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 ...

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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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[Remathilis]

What kind of Warlock can only cast 2 spells in one encounter and nothing else? They don't have cantrips? Lessee, my 5th level warlock has 2 spells, 3 cantrips and 3 invocations. Note, that's more versatility than any non-magic class has already, but, let's ignore that.

Straight up PHB, no extra books:

Cantrip - Eldritch Blast (of course), Prestidigitation, Mage Hand (tons of versatility in those last two)
Spells: Unseen Servant, Charm Person, Mirror Image, Suggestion, Hypnotic Pattern, Tongues (note, I've also got 6 more spells from whatever my patron is)
Invocations: Beast Speach (unlimited speak with animals), Devil's Sight (no limit), One With Shadows (unlimited use invisibility - makes for FANTASTIC scouting).

That's at 5th level. The spells are just icing. The meat and potatoes of the class is in the invocations. Never minding if I'm a Tome Warlock, I've got a veritable shopping list of extra spells and Book of Secrets instead of Beast Speach (Speak with ANimals is a ritual anyway), and I've got a HUGE shopping list of spells that don't need rest to cast.

I really, really don't see the issue here.

The issue is half of those choices aren't really choices since they are exclusive to their two spell slots. The only thing you can reliably do is sneak, move light objects, talk to animals and shoot beams. (I'm discounting DS here because it's passive and in many situations equal to darkvision). The rest of your abilities share a very limited pool of uses. If you go into a dungeon, use a hypnotic pattern on a group of goblin guards (an effective way to end the fight) in room one and then charm a goblin to interrogate him, congrats, you're out of spells one room into the dungeon and it's time to short rest. Or you can continue with your two cantrips and three invocations, effectively a weaker rogue with a heavy crossbow. meanwhile, any other caster would still have the majority of their abilities available and can move on to room 2 without resting.

That's the issue with pacing; for the warlock to do anything cooler than be an arcane trickster who talks to dogs, you need to rest early and often. Every room or two of the dungeon if you can. If you don't get a rest, you are vastly underperforming. If you get more than two rests, you are doing more magic than any other caster. So the warlock will always demand rests, even if it clashes with the DMs narrative and has little or no use for the other PCs.

The ideal solution is to make warlock magic function equivalent to what they should be; half-casters. Barring actually making them half-casters, the ideal solution is to divorce their recharge from short rests and limit them to two per day. I would also be in favor of upping the number of spell slots and limiting recharge to 1/day.

 

[Hussar]

i

you say this as if being repetitive is a good thing

The playtest 5 Warlock still had plenty of EB left in him

It's good enough for any non-caster. I'd personally love the game to eject all casters save the warlock.

But, I also realize that what I want just ain't going to happen. I lost this fight years ago.

 

[Hussar]

The ideal solution is to make warlock magic function equivalent to what they should be; half-casters. Barring actually making them half-casters, the ideal solution is to divorce their recharge from short rests and limit them to two per day. I would also be in favor of upping the number of spell slots and limiting recharge to 1/day.

For me, the ideal solution would be for every caster to be limited in the way a warlock is.

Why is your warlock, in the example, blowing spells like that? What was the point? Hypnotic pattern on goblins? What a waste.

To me, that's the point of being a warlock. You don't get to cast spells every single encounter. You get to play where you actually have to think about conserving your spells from time to time. Best of all worlds.

 

[mamba]

It's good enough for any non-caster. I'd personally love the game to eject all casters save the warlock.

I am with you on limiting casters more, but not to the point of a Warlock

 

[Remathilis]

For me, the ideal solution would be for every caster to be limited in the way a warlock is.

Why is your warlock, in the example, blowing spells like that? What was the point? Hypnotic pattern on goblins? What a waste.

To me, that's the point of being a warlock. You don't get to cast spells every single encounter. You get to play where you actually have to think about conserving your spells from time to time. Best of all worlds.

Unfortunately, there is no way in all nine hells that you're going to get magic so limited like that. I'd prefer to talk about things that have a chance of happening.

And why is my warlock casting a spell? Because he's a caster. If I wanted to just shoot 1d10 per round, I'd just use a heavy crossbow. Which is the other problem: if I hoard spells because I don't know when I will get to recharge them, I'm nerfing myself. And clearly getting spells back multiple times per day implies I should be using them freely, not hoarding them. The game encourages me to blow my spell and rest frequently, I get more powerful every time I do.

That's bad design. It needs to be fixed.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

by making it impossible for them to decide to cast a third spell, because it is a really tough fight. The SR recharge limits them to two, no matter what.

This is ridiculous. All casters have limited spell slots.

only if they know they can SR soon, otherwise they are duds that preserve their skill in case something worse comes along

The warlock shouldn’t ever be a dud, regardless of spell slots. If they are, someone at the table should be explaining basic PC competency wrt to warlock.

Warlocks are ass kickers. All day long.

And again, every class should have short rest features alongside long rest resources. Problem solved. The only actual problem with short rests as far as I can see. Just uneven resource managemene

what? They would have more, as they no not recharge as often

This…no. That is not correct. The warlock has fewer slots, at max level, with short rest recharge. This is a decrease in Spellcasting power compared to wizards. Because their Spellcasting isn’t as robust, Warlocks can pile up an impressive array of at-will abilities that would be terribly broken on any other full caster.
Warlocks have more options outside spells because their Spellcasting feature is less powerful.

they still recover more from a SR than most others, so yes, they can go longer if they can basically SR at will

Who is talking about at-will short rests? No vaguery please I’ve grown very tired of it. Specifically who, in what post?

give them 0 SR and they are done halfway through the day

Do you have any specific examples from the gaming table or not?

More importantly this now turned from

to ‘it is not that bad’. Well, even if it isn’t always that bad, it still only has downsides, so why keep it

False. My position is the same, it has more upsides than downsides.

they can do that with LR if they want to, with SR they have no other choice, this is why I mentioned loss of agency

Every ability recovery model has limitations. It’s only a loss of agency if the model in question decreases the overall ability to make meaningful choice. SR and LR does not do so.

 

[Vaalingrade]

by making it impossible for them to decide to cast a third spell, because it is a really tough fight. The SR recharge limits them to two, no matter what.

All making them daily casters does is kicking the can down the road to to make it impossible for them to cast any spells at all after like three encounters without having an pace-breaking nap.

 

[CapnZapp]

The majority I'd always correct about what the majority enjoys. If 70% of people say they like chocolate ice cream, then they are correct that they like chocolate ice cream. That doesnnean chocolate ice cream is objectively superior to another flavor, but the majority us right about their preference. And a game company is working to appeal to preferences, not fibd The Platonic Ideal of Game.

Sigh. If WotC always listened to "the majority" we would probably still use some kind of AD&D game, with inverted AC (THAC0) just to mention one (tired) example.

The point is that true innovation doesn't come from committees. Every time D&D has reinvented itself the new edition has come from a small group of designers from within WotC. Never from public surveys.

WotC only listens to "the majority" when it suits their purposes. Right now it suits them fine to basically sit on their hands for half a decade, enjoying their de facto monopoly on D&D-ish content (since Paizo got lost in the woods with their PF2 game). That people like you appear to believe this is what "the majority" is best served by => congrats to WotC!

 

[mamba]

This is ridiculous. All casters have limited spell slots.

there is a difference between having 5 and having 20 you know… there are more options than two or infinite

The warlock shouldn’t ever be a dud, regardless of spell slots. If they are, someone at the table should be explaining basic PC competency wrt to warlock.

Warlocks are ass kickers. All day long.

if you consider EBs asskicking

And again, every class should have short rest features alongside long rest resources. Problem solved. The only actual problem with short rests as far as I can see. Just uneven resource managemene

that is the inferior solution to getting rid of recharges on SR, but still better than what we have today…

Who is talking about at-will short rests? No vaguery please I’ve grown very tired of it. Specifically who, in what post?

you said it is balanced with 1 or 2 short rests.

There are sometimes more, sometimes less than that in a day, creating imbalance - and since the Warlock does not know in advance, he has to pace himself even on ‘good’ days

 

[mamba]

All making them daily casters does is kicking the can down the road to to make it impossible for them to cast any spells at all after like three encounters without having an pace-breaking nap.

same as everyone else then, not sure I am seeing a problem here…

I want some attrition, not the superhero / John Wick kind of gameplay where either you die or nothing that happened 5 minutes ago had any impact (also, let’s face it, you don’t die, and if you did, you’d be resurrected)