D&D (2024) New One D&D Playtest Document: 77 Pages, 7 Classes, & More!

There's a brand new playtest document for the new (version/edition/update) of Dungeons of Dragons available for download! This one is an enormous 77 pages and includes classes, spells, feats, and weapons.

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

In this new Unearthed Arcana document for the 2024 Core Rulebooks, we explore material designed for the next version of the Player’s Handbook. This playtest document presents updated rules on seven classes: Bard, Cleric, Druid, Monk, Paladin, Ranger, and Rogue. This document also presents multiple subclasses for each of those classes, new Spells, revisions to existing Spells and Spell Lists, and several revised Feats. You will also find an updated rules glossary that supercedes the glossary of any previous playtest document.

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[tetrasodium]

The trouble with short rests in 5e is that they return so much, in the case of the old warlock/monk & even packet6 monk the return is "ALL" of the consumable resource needed to nova through any reasonable encounter. Even though 2e technically could have a shorter "rest" it never had

Spoiler: these problems

Complete with three different exasperated efforts from the GM in that video

Spoiler: *The relevant 2e rules

• Turns were 10 minutes (PHB197) & if you got your con to 20 or above you'd start regrating HP just with the passing of time. That regen would start at 1hp every 6 turns & drop a round every point of con till it was 1/1 at 25con (PHB21).
• PHB107
  "Memorization is not a thing that happens immediately. The wizard must have a clear head gained from a restful night’s sleep and then has to spend time studying his spell books. The amount of study time needed is 10 minutes per level of the spell being memorized. Thus, a 9th-level spell (the most powerful) would require 90 minutes of careful study. Clearly, high-level spellcasters do not lightly change their memorized spells."
• PHB111
  "Priests must pray to obtain spells, as they are requesting their abilities from some greater power, be it their deity or some intermediary agent of this power. The conditions for praying are identical to those needed for the wizard’s studying."
• PHB81
  " Healing: A character proficient in healing knows how to use natural medicines and basic principles of first aid and doctoring. If the character tends another within one round of wounding (and makes a successful proficiency check), his ministrations restore 1d3 hit points (but no more hit points can be restored than were lost in the previous round). Only one healing attempt can be made on a character per day.
  If a wounded character remains under the care of someone with healing proficiency, that character can recover lost hit points at the rate of 1 per day even when traveling or engaging in nonstrenuous activity. If the wounded character gets complete rest, he can recover 2 hit points per day while under such care. Only characters with both healing and herbalism proficiencies can help others recover at the rate of 3 hit points per day of rest. This care does not require a proficiency check, only the regular attention of the proficient character. Up to six patients can be cared for at any time."

The biggest contributor is that some PCs get back "ALL" of their resources and no class needs to successfully do anything that might draw attention or be made impractical by the environment/location during a rest now. All of that creates a situation where there is no risk of backslide till it reflects poorly on the GM and that an interrupted long or short rest just loops back to "lets take another rest" to recover the resources just used plus the ones previously consumed. If the PCs aren't swimming in irresistible poison or surrounded by an explosively erupting volcano an interruption doesn't break the loop back to "lets take a rest" loop until that interruption veers into some flavor of TPK amounting to f rocks fall/lightning strikes or one side of the gm screen simply packs up.

Looking at the poisoned condition in the 5e PHB a long or short rest could actually be taken without issues while standing in a lake of poison

 

[Ruin Explorer]

I mean...what data do we have to suggest that, really...?

You always ask this and what we have is shared experiences, Let's Plays/Actual Plays, Youtube streams and so on. And it's clear from those that for most groups, they're not doing Short Rests as often as it seems like design suggests - some groups are basically not doing them at all. And a large part of that is because they're one hour, which is a huge chunk of time, narratively.

I get that you've not had that problem, but it's pretty tiring and pointless-feeling to have to deal with you constantly questioning everything and demanding "evidence" when you have none yourself, and literally everything you say about your play experiences and group screams "OUTLIER".

 

[Marandahir]

30 minutes still feels excessive dramatically. I'd put it as 20 minutes so because that's more in line with people's lived experience of a "short break".

Huh, I would have thought that because before you said most people didn't have a lunch hour, you'd be fine with the 30 min SR which is the standard lunch break for my contractors. They also get 15 min snack/coffee breaks every couple hours, so that lends itself to a 15/15/30/15/15 set up for SRs, if we have symmetrical ones.

My union has ensured me a full lunch hour, and it still doesn't feel more than a SR for me. But yeah, I can take a good walking break or play a few games of backboard tennis or do a grocery run instead of eating lunch, with that hour. I think they chose 1 hour because they thought 10 mins was too short and thus too easy to cheese, and then 1 hour was the next most easy unit of time to set the SR to.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

Huh, I would have thought that because before you said most people didn't have a lunch hour, you'd be fine with the 30 min SR which is the standard lunch break for my contractors.

That's literally the longest break in a day of work for a lot of people in the world, and importantly, they only get one, it doesn't work for a short rest, which you're supposed to have more than one of. You see the issue, I take it? Psychologically it conditions people to only have one.

A short rest should reflect something you get more than one of - 15 minutes is good but I think for some reason modern WotC hates anything that isn't an even block of time, so we go up to 20.

 

[Marandahir]

I like Short Rests...

I'm definitely a fan of having Short Rests that don't break up the narrative flow as much as an hour would.

Maybe some sort of risk/reward table for short rests; you can recharge a portion of your SR pool or heal some HP in proportional ranges from 10m to 1 hr, but 1 HR recharges all of it, but the longer the rest, the higher the rate of risk of a complication arising (perhaps longer SRs add dice to the tension pool if you're using AngryDM's mechanic there). That's all house rules though, but I'm interested in how WotC can balance SRs in core, at least in this thread.

 

[Autumnal]

But I will also say there's the additional side (which I happen to belong to) which is that we know 1-hour Short Rests are irritating... but that changing them to a length of time I like is so easy that I don't actually care what the book does or does not eventually include. If they leave it as 1 hour or change it to 10 minutes, 3 hours, 5 minutes, 1 minute, or whatever... it doesn't mater to me, I'm going to use the time period I myself am most happy with (10 minutes).

In a bold and surprising move, the version that goes to print has short rests take 99 minutes, while long rests take 15 minutes. A sidebar in the surprise mechanics deals with shocked and confused players as well as characters.

 

[Stalker0]

I've played 4E, so I know this isn't really true, nor even a real problem. I've also played 5E where people did Short Rest regularly, and it wasn't a problem. If anything, it was more balanced.

It's outright false to claim resources become "meaningless"

I can agree with this. 5-10 min, the key note there is that:

• The narrative assumption is that the players get their short rest powers back after most encounters.
• The time is long enough to still allow a DM to "throw in another encounter" if they want some attrition or to spice things up.

 

[Tales and Chronicles]

In our CoS game, we've just switched to rests being the length of time that makes the most sense in the current situation, so short are somewhere between 10 minutes and 1 hour and a long rest take somewhere between a few hours to a couples of days, depending on the exhaustion of the character resources.

 

[Parmandur]

You always ask this and what we have is shared experiences, Let's Plays/Actual Plays, Youtube streams and so on. And it's clear from those that for most groups, they're not doing Short Rests as often as it seems like design suggests - some groups are basically not doing them at all. And a large part of that is because they're one hour, which is a huge chunk of time, narratively.

I get that you've not had that problem, but it's pretty tiring and pointless-feeling to have to deal with you constantly questioning everything and demanding "evidence" when you have none yourself, and literally everything you say about your play experiences and group screams "OUTLIER".

Competing anecdotes, yes. Nobody's anecdote is better or worse, since they are isolated incidents. One suspects, however, that WotC mat have some more data.

I used to think my experience was an outlier, when I was in College reading forums. But at this point I don't think it is, so much.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

Competing anecdotes, yes. Nobody's anecdote is better or worse, since they are isolated incidents. One suspects, however, that WotC mat have some more data.

Disagree, that's an overly philosophical and disconnected-from-reality take. It's like saying to a bunch of people who have been harassed by the police "Well, I've always found the police to be terribly nice, so your anecdotes are nothing but that haha!". The reality is, if a bunch of people's "anecdotes" (an insulting and dismissive word used for experiences that others had, I note, a word that vanishes the moment they approve of an "anecdote") line up, and they do here, they should be considered to have more weight than otherwise.

I don't think WotC have any data on this.

I have never seen a survey question relating to it, have you? It's impossible to track via D&D Beyond. So all they could have is what, secret surveys that none of us have ever seen? Seems a little conspiratorial. Given they've never asked about it, which is actually surprising, I think it's highly likely this is a blindspot the designers have.