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.

Unearthed Arcana Playtest

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[Micah Sweet]

I don't disagree with you here, but I think the issue is more complex than WotC being unwilling to do it.

5e (and most RPGs) just don't have robust wilderness exploration/travel rules (and honestly I don't see how they could and keep to the spirit of the game) but let's say those are created, and exploration becomes roughly equivalent to combat as an interesting, varied subsystem, and the Ranger has awesome abilities that make those more fun without trivializing them.

The problem is you can't just let the Ranger play in this new playground: every class has to have meaningful ways to participate. It's one thing to say that some players make a couple of Survival or Persuasion rolls while other players watch, but it's another thing to design a whole, engaging subsystem and only let some players contribute meaningfully.

And you also can't let magic trivialize this subsystem. I know a lot of people feel that casters are vastly superior to martials in combat, but it's not like the martials just stand there and watch while the casters dispense with the bad guys. (And if that's happening the encounters were already trivial.)

So now you're not just designing a new subsystem, but re-designing...or at least augmenting..all the classes to give them ways to engage with it.

I just don't see it happening.

Want to play the popular archetype of the natural explorer? Take Survival, use a bow, describe your character as wearing a green cloak.

The Ranger has got to be something more/different.

Level Up does literally all these things. It is possible, if you put in some effort to make the game that way.

 

[Micah Sweet]

And that UA failed.

Keep your courtesy trolling. You speak dismissively and insultingly about things people like and the people who make them, and get offended when I call a claim you make absurd?

No. If this is how you do, do it with someone else.

What's courtesy trolling?

 

[Olrox17]

I think it just might be their way of stepping away from a conversation that was upsetting them.

Jeez, kind of an overreaction, considering how civil the conversation has been so far.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Jeez, kind of an overreaction, considering how civil the conversation has been so far.

I do wish you didn't have to guess who has you on their ignore list.

 

[Vaalingrade]

I humbly request that the idea of 'preparing' spells be tied to the wizard only.

And then maybe we not have the wizard.

 

[darjr]

I do wish you didn't have to guess who has you on their ignore list.

It’s kinda the point of it though. If some folks knew they’d target them.

 

[AnotherGuy]

But how many of those systems were good? Psionics took how many tries to do across 2e, 3e, and 4e? Incarnum wasn't well received. Neither was Tome of Magic. Neither TSR nor WotC ever managed to make a non-spell magic system that ever caught on. I guess WotC just feels spells are a better received version of 4e powers and treat them as such.

I thought the Psionics for 3.5e was pretty good, but I'm willing to admit I may be an outlier as I didn't have much exposure other than playing a few high levels (8th-13th). The class (psion) and race (elan) I played allowed me to be incredibly versatile, at least it felt like that. It may have been OP, I cannot be sure due to my limited experience.

 

[Minigiant]

There aren’t subsystems for those because the goal with them is best served without subsystems. Not just simplicity, though that is a very worthy goal, but also improvisational freedom.

I do wish they’d give a little more text describing and giving examples, but I certainly don’t want to see 5e become 3.5 or 4e with their hyper specific crunch for each skill.

Indeed 5ES goal is to be overall simple and mostly freeform with spells being pinpoint counters to reality.

However lack of examples seriously hurts their expand of Expertise.

 

[darjr]

I do wish that there were slightly different rules for spells for different types of casters. I mean there already are, wizards vs sorcerers for instance, why not extend that to rangers? Say they don’t need some or many of the components and/or they are not arcane and can’t be dispelled or counter spelled.

But then what happens with multi class characters?

 

[doctorbadwolf]

It seems so. It really shouldn't be, though, right? Professional game designers and all that. Other systems seem to have managed (PF2E for example).

It seems though, that anything slightly not-normal is going to be represented by spells, moving forward. It's the simplest, easiest solution, requiring no extra work. I can see how some people might refer to that as "lazy design" I suppose, and I'd have no counterargument except to say they aren't trying to make a well-designed game, they're trying to make an ever-more popular game, and that's the only goal that matters.

Insultingly? Where? Where are we actually disagreeing?

See the bolded, above.

What's courtesy trolling?

Staying strictly within the rules while being just disrespectful enough to goad the other person into being discourteous.