D&D (2024) New One D&D Playtest Shows Us The New Druid & Paladin

WotC has released the fourth One D&D playtest document. This 29-page PDF includes the druid and the paladin with Circle of the Moon and Oath of Devotion subclasses.

Druid. The Druid class and Circle of the Moon subclass are ready for playtesting here.

Paladin. The Paladin class and Oath of Devotion subclass are ready for playtesting here.

Feats. Several revised feats appear here for your feedback, with more revised feats coming in future articles.

Spells. More spells are ready for playtesting, with a focus on smite spells, Find Familiar, and Find Steed.

Rules Glossary. The rules glossary has been updated again and supersedes the glossary in previous Unearthed Arcana articles. In this document, any underlined term in the body text appears in that glossary, which defines game terms that have been clarified or redefined for this playtest or that don’t appear in the 2014 Player’s Handbook.

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[FitzTheRuke]

My only complaint is the wild shape forms not getting dex bonusses to AC. They're gonna need some serious AC to make up for the lack of extra HP.

Otherwise this stuff looks great, IMO. I'll have to try it out and see if that opinion sticks.

 

[GMforPowergamers]

I mean . . . so what if they are different? Players shouldn't worry about what is on each others sheets, they should focus on their character. They would have different abilities if one was a monk and one was a paladin, or if they had built using different druid subclasses, so why should anyone care they are different from the other?

yes and no... you don't think it would confuse someone that wild shape druids need to borrow the monster manual when they have a pre set form? or why bark skin gives temps to one and the other gets a set AC min?

you don't think that "Everyone gets a feat at first level" or "Only variant humans do" alone would cause confusion...

what about when a condition like exhaustion applies and they both take it and suffer different effects..

They literally can play in the same game as each other, and something like choosing to use the revised grapple rules or the original grapple rules is as simple as stating what book you will be using from.

then you need to modifie the character that isn't useing that book to match... so what ever one you choose one of them has to change

None of this is a problem.

disagree... hard disagree

 

[Micah Sweet]

If you can't see the fact that a 2e or 4e warlord has wildly different "outputs", then I'm not quite sure how to explain it to you. Saves work completely differently. Attacks scale on a completely different baseline. The damage expressions and scaling aren't the same. You can't ask a 2e druid or a 3e druid for skill checks because the entire model is different.


And again, I just don't see how that's a problem. I think there's some fundamental assumptions we have about the game that is causing us to be unable to communicate clearly about this issue.

The assumption is that core math alone is not the only important part of a game. All that stuff you use to create and play your PC matters too.

 

[GMforPowergamers]

News to me. We had been mixing 1e stuff with 2e from 1989 to 2012 without issues. In fact, Skip Williams had said the entire point of 2e was to be backwards compatible with 1e. That "We wanted 1e players to keep using their stuff they paid their hard earned money on. Of course we thought about ascending AC, but we needed to make them compatible."

and again... you need to fix the things that work... and this is already (at less then half previewed) more changes...

 

[Weiley31]

I honestly assume that was an error and should be "at least equals"...
Otherwise it would probably be "roll a d4. On a 4 you don´t exend the spell".

That's how I read it was anyway.

 

[Weiley31]

GM won't listen to reason. Despite WoTC citing backwards compatibility.

 

[GMforPowergamers]

The assumption is that core math alone is not the only important part of a game. All that stuff you use to create and play your PC matters too.

exactly...

at it's core 23 years of D&D has been "roll 1d20 add mod, and try to hit a target number or higher" that doesn't mean every edition is the same

 

[GMforPowergamers]

GM won't listen to reason. Despite WoTC citing backwards compatibility.

try again without being insulting... GM disagrees with you, and nothing you have said has made that any different

edit: and WotC cite DM backwards compatibility with some minor work not PC side

 

[Micah Sweet]

Exactly. This is player facing stuff, not DM stuff mostly. It is like picking different classes or subclasses. Why do I care if they play monk, artificer, 2014 druid, or 2024 druid, and use the abilities that go along with whichever they pick? If there is a spell question between the two editions, just let the player pick, or take a moment to read through as the DM and choose one. Or maybe the book will have guidance for players or DMs to make that question even easier.

There likely won't be any guidance of the sort you're describing. Once the new PH is out, I have no doubt that WotC wants us to forget the 2014 book (and everything else more than few years old that isn't an adventure) ever existed.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

To be clear, I am not basing my opinion of this version of the Druid vs the '14 version as I am not very familiar with the '14 version. I am just reviewing it on its own merits.

You and pretty much everyone who thinks this design is good lol.

However, I will point out smite was nerfed a bit and you suggested it wasn't.

How so? It looks like it was buffed slightly, given it works with ranged attacks.

I don't care about class lore, so I didn't read it.

Sure, but it's bizarre and terrible.