D&D (2024) Unearthed Arcana Playtest Packet 7 Live on D&D Beyond

Wizards of the Coast posted the seventh playtest packet for the 2024 update to Dungeons & Dragons. The new playtest packet includes updated class material for the Barbarian, Fighter, Sorcerer, Warlock, and Wizard classes.

Highlights for each class:

Barbarian

• New Path of the World Tree subclass and updated Berserker, Wild Heart (formerly Totem Warrior), and Zealot subclasses.
• Attack recklessly for a full round rather than just one turn.
• Path of the Wild Heart (formerly Path of the Totem Warrior) has updated options.
• Brutal Critical gets damage buffs.

Fighter

• New Brawler subclass excels at using improvised weapons and unarmed strikes.
• Tactical Mind and Tactical Shift expand the use of Second Wind.
• Studied Attacks grants advantage on an attack roll against an enemy after you've missed an attack against them.
• Battle Master and its maneuvers have been updated.

Sorcerer

• Innate Sorcery empowers your spellcasting for a limited time.
• Sorcery Incarnate and Arcane Apotheosis boost your Metamagic while Innate Sorcery is active.
• Sorcerous Restoration is available at 5th level and scales with your sorcerer level.
• Wild Magic Sorcery now more reliably allows you to roll on the Wild Magic Surge table.

Warlock

• Pact Magic is back.
• Eldritch Invocations are now available at 1st level and your options have been revised.
• Pact Boons are now invocations, and Mystic Arcanum is once again a class feature.
• Patron Spells are always prepared.
• Updated Archfey Patron, Celestial Patron, Fiend Patron, Great Old One Patron subclasses.

Wizard

• Spellcasting feature now allows you to swap out a cantrip each long rest.
• Memorize Spell is now a feature. Modify Spell and Create spell have been nixed.
• Updated Abjurer, Diviner, Evoker, and Illusionist subclasses.

Universal changes include a return to class spell lists, more features from Tasha’s Cauldron of Everything, and update to some of the spells including arcane eruption, sorcerous burst, counterspell, and jump.

The official Dungeons & Dragons YouTube account also posted an almost 90-minute-long video doing a deep dive on the playtest packet.

 

[darjr]

It's 54 pages. The "What's inside" section.

WHAT’S INSIDE
Here are the new and revised elements in this article:
Classes.
Five classes are here: Barbarian, Fighter, Sorcerer, Warlock, and Wizard. Each of those classes includes multiple subclasses, two of which are entirely new: the Path of the World Tree in the Barbarian and the Brawler in the Fighter.
Spells.
Revised spells are included.
Weapons.
Weapon revisions are included.

The following sections were introduced in a previous article and are provided here for reference:
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.

Unearthed Arcana Playtest

Unearthed Arcana Playtest Materials Get Unearthed Arcana playtest content, try it out in your game, and provide feedback! Check back regularly for ...

www.dndbeyond.com

 

[Parmandur]

Making the "Pact of..." features into Invocations makes a lot of sense, instead of a Subclass like choice.

 

[Weiley31]

I like that Rage can be extended with a Bonus Action.

 

[Weiley31]

Also, as a Battle Master player, I am pleased so far with what I see. ESPECIALLY with Relentless.

 

[Incenjucar]

Hiding still makes you physically transparent. sigh

 

[Ruin Explorer]

Is this is the general commentary thread because I must say, I thought this was going to be "small tweaks" according to WotC, but the improvements I'm seeing to Fighters seem to significantly more major that Fighters have even seen in any UA before.

I mean we've Tactical Mind, an actual utility ability, yeah it's extremely weak, it's the equivalent of Advantage, roughly, though you could use it after Advantage, I guess. Also hilariously I guess you get to move without OAs even if you use it out of combat lol? Battle Master is much improved (on an already solid slate), and gets an actual no-roll utility ability - Know Your Enemy - mostly in-combat but still, you could use it out - you could even do scouting with it and come back after a short rest with all your dice back. Student of War gives an actual skill as well as no-doubt still-useless tool proficiency.

Brawler isn't quite there yet but sounds promising, and importantly, WotC have a sidebar that amounts to "Unarmed attacks will be forced to totally suck if you're not a Monk", which is broadly applicable and could be very cool, and perhaps obviate the need for a martial artist class that isn't Monk (still need to throw Monks overboard though, easily 5E's worst conceptualized and least-developed class). It's a little sad though - you can see someone is basically struggling with Crawford to overcome Crawford bizarre but ultra-consistent deep hatred of unarmed attacks from non-Monks (including natural weapons on PC), but you have pathetic loserly design like "Oh you get a free unarmed attack but you're not allowed to use it to punch someone, that would be cool and mechanically effective so obviously inappropriate on a martial!".

We do get a bit of needless idiocy still, like with EKs, they can have two bonded weapons, cool, but need 2 bonus actions to summon them. That shouldn't even be a rule. It's a waste of ink. All it does is the make the subclass very slightly worse, and make the game needlessly more complicated for absolutely no gain whatsoever. That is straight-up bad design. It's not even consistent design.

I see predictions re: BG3 stuff being in (whichever way around it was, hardly matters) are indeed correct. Speak with Animals is a Ritual spell, for example, and Wildheart Barbarians replace Totem.

Warlock is now a mandatory 1-level dip for any high CHA character who melees and whose DM allows multiclassing good god. Also 3 attacks at level 11 woo.

Oh look they made Wizard an even bigger problem out of combat by giving them Scholar and Memorize Spell. I kind of like Memorize Spell and feel like it's on-brand for Wizards, but it should be like, 1/short rest or something, because A) that would mildly incentivize short rests, something Wizards generally oppose and B) this current design means you can effectively cast ANY spell in spellbook out of combat, which is most obnoxious place to be able to do that, so you can now absolutely OWN the entire party because ALWAYS have ALL your really dumb no-roll utility spells available.

Ugh Counterspell why is this trash still in the game?!?!?

Short Rest is inexplicably still an hour. For god's sake make it 10-15 minutes and limit it to 3 per Long Rest.

 

[Stalker0]

I mean we've Tactical Mind, an actual utility ability, yeah it's extremely weak, it's the equivalent of Advantage, roughly, though you could use it after Advantage, I guess.

Remember the ability is only applied when you fail a check, so you can only use it when you need it. I think you are seriously underestimating the utility. Use this in combo with the battle master's commanding Prescence maneuver, and suddenly you have a fighter so smooth talking that even the bard has to show respect (Persuasion +1d8 +1d10, an average +10 to a check!)

The brawler's main problem is the same as the monk, the game assumes that having weapon equivalency without weapons is somehow a "benefit"....but in 99% of circumstances its not (and technically you can't get d8 damage without giving up a shield....which is terrible). The abilities look fun, but at the end of the day a 3rd level brawler doesn't get anything that a fighter with a few weapons doesn't have the vast majority of the time. Its not until 7th that things start getting interesting.

 

[darjr]

I think know your enemy would be better if it gave you an immediate attack action

 

[Parmandur]

Remember the ability is only applied when you fail a check, so you can only use it when you need it. I think you are seriously underestimating the utility. Use this in combo with the battle master's commanding Prescence maneuver, and suddenly you have a fighter so smooth talking that even the bard has to show respect (Persuasion +1d8 +1d10, an average +10 to a check!)

And not every party is going to have a Bard, so the possibility of a Fighter build being the face doesn't necessarily take away from a Bard being usually the easy no resource charm-master (high Charisma, expertise in Pwrsuasian, etc).

Most Fighters will probably use this as an invitation to get creative with Athletics and Acrobatic checks, like a swashbuckling pulp action hero.

The brawler's main problem is the same as the monk, the game assumes that having weapon equivalency without weapons is somehow a "benefit"....but in 99% of circumstances its not (and technically you can't get d8 damage without giving up a shield....which is terrible). The abilities look fun, but at the end of the day a 3rd level brawler doesn't get anything that a fighter with a few weapons doesn't have the vast majority of the time. Its not until 7th that things start getting interesting.

Being unable to be disarmed or surprised is very potent. I think this Subclass will keep up in damage (the primary measure that matters) while really bringing flavor to the game.