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.

 

[Remathilis]

Certainly Cure Wounds looks a lot stronger next to Healing Word when it scales at 2d8 per spell level versus 2d4. Depending on your level, dropping 6d8+4 or 8d8+5 healing looks pretty substantial. Let's do some math.

A martial PC with a d10 hit die and Con 14 has, taking the unrolled HP gains, 52 HP at 6th Level. A caster with an 18 casting stat and using a 3rd Level spell slot on Cure Wounds heals 6d8+4, or an average of 31 HP and a maximum of 52 HP. That's pretty substantial for one action. And that's before you tack on bonuses, like a Life Cleric adding another 6 HP to that amount. Meanwhile Healing Word's 6d4+4 is an average of 19 HP and a maximum of 28 HP. Quite a bit lower, but that's what it costs to save an action.

Is that good enough to make an upcast Cure Wounds worth both the action and the spell slot? I dunno. I doubt anyone could say so authoritatively without compiling a significant amount of Actual Play data. But it's certainly an attempt to make it useful again, and I respect that.

It's also worth noting that PCs get a feat at level 1 and tough is on that list. That is potentially two extra hp per level.

 

[UngainlyTitan]

Certainly Cure Wounds looks a lot stronger next to Healing Word when it scales at 2d8 per spell level versus 2d4. Depending on your level, dropping 6d8+4 or 8d8+5 healing looks pretty substantial. Let's do some math.

A martial PC with a d10 hit die and Con 14 has, taking the unrolled HP gains, 52 HP at 6th Level. A caster with an 18 casting stat and using a 3rd Level spell slot on Cure Wounds heals 6d8+4, or an average of 31 HP and a maximum of 52 HP. That's pretty substantial for one action. And that's before you tack on bonuses, like a Life Cleric adding another 6 HP to that amount. Meanwhile Healing Word's 6d4+4 is an average of 19 HP and a maximum of 28 HP. Quite a bit lower, but that's what it costs to save an action.

Is that good enough to make an upcast Cure Wounds worth both the action and the spell slot? I dunno. I doubt anyone could say so authoritatively without compiling a significant amount of Actual Play data. But it's certainly an attempt to make it useful again, and I respect that.

Page 274 on the DMG on how to build a monster has form a CR 10 monster a +7 to attack and a dpr of 63 to 68, let say 65 dpr.
let the fighter have AC 18 so the expected chance for that critter to hit is 0.5 giving a dpr of 65*0.5 = 32.5. Which is close enough to the expected healing of the cure wounds given above. So, I would say that using that slot would be worth it.
I agree that the above is not definitive but a good indicator none the less.

 

[occam]

The new conjure woodland beings is listed at level 5, while it's a 4th-level spell in the 2014 rules. I think this might be the first potentially stat block-breaking change in the new rules, in that a stat block showing the spell at 4th level would clearly identify it as belonging to pre-2024 rules. This seems like an error.

 

[Charlaquin]

Yes. The best use of healing magic is to wait until you are at 0, and then have the healer heal you back up, lather Rinse repeat.

I mean, that will still be the case. As long as a character with >0 HP functions at full capacity and a character with 0 HP can’t act, waiting until a character’s HP falls to 0 before healing them will always be the optimal way to use healing resources.

Damage outpaced healing by a large amount.

Yeah, this chance will certainly help mitigate that. So, now when you get healed back up from 0 in combat, you might actually last a full round before getting knocked unconscious again.

 

[Charlaquin]

Ugh I hate the new conjure spells. I would rather it be limited to summoning a single creature with a template.

You can. You just do that with the Tasha’s summon spells now (which will be in the new PHB).

 

[Charlaquin]

Has level 6 always given force damage to monks? That's basically magic weapons given resistances.

This is part of a trend of removing features that granted the ability to deal “magical damage” and replacing them with the ability to deal damage of a type other than bludgeoning, piercing, or slashing (most often force or radiant). It’s commonly speculated but technically not confirmed that this signals a change from monsters having resistance to “nonmagical bludgeoning, piercing, and slashing” to just straight-up “resistance to bludgeoning, piercing, and slashing.” The barbarian’s damage resistance during rage changing to remove the “nonmagical” exception seems to support this idea.

 

[bedir than]

I like Starry Wisp. It's flavorful and makes sense for the Druid (especially wildfire). I would love to have it open for Rangers and Paladins, but I can't remember if they kept or lost cantrips

 

[Charlaquin]

While that’s good, I’m perplexed why they would make these spells at all. They don’t actually conjure a creature as their names imply (and all of their older version have done). I feel like this is 5e but with disassociated mechanics. It’s like chill touch but worse.

The point is obviously to eliminate the conjure spells as originally written, which were problematic in a lot of ways. But if they just cut the spells entirely, people will object. So instead, they designed entirely new spells and gave them the same name, to try to sneak the removal of the original conjure spells past people’s radar.

 

[Charlaquin]

About healing...

I think they hit a good sweet spot. Healing was really bad in 5e, even when you were at 0, the enemy would just drop you again in their next turn, and sometimes that happened before you even took your turn.

It was so bad that even after being doubled I don't think healing is always the best use of your spell slots, and it's at most on par with an attack, so we souldn't see a resurgeance of healbot clerics

Yes, I’m sure this is what Jeremy Crawford meant when he said in the video that there was room to improve healing spells without unbalancing anything. As long as healing output is less on average than the damage you could output with the same action economy and resource expenditure, they can still ignore in-combat healing in DPR analysis.

 

[MonsterEnvy]

The new conjure woodland beings is listed at level 5, while it's a 4th-level spell in the 2014 rules. I think this might be the first potentially stat block-breaking change in the new rules, in that a stat block showing the spell at 4th level would clearly identify it as belonging to pre-2024 rules. This seems like an error.

Some spells were stated to have their levels changed.