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.

 

[Yaarel]

Well, that's all right then!

I know people can swim in a chain tunic. Not sure about the Renaissance full plate tho.

 

[Clint_L]

While playing devil's advocate, it occurs to me that there is one elephant in the room that we haven't addressed, which is why jumping, climbing, and swimming are not affected by heavier armours and encumbrance?

It might well be that a weak rogue in light armour should actually be better at climbing, swimming, and jumping than a strong character who is weighed down by penalties. Has anyone done any real world experiments of people swimming in Chain or Plate Mail? ;-p

Spoiler

You can. But not easily, or for long.

 

[James Gasik]

It was back in 4e that I had this epiphany about armor check penalties and the like. Look at the Fighter. They traditionally have mostly Physical skills- climbing, swimming, jumping, and so on. If they get a social skill, it's usually rather blunt like Intimidate.

Fighters are usually designed to wear heavy armor. Starting in 3e, it became vogue to penalize most of the skills Fighters were good at for wearing the armor they were intended to wear, which really hampered their so-called advantages.

It wasn't until Pathfinder 1e that any sort of patch for this was made, by giving the Fighter the ability to reduce the penalties for wearing armor.

Doing away with penalties for armor and encumbrance actually helps the Strength Fighter (since the bulk of one's weight carried is typically your armor, and theirs is the heaviest), even if it seems like the opposite would be true.

 

[Chaosmancer]

While playing devil's advocate, it occurs to me that there is one elephant in the room that we haven't addressed, which is why jumping, climbing, and swimming are not affected by heavier armours and encumbrance?

It might well be that a weak rogue in light armour should actually be better at climbing, swimming, and jumping than a strong character who is weighed down by penalties. Has anyone done any real world experiments of people swimming in Chain or Plate Mail? ;-p

Because many people hated that in older editions, and it is far too much of an annoyance to deal with. I mean, it would literally be penalizing high strength characters for being high strength characters, as those are the only characters who really put on the heavy armors. It is just a bad incentive.

 

[Vaalingrade]

While playing devil's advocate, it occurs to me that there is one elephant in the room that we haven't addressed, which is why jumping, climbing, and swimming are not affected by heavier armours and encumbrance?

I'm gonna go with 'because encumbrance is terrible' for 500.

 

[Maxperson]

Strength (Athletics) needs to be the go-to for every kind of mobility check in the game, especially for body stunts and body coordination.

One cannot climb without balance. One cannot jump without falling. It is all one ability to check.

Strength is agility.

Strength is gross motor skills.

Strength is every athlete and gymnast.

Is that supposed to be humor, because strength isn't any of those things. It's sometimes hard to tell when someone is joking or being serious in text.

 

[Horwath]

It's not applied because streamlined & simplicity threw ACP on the monorail to brockway and ogdenville.

ACP was kind of high in 3.5e, ok in 4E and because we cannot do math in 5E and everything has to be advantage or disadvantage in 5E, ACP had to go.

but it can return and armors need to be simplified and balanced.

I.E.

light armor:
min STR 10
+3 AC
max dex +4
ACP: -1

medium armor:
min STR 14
+6 AC
max dex +2
ACP: -2

heavy armor:
min STR 16
+9 AC
max dex: +0(yes, negative applies)
ACP: -3

edit: for spellcasters, ACP can apply to spell attacks and DCs to have interaction of armor hampering spells but not completely prohibit them.

 

[Pauln6]

Because many people hated that in older editions, and it is far too much of an annoyance to deal with. I mean, it would literally be penalizing high strength characters for being high strength characters, as those are the only characters who really put on the heavy armors. It is just a bad incentive.

We only ever used the full encumbrance rules in 1e but in that edition armour had a significant effect on movement, being halved for those wearing plate mail. It's much easier to just apply a simple penalty to movement of say 5' for medium armour and 10' for heavy armour but you could say jump distance is based on strength minus your armour AC bonus. You could require an armoured character to make a swim check even in quiet water with the DC being your AC bonus. So your strength 10 acrobat in leather armour would have a base jump distance of 9 feet, your strength 20 fighter in plate Mail would have a base jump of 12 feet. That doesn't sound that unrealistic. I've never liked the absence of rules to let you jump that bit further but I might just let players roll Athletics (or Acrobatics in appropriate circumstaces if you are that way inclined) and add the score in inches to to your roll which could add up to 4 feet to a jump (natural 20, expertise, level 20).

Is that supposed to be humor, because strength isn't any of those things. It's sometimes hard to tell when someone is joking or being serious in text.

That's not quite true. If you practice yoga you will learn that muscle strength is as important to balance as much as your sense of balance. The ability scores have always overlapped though, with strength representing a degree of physical fitness, and constitution representing a degree of mental fortitude.

 

[tetrasodium]

ACP was kind of high in 3.5e, ok in 4E and because we cannot do math in 5E and everything has to be advantage or disadvantage in 5E, ACP had to go.

but it can return and armors need to be simplified and balanced.

I.E.

light armor:
min STR 10
+3 AC
max dex +4
ACP: -1

medium armor:
min STR 14
+6 AC
max dex +2
ACP: -2

heavy armor:
min STR 16
+9 AC
max dex: +0(yes, negative applies)
ACP: -3

Adding or removing something like that from the monorail of simplicity is a job for the base game and possibly a sidebar. Not the gm. 2024 needs to do better than the last decade of telling totally unsupported GMs to fix it themselves

 

[Horwath]

We only ever used the full encumbrance rules in 1e but in that edition armour had a significant effect on movement, being halved for those wearing plate mail. It's much easier to just apply a simple penalty to movement of say 5' for medium armour and 10' for heavy armour but you could say jump distance is based on strength minus your armour AC bonus. You could require an armoured character to make a swim check even in quiet water with the DC being your AC bonus. So your strength 10 acrobat in leather armour would have a base jump distance of 9 feet, your strength 20 fighter in plate Mail would have a base jump of 12 feet. That doesn't sound that unrealistic. I've never liked the absence of rules to let you jump that bit further but I might just let players roll Athletics (or Acrobatics in appropriate circumstaces if you are that way inclined) and add the score in inches to to your roll which could add up to 4 feet to a jump (natural 20, expertise, level 20).

we use 3rd edition that running jump is your roll in feet.