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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[SkidAce]

...

However, I hate that Wild Shape is still siloed into a de facto combat-only ability. When the Wizard gets Alter Self a 3rd (2nd), Water Breathing at 5th (3rd), Fly at 5th (3rrd), and Polymorph at 7th (4th), it's really aggravating that Druid can't do better than that with it's defining class feature that's supposed to let you do exactly that.

...

Quoted for Truth.

 

[Xamnam]

For me, neither of the problems with paladins - smite damage being too high and save bonus stacking breaking bounded accuracy - have been addressed.

Forgive me if you're referring to something else, but this playtest does state:

If another Paladin is present, a creature can benefit from only one Aura of Protection at a time; the creature chooses which one when entering the auras.

and in addition, the Devotion paladin's specific Aura of Devotion is called out as a sub-effect of the Protection aura.

 

[Gladius Legis]

For me, neither of the problems with paladins - smite damage being too high

You ... are aware smite has been limited to once per turn, right?

 

[Mage of Spellford]

Wait so now just being within 10ft of a 7th level Paladin allows you to a better chance to avoid being grappled. And this makes sense how?

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

It is an odd duck, isn't it? We got rid of alignment languages, even Thieves' Cant (explicitly based on real things in our world) vanished for awhile. But Druids being a secret society of "Woodsy Illuminati" persists!

I can see rogues having their own slang and some rogue subclasses having quite elaborate cyphers and languages of their own. I can see illusionists having a professional language.

"Hey, keep an eye on that new logging camp" doesn't feel like it merits a different language.

If they wanted to frame it as the Old Speech, which was used before the modern era, sure, but that should probably be campaign specific. Making it Primordial (which I still want them to split back into four separate languages) I could see. I could really see druids using Sylvan.

But their own language? So odd.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

Wait so now just being within 10ft of a 7th level Paladin allows you to a better chance to avoid being grappled. And this makes sense how?

"Touch me not: I am chaste! And so are you!"

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

Forgive me if I missed this, but how is a tiny wildshape more powerful than an aquatic or flying one?

 

[tetrasodium]

Forgive me if you're referring to something else, but this playtest does state:

and in addition, the Devotion paladin's specific Aura of Devotion is called out as a sub-effect of the Protection aura.

You can't have flat bonuses like that and bonuses that grow from leveling and bounded accuracy, it results in a conflict that overwhelms BA in problematic ways. Aura plus bless plus non-paladin class features A B C D & so on. Bonus type conflicts served a purpose back in 3.x. Now in 5e & it seems that in one d&d we still have multiple sources but they always stack unless a given source explicitly states it excludes a particular situation. For example I did a quick search on boosting saves in 3.5 & came up with this for will saves

Spoiler

• Bless +1 resistance bonus
• Protection from evil: +2 resistance bonus
• Luckstone: +1 luck bonus
• Aura of courage: Morale Bonus
• Heroism: +2 Morale bonus
• Rage: +2 Morale Bonus
• an uncountable number of feat & PrC features
• etc

There was even a logic to it

Spoiler: dmg21

Keeping track of the different types of bonuses a character gets from
different sources may seem like a real bother. There are good reasons
to do this, however.
Balance: The main reason to keep track of what stacks and what
doesn’t stack is to keep total bonuses from getting out of hand. If a
character wears a belt of giant Strength, it’s unbalancing to allow the
cleric to cast bull’s strength on her as well and allow both bonuses to
add up. Likewise, a character with mage armor, magic plate armor, a
ring of protection, and a divine favor spell would be unbalanced if all his
bonuses were cumulative. Stacking restrictions keep the game within
manageable limits, while still allowing characters to benefit from
multiple magic items. For instance, note that some of the items from
the previous example—the magic plate armor, the ring, and the divine
favor spell, for example—could work together, because they provide
bonuses of different types.
Consistency and Logic: The system of bonus types provides a way to
make sense out of what can work together and what can’t. At some
point, when adding types of protection together, a reasonable player
realizes that some protections are just redundant. This system logically
portrays how it all makes sense together.
Encouraging Good Play: Categorizing bonuses by type allows play-
ers to put together suites of effects that do work in conjunction in a
consistent manner—encouraging smart play rather than pile-it-on play.

This is something that a GM can easily choose to ignore if they choose to do that with their table of players. Unfortunately this is not something that a GM can bolt on after the fact if it's not baked in from the start & the difficulty of doing so goes up the more content published for the system.

 

[mellored]

Seems odd that the wild shape scales for all druids, but the healing doesn't.

 

[Lycurgon]

I think my feedback will be "Thanks for saving me money. I won't want to buy any of the new books. I'll just take the handful of good ideas to use with my existing books and ignore the rest garbage in the new edition. More money to put towards 3PP."

Every time a new UA comes out I like a little of it but find they are making the game worse with most of the changes, IMO. Clerics are now boringly similar to one another, Druids are less versitile, Moon Druids can't tank, Bards have been nerfed. These things might change before the final product but with the way they talk about stuff (Video says they are improving Wildshape while they make it way worse) I don't have much hope. They are not consistent with what they seem to be trying to achieve. Paladins can now use Divine Strike with Unarmed strikes but can't use Radient Strikes or Sacred Weapon with them. They say that they want more options for Channel Nature because not everyone wants to be a shapeshifter, but then focus several class abilities on wildshape.

But I am okay with giving my money to other creators. It makes me more interested in seeing Black Flags take on classes.