Dungeons & Dragons to Release New Unearthed Arcana Playtest, Shifts 2024 Player's Handbook Back to 5E Standards
Dungeons & Dragons appears to be abandoning several proposed changes to its ruleset in favor of character building frameworks much more aligned to the current rules. Today, Wizards of the Coast released a new video that provided an overview of the next Unearthed Arcana playtest, which will be released on June 29th. Notably, the video revealed that this Unearthed Arcana would be the "biggest ever" but would also feature the return of several notable character progression features. Most notably, each class's "capstone" ability will once again be earned when a player reaches Level 20 and the subclass progression for each character class are returning to its 2014 progression, with the exception that every class's subclass abilities will start at Level 3.
Earlier playtests played around with the idea that character class progressions would be standardized, meaning that all classes would learn either a class ability or a subclass ability when reaching the same level. For instance, previous playtests featured character classes that earned subclass features at Level 3, Level 6, Level 10, and Level 14. However, in the video, Jeremy Crawford mentioned that the standardized character progression caused an unintended "ripple effect" that caused the design team to return to the original format. However, Wizards will be retaining one part of the "new" character progressions – all subclasses will get their first subclass feature at Level 3.
The "capstone" or "endcap" abilities for various character classes will be returning as a Level 20 feature, with Wizards backing away from the Epic Boon Feats proposed as a new Level 20 reward. The D&D design team had proposed moving the final character class abilities to a Level 18 feature, but they received enough feedback to keep the features as an endgame feature instead. Crawford mentioned that the design team hadn't given up on the idea of Epic Boon Feats, and they'll revisit the feature in a future Unearthed Arcana.
Other material included in the playtest will be multiple subclasses for seven classes, including a first look at the Monk. Revised spells and a brand new spell will also appear in the playtest, along with revisions to the Weapon Mastery system introduced in the last playtest.
Based on the video released by Wizards of the Coast, it seems that the D&D design team is stepping back from some of the big changes proposed in previous playtests. This provides a bit more context to Wizards' previous explanation that the upcoming 2024 Core Rulebooks were revisions to 5th Edition instead of a "5.5" edition or a new version of the game entirely. While many were skeptical about those changes based on the early playtests, which proposed changes to several fundamental mechanics, it seems that the designers are quickly settling on something that's bigger than an errata but smaller than even a "revised" or "enhanced" edition of the game.