZapp]

I dunno. I barely remember anything from 3e. But 3.5 fixed most of my problems with 3e.

I thought so at first, blinded by WotC's marketing as I were.

But after playing for a year or so I realized that changing up damage reduction, and re-releasing all the prestige classes, and forcing me to re-read all the spells (ALL THE SPELLS) did nothing to fix d20's fundamental flaws.

The fighter remained linear while the wizard remained quadratic. Creating NPCs remained the exact nightmare it always was.

Contrast 3.5 to 5E, which actually meaningfully changed the game to actually fix (or at least substantially change) the balance between casters and martials, and definitely did away with the create monsters headache.

Not saying 5E is perfect here. I am saying that just changing around things on the surface (as 3.5 did) won't fix any of 5E's real problems.

Not unless you think a weak spell there or a bad subclass here is the extent of 5E's problems. I posted three of my issues with 5E far up-thread, so let's just say they all go much deeper than some class or effect being less than impressive.

We're not gonna get 6E here, folks. Based on the playtests and how WotC basically is reneging on every single true change (even if tiny in the greater context), all we are getting next year is a 3.5 of 5E - basically the same, only reheated enough to make some believe actual problems have been solved.

If everybody referred to 2024 D&D One as edition 5.1, that would be more in line with what we appear to be getting.

 

[Parmandur]

Not unless you think a weak spell there or a bad subclass here is the extent of 5E's problems.

Well, I'm not dating the game is perfect as such, but...pretty much? The game is fine, dome tweaks every decade or so is about right.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

Again, it depends on the altitude. An adnd character sheet and a 5e character sheet are bothe instantly recognizable as DnD character sheets. While a Savage Worlds (to pick a random example) is most definitely not.

And the non mechanical stuff is pretty translatable between editions.

If I say I’m playing a paladin, every knows I’m playing DnD. It’s part of the basic dna of the game. Whereas a Gurps character obviously isn’t.

None of this means that D&D editions are all the same and the wildly different mechanics are just cosmetic.

Yes there are big differences within the DnD family but those differences are not as big as the differences between DnD and another system.

The post I first replied to presented the bolded text here as not the case. The rest of the sentence I could not possibly care less about.

Would you prefer we go a level deeper with our silly analogy then?

"All D&D editions are the same except for the body on top of the frame."

False

"All D&D editions are the same except for the brand of the car."

False

"All D&D editions are the same except for the manner of wheeled vehicular transportation."

Closer to the truth, which means they aren’t the same.

Pick and choose whichever depth of distinction between types of vehicles you want in the analogy to satisfy your beliefs and make you feel better. But like @Hussar said... the differences are all still top-level compared to the differences between motorized vehicles and horses.

I don’t care about things I didn’t ever comment on.

Apples and oranges are different. The fact that mushrooms are even more different is completely irrelevant to the truth of the first statement.

I personally do not care if I'm driving a Honda Civic, Ford Broncho, three-wheel dune buddy, or moped if every one of them gets me easily to the mall-- much moreso than any attempt at using a horse to do it. If I want to get to the mall (play D&D)... any of those wheeled vehicles are just fine and they all accomplish the same thing. And I'm certainly not going to ride a horse (use the World of Darkness system) to do it.

Respectfully, if you actually see no difference between those vehicles, it doesn’t mean there isn’t any, it means you don’t know anything about those vehicles, or vehicles in general.

If you have a Camaro fetish and will only drive Camaros... that's cool, you do you. But don't get mad when the rest of us point out there's no real difference on the grand scale of your Camaro and a Hyundai.

I mean you can “point out” anything you want, regardless of its actual veracity. As for that specific example, depends on which of the dozen or so models of Hyundai you’re comparing.

Again, an off road or all terrain vehicle and a coup are very different.

More importantly, your dismissive rant talking down to anyone who does care about changes and difference in the mechanics of D&D editions was BS from the beginning. They aren’t “surface level” just because you don’t care, and it isn’t appropriate to talk about people who are discussing them in earnest as you did in the post I first replied to.