D&D (2024) New Unearthed Arcana Playtest Includes Barbarian, Druid, and Monk

The latest Unearthed Arcana playtest packet is now live with new barbarian, druid, and monk versions, as well as new spells and weapons, and a revised Ability Score Improvement feat.

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WHATS INSIDE

Here are the new and revised elements in this article:

Classes. Three classes are here: Barbarian, Druid, and Monk. Each one includes one subclass: Path of the World Tree (Barbarian), Circle of the Moon (Druid), and Warrior of the Hand (Monk).

Spells. New and revised spells are included.

The following sections were introduced in a previous article and are provided here for reference:

Weapons. Weapon revisions are included.

Feats. This includes a revised version of Ability Score Improvement.

Rules Glossary. The rules glossary includes the few rules that have revised definitions in the playtest. In this document, any underlined term in the body text appears in the glossary.

 

[Parmandur]

This one's going to be divisive, I expect. I mean, I LOVE these new Conjure spells.

Is anyone out there in the middle-ground? Where you're just like, "Meh, they're fine, I guess."

Because it seems like a lot of love/hate.

The only thing I'd change is to make it more explicit that there's a Celestial creature inside that pillar of light, and not just a pillar.

I think they.are OK, but I'll live if they go off into the night, too.

 

[tetrasodium]

Wizards probably should have a design note at the beginning of each of these sections saying that. I was watching YouTubers do streamthrough readings and analysis and several of them were scouring those sections for changes even though they had read the section in the beginning of the document saying that those were included purely for reference. Some of these folks make a living at D&D on YouTube and if they trip up on this, I imagine a lot of average playtesters will be wasting their time looking for changes that aren't there.

I don´t think being a youtuber automatically gives proficiency in reading comprehension. Sometimes I think you lose it if you had it before.

To be fair, almost every packet has had rules glossary changes not in the change notes, sometimes they were mechanically significant ones

 

[fluffybunbunkittens]

This one's going to be divisive, I expect. I mean, I LOVE these new Conjure spells.
Is anyone out there in the middle-ground? Where you're just like, "Meh, they're fine, I guess."

I mean, I'll take anything over the 2014 Conjure spells. The spells could say 'you conjure an X that pops its head out, sees you, and goes away, you have wasted your turn' and I'd still rank them as okay in comparison.

But I can still wish that these basic cylinders of AoE were themed much more strongly.

 

[Vaalingrade]

This one's going to be divisive, I expect. I mean, I LOVE these new Conjure spells.

Is anyone out there in the middle-ground? Where you're just like, "Meh, they're fine, I guess."

Because it seems like a lot of love/hate.

The only thing I'd change is to make it more explicit that there's a Celestial creature inside that pillar of light, and not just a pillar.

I like all of them but Conjure Animal, which feels like you just create a trap square instead of anything like calling on animals or animal spirits.

It's nice that they basically brought back the Invoker after a decade, but Conjure Animals could have used... honestly a first pass to start with.

 

[Charlaquin]

This one's going to be divisive, I expect. I mean, I LOVE these new Conjure spells.

Is anyone out there in the middle-ground? Where you're just like, "Meh, they're fine, I guess."

Because it seems like a lot of love/hate.

The only thing I'd change is to make it more explicit that there's a Celestial creature inside that pillar of light, and not just a pillar.

I don’t have particularly strong feelings about them. I think it’s clearly necessary to rework them in a way that fixes the myriad issues with the 2014 versions, without also stepping on the toes of the Tasha’s summon spells, and this version achieves that, so that’s good. As for what they actually do, I neither take any particular issue with them, nor get the urge to play a character that uses them ASAP. They’re perfectly cromulent spells, in my book.

 

[Stalker0]

I don’t have particularly strong feelings about them. I think it’s clearly necessary to rework them in a way that fixes the myriad issues with the 2014 versions, without also stepping on the toes of the Tasha’s summon spells, and this version achieves that, so that’s good. As for what they actually do, I neither take any particular issue with them, nor get the urge to play a character that uses them ASAP. They’re perfectly cromulent spells, in my book.

Yeah that’s my feeling as well. These aren’t conjure spells to me, but they are good spells, and a much needed replacement for the other ones. In a perfect world they would have renamed them but backwards compatibility is going to force their hand so…I can live with it

 

[Stalker0]

Ok so beyond the flavor questions of the new conjure, js the fact they are conjures of “creatures” doing anything game wise?

Are there any animal, fey or celestial protection or blocking/repelling spells that would work against any of these spells?

The main one I could think of would be anti life shell, in theory you can’t move these conjures into the shells area

 

[DEFCON 1]

This is one of those situations where I bet the designers do not have anything set in stone and are just checking to see how most of us feel/need our flavor and mechanics to be for these Conjure spells. They've given us one idea and depending on how we respond, they will either keep going with it and finessing it (like for instance eventually perhaps putting a 'celestial being' within the Conjure Celestial column of light, if that gets enough queries/pushback)... or they will come up with some other new idea for how to do these spells that aren't AoEs.

The biggest thing right now for them is trying to figure out what we as players feel we want or need for 'conjurations' versus 'summons'. From my perspective... Summoning creatures means actually bringing real creatures to our location to do stuff for us... whereas Conjuring creatures means creating creatures or creature-like things/effects at our location to do stuff for us. So for me... these AoE effects are relatively okay because "creating" things means they can take whatever kind of form we as the conjurers give them-- so these "creatures" could be exactly like the real things... or they could be larger or smaller; they could be solid or liquid or gaseous or incorporeal; they could be different colors, different speeds, have different actions than a "normal" creature of that type; etc. etc. We conjurers are creating them, we can make them look and act however we'd like.

That being said... I also wouldn't have an issue if WotC went in the direction that others have said here in making these Conjured creatures be for out-of-combat effects instead, while leaving Summoned creatures as actual in-combat-use spells. So a Conjured Woodland Being wouldn't have a statblock of some creature to use in a fight... but instead there would be some Exploration or Social bonus or effect we would gain and the flavor of that effect comes out of some woodland creature hopping and skipping off to do it. Like maybe it's a scouting effect, like kind of Druidic version of the Wizard's Arcane Eye spell or something (both being 4th level spells) but instead of an invisible eye flying around, there's some incorporeal "raven" doing the same sort of thing instead. And the other Conjuration spells all have other magical effects.

To me, it doesn't really matter what they do. If the Summon spells do single creatures for melee combat better and more balanced now, then use the Conjures for AoEs or non-combat related things and we just accept that the thematics of the word 'Conjure' for these spells might not be the best choice but just a necessary one.

 

[Asisreo]

This one's going to be divisive, I expect. I mean, I LOVE these new Conjure spells.

Is anyone out there in the middle-ground? Where you're just like, "Meh, they're fine, I guess."

Because it seems like a lot of love/hate.

The only thing I'd change is to make it more explicit that there's a Celestial creature inside that pillar of light, and not just a pillar.

I'm pretty ambivalent. My players and I never really abused them before and I think they're neat now, but it didn't personally affect me so I was concerned either way.

 

[mellored]

Is anyone out there in the middle-ground? Where you're just like, "Meh, they're fine, I guess."

People tend not to go on forums to say things are ok. You mostly hear from people who are excited.

And in comparisions to the old ones, these are much better. But it depends on which one your talking about.

• Animals is weak.
• Celestial is strong.
• Elemental needs some wording cleared up. It’s kinda easy to avoid.
• Fey is a bit weak, but scales hard.
• I don't like minor elemental. It's either useless or overwhelming depending on your build.
• Woodland Beings is a bit generic, but works.