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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[Parmandur]

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.

I'd say you have that police analogy backwards, honestly, but I want to back off froma. Charged political analogy. So what I will say is that when we have competing anecdotes, I tend to believe WotC when they say their data mat he's my experience (such as how they discovered people were really playing 3E when they started actually collecting data for the Next paytest, or that most people aren't using Feats). Since my experience is that, yeah, people aren't using Feats Round...it seems plausible to me that their data may show the same. Same as the other way around, if their data showed them the opposite of my experience and they acted on that, it would make sense to me, not require a conspiracy.

And yes, WotC asks a lot of questions and does extensive playtesting, so I do believe they have data

 

[Stalker0]

Using hit dice to recharge things would work for me.

I actually think that is a terrible idea.

I always hate anytime they merge a defensive mechanic to power an offensive one. In this spending your hitdice to power offensive powers.

It creates two dichotomies in players:

• Your aggressive players will blow their loads on their powers....and then get upset because they have no healing and die.
• Your conservative players will hoard the abilities for that "just in case" moment when they really needed it, and so never enjoy the system.

Its the same problem I have with revivify as an example (I actually have several problems with the spell, but for this example...). There are going to be players that feel compelled to always have that spell prepared and to keep a spell slot open for it, because if the day that one of their fellow players died and they didn't have it....they would feel terrible (or worse, their fellow player gets mad at them for not doing so).

Defensive and offensive mechanics should not mix. Hitdice are great because they do their job. They provide a reservoir of healing that any player can use. Simple, easy. Players will always use them when they need them, and there is no reason to hoard them (I mean I might as well heal now if I need the healing). The only hoarding you get now is the player that has like 2 points of damage and decides to hold on that last roll kind of thing. But the system works very well. Best not to gum up the works.

 

[Marandahir]

Maybe have a Recharge Dice pool, which is equal to but separate from your HD. Depending on the length of your SR, you can roll 1 or more RD.

10 min = 1 RD
20 min = 2 RD
30 min = 3 RD
40 min = 4 RD
50 min = 5 RD
60 min = 6 RD

Choose a SR recharge feature and roll a number of RD equal to 1/10th the number of minutes rested. You regain a number of usages of that feature equal to the result of the dice, but can't exceed your maximum usages. There is no benefit to a SR greater than 60 min, but a LR recharges all SR features without rolling.

The exact number of dice could vary depending on balance -- I could see a very SR-heavy class like Warlock needing more RDs per 10 minute period so they could recover more spell slots.

Or perhaps you add your Proficiency bonus or key ability score modifier to the result of the RD roll.

 

[Parmandur]

You'd figure there'd have to be some reason (unless of course the most obvious reason being that most people they have received word from has never had issues with the 1 hour short rest.)

I think that's the whole deal.

Yeah, I sometimes feel annoyed by the idea that all anecdotes are equally dismissible. For example, I've seen it used to dismiss my 30 years of experience selling comics and games, as if that counts for nothing! (There is often a confusion that because something doesn't count for everything that it counts for nothing. There is space in-between!)

To me, it just seems absurd that when WotC says that most people don't use Feats, thst is dismissed as ridiculous on the face of it...when that matches my entire experience of 5E. Like, just because WotC says their data doesn't match someone's personal experience doesn't mean the data is inaccurate.

 

[tetrasodium]

That is unfortunately a common human bias that often doesn't play out in stats.

We humans tend to exaggerate our initial experiences. If I'm told X....well X is probably true. If my first experiences are Y....it takes a lot of evidence to convince me Y isn't true.

The truth here is.... all of these anecdotes are taken from a limited sample of the dnd gaming population, and often a very selective one (such as enworld forum goers as a group.....or people they post their dnd games on youtube group). That is a very biased platform to assess your entire community.

The only group I am aware of that has taken a concertive effort to gain stats about the entire dnd gaming community is WOTC....and even their sampling is biased (after all their surveys rely on people willing to go their home page on the internet). Only they could really say with any measure of conviction how often people are actually using short rests, and even then the evidence would have to be decently strong to overcome some of the biases inherent to their methods.

Getting to the real statistical truth of something is often quite challenging.

I did post a somewhat objective data point earlier. Specifically a video about 5e rest/recovery with 50k to a mere 451 here is another with 71k to 307 & a tangentially related one with 102k to 599 . I don't believe I've ever seen a video poking fun at the inability of 5e players to take a rest though and the closestI canrecall is one with 28k to 79 where Zee Bashew (the animated spellbook guy) made this:

Spoiler: My most DIABOLICAL creation!

It's extremely telling that in one minute 29 seconds it covers a creature capable of applying four or five layers of what is effectively death by fiat.

 

[Stalker0]

I did post a somewhat objective data point earlier. Specifically a video about 5e rest/recovery with 50k to a mere 451 here is another with 71k to 307 & a tangentially related one with 102k to 599 . I don't believe I've ever seen a video poking fun at the inability of 5e players to take a rest though and the closestI canrecall is one with 28k to 79 where Zee Bashew (the animated spellbook guy) made this:

Spoiler: My most DIABOLICAL creation!

The biggest thing we would need to factor in here is whether the thumbs up/thumbs down already has an innate positive bias. Aka are youtube videos in general (or at least the ones on this site) innately getting solidly positive thumbs up ratios in general.

If the answer is yes....than this data point means almost nothing. Similar to the placebo effect, an effect doesn't actually mean an effect of value.

 

[UngeheuerLich]

The rules can be upgraded on the fly. I do it all the time. So do many DMs.

And how much of a "quality of life upgrade" it actually is is very much dependent on the individual.

Yes. To both.

But if you upgrade yourself on the fly, you don't have to pay anyway.

Denying new players a quality of life upgrade is a bit selfish, as we who own everything already won't buy new books anyway.

It is nearly as if some people think: if I don't get upgrades for free, noone should get them.

 

[tetrasodium]

Maybe have a Recharge Dice pool, which is equal to but separate from your HD. Depending on the length of your SR, you can roll 1 or more RD.

10 min = 1 RD
20 min = 2 RD
30 min = 3 RD
40 min = 4 RD
50 min = 5 RD
60 min = 6 RD

Choose a SR recharge feature and roll a number of RD equal to 1/10th the number of minutes rested. You regain a number of usages of that feature equal to the result of the dice, but can't exceed your maximum usages. There is no benefit to a SR greater than 60 min, but a LR recharges all SR features without rolling.

The exact number of dice could vary depending on balance -- I could see a very SR-heavy class like Warlock needing more RDs per 10 minute period so they could recover more spell slots.

Or perhaps you add your Proficiency bonus or key ability score modifier to the result of the RD roll.

Levelup kinda has something similar with the ability to recover 1d4 exertion by spending a hit die & 1 minute of time mediating -OR- they can just take a short rest & recover ALL exertion. In over a year of running Levelup I only ever saw players do this when I refused to allow a short rest & even then it was with significant bristling over the idea of doing it rather than taking a short rest.

Your "recharge dice pool" idea will have no meaningful impact as long as the option to recover "ALL" resources with a proper rest remains.

The biggest thing we would need to factor in here is whether the thumbs up/thumbs down already has an innate positive bias. Aka are youtube videos in general (or at least the ones on this site) innately getting solidly positive thumbs up ratios in general.

If the answer is yes....than this data point means almost nothing. Similar to the placebo effect, an effect doesn't actually mean an effect of value.

Look again... Measure it like a black hole by looking at everything around the void & define the void by what causes everything around it. The absence of videos showing players unable to take rests is the notable datapoint.

 

[I'm A Banana]

The probelm with short rests isn't really their duration. 30 mins or half an hour or seven days or a year or 10 minutes or whatever, if your DM isn't actively considering them, you might not have a practical window for them. Just like long rests. The exact duration isn't what's holding them back (and is incredibly simple to change).

Long rests are just valuable enough to be actively considered and used by the DM in planning.

Arguably, if short rests were more valuable, they might be considered more. A short rest that was significant to everyone the party would, I think, be considered more as well.

But this isn't just short rests.

This is also an issue for downtime - a lot of tables don't use it because 10 days isn't space that their story or adventure design have really thought about giving the party.

This is also an issue for half of the equipment list, for encumbrance, for copper peices - a lot of tables don't use rope or rations or 10-ft poles or mirrors or bother with weights or small coins because the adventure is a cinematic story that occurs on an immediate timeline and doesn't have a lot of patience for faffing about with these more "dungeon survival" elements.

Most tables do what 5e was mostly designed well to do, and what 5e was mostly designed to do, in terms of adventures, was stories in which a plucky nakama saves the world. If you want those stories to include both overnight sleeps and momentary pauses, then both need to be doing something. Long rests are doing something big. Short rests are just...ignorable. So either nix them (leave them is as an optional rule or something), or give them teeth.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

I hate short rests, but a 5 min short rest is even worse than a 1 hour one. At that time, why not recharge everything after each encounter, or better yet, immediately

You don’t see the difference between being able to recharge during a fight, and having to have relative safety and calm for at least long enough to catch your breath in order to recharge?