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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[fluffybunbunkittens]

But, again, you don’t really have a bunch of subsystems.

Half the spells are their own subsystem. Just go have a look at Polymorph or Teleport - you are not extrapolating those from Ray of Frost.

 

[Hussar]

Half the spells are their own subsystem. Just go have a look at Polymorph or Teleport - you are not extrapolating those from Ray of Frost.

Fair enough, although I'm not sure "half" isn't a bit of an exaggeration. Most of the spells aren't like that. Although, I will agree that there are just too damn many spells. It's one area I would rather see a HUGE paring down. Go back to Expert D&D where you had about 8 spells per level. Done. Not going to happen, but, one can dream.

It's really actually quite annoying that the caster turns often take twice as long as anyone else's, not because they're so much more difficult to run or anything, but, because so many times, the player drops a new spell, and often aren't 100% up on the rules, or, my personal favorite, "I cast ((Insert Spell Name)" Okay, sure. What does that do? "It does this and this and this" Uhh, ok. Do you have that keyed in as a macro or do you have the spell handy to show me? "Oh, no, it's in this book... oh, you don't have that book... well, that's how it works..."

DM bangs head on desk repeatedly

Look, if you're a caster, and you've just got that brand new polymorph spell, or animate objects, or whatever, take the thirty seconds to prep it to use at the table BEFORE you use it at the table.... Pretty Please.

 

[Bill Zebub]

On a slightly more serious note, this was kind of my point, there's like this amusing superficial similarity, but the idea that a dude who inspires people and whose main deal is casting spells is "like James Bond" is pretty wack.

Bond's actual main deal I note is luck - it's literally expressed in the first film, I forget the exact line, but it's alluded to almost immediately that he's very lucky. And then throughout pretty much all the pre-Craig films we see that over and over, Bond often just blunders his way into things, rarely does any actual spycraft, gets into these incredibly dangerous situations and again often gets out of them by luck rather than judgement or skill, and constantly bumps into women who find him attractive and are willing to do unreasonable things to help him, or to delay killing him (even though, very often, objectively, he's not that hot). It's also why most of the casino games he prefers are games of chance, not skill (pre-Craig, again).

I dunno if he even has a high CHA when it comes down to it - he's rarely able to convince anyone of anything outside of romance, doesn't seem like a natural leader, and so on (I mean, I'd definitely say it's above-average though).

He's kind of one of those characters that actually only works properly in an RPG where the PCs have some narrative control, because of the luck factor often involving third parties appearing conveniently. Sorry been listening to a podcast about Bond recently, so had a lot of thoughts!

Coincidentally, in the simplified class structure I’m designing for kids, the main theme of my Minstrel class is…luck.

 

[Njall]

But, again, you don’t really have a bunch of subsystems. Most spells are mechanically identical. Roll a save and deal x or y. Or roll an attack and deal x. Doesn’t matter what class casts it, most of the spells are pretty much the same thing.

Which, if anything, proves his point.
For example, WoTC, contrary to what most "modern" games do, doesn't even bother with any sort of active defense system for martials, using instead HP and AC as a broad measure of the character's defensive capabilities.

Which is ok when you want to keep things simple.

But, as soon as casters enter the equation, they take the time to make sure that they have every possible different color or combination thereof your wizard might want to smite stuff with covered.

There's this bizzarre disconnect in D&D, where combat and most skills are mostly abstracted and kept simple, until magic's involved.
Then, the system suddenly becomes super detailed, 'cause can't have a warrior actually parrying a blow (aside from... well whatever battlemasters get, which sure as hell ain't useful past the first 3/4 levels), or deciding whether he wants to conserve HP rather than go all-out on damage, or even managing more than one reaction per round... that'd slow things down, but a wizard that prefers to zap something with a blue ray rather than a yellow one? That sure needs to be addressed with a paragraph or two [/sarcasm].

 

[Ruin Explorer]

What subsystem is there for Athletics checks? You roll a d20, add athletics, succeed or fail. Full stop. That's the full scope of the Athletics skill, exactly the same as any other skill.

???? Right in the playtest is a whole subsystem involving Jumping... just as there is in the main rules...

 

[Micah Sweet]

Fair enough, although I'm not sure "half" isn't a bit of an exaggeration. Most of the spells aren't like that. Although, I will agree that there are just too damn many spells. It's one area I would rather see a HUGE paring down. Go back to Expert D&D where you had about 8 spells per level. Done. Not going to happen, but, one can dream.

It's really actually quite annoying that the caster turns often take twice as long as anyone else's, not because they're so much more difficult to run or anything, but, because so many times, the player drops a new spell, and often aren't 100% up on the rules, or, my personal favorite, "I cast ((Insert Spell Name)" Okay, sure. What does that do? "It does this and this and this" Uhh, ok. Do you have that keyed in as a macro or do you have the spell handy to show me? "Oh, no, it's in this book... oh, you don't have that book... well, that's how it works..."

DM bangs head on desk repeatedly

Look, if you're a caster, and you've just got that brand new polymorph spell, or animate objects, or whatever, take the thirty seconds to prep it to use at the table BEFORE you use it at the table.... Pretty Please.

Sounds like more of a player problem than a system problem.

 

[Bill Zebub]

???? Right in the playtest is a whole subsystem involving Jumping... just as there is in the main rules...

Not sure I count brief rules for specific situations as “a whole subsystem”. I mean, I guess you could; I’m not going to argue there’s a threshold of column inches required. But then let’s get rid of the word “rule” and call everything a subsystem.

 

[MarkB]

I have always thought of James Bond as the "Shake the tree" move. I imagine the discussion in M's office something like "What is this bloke's deal, seems fishy" "Dunno! Why don't we send in Bond and see who shoots at him"

So, basically he's an adventurer.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

Ummm...no.

In the other thread, Umbran points out that one needs to discuss design goals when evaluating if the design is well-done or not.

The goal for 5e, clearly, is to be popular. As a result, design is simple, as you point out. This means, for example, removing nuance from the game and just defaulting to "spells" for anything pcs do that is even slightly above ordinary.

With popularity and simplicity as design goals, it is well-designed.

It is well designed as a fun game. Fun being the primary purpose of games…that makes it a well designed game.

“Popular” is just “enjoyable and satisfying for a large percentage of people”.

“Removing all nuance from the game” is nonsense. Spells are used to represent magic. The monk doesn’t cast spells in order to jump 60 feet or run twice as fast as normal people at high level, but if the ranger is supposed to commune with nature to gain information, and there are already spells that literally do that, and the ranger is already conceptually magical (which they’ve been for at least 20 years, arguably since the beginning), just using those existing spells to model that isn’t a lack of nuance or lazy as you danced around calling the designers upthread, it’s just not to your preference. That’s it.

 

[Eric V]

It is well designed as a fun game. Fun being the primary purpose of games…that makes it a well designed game.

“Popular” is just “enjoyable and satisfying for a large percentage of people”.

“Removing all nuance from the game” is nonsense. Spells are used to represent magic. The monk doesn’t cast spells in order to jump 60 feet or run twice as fast as normal people at high level, but if the ranger is supposed to commune with nature to gain information, and there are already spells that literally do that, and the ranger is already conceptually magical (which they’ve been for at least 20 years, arguably since the beginning), just using those existing spells to model that isn’t a lack of nuance or lazy as you danced around calling the designers upthread, it’s just not to your preference. That’s it.

Yeah, we're not disagreeing on the definition of popular. I don't think we're disagreeing on popularity being the goal of the design, either. If some aspect of the game was fun but not necessarily popular, it would not make it into the game.

The D&D ranger has been conceptually magical for many years, true, but there are people coming into the game without that baggage; they have other pop culture ideas about the ranger (as @Ruin Explorer has pointed out) that apparently are not welcome in a game that substitutes magic spells for things that the pop culture examples do without magic.

You are also quite wrong about it "just not being to my preference." Which...of course you are; you don't know me, right? The truth is, I actually don't care at all, except that I find it a shame that the biggest brand for fantasy RPGing can't make room for a reasonably popular concept from other media. That's all.