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.

Claim Unearthed Arcana now! - D&D Beyond

www.dndbeyond.com

​

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.

 

[Chaosmancer]

My current group has dumped intelligence and they suck at research. It makes life harder for them, and for me, when I have to limit the information I give them. It would be easier for us all if just ignored that and fed them the maximum info but I feel that somewhere out there is a character who may one day have higher than Int 14 (the fighter/rogue/warlock) and train in research skills. It's all about choices.

There are other ways around it such as intimidation, tricking npcs, or speak with the dead, legend lore, divination etc but none of that changes the fact that intelligent characters can be fun. I started binge watching Shadow Hunters where almost all the characters seem to have relatively low intelligence, and I think I would prefer to play someone smarter!

There are some players who want to play those characters so it feels unfair to say that other players who are concerned more with combat bonuses and bang for their buck should steal the toys of those players who are happy to play with the trade-off.

I do think that the backgrounds should be used more liberally to grant broad brush bonuses in appropriate ways and story benefits without rolling.

A sailor could be treated as trained in navigation, swimming, ship repairs, weather prediction etc without reference to specific skills or treat background training like tool proficiency to give advantage if you also have the skill.

A 10 intelligence is average. Most every person you have interacted with in college had a 10 intelligence.

Now, if everyone has a negative intelligence? Sure, I could see that being a time when you need to limit information, but the actual problem with intelligence is generally that no one at the table is actually smart enough to portray a 16 or 18 intelligence.

And sure, it can seem unfair to a theoretical future character who has a higher intelligence that you gave information to the low intelligence party. But theoretical future characters are rarely my concern unless I'm talking specific class/race abilities. I've had characters who everyone assumed were stupid, because of how the player played them, who had very high stats. The player just decided that those stats didn't matter.

 

[Chaosmancer]

Does the game just automatically assume someone is using the Help action for every ability check?

I mean, I basically have started to as a DM. I'm more surprised when the party DOESN'T use the Help action than when they do.

 

[UngeheuerLich]

Most of what you listed doesn't matter.

Ok. Didn't need to read the rest.

 

[Pauln6]

A 10 intelligence is average. Most every person you have interacted with in college had a 10 intelligence.

Now, if everyone has a negative intelligence? Sure, I could see that being a time when you need to limit information, but the actual problem with intelligence is generally that no one at the table is actually smart enough to portray a 16 or 18 intelligence.

And sure, it can seem unfair to a theoretical future character who has a higher intelligence that you gave information to the low intelligence party. But theoretical future characters are rarely my concern unless I'm talking specific class/race abilities. I've had characters who everyone assumed were stupid, because of how the player played them, who had very high stats. The player just decided that those stats didn't matter.

Our group includes two lawyers, a university professor, carers, supermarket workers, a computer expert, and a financial crime investigator. One size doesn't fit all whether talking about players or characters. The DM just has to work with players and characters alike so that stats do matter just as the character concept matters.

If your experience is that strength and intelligence don't matter in your games, then dump them. They matter in my game, and I try to make sure that they matter.

 

[UngeheuerLich]

Our group includes two lawyers, a university professor, carers, supermarket workers, a computer expert, and a financial crime investigator. One size doesn't fit all whether talking about players or characters. The DM just has to work with players and characters alike so that stats do matter just as the character concept matters.

If your experience is that strength and intelligence don't matter in your games, then dump them. They matter in my game, and I try to make sure that they matter.

Making INT count, even if one's players are not IQ 170 smart is as easy as allowing people with lesser social skills play high CHA characters.

One just assumes the character was better at making the plan or convincing the king than the player could play it out.
Or one has them make an INT check to allow them to notice a big hole in their plan the player missed or make a CHA check to have the guard react to, not the actual speech.

I mean, noone would let dextrous characters show how they balance over a 30 ft high rope.

In our games INT and CHA checks happen a lot. I use passive investigation to have Characters feel that something is off, maybe that the interior of the house is smaller than the outside. Or the ground floor has less rooms than the floor above.

 

[Yaarel]

Our group includes two lawyers, a university professor, carers, supermarket workers, a computer expert, and a financial crime investigator. One size doesn't fit all whether talking about players or characters. The DM just has to work with players and characters alike so that stats do matter just as the character concept matters.

That diversity of players at your table is cool.

If your experience is that strength and intelligence don't matter in your games, then dump them. They matter in my game, and I try to make sure that they matter.

The six abilities are seriously unbalanced with each other. This is a game design problem. It requires a game design fix.

Unfortunately, the designers have their hands tied by "tradition". One of the goal designs of 5e 2014 was to unify all of the previous editions of D&D into one edition. Something like whatever "felt" like D&D the most. This is a useful goal, and proved profitable. Unfortunately, part of the "feel" is players having accustomed themselves to a six abilities that works ambiguously, awkwardly and less well, at times even poorly and faultily. Any fix would feel unfamiliar to some degree.

The need for both Strength and Dexterity for mobility (jump-fall, climb-balance) when each ability makes the other dumpable, is painful and interferes with the parkour concept and the swashbuckling genre. Dexterity by itself is radically more useful, powerful and frequent, than the other physical abilities. The overlap of Strength weapons and finesse weapons is ambiguous. The mental abilities are radically imbalanced compared to each other. Wisdom is everything. Charisma is decent by itself, but classes organize to make it a super ability for magic. In practice, Intelligence is little more than "DM gives a hint", and is either arbitrary or worthless. The overlap between Intelligence Investigation and Wisdom Perception is ambiguous. The overlap between Intelligence knowledge and Wisdom "intuition" is ambiguous. And so on.

The 5e 2014 six abilities have huge, deep, and pervasively consequential design problems.

For 2024, will D&D players give the designers permission to fix these game engine breakdowns?

 

[Chaosmancer]

Ok. Didn't need to read the rest.

If you aren't even going to read other people's arguments and opinions, why bother to keep posting on a forum at all? You are essentially saying "you don't agree with me, therefore your opinion is trash."

 

[Chaosmancer]

Our group includes two lawyers, a university professor, carers, supermarket workers, a computer expert, and a financial crime investigator. One size doesn't fit all whether talking about players or characters. The DM just has to work with players and characters alike so that stats do matter just as the character concept matters.

Are you trying to imply that being skilled in a job you are highly trained for makes you more naturally intelligent than people with less job training? I mean, your entire first sentence is "look at all this range of job skills" followed with talking about "one size fits all". Seemingly with no indication of understanding that most people are of average natural intelligence, just because you have a fancy job doesn't make you intelligent, see all the lawyers who end up in the news for things like misfiling paperwork or doing other dumb things like admitting to crimes on the phone.

If your experience is that strength and intelligence don't matter in your games, then dump them. They matter in my game, and I try to make sure that they matter.

The very fact that you have to TRY to make them matter should be a red flag that something is imbalanced. After all, I bet you have never once had to try and make Constitution matter to the game.

And I use Intelligence regularly for Investigation or Arcana checks. But I am also fully aware that most classes get no real benefit from a higher intelligence, because while I can try and make it matter, other attributes matter without me trying and those being low is a bit more of a challenge.

 

[Clint_L]

They assume rolled stats. That's the default, and I've never heard any designer claim otherwise. Have you?

I'm not sure what you mean by "default." Or "rolled stats", since there are many different methods of rolling stats.

The PHB lists two ways of determining stats up front, rolled using 4d6 drop 1, then arranging as desired, or standard array, again arranged as desired. Functionally, these are basically the same thing (assuming honest rolls), since the standard array is derived to equal the average total of rolling stats using that method, but arranged into a useful pattern of numbers for creating a new character, leaving room to grow.

Functionally, more tables use point buy than anything else, but again this is derived from the standard array and designed to achieve a similar total number when optimally arranged.

So for practical purposes, I think it's fair to describe the game as balanced around the standard array.

 

[Mistwell]

I'm not sure what you mean by "default." Or "rolled stats", since there are many different methods of rolling stats.

From the PHB they establish the default first, and how to roll those stats by the default. They then given the first optional method:

"You generate your character’s six ability scores randomly. Roll four 6-sided dice and record the total of the highest three dice on a piece of scratch paper. Do this five more times, so that you have six numbers. If you want to save time or don’t like the idea of randomly determining ability scores, you can use the following scores instead: 15, 14, 13, 12, 10, 8."

The PHB lists two ways of determining stats up front, rolled using 4d6 drop 1, then arranging as desired, or standard array, again arranged as desired. Functionally, these are basically the same thing (assuming honest rolls),

No, averages are not the same as rolling.

since the standard array is derived to equal the average total of rolling stats using that method, but arranged into a useful pattern of numbers for creating a new character, leaving room to grow.

Functionally, more tables use point buy than anything else,

Your evidence for this is what?

but again this is derived from the standard array and designed to achieve a similar total number when optimally arranged.

So for practical purposes, I think it's fair to describe the game as balanced around the standard array.

No, really, it's not. The default method is rolling, and rolling isn't the averages. They have to design the game assume it can have both above average and below average results. It's one reason they limit your ability scores to 20 at lower levels without high level magic or high level class abilities.