D&D (2024) One D&D Expert Classes Playtest Document Is Live

The One D&D Expert Class playest document is now available to download. You can access it by signing into your D&D Beyond account at the link below. It contains three classes -- bard, rogue, and ranger, along with three associated subclasses (College of Lore, Thief, and Hunter), plus a number of feats.

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[Olrox17]

My brother in Christ, this is a world in which there are eldritch abominations beyond human ken living in people's basements. Going by your logic, fighters and rogues should also be wizards. Commoners should be wizards. Either magic is something special that only some people can do, or it's something everyone and everything has, in which case it's not magic.

And let's not forget barbarians!

In the fiction of the game, what does a battlemaster do when they attack someone with a sword? Is it perhaps different from muttering an incantation and calling on an unearthly power? An anti-martial field already exists, it's called 'armour'.

Resistance (and immunity) to non-magical weapons is also very common on monsters, even low level ones. And flying enemies, mocking the poor melee warriors. I'd say that are at least as many monster abilities screwing martials, as there are anti-spellcasting ones.

 

[gorice]

This is probably pointless, but: how often did Van Helsing cast magic?

 

[Bill Zebub]

I keep thinking about the line from the Hobbit, about (I paraphrase) how Hobbits don’t have magic, except the ordinary everyday sort that allows them to hide when stupid big people come blundering along.

Why is it so freaking important whether or not something is magical? I don’t really believe it’s about how to adjudicate anti-magic fields; there seems to be some kind of emotional investment in this issue.

 

[Eric V]

So, if a person wanted to play a highly skilled outdoorsman who could accomplish things like calming the wild horse down, minor healing, befriending a wolf, knowing weaknesses of creatures, and other rangery-stuff...the answer has to be spells. D&D spells, mind you, with their VSM components and shared spell lists. There's no room to play the skilled archetype from imagination and many pieces of media?

That seems unnecessarily limiting, especially since the spell-using ranger could be part of a subclass.

 

[Eric V]

I keep thinking about the line from the Hobbit, about (I paraphrase) how Hobbits don’t have magic, except the ordinary everyday sort that allows them to hide when stupid big people come blundering along.

Why is it so freaking important whether or not something is magical? I don’t really believe it’s about how to adjudicate anti-magic fields; there seems to be some kind of emotional investment in this issue.

It doesn't matter how you envision your character when you sit down to play?

I mean, there are technical issues to be sure (if you don't have the material components, etc.) but primarily it's about how the character plays from one's imagination...which is why we play RPGs, right?

If we were talking about a board game, I'd agree with what you wrote 100%.

 

[Remathilis]

This is probably pointless, but: how often did Van Helsing cast magic?

I get the origin of the cleric is a player wanting to play a vampire hunter, but they are an Old Testament prophet wearing the armor of a Knight Crusader with Van Helsing's cross stapled on. Aragon is closer to the 5e Ranger than Van Helsing is to the Cleric.

 

[gorice]

I keep thinking about the line from the Hobbit, about (I paraphrase) how Hobbits don’t have magic, except the ordinary everyday sort that allows them to hide when stupid big people come blundering along.

Why is it so freaking important whether or not something is magical? I don’t really believe it’s about how to adjudicate anti-magic fields; there seems to be some kind of emotional investment in this issue.

I don't think its about game mechanics at all, or at least, not principally. Whether or not a class like a ranger uses magic is massively important from a purely aesthetic perspective, and has big worldbuilding implications. If you don't want to play a magical character, or run a ludicrously high-magic campaign, D&D has increasingly little to offer.

 

[Olrox17]

I keep thinking about the line from the Hobbit, about (I paraphrase) how Hobbits don’t have magic, except the ordinary everyday sort that allows them to hide when stupid big people come blundering along.

Why is it so freaking important whether or not something is magical? I don’t really believe it’s about how to adjudicate anti-magic fields; there seems to be some kind of emotional investment in this issue.

The more this discussion goes on, the more it looks like the main issue is VSM components. I get it, nobody wants their Aragorn-like character to go abracadabra while they do weird gestures and toss bat crap everywhere.

 

[Micah Sweet]

But this argument got lost a long time ago. D&D has never bothered worrying too much about corner cases - by D&D I mean 5e that is. The anti-magic field is such a white room theory crafting point that it's pretty much just a cliche by this point. I'm more than willing to bet my lunch money that only a very, very tiny minority of gamers has ever seen one in play. And, let's be honest, no one has ever seen an Animal Friendship spell counter-spelled.

Thus, D&D has decided that if something is 90% duck, we'll just call it a duck and be done with it. If two things are functionally the same, in 5e they use the same system most of the time. Thus, cantrips use the straight up combat system most of the time, with a few using the saving throw system. Functionally, there is no difference between a Firebolt and someone with a crossbow. Dice might be different, but, the mechanics are identical.

And since D&D1 is aiming for streamlining and simplifying, we're going to get caster rangers. Full stop. That's just how it will be. 5e was based on the idea that anything that is even remotely "spell like" is just a spell, full stop. Thus rangers and paladins become half casters instead of having a list of bespoke abilities. So, we can have two rangers that are actually quite different, simply by choosing different spells.

Oh, if you're talking about how things are actually going to be (WotC being WotC), rather than how some of us think they should be, then I have to agree. I don't like magic "rangers", but that's what 6e is going to have. There are IMO better ways (much better ways) to make a knowledgeable survivalist wilderness defender, but WotC is determined to take the easy way out.

 

[Micah Sweet]

So, if a person wanted to play a highly skilled outdoorsman who could accomplish things like calming the wild horse down, minor healing, befriending a wolf, knowing weaknesses of creatures, and other rangery-stuff...the answer has to be spells. D&D spells, mind you, with their VSM components and shared spell lists. There's no room to play the skilled archetype from imagination and many pieces of media?

That seems unnecessarily limiting, especially since the spell-using ranger could be part of a subclass.

Apparently its brutally unfair to the poor spellcasters otherwise.