D&D (2024) New UA one D&D play test document Dec 1st.

[DeviousQuail]

• Holy Order is great but as others have said WotC should create a few more since every Cleric will have two of them by level 9.
• I'm happy with the interactions between Blindsight, Truesight, Tremorsense, and Invisible after a first pass. Being Invisible won't do much against a creature that can see through your invisibility. Tremorsense doesn't give you the ability to see them though, only know where they are and I'm fine with that.
• Light [Weapon Property] has been cleaned up. Perhaps they saw all of my complaints? Now you have to already have a light weapon in each hand to gain the offhand attack benefit, which is better than the shenanigans of the previous UA.
• The Jump action is like a special dash action. The distance you cover from the jump doesn't use your movement but you are limited to a distance no greater than your movement speed. I'm just excited for characters with maxed Strength and Expertise to regularly jump over basketball hoops.
• As someone playing a Cleric right now I'm going to hold off on that new Spiritual Weapon design until the campaign is over.
• I don't have a problem with Divine Intervention. A more strict DM can just limit it to only spell effects from the Divine list and be fine. Or make it take longer than an action to use so that it becomes a mostly out of combat ability.
• I'm surprised they want to take the Goliath in that direction. Was making a Giant-kin species not an option?
• I like where Guidance and Resistance are going. They aren't as spamable as the 2014 version but the cost of a reaction and limited range are a decent tradeoff for not requiring concentration.
• No opportunity attacks on teleportation will cause at least one person at my table grief even though I've always enforced it that way.

 

[darjr]

I think divine intervention should have added to it.

“On a failure your god tells you to fix it yourself and gives you your action back”

 

[Blue]

I like the "Holy Order" mechanic--basically, the decision to be a "weapons cleric" or a "magic cleric" is no longer dependent on domains, it's a separate choice made at 2nd level. However, the scholar option feels incredibly underwhelming compared to the other two. Even allowing for the fact that it's much easier to get heavy armor training now, I can't imagine picking a few knowledge skill bonuses over a) heavy armor or b) rapid Channel Divinity recharge.

This mirrors my initial thoughts, but on further pondering I'm not sure I agree. This seems to be the martial/skill-monkey/caster, or as they put it Warriors/Experts/Mages groups. What makes sense for skill monkey? Well, adding +WIS to a skill ramps up faster than adding Prof again, so it's better than Expertise which is the hallmark of the Expert group, and it very carefully is not Expertise so you could get that as well. And that's before the fact that it's adding two proficiencies which also counts as something. This quite exceeds the skill-monkeyness of the Expert group until they get their second batch of Expertise. That's quite the haul, and can come up in play with some frequency.

 

[Incenjucar]

Having the Intervention recharge time be based on the slot used would be good, too. Perhaps 1 day +1 day/slot.

 

[Blue]

The Smite Spells are still on the Divine List

They listed at the beginning of the rules glossary what they changes, and the spell lists were not on there. That's not somethign they were revising for this iteration, as opposed to they revised it and left the smite spells on. Give it time.

Though since there are war gods, and since paladins most likely use the divine list, what is the problem with the smite spells being on the list?

 

[OB1]

Just hit me, True Strike could change to the new Guidance methodology and actually be a worthwhile cantrip!

True Strike - V, Reaction
When a creature you can see within 10' of you misses on an attack roll, they can add 1d4 to the roll, potentially turning a miss into a hit

 

[Stalker0]

• The Jump action is like a special dash action. The distance you cover from the jump doesn't use your movement but you are limited to a distance no greater than your movement speed. I'm just excited for characters with maxed Strength and Expertise to regularly jump over basketball hoops.

It however, also means that you can no longer jump as part of your regular movement, which severely limits its usefulness in combat.

 

[Xamnam]

I am absolutely going to criticize Jump requiring an action for as long as I have an opportunity to do so in the surveys.

 

[Amrûnril]

I quite agree, but IMO that should be a thing all clerics get. And druids should have a similar feature for Nature.

I'm not sure of this. I can imagine plenty of concepts for divinely inspired/powered adventures who don't actually know very much about religious theory/doctrine.

I think divine intervention should have added to it.

“On a failure your god tells you to fix it yourself and gives you your action back”

Something along these lines would make Divine Intervention a lot more attractive in emergency situations, which thematically seem like the scenario this feature was designed for.

 

[WarDriveWorley]

I'm going to focus on Aid here a bit.

I don't like the change to THP to be frank for the following reasons. Also slight disclaimer, I know that some of the issues I have with it are because of specific rules I use at my table and your table may vary. That's fine. I just want to explain in case my niche case becomes a non-niche case.

1. Since I've talked about my rules I'll start with those. I use the wound system that Studio Agate put out in their FateForge system. the link brings you to the free player's guide which details this, but as a quick explanation, a character's wound threshold is based on the character's maximum HP total. THP don't add to this. Raising the wound threshold on a character means they're less likely to be incapacitated by a good hit in combat. As a note wounds have created some interesting combat dynamics to the point some characters that aren't really HP oriented (a blaster wizard and an archer ranger) both seriously debated on taking the tough feat. I know I can houserule THP to also affect the wound threshold, but given the mercurial nature of THP it can be somewhat confusing to track.
2. Duration: Currently Aid is a "fire and forget" buff. You cast it and it lasts 8 hours with no concentration. If you take damage healing will replenish back up to your new max. The new one is also fire and forget, but it's instantaneous. Once you use those THP they're gone till Aid is cast again. I find this to be a bit of a spell tax in it's "updated" form.
3. Stacking: So one of my players is playing a Paladin and will drop heroism on himself. Current rules means that heroism and aid stack. Unless something changes with how THP are handled in DND1 they wouldn't under the updated Aid. That also means that other THP spells like Barkskin either make Aid redundant or situational and I think that ways of getting THP are too prevalent in 5E to add just another one.

Someone had mentioned that this may help ease record keeping, but I don't agree. My group consists of 6 players and myself. 2 of them are brand new (first ever campaign) and none of them have had any issues tracking Aid being cast on them. Now I know that that's not indicative of all players and YTMV, but I feel it's still worth mentioning.

Now that said I do like the increase in the amount of targets, but conversely think this may be to offset the lack of "permanent" hp.

So yeah I'm definitely not a fan of how it works now.