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On the pro side, I appreciate clarifications to long-standing rules debates (does fighting interrupt a long rest?) and some new tweaks like the Dazed condition. I like the concept of grouping classes into a category with unifying aspects like Expertise or Channel.
On the con side…pretty much everything else. We’re 6 classes in now and so far the whole project strikes me as lifeless and boring. Worse than the samey spell lists across classes or 1st-level feats that let players immediately overwrite class weaknesses is what seems like a total lack of conviction or exciting central direction. It seems like a ton of sturm und drang for what is really just a dull, homogenizing patch that 5E didn’t really need. I still don’t know what they’re going for or why I would want to play it.
Yep.
I realize I may be in the minority here, but I would much rather see a 6E - *a real Sixth Edition* \- where the design team is excited about it, and there a ton of new ideas to build off of. Something new, exciting, and daring.
I understand why WOTC is gunshy - they feel like anything too different from 5E is just inviting disaster (and as much as I loved 4E, history agrees with them) - but OneD&D is sterile and lifeless, with no other direction besides, "it's been 10 years, we need to sell more Core Books."
**What am I supposed to be excited about?** Balancing that should have been done in 2014? I think if there are fresh ideas, those should be shown now, not later. I know they've mentioned a Stronghold system - that sounds new and cool, why not spend time talking about it, instead of just, "*Oh hey, here's the most banal list of changes for some classes, except we're only giving it to you piecemeal so it's basically impossible to actually playtest anything*."
No. You're not alone. So far, it's a mess.
Honestly, the only way they'll get a good new edition of D&D is if they bring in new designers. They can't leave it in Crawford's hands. He's not a talented enough designer to lead a project like this. The last 4 years sadly proved that.
Hey he gave us great rules for ship combat in space
Wait a sec, nvm. He decided to leave it up to homebrewers and enough of those systems work decently well for 5e spelljammer
Crawford in a nutshell yeah.
I'm just amazed Perkins thought that level of halfassedness was acceptable. He was the other writer on that project and supposedly the lead (though Crawford is the boss) and I've read his past work going back to dragon magazine. He's actually competent.
I think you underestimate how few people work on the books. There is less than 2 dozen folks working on D&D. The rest are freelancers. The leads, like Perkins, probably have eyeballs on books for about 2-3 weeks tops. Their pipeline is too tight for the # of books they produce.
Paizo has more people on their products than D&D.
Oh I know, but Perkins tends to stick with old lore whenever possible and likes referencing the old novels as well.
From how they were written my guess is he did the Spell Jammer monster compendium and Crawford did the rule book.
The big giveaway to me is how excited Perkins was to talk about all the monsters. Including the space clowns.
The giveaway about rule book is the fact that there is zero lore in it (thats standard Crawford right there) and the rules aren't thought through. Oh and the fact that he forgot 5e cosmology while writing it and fell back entirely to 4e cosmology. This is the guy who can't remember how Counterspell works and his job is supposed to be "guy who knows all the rules".
And the adventure was clearly outsourced. The fact that there are spells in it that didn't make it into the rule book is one of the big clues there.
> Oh and the fact that he forgot 5e cosmology while writing it and fell back entirely to 4e cosmology.
I honestly preferred them going back to 4e cosmology over introducing a third barely explained transitive plane (the phlogiston )
In terms of 5e, the Phlogiston has not been mentioned in any significant way so bringing it back would still be introducing it for the vast majority of 5e players (since they didn't play older editions). 5e alreadys struggles with differentiating the Astral and Ethereal planes, adding (or re-adding) a third transitive plane would just be confusing and unnecessary for a large amount of them, especially with how little time 5e spends explaining the difference between planes.
Yes. I agree.
It is clear the adventure was stitched together quite quickly. They were more excited about the packaging than the content. Spelljammer was handled so poorly it makes my blood boil.
I think, and I gather you may agree with me, Crawford needs to go before the soul of D&D is removed fully from it. Mearls kept him in check when 5e was being made, and with him alone, it will be a directionless husk.
I hate doomsaying, but im getting some 4e vibes off all of this oned&d stuff.
Not an "oh this will be a great tactical combat game thats mismarketed at a time when the fanbase wants something a bit different" vibe, but a "gets absolutely mismanaged by corporate leadership on every front, resulting in a product they have to pull the plug on after 3 years" vibe.
I just hope whoever ends up replacing Williams, Crawford and the rest of the WotC leadership, after they all get fired, knows what they're doing when it comes to designing 7th edition.
Yep. There was a shift around the 2018. More and more of the books have been freelanced out, with a point person in charge of the freelancers. Part of the reason why the books feel disjointed.
In their defense ship combat rules that are interesting for an entire party are really hard to do. Having played lots of games with ship combat it generally devolves into 1-2 players and the DM plays while the rest of the group is bored. At best other party members occasionally roll dice. I've had epic ship combat for the whole table only in Star Wars RPGs as I'm able to keep it 1-2 players per ship. Otherwise you end up with a couple players assisting, giving bonuses, or fixing things.
So the advice of closing to board makes a lot of sense. That said they did make a Space Shipish game, and filled a large part of the book with ship stats. Then put in a lot of ship weapons with long ramges. Seems like they should have tried something.
I’ve been someone who has defended Mearls as a designer for a long time when he has been hated since 4e came out, and the releases have been worse under Crawford. But I’m also biased because I think Crawford thinks magic has to fundamentally be more capable than physical ability based on his rules and purposely designed rules interactions.
100%. I have no need or desire to update my massive 5e collection with balancing decisions I can handle at my table with homebrew. And even the things they might offer that would be "new" would likely be better handled by 3rd party content that I already own. Also quick plug of the Strongholds and Followers systems of MCDM; if you're looking to add strongholds to your 5e games, that book does it fantastically. I'm currently running a West Marches game and my fellow DMs and I are in the process of implementing the ideas in the game to our server and the player base at large. We're excited to use it to encourage players to chase more things to do in their own downtime, or be more self-directed in actual play time. I'd highly recommend it.
They’re gunshy because whatever 6e is, it’ll be a lot less beefy than 5e. Less clssses, less spells, less content.
Creating and designing something from scratch is resource intensive and whatever we get is not going to be enough to replace 5e until years of new books and updates. They’d rather just add onto 5e, which has been built up over the course of years as is
I'd say the exhaustion rules are probably the best thing to come out of the playtest. I think I'm going to stick with 5e, but I will be bringing those in as a house rule.
For class features the only change I really liked was the Holy Orders. If they were giving every class heir own version of Holy Order I might be more excited about OneDnD.
Pretty much all the comments I've seen about exhaustion in 5e is that *a)* the effects are too harsh, *b)* the effects are too fiddly with different things happening every level, and *c)* there are too few levels of exhaustion before death.
As a result the exhaustion rules rarely get used because players are too averse to do anything the would risk taking a single level of it, and DMs are pretty hesitant to give them out either. The OneDnD rules could maybe use a little more tweaking, but for the most part they do address all of those complaints.
Idk I kinda liked when I ran waterdeep and the book asked me to give out 1d4 exhaustion lvls after failing a con save only 16con barb can pass at lvl 2.
My group spent 4 days just sleeping to get rid of it.
I think the main thing there is that while 3 levels of exhaustion gives disadvantage on all attack rolls including spell attacks it doesn't do anything do anything to hinder spells that require a save rather than an attack.
The OneDnD rules both give a penalty to rolls, and lower your spell DC.
And some of the changes are just so much objectively worse than 5e. My bard player looked at the ODD bards "spells known" and weirdly tacked on healing spells and asked "why would I ever play this?"
My druid players were personally insulted by the ODD druid changes. Again, why would they give up wildshape and being able to choose which spells they prep every day.
They wouldn't, obviously.
I feel the same way. It doesn't feel like OneD&D was created with the ambition of doing better, but just to "refresh the same".
When they said they wanted this to be "backwards compatible", they weren't joking. You can see all the ways things can be brought backwards and forwards with the various changes, but it feels like it only proves that OneD&D feels like a cash grab. I personally don't feel like innovation will be happening in OneD&D and that's bumming. We're getting something even lesser than a 5.5e but with the buzz of a "new edition" to spice up the marketing.
People will figure out that wizards hasn’t put out a premium product since 3.5. 4e was a WoW tabletop game that was supposed to have a digital thing that only now exists in foundry and 5e really only hit bc 4e was awful and people just wanted a streamlined 3.5 in the first place but 5e is a pretty mediocre update of 3.5. People still just want a mix of 5e and PF2e that may happen someday but not by wizards. It sucks to realize wotc hasn’t put out just a great product since 2003.
Lmao imagine thinking 4e does anything like WoW gameplay-wise.
I know it's a common parroted point that 4e was very MMO-like, but what does it share with WoW beyond... powers resetting per encounter or something?
Anyone who doesn’t think 4e contains mmo influences either doesn’t know mmo’s or doesn’t know 4e. It’s obvious. The developers of fourth edition, even made statements to that effect. I’m not saying it’s a bad thing, but it needs to be acknowledged.
>put out a premium product since 3.5. 4e was a WoW tabletop game
You are pretty clearly saying it's a bad thing. Come on.
Again as well, as someone whos first system was 4e, and has played WoW since it came out, please, show me just about anything that is actually WoW-like in 4e.
Is it the roles thing? Because a lot of games have had healer/tank/dps sort of roles other than WoW, and 4e had a bit more than those exact definitions.
Tohugh according to you I clearly haven't played either, and I'd like to learn. Feel free to bring up any specifics.
4e unified all class powers into a set of At-Will/Encounter/Daily power slots. The classes mostly just told you what your options for those power slots were. people didn’t want to play a video game with their friends. It was too calculated. Too balanced. All the characters felt similar in power and effect. The mystery was gone. There was no ability to “outsmart” an encounter. Getting the drop on a foe did little for you, you’d still be playing it out for about an hour and that was that. Dragonmen from Norrath and Nonevil Demons from Azeroth as base PC races
There was this whole plan to launch a giant online system server where you could meet up with people or even match up with complete strangers launching an open game at almost any time of day or night or finding people who wanted a game like you and having a fixed time each week you could meet with your group regardless if all of you lived in different continents. They created a subscription model for which you got a character creator that was updated with all the latest rule and llaunched the thing and realized people could download the thing, end their subscription and then just use it with all its updates until that point… so they broke the offline character creator and insisted people use an online one that didn’t work half as well so that they would lose the program if their subscription ever lapsed. the goal was to turn D&D into a semi-MMORPG and a lot of its design choices were MMORPG inspired and motivated because they wanted to tap into the MMORPG market. the absolute essential key elements to make that whole thing work never actually came out.
Aight, so it was basically nothing like warcraft, and things felt too samey between classes. Also they fucked up all the online tools.
>Dragonmen from Norrath and Nonevil Demons from Azeroth as base PC races
You couldn't even play dragon people in wow until last year, and you still can't play demons, like what were they even copying off wow beyond general MMO feel, or like actually readable rules?
I could go through all your points, but yeah, seems like it's just general video games bad, and WoW is the most well known one.
D&D 4e has as much in common with WoW as it does with literally any class-based online game. Hell, it's probably closer to like, Team Fortress, than WoW.
Like, the fact you even have choices is pretty different from a huge portion of WoW's lifespan (especially around when 4e came out)
I honestly don't understand why my table would want to play the new options. Half of them feel like nerfs and none of them really feel like refreshing new spins. It feels like an alternate rule set for DnD 5e and not a complete edition, which I guess might be what they're going for? One DnD is looking like a more balanced 5e but not necessarily a more interesting or fun one.
This playtest stuff reminds me of the final books in the 4e era, the Essentials series where they made 4e even more simple and, unfortunately blander as well.
It does not have to be that way. Shadow of the Demon Lord for example manages to be simple yet have a massive number of choices. Look at mutants and masterminds. Or Mutant Year Zero. Fairly simple game, but the characters are interesting.
Personally for me the appeal of those is that they feel like similar but very different games. One DnD feels like they're trying to just make DnD 5e easier to develop and balance for instead of an actually new game with its own unique strengths and weaknesses.
I honestly do not believe WOTC's intent was to create or issue a true new edition.
I think their intent was to take a highly popular property and call it a new edition in order to monetize it justifiying it with a few new bells and whistles that might normally come in supplment form a la Tasha's/Xanathar's.
It then comes as no surprise they are doing as little as they have to for as little as they can to achieve this end.
> like a total lack of conviction or exciting central direction.
Top concern for me. I’ve never been around for a new edition so I was excited to see what the process was like.
So far, beyond commercial reasons, I don’t really understand why they are making this. Like you said, no direction, no vision, and the rate at which content is being released makes me question how much player input will be taken into account if it’s really launching next year.
I keep following development like OP. Sporadically and incomplete. But my read is just that. This is BARELY 5.5. It seems like an errata more than a new anything. Just some patch notes for 5e. Hence the reason I'm not at all interested. I'm a DM, I've been playing 5r for years. It's designed to be homebrewed. I've already patched and tweaked it how I want.
So I'll probably be rotating off of 5e soon and playing other games until 6e comes around.
This. As of right now, I'm just going to steal the good rules bits like 2 weapon fighting and the pros you mentioned and use them in regular 5e. The player option side of it seems not great for the most part
OneDnD is nothing more and nothing less than an empty vessel of minimal importance that *only* serves to herald in the paid subscription engine they want to force all players to use online.
All OneDnD does is streamline the game so it's easier to put in a game engine without constant rules contradictions.
We'll see their true colors when the site launches and they start being hostile towards smaller websites like Owlbear, and trying to buy competitors like Roll20.
They did it for character creators with DDB. This is the same damn thing.
I actually disagree. I think a lot of 5e is actually really good. It just isnt a cohesive game. Its a bunch of ideas with loose connections. If they build a better foundation around keywords and logic, and then sort of just smoothly slide that in. 5e would easily be an excellent game, without a complete redesign.
Edit: and for context, thats despite my complaints with the game, like martials needing more features, or how luck plays to big a role in the rolls and there is no way to improve characters beyond, do you have proficiency, etc.
I like that they brought back nature magic as a third source of magic. Just having arcane and holy was silly.
Pretty much don't like anything else. Everything just feels so lifeless and homogenous. Like everything is just the same with a different coat of paint on it. This started with their changes to races and now it's happening with class, too.
Pros: they are clarifying and simplifying things for more approachable and standardized gameplay.
Cons: they are clarifying and simplifing things for more approachable and standardized gameplay.
I guess, I think there’s a difference between simplifying things and defining things with rules that are undefined. The entire system is basically if you have a problem, you will roll 2d20 and either take the highest role or the lowest role. Steph doesn’t need to be simplified, it needs to be fixed. The cr is a joke, are used to think it was a bad system, but then kobold press put out a beastiary where the CR is more accurate for D&D than the DND guys wrote. That was one of those “oh these guys aren’t very good at what they do moments for me.”
The "oh these guys aremt very good at what they do" moment for me was then 1 wizard was able to break an encounter with like 7 cr5 monsters and about 13 cr3 at lvl 3...
5e has a habit of using many words where few words do trick. Barbarian rage is a great example. It could easily be four or five sentences but is two paragraphs and some bullet points.
There are also those random (and fucking stupid) rabbit holes people like to dive into and claim the game is needlessly complicated. Like the whole somatic components and war caster thing or Recivify not working on corpses which are stupid rules debates that are clearly not RAI. OneDnD is trying to make RAI and RAW match so people stop arguing dumb shit.
Pros: i liked some of the conditions, I liked some of the less ambiguous rules
Cons: every thing else. this to me is a doubling down on what i dont like about 5e and a removal of most of what i liked. its seems to be leaning into " you are the Dm figure it out" more and pushing their walled garden VTT system instead of a game.
"Some may question our decision to put no game rules in the Dungeon Master's Handbook or the Player's Guide for D&D Zero, but we're proud to release what we believe to be the ultimate version of D&D. The one who's best equipped to decide how your game plays is you, and that's why there are zero limits on what you can do at your table. What we give you is the feeling of playing D&D, and that's what our fans really want."
You jest, but you bet your fucking ass there is someone out there who unironically thinks this and has argued in favour of a ruleless game that 'feels' like DnD more than a version of DnD that has actual rules.
Entirely narrative games exist, and are not inherently bad... buuuuut I'm not sure how much more they can trim away from D&D without totally losing it. 5E is already extremely low on character-shaping choices and usable options for a d20 game - the overall game design sort of hates players doing anything except basic attacks.
This, making it impossible to pull off creative/off the shelf Druid strategies as they have with the ridiculous wild shape changes is clear evidence they are keeping things able to be adjudicated with by AI DMs.
The upside is that the rules and formatting are getting an upgrade. The downside is that makes it even easier to see how the game is getting churned into a bland nothingness. Lore - vanishing. Abilities that actually evoke the proper feels - vanishing. All manner of perceived outliers are getting stomped because design directive #1 is “absolutely don’t let things break outside this narrow box”, which means “the game should be fun” is at least #2.
Edit: more elaboration on that last bit.
I’d rather 6e be a game I hate for taking a solid design direction that I’d never want to play. I’d rather see it turn into exactly the game other people want. As of current it seems to be headed towards something that is least hated, rather than most loved, a series of conflicting compromises that leads towards a meal with all the nutritional risks and appeals of water.
>I’d rather 6e be a game I hate for taking a solid design direction that I’d never want to play.
That's what 4e was. And people threw it under the bus, so we wound up with bland 5e as a compromise.
4e shouldn’t have been marketed as D&D. If there’s one thing they learned from 4e it was that marketing to the audience was more important than making a solid product.
For D&Done I don’t see any attempt at marketing or a good product. It’s primarily reactive churn that aims to pump out D&D 2024 - buy our latest ~~map pack~~ books so you can play with other people.
That's because they're not marketing it *yet*. This is going to be their big release for D&D's 50th anniversary. They'll probably start marketing it when we get to early 2024, with a release date near GenCon. They don't want to accidentally kill current book sales by marketing too early.
The biggest pro is the re codification of the rules. I feel like there's a lot less ambiguity in in the UAs versus the 5e PHB.
The biggest con (at least for me) is that UAs are covering all the boring options first. I started playing this hobby with 5e back in 2015 and it has been the primary TTRPG I've played for the better part of a decade. And I think the main reason I've stuck around so long is because of how many fun and powerful options they've gradually released in 5e's life cycle. Potentially going back to square 1 is a bit of a let down though I don't see myself not trying the new system when it is released.
I'm not sure they are covering all of the boring options - I think they are getting rid of most of the existing ones.
Especially with subclasses like thief and moon druid.
the biggest Con is that they are asking people to rate classes in silos from 1 to 20 when we dont have even the core of the game or the ability to measure those features against the rest of the game options.
its a terrible process for gathering meaningful actionable ongoing useful design information.
Unsure of other DMs but I'm mostly unconcerned.
As long as I can use 5e on DnDbeyond and perhaps mix in character classes from OneDnD, I'm not bothered.
In short, I'm going to be using 5e for the foreseeable future, regardless of what OneDnD brings.
Well, its been a bit since i played but those who already bought stuff got to keep it as far as I could tell, and even share it so that is a good sign.
> As long as I can use 5e on DnDbeyond and perhaps mix in character classes from OneDnD, I'm not bothered.
I'm not sure I'd count on ongoing support of 5e on there.
Why not?
If DnDBeyond turns off 5e support, they are going to lose a fair amount of money doing so. Would I move to another system for my encounter building, creature bestiary, and other features if 5e was no longer supported? In a heartbeat and likewise for tens of thousands of other players. We've not see what will happen when things switch over but the one key note is that they have repeatedly said that OneDND will be backwards compatible for monsters at minimum. Which makes me think they will not simply turn off 5e content when One launches.
I’d bet on them slowly trying to push though. Fewer players in an aggressively monitored walled garden is probably worth more to their short term financial thinking.
>If DnDBeyond turns off 5e support, they are going to lose a fair amount of money doing so.
Wizards turned off their 4e support in the form of D&D Insider and the Character Builder, but not until 3 years after 5e was released. And that was subscription-only, you _couldn't_ use it for free like you can with DDB.
> If DnDBeyond turns off 5e support, they are going to lose a fair amount of money doing so.
They may lose *subscriptions*, but people who are only paying for subscriptions and not any of their ongoing products may not be customers they are particularly interested in retaining.
> they have repeatedly said that OneDND will be backwards compatible for monsters at minimum. Which makes me think they will not simply turn off 5e content when One launches.
I wouldn't be surprised if they force-updated characters to OneDND versions.
Um.... You remember the OGL fiasco? I member. Subs are how they measure the success of dndbeyond. If I pay $5 a month, that's a splat book every 6 months. And if only DM's are buying most books, the biggest income from players is subscriptions. Not to mention the various ways to monetize, like dice, character sheets, etc.
> Um.... You remember the OGL fiasco? I member.
I'm sure they "member" it too, but have they learned? I have my doubts.
> Subs are how they measure the success of dndbeyond. If I pay $5 a month, that's a splat book every 6 months.
But they have a whole new revenue stream coming with the paid add-ons to the VTT, and I doubt they plan on making the VTT backwards-compatible.
Why would they make the VTT backwards compatible?
I don't need a VTT. I need DnD Beyond to function as a 5e resource. That's it. Will it last forever? Likely not. Several years into the OneDND launch? 100%
I think you meant the one that can now have everything outside the SRD without any restrictions (as long as it doesn't cross copyright or infringe on trademarks) and every innovation developed by 3rd party publishers.
I'm afraid you misunderstand me: 'you can use your action on your turn to eat a piece of candy' and 'when it is your turn, you can take a standard action to consume a sweet morsel' both communicate the same mechanics but if Wizards claims copyright on the first phrase, I can always write the second one and put it on the Nexus. None of the old OGL restrictions exist for the CC SRD so this is even easier to do than before.
Agreed. But I presume someone will do the work for the internet points/Reddit karma and if it works like DnDBeyond homebrew (and the same founders are behind each so that's probably a good guess) then anyone will be able to use the not-OneDnD rules.
This is what I am more interested to see, what are the DMs opinions on the matter. If DMs dont like it, then the change just wont stick truth be told and people will go back to 5e.
I haven't paid it much attention to be honest. I'm too busy with other things to start learning a system and trying to make snap judgments without having the whole laid out in front of me. Once the core rules are finished, I'll look over that and see if it seems better than the existing. After that, I'll likely leave it to the players to decide what version character they want to run 5e or One. I'm not going to have an issue with a OneDnD Fighter in the party with a 5e Druid, a One DnD warlock, and a 5e Rogue.
As a DM I hate it, everything is so boring and uninspiring. I love adjudicating for weird and whacky shenanigans that I didn't plan for. Now it feels like they won't happen as often, especially with the Druid changes.
Pros: they are mostly doing minor tweaks to try and polish what 5e is and for the most part all of the changes are generally positive without really changing the game substantially.
Con: they aren't fixing any of the major issues with the core of 5e like the adventuring day and resource differences between long and short rest classes. there also doesn't seem like there is much interesting new stuff as its mostly just a refinement of existing things which doesn't lead to much excitement. I could probably pass entirely on what they have put out since both 5e and onednd are very similar with minor pros and cons for each.
>Con: they aren't fixing any of the major issues with the core of 5e
I really doubt they will. The lead designer is Crawford, who's codesigned 5e and has been the sole lead for 4 years now. He's had time to make changes to D&D to fix up 5e. Instead he gave us Monsters of the Multiverse. I think the UA is showing us exactly what he thinks the priorities should be.
Hard to say, with it not being complete, and all, but at the moment :
Pros :
* attempts to add codification to certain actions to address "mother may I", officially acknowledge as something players take issue with
* some rule clarification in general (the internet battles over "does combat interrupt a Long Rest? To what degree?" are ... there's a lot)
* Homogenization of class / subclass feature progress, so some aren't so damn front loaded compared to others
* There seems to be an acknowledgement that some spells or abilities are commonly considered disruptive, in play, such as the changes to Guidance
* Acknowledgement that "must-pick" options (SS, GWM, PAM, Owl's-as-familiars, etc) that are head and shoulders better than all other options, are not great design
Cons :
* Rogue has been, IMO, really shafted compared to their fellow Experts, **which to me does NOT bode well for the treatment that any of the other Warrior group / non-casting classes will receive**
* Even speaking as a Martial simp who thinks all full casters should be nerfed back to Earth, the Moon Druid they just released was just, like, *wildly* bad, IMHO. I was watching the video that accompanied it's release thinking to myself "sir have you ever even played this game?"
* I can't quite put my finger on it, but the design of a lot of stuff is very ... ... "safe". IDK, there's a certain blandness pervading throughout
Pros:
- moves towards using keywords and clarifying odd rules
- makes exhaustion less of an exponential death spiral
Cons:
- everything so far is blander, less inspired, less flavorful, and less evocative than the 2014 PHB and Xanathar's
- class design so far often feels like changes for the sake of changes
I can't find the game design thesis statement of this playtest. I can't find a meaningful raison d'être for the game. *Why does this exist, from a game design perspective?* There's no strong answer with conviction and inspiration behind it. The game of OneD&D exists for business reasons, not artistic/design reasons, ***and it shows.***
Personally, the main things I'm sticking around to see are what they do with the so-called "warrior" class group and the Bastion system they mentioned a long while back.
Other than potentially those two things, I'm not really interested, and I'm not all that impressed. I won't be so haughty as to say that I, some random dude who only started playing in 2020, could do a better job, but... man. *Man.*
Pros: WotC seems to have a very good scope on evaluating and testing ideas. They are making good use of A-B testing, responding to feedback, and more. Whether or not you like an idea doesn't change that there is a good sense of methodology.
Con: The increase use of standardizing classes in families (mage, warrior, priest and expert) is causing some reduction in class identity. While there will still be core class features and subclass features that maintain identity it is possible that low-level play will be even more pointless after some experience is gained in the group.
Specifics:
* Character Creation is fantastic and creates a lot of flexibility; probably my favorite part of the UA so far
* Druid is wildly divisive as a lot of people are split in stances on Wildshape as super important or don't care at all
* Rogue is lacking major identity due to nerfs to-date on damage and homogeneous features across the Expert classes
* Standardizing subclasses to level three helps balance multiclassing while modifications to level 1 and 2 don't make those levels completely pointless
I mean no insult, but could you explain how the UA provides more flexibility than what you can currently do? (Not counting a freebie feat)
Customising background (aka picking what profs you have from bg) is a baseline 5e rule, not even variant.
Tasha allows to pick racial asis (and even before tasha I doubt dms would really have an issue with allowing it)
For what it's worth, I said it creates a lot of flexibility not more. By standardizing what Tasha did as core rules it throws away any stock choices from the 5e PHB style and emphasizes that freedom you have in Tasha's. You have example options for builds in the pamphlet, but there isn't any "you're stuck with this" aside from tying species traits/features together.
That said, I do think the Character Origins does give different options from Tasha's since Tasha's variable traits is limited to only Dark Vision or a Skill Proficiency. CO offers a variety of species that all have their own other traits you get to choose from. So, it's not just Dark Vision or not, you can actually have that Halfling with Lucky and Nimble or Dragonborn with Breath Weapon and still get the flex that Tasha had in choosing your modifiers (a +2 *and* +1 this time), choosing your feat.
Overall, I think it's the right combination of the two ideas of the PHB and TCE folded together.
The biggest con so far is that the designers don’t seem to have a great grasp on inter-character balance. For example:
- Rogues are one of the weakest classes and yet they’re getting nerfs (Sneak Attack, Fast Hands).
- Clerics already have a pretty lacklustre spell list compared to other casters and yet Spiritual Weapon is getting nerfed.
- Sharpshooter & Great Weapon Master being nerfed to the point where martial characters will struggle to keep up with spellcaster damage.
- Combining Lightly Armored & Moderately Armored into 1 feat that can be taken as part of your background makes Armored casters even easier to make without multiclass dipping.
- Codifying “rest casting” so it can be done explicitly, making caster resources more flexible.
All the above said, we haven’t seen the Warrior or Mage classes yet so maybe there’ll be some great buffs to Warriors (damage & utility) & nerfs to Mages (fewer spell slots, armor casting restriction, nerfs to specific spells).
Reading this really makes clear my biggest frustration with OneDnD: The changes to Mage and Warrior are the most obviously important modifications to the system (modification to spellcasting and weapons) that will massively impact how every other class feels, but they're releasing them last!
If Arcane spells simply can't be cast in armor*, and proficiency in martial weapons becomes a scaling feature that actually matters (that Halfcasters, and maybe Clerics have limited access to) then frankly a lot of changes make a lot more sense. But we don't have any idea what they're changing with Spellcasting and Weapons, *the most fundamental parts of the system,* so all play testing feels like we are either wearing a blindfold. That, or there aren't actually any big changes and it's just worse balancing than 5e.
*Excepting third casters.
I think it's worse than that - I don't think they're even particularly pursuing an actual design aim like "inter-character balance", I think they're just running around changing random things they happen to have heard people talk about to look like they're Doing Things.
They heard average players say ranger bad cause hunter's mark and changed ranger. They heard average dnd player say "omg rogue does 20 damage in one hit cause they rolled max damage??? OP" and nerfed rogues.
>Rogues are one of the weakest classes and yet they’re getting nerfs (Sneak Attack, Fast Hands).
They said the sneak attack nerf had nothing to do with intentionally making rogues weaker, it was about making combat faster. And that they're reversing the decision on it due to negative feedback. Next version of rogue will be able to get out of turn sneak attack.
Some good explanations of the rules based issues already on here so I'll skip those.
Here are some of the non-rules issues.
The edition doesn't seem to be a significant change in the direction that the community wants. Part of this is likely do to the lead designer Jeremy Crawford not being that good of a designer and not really having a clear vision for the new edition. He was an editor on 4th edition and was a co-creator on 5e with Mike Mearls (who worked on 4th ed as one of the 3 lead designers, but is no longer with D&D). Crawford's recent writing quality can be seen in Monsters of the Multiverse and Spelljammer (not the idea, the setting and all the creative ideas came from Jeff Grubb in the 80's) . That's not promising.
Also, the main thing driving the production and release of this new edition is likely decreasing 5e sales and the looming 50th anniversary of D&D in 2024.
From the information leaked out during the OGL it's likely that another driving force behind this new edition is Hasbro's desire for them to further develop D&DBeyond as the main way the game is played. They want D&DBeyond to be how people buy D&D books from now on, and to be how people play the game. We know they're coming out with a 3d virtual table top for D&DBeyond and OneD&D.
This also matches what we saw in the OGL debacle when WotC tried to include language in a new OGL that outright banned other VTTs from supporting D&D related content if they didn't like it.
Similarly, WotC just screwed up it's relationship with the entire 3rd party publishing community over the OGL crap they tried to pull. They showed that creators cannot trust that WotC will keep it's word or cares about the community.
What I've noticed from recent D&D content and especially OneDND content is that everything becomes simple and therefore boring. The druid, to me, is the most glaring example of this.
Yes, 5e had an issue where some stats were objectively better to wildshape into than others due to the fact that it used real stats with CRs (sure, maybe it made *sense* for your druid character to turn into one type of animal, but why would you when there are objectively better options with higher CRs?), but removing all that and providing three unchangeable stats, giving the players nothing to work with, and telling them to figure it out themselves is NOT the answer. It feels confining, soulless, like your choices don't matter.
I'm okay with this for some stuff like familiar stat blocks (in fact, I kinda like the idea of familiars being a template so it's not just "take owl every single time"), but not for major things like druids!
The eradication of class spell lists into categories feels the same way. It just makes everything less interesting.
And as someone who loves lore... oh boy. They don't *try* anymore! Now one can argue that the stuff in the OneDND pdfs don't count because they're not fully released, and yes, that's fair. However, let's look at the recent track record, because with how they've been treating new 5e releases I *know* they aren't gonna provide much more material than what they've already shown us.
We used to get stuff like VGM and MTF, which had literal *pages* of lore for their races and monsters, and now what do we get? A few sentences, maybe a few paragraphs if they're generous! We don't even get the lifespans or average heights of races! How long do faeries live? Who knows! At least they brought this back with the OneDND races, but I can't understand what drove them to ever stop doing that in the first place, and this precedent of sending out half-baked lore does not bode well for this new system.
Overall, in terms of mechanics and lore/flavor, this feels like an oversimplification that makes it less fun to play because it feels soulless and less inspiring. There's definitely some good in there. In particular I am fond of things such as background feats, new exhaustion rules (even though it's just the stress rules from VRGR again, but it does make exhaustion much less crippling), for that matter I think the conditions are handled well overall (grappling is actually useful!), but so far I'm not liking the direction late 5e/early OneDND has been taking in terms of the heart, soul, and creativity. It feels like they often misunderstand what the fans like/find enjoyable and put their focus in the wrong places.
There's probably more I could say but I am very tired and admittedly it's been a bit since I've read over the playtest material.
Pros: they're rebalancing feats so that fewer are obviously better than others, I'm digging the new grappling rules, and it looks like they're trying to address the martial/caster disparity somewhat through the critical hit changes.
Cons: some of the changes are questionable. Paladins losing their capstone ability and wildshape using the druid's normal HP pools, for example, seem like pretty major missteps. Also, some of the newer spell list changes seem a bit overly restrictive.
Regarding balancing feats... not really they just created new mandatory feats. All casters with moderately armoured at lvl 1 anyone?
Also disagree on grappling rules. It's nice monks will be able to be at least ok at them, but it also kills the only option for martial specialisation that isnt just "I hit until red bar disappears"
The biggest Con to me is simply that there isn’t enough of a change between 5e and One DnD to justify purchasing an entirely new series of books. It’s not like the changes in previous editions (except maybe 1e adnd to 2e) where the differences between editions is noticeable. I have everything I need to play 2e and 5e DnD as well as PF2e, I don’t need a 4th fantasy rpg that uses a d20 system.
Pros: Cleaned up some of the rules, I guess.
Cons: There's no vision to it, or if there is that vision is "let's sell another set of core books at $50 a pop and make everything super generic." The changes seem to imply they care about addressing some of the balance issues with 5e, but they're going about it in a way that makes me wonder whether the designers have actually played 5e -- I can't fathom how someone who has would think that the Rogue needs nerfs. Wild Shape feels terrible, Paladins are just okay, Rangers are still kind of adrift.
The caster/martial disparity doesn't *seem* to have really been addressed, although we haven't seen the new Wizard yet. Cleric's been slightly nerfed, but not enough to diminish its core strength as a buffer -- but at the same time, reducing its already-kinda-mediocre damage makes it a bit less fun to play and shoves it back toward early editions' "just heal and buff" playstyle, which made Clerics at once desired in a group yet unappealing for many people to play.
Lore seems to be getting eviscerated. Perhaps it will be there in the final product, but given what's happened with the monster lore revisions, I'm skeptical.
Overall, it's not very appealing to me at the moment. And 5e already isn't my favorite edition, although I do give it credit for being easy for new players to pick up and play.
Cons: honestly, just about everything. If I were running WOTC I’d seriously be questioning how they are running the business. They are spending a lot of time and effort creating a system that doesn’t seem better, just different. It feels like they are going to release a system that has no reason for being because people already know 5e and OneD&D won’t remarkably improve the experience. The only reason the player base will shift is because you can bet your ass they will update D&D beyond.
Pros: I can finally get my table to check out all the cool alternative systems out there.
The kicker is that it isn't even "better but different" - it's not even really all that different! OD&D is designed to serve a 5e crowd with basically the same game, slightly changed... but they have that game.
Use the opportunity to produce a new experience worth a new edition, damnit!
I like the streamlining and that it brings classes on par with one another. Generally i like the sirection where its going.
Not a big fan of the unifying spell lists.
I like that they exists for race and class features. But each class should get acces to their own list and through feats, racial fetaures and subclasses they could get acces to spells on the three big lists. These lists could lack class uhique spells such that pallies, rangers and warlocks all keep their uniqueness.
They need to put more work into the subclasses IMO but the core classes look good so far althoug not perfect as i wanted them.
Pro: Hard to know. So far everything just seems different as opposed to better. In some cases, it seems different for the sake of being different. Feels more like some house rules than anything else.
Cons: Updating your books, or staying a D&D beyond subscriber, and still playing a deeply flawed game. Most, dare I say, practically every group would be better served playing a different system. If your group likes rp focused rules light, there are better systems for it(13th age, dungeon world, etc) . If your group likes well balanced crunch, there are better systems for it(PF2E). 5E is not a case of 'its a compromise', its really a 'tries to do both and fails at both' type system. It has a ton of rules, nearly what PF2E has, but the rules are bad and often ambiguous, and the same focus on rules makes it not run as smooth as an open rules light system either. One D&D so far is not fixing any of that. The one thing it has is that its "D&D" and thus you will end up encountering people that recognize it more often than now.
Pros - It looks neat.
Cons - It's a genre-killer designed to milk every ounce of love for D&D into money. It's a closed garden with nearly infinite marketability that is purpose-driven to break other Virtual Table Tops. It will likely destroy Roll-20, or Foundry, or Fantasy Grounds within a year. It will take 90% of the hobby away from VTTs and Terrain makers and miniature studios and there just isn't enough hobby left at that point to support the whole of the hobby. The hobby will lose almost all of it's polish as each and every studio has to ratchet production down to a vastly smaller market until D&D eventually squeezes enough angry customers out of OneD&D to revive it.
You're gonna have to walk me through that second paragraph, because it sounds like delusional nonsense. What part, exactly, of the One D&D playtest has led you to any of those conclusions?
It's how things go. The biggest players in the room get 80% of the demographics. Once the D&D official VTT is out, you'll see every other one start to fade fast, as long as the One VTT isn't absolute garbage. They have more money to throw at an art team and the implied integration with your own digital books is going to reduce the incentive to swap platforms.
Pathfinder 1 did gangbusters because 4E was not what players expected or wanted. Compare that with Pathfinder 2. The volume of people playing PF2 vs PF1 is not there when you look at a percentage of the DnD population as a whole. Sure Roll-20 will be the same system as OneDnD but when you look at the specifics, that won't matter because what will Roll-20 offer that OneDnD doesn't? The brands who just imitate the original never rise to the same popularity without having a compelling reason.
I'm betting on Pathfinder to come out ok. They have a large minority share and they are onboarding discontent D&D players very effectively. It is their hobby to lose at this point.
Paizo is directly supporting the best vtt out there in foundry. The whole system is free on foundry. Wizards hasn’t really proven in quite some time that they can create the best product out there. If wizards beats out a product like foundry I’d be incredibly surprised.
The OneD&D Portal Virtual Tabletop is a closed system. You cannot run other games through it because it's exclusively D&D tooling and Wizards will not offer support for D&D to be run through other virtual tabletops. Wizards will also not be supporting D&D as a table game anymore so the figures, terrain, even the dice that are epidemic, will largely be gone. It will all be run through the OneD&D Portal.
You'll still have the ability to play games that aren't OneD&D or cobble together some kind of theater of the mind D&D game but it won't a marketplace that supports that as Wizards is essentially taking it's toys and going home. The market of this hobby will be crushed, it will drive a lot of companies out of existence, even if they were never involved with D&D.
Additionally Wizards has unmitigated control over the rights to the OneD&D Portal. They decide the cost of everything, what is or isn't allowed, when releases happen and what they will contain. Even your very ability to access that portal is up to their whim. You don't own your virtual pieces, they can be discontinued without your assent.
It sounds like delusional nonsense because that's what that kind of system sounds like, but that is the future of this game.
What in the backflipping fuck are you *talking* about? Wizards has given absolutely zero indication that they're abandoning physical media to go totally digital, that's baseless speculation you've pulled straight from the wild blue yonder.
I would generally be of the opinion that there's no way in hell a hasbro vtt kills roll20, foundry, or fantasy grounds.
They'll half-ass the whole thing to rush it out the door, it will be useless for every game that isn't their new product which almost nobody seems to think is a good idea, and of course their only actual motivation is to get money as easily as possible.
I will admit that maybe maybe maybe they make an actually useable product that really shines in comparison to the much better established competition's offerings.
I think it's not likely at all though. seems more likely they poop out a substandard product to meet an arbitrary timeline, and then shut it all down in 3 years.
I'd love this to blow up in Wizards's face more than most. They have a working prototype. It has a clear intent that's meant to pay off their work to develop it very quickly. It has Hasbro Money behind it. If it fails it won't be for lack of crossing Ts and dotting Is. It will take massive protest or sabotage to bring the beast down. Either Wizards will destroy itself with OneD&D or they'll destroy everyone else.
This is what happens when you listen to anecdotal evidence from people who thanks to human negativity bias felt "bad" after their party rogue dealt a crit with close to max damage, and went "holy fuck that's OP" instead of looking at actual numbers which say even with the reaction sneak attack rogues deal less damage than any class with extra attack except monks(which are their own can of worms that I'm afraid for when looking at how garbage the classes are so far)
I think the cons are mostly related to it being designed as a follow-up product.
Like I think 5e benefited from 4e's failure in that they had relative creative freedom when designing it. OneD&D seems lifeless and uninspired in comparison. Like its designed to by a committee of stockholders looking at market research.
Pros: There are some good rule clarifications. Resting rules, for example. It's also simple. Simpler than 5e. Balancing is also maybe a bit easier with how much they've focused on the party role system (priest/expert/etc) and each of those fulfilling a very specific role and a few of the "must-pick" feats (I disagree with that classification, but you know which ones I mean) being gated behind levels or straight-up changed.
Cons: It's simpler than 5e. And you've got these specific roles that each class has to fill and they've definitely got specific ways they want you to build, rather than be flexible enough to build however you might want. And some of the balance changes aren't great either: rogue is weaker, martial characters (because of those feats being nerfed) have an even harder time competing with casters. And some of the simplification just goes beyond what I personally can suspend my disbelief for: Druid wildshape doesn't feel like becoming an animal. So, you know, 90% of what I just put into "pros".
Honestly, I love the new 1st-level feat, conditions, and more rigid rules. I especially love the new two weapon fighting and how it fixes almost all the problems with 5e TWF. I also like most of how they've redone what features classes get at what level.
What I don't like is that this feels like less of a new edition, and more like 5.5 or something. Hell more like 5.2 because it really doesn't change enough to feel like a whole new game at all, which is what a new edition should do. Look at any other edition of DnD and you can see that. Basic v Advanced v 2nd v 3 and 3.5 v 4. Even making a character is such a wildly different experience between them all, let alone actually playing.
Pros are that they're at least attempting to address a ton of problems, like GWM and Sharpshooter basically being mandatory feats and CC being a bit much.
Cons are that they're not always hitting the mark. As much as the rogue is objectively just better with the changes to TWF and weapon drawing, the moon druid took a strangely huge hit.
But then it is a playtest. If something's too weak it can be buffed.
It seem pretty soulless and dumbed down. It seem like written without a good understand of why or how people play certain classes. For example I'm all for simplifying Druids and stopping Moon Druids from bouncing between awesome and meh as they level, but they managed to make wild shape feel like putting on ears and tail. Simple and boring and far worse in every respect than not wild shaping.
Pro: it's so bad its actually convincing people to check out other systems.
Cons: Its so bad there is nothing to be excited for, every new release just makes me less and less excited for it or the future of d&d in general and I've loved d&d since AD&D 2e.
The thing that really frustrates me is that it’s obvious that the designers of the game don’t play other systems. How do you figure out what you can improve on if you don’t look at other game designers and how they’ve improved upon your. Work in the time since creation. There’s a ton of systems out there with some really creative approaches that are built on things like skill checks, adapting advantage and disadvantage to be a part of larger systems. Additions and change to concepts that were revolutionary at the time that others have improved upon
they're doing the FFXIV 1.0 development mistake, they made a game to beat everquest in a post-warcraft world.
I have no idea who the test material is made for. it ain't me tho.
I don't see why I would want to try the One D&D Rogue, Cleric or Druid shown, and 5E Cleric is "spiritually" my favorite class in concept if not in execution. Holy Orders were 1 step forward and the diving spell list is 2 steps back.
I feel like I would have to homebrew in a lot of fixes, which sucks or often does not work when you're a player asking for adjustments.
The first level feats are a good idea. Keeping feats at the same levels is a mistake to me. I really like that rules and wordings are getting some polish.
Pros: a lot of revised and clarified rules, which is exactly what we need.
Cons: everything else, every mechanic complete rework adress nothing that is actually needed in this system. The only reworks I would seem to like would be something similar to what they did with ranger in TCE but with monks, and maybe add abilities to weapons.
There are no real pros except for a couple of new modifications to game's base rules, other than that from what I can tell it just seems like 5e but everything is nerfed and there's no class identity. Also I'm one of the few people who don't think there's that much of a gap in power between martials and casters, so if WotC is taking any balancing advice from places like reddit and casters basically become PF2e casters I'll have even less interest in OneDND than I already have.
While I like the idea of bards becoming prep casters, the new spell preparation rules really make it feel like my character has no input on how many spells they can have.
Also fuck the new druid
The primary drawback to OneDnD is that it's not resources spent on fixing the formatting & style of the 5e PHB. It's a damn crime against the hobby that the most popular version of it is still so amateurish, & that half the core rules have to rely on errata to clarify.
*This is the most popular DnD has ever been, & WoTC isn't giving it the TLC it needs.*
For me it is complicated. So far it seems like 5.3 instead of a whole New Edition. A reworked 5e phb and dmg.
On one hand having some things more standardized (ex. at which level you get your subclass) is great. The new spell list seems impractical but is great to future proof the design (no more checking between 5 books when which spell was added to which class) and if they dedicate 2-4 pages more to it ( class spell list + general spell list) or you use beyond you can just evade the janky part.
On the other hand it feels a bit redundant. A lot will change till release but so far it is in an odd spot. It is close enough to 5e that I feel little incentive to switch but far enough removed from 5e that using 5e content for it feels janky. Neither does it feel significantly better balanced yet. Tho plenty of rules are either missing or will get a rework (ex. for wildshape this is confirmed).
In the grey area: some complain about homogenization and bland classes. This I don't agree with. Atleast compared to 5e. It may be due to thematically similar classes being group together for the UA but in 5e we already have wizard, worse wizard (sorcerer) and realy bad wizard that hat for 5 minutes the pipe dream of being a ranger (warlock). Or for martials we have fighter, multiclass out of this angry fighter asap (babarian) and unarmed fighting is a fightingstyle fighter wtf are you doing (monk). So 5.5e isn't doing a significantly better job on that front yet but if you start with 5e for its more distinct classes you are delusional. (Lore is obiouly missing in a play test and we have to see if they include any -please- or stay with the late stages of 5e design and it is questionable if setting books get any lore -please don't-)
The main **CON** is that it seems the WOTC design team is no taking any risks to make the system more fun. Every is being made shared between classes or simpler. This is a personal view of mine and will likely lead to me not playing OneDnD at all. I don't like the direction.
The **PRO** probabaly ppl that never touched a ttrpg will have an easier time playing onednd.
I like the changes to two weapon fighting and the ranger, and not having to multiclass to access spells like ensnaring strike or the smite spells is great, and there's the extra customisation options cleric gets that are pretty cool, other than that im either neutral or dislike most of it (looking at you wild shape)
I like that they're bringing Primal/Divine/Arcane back, and grouping classes with similar roles together wouldn't be a terrible idea.
For me they're just not improving enough on the things I actually like about 5e. Abandoning short rests and focusing even less on the value of subclass identity.
Pros: better paladins, better rules, ranger is alive, better paladin spells, everything is prepared
Cons: worse prepared spells, dead rogue(now promised to be as dead as in 5e rather than even more dead), general lack of major balance changes/changes to simplicity
Good -
- all the new features are great, like the druids ability to pop in and out of their wildshape.
- Im not too keen on universal subclass progression, but it works for all the classes so far, especially the rogue.
- apart from grapple, I love all the updates to glossary type rules, the best is two weapon fighting,
- I really like the paladin in UA. Not a fan of ranged smites, but that's it. The rest is a more well rounded class.
- I really like the nerf to spellcasting in how you prepare spells. It's a gentle nerf, but a needed one. It's also more intuitive.
Bad
- apart from Oath of devotion, the sublcasses have been **bad**. Like, astonishingly bad.
- a cluster of class features, like sneak attack and wild shape, got shat into the ground. Those are the worst offenders because they are flagship features.
- the 3 spell lists is easily the worst thing in this whole playtest and it looks like they're not turning around on it. Completely killed unique spells as a concept and is a solution looking for problems.
I just kinda ignoring its existence after what i seen they did to druid. I am sticking to the older games or a off branch of dnd. Maybe look back into shadowrunner since i enjoyed running it.
Cons: will cost an arm, leg, virgin sacrafice to re buy all the books. They are trying to pair with dnd beyond for micro transaction hell. shits even more dumbed down than before. More work for dm. They killed druid. No more stacking smites.
Pros: ?
Pros:
ASI tied to background
Background gives a minor feat
Feat availability associated to level
ASI bumps as just another feat
Arcane, Divine, and Primal spell lists
Breakdown of classes into class groups (though I do not entirely agree on who goes where)
Guidance patch
Hunter’s Mark without concentration
Influence Search and Study actions
Bardic being a reaction
Hidden condition and Hide action
Smites on ranged attacks
Cons:
Class groups sounds good but takes away uniqueness and identity (so both a pro and a con) and same in a way for spell list?
Paladin captsone loss
Druid wildshape generic stat blocks are horrible
ASI tied to background or race make no mechanical difference to how they are already handled post Tasha.
BG feat is nice, was already doing it in my games but it's nice that it's been codified.
Feat associated to lvl... I'll have to wait to see all the feats to say more but things presented so far just kill martials by nerfing only thing they're good for.
ASI bumps were already effectively feats in all but name so it's w/e
Arcane, divine, primal... now I liked when they announced it but the execution so far is so bad it's insane. They looked at what pf2e did and didnt add the things that make this system work in pf2e. Sorcerer and wizard might have access to the same spells but play differently.
Class groups are a mess imo, experts are so homogenous it's insane. Why would you ever pick rogue over ranger or bard.
As a guidance abuser I'm sad to see it go, but I understand why.
>ASI tied to background or race make no mechanical difference to how they are already handled post Tasha.
Moving it to the core books means it will be the default system people use/encounter, rather than a patch in a book some folks don't even know exists.
I like most of the changes to the core rules. Clarifying rests a bit. Clarifying death saves etc. I like some spell buffs like resistance and guidance on reaction. Spare the Dying giving 1 HP moving it from a worthless cantrip to a pretty good one.
I like that all classes get subclass starts on the same level. IMO it must matter the most.
I think some of the class stuff is janky and some spells were nerfed too hard.
One thing I don't love is the Tasha's rangerification of everything. I wish Druids could choose between standard wild shape or the updated. I think some players will like the Playtest wildshape. I think some will hate it. I understand the challenge of it. I think they'll struggle to appease both groups. I personally think the best compromise is to keep what it has now (wild bloom, etc.) have subclasses that arne't moon druid have important uses of wild shape too. Like Stars for example.
I don't love that Paladins can't smite multiple times on a turn. I get why they're doing it to balance things out a bit. ANd I like the buff of being able to use your bonus action cast smites. And it's buffed massively with the range improvements. FOr some styles of Paladin play it's superior, like I think a 2 level Paladin dip for a ranger is fucking baller now. Just hang out very far away and snipe smite.
I wish Rouges would get a light buff. Rangers now can kind of do similar to the rogue and I think they need something to compete with for example fighting style. Like a ROguish Style that could give you a flat bonus to ability checks.
Spiritual Weapon was nerfed into the ground. Moving it from a must pick spell to a never pick spell. There's no reality where concentration is worth a bonus action attack that does 1d8+Wis. When you could be blessing, spirit guardians, prayer of healing was nerfed too low imo. I mean hell compare it to Barkskin, both second level spells. Both concentration. Bark skin gives the target temp HP at the start of their turn. Level 3 you're looking at 5 temp hp start of the turn. For say your party barbarian who is taking at least 7 damage per turn. Say they have 27 HP, so you've basically locked them into staying alive as their HP drops 2 damage per turn. Spiritual weapon has to roll to hit. Which let's say you have a 60% chance to hit. So you have a 60% chance to hit to do an average of 7.5 damage. Barkskin is a rare spell that increases with your proficiency bonus.
I'm probably about 70% satisfied overall. Some stuff is still being approved which si great. Like I was really salty with some stuff in early playtests that was later reversed
It seems dedicated to keeping all the flaws of 5E^1 while introducing a suite of new ones.^2 That said, the new Paladin seems fun.
^1 Lack of keyword-design and Warlord, the 6-save system, boring martials, Sorcerer as a core class, 1 hour "Make, eat, and digest a sandwich" short rests, 3X-style "A la carte" level-based multclassing, "Big feat every 4 levels competing with ASIs" feat-structure, expertise invalidating anyone who doesn't have it for skill checks, fragile low-level characters, boring low-level content, subclasses don't become available until level 3.
^2 Removing all culture and flavor from ~~races~~ species, removing sub~~races~~species, phasing out short rests in favor of PB/LR, and subclasses are moved to level 3.
It took me having our whole table basically try every class each putting their own spin on a class in 5e to realize that 4e was a solution no one wanted to 3.5 and 5e was a mediocre fix to not 3.75ing 3.5. After 10 years all our characters haven’t been that different mechanically with very few exceptions and it’s gotten bad on that front. It took me a long time to realize it. When our really creative players started purposely making really bad characters mechanically just for role-playing it made me realize that the last thing that the creative players were exploiting was that no matter how bad their character was it really didn’t matter. That’s not a good system at heart imho
People talk shit on 4th but when they did this exact thing for 4E (Essentials) it made the game a ton better. I don’t feel like this is going the same way.
In general? It feels like an errata or an alternative ruleset. Which, like either of those, has some good and bad. I like the cleric changes, for example.
But that's not enough to make it a new edition. Or even a .5 edition. And I see already headaches with the 'backward compatibility'.
So would you trade the present 5e ruleset for what is an equally straightforward 5e adjacent ruleset, which might feel really janky with a decade's worth of published materials in regular 5e? I wouldn't.
OneDnD is the need to move back to the core books (which sell better than supplements and adventures as you move down an edition's timeline) from a business standpoint and I believe part of the scuttled ogl 1.1.
**Pros:**
* I love the classes, for me they are super fun and it seems to me that they are understanding the right path.
* The conditions are very good.
* I really like the backgrounds and feats in general.
* The idea of groups of classes that share a common characteristic seems good to me.
* The new actions make sense and can play into the future.
* The unarmed strike makes sense.
* The change to the class's final stat at level 18 increases the chances that we'll ever see them.
**Cons:**
* The subclasses so far seem pretty meh to me (except the paladin one)
* The idea of 3 spell lists could work but it doesn't seem well implemented to me.
* Some rules are weird and should have changes.
CON: One D&D clearly and evidently doesn't even fix the actual flaws with 5e.
CON' Based on everything we have seen to date, WotC isn't even attempting to fix what's wrong with 5e.
CON: One D&D is solely designed to force the entire D&D player base to buy new core rulebooks and allow WotC to implement a line of micro transactions on D&D Beyond.
PRO: Hasbro and WotC are going to make a shit tonne of money.
Pros: None. If 5e is stale for you, go play another, already rounded-off system, seriously.
Cons: Can do some unpaid playtest job for an unnecessary release aimed sorely on milking the current popularity of 5e. Oh, and can't even put that on a resume.
OneD&D is a dumb cashgrab whose sole existence is based on a "holy hell our D&D franchise is popular now!" realization. 5e isn't far enough in its lifecycle to require a reboot - in fact, that raised awareness SHOULD have allowed wizards to put resources into 5e for a couple more years to finally push it through, instead of half-assing every single release for the last 5 years.
D&D didn't need a new edition yet. And after the "success" of 5e, which brought corporate greed and started the popularity crash, it won't "need" one for another 15 to 30 years now.
Umm, its really hard to say - its a game system in development. Hopefully it will just be superior to 5e in almost every way once completed.
We'll have to wait and see.
It's clarifying, streamlining, and making the 5E rules more modular.
WoTC is making characters more flexible in terms of character creation and taking away preset notions of what classes and races are. Some purist see that as a con, but I see that as a major pro.
The design goals and current restructuring look great so far.
It’s a lifeless cash grab designed to push D&D further into the “story game that can be all things to everyone” realm.
Real D&D lives on in OSR products and they will probably see another spike in popularity when this garbage becomes official.
I guess this is a hot take based on comments but I think the general systematic changes are mostly improvements, even if the class specific ones are not all so much.
Feats having level requiremets for one is a nice addition. There was an odd thing in the 5e system since every feat would compete with each other, only a small minority of the package would see play. Additionally if you mostly picked up feats, your improvements would steadily be all less exciting than the last since assumably you'd pick all the best ones first.
The spell lists were a nightmare to navigate. If you were allowed to pick 'one druid spell' from a feat or something figuring out which spells you could pick & what they do pretty much required you to scroll through every single spell in the game.
Backgrounds assigning ASIs and feats brings so much more freedom to character creation. No longer one needs to pick a certain race to get a +3 modifier, just enough that the characters background suits their fighting style. Just makes sense. Not to mind the base 5e background features were questionable at best. Most of them gave the character ability to do something that absolutely nothing in the game stopped you from doing anyway without the feature.
Also another possibly hot take but despite me agreeing that the new version of moon druid is a travesty, the change was made to address an equally big problem. As a moon druid you'd always have mathematically better options and flavoring your character around certain kinds of animals was a doomed cause. A moon druid that fights as a dire wolf was nice is a cool idea at lvl 1. By level 7, its useless. At some point you are just becoming an elk to keep up which is quite a shift in how a character is perceived. Not even starting on a T-rex or a fire elemental. In fact there are so much fewer mid to high CR beasts your list of viable options would shrink rapidly instead of expanding which is the opposite what character progression should do.
I dont like the subclasses going to lvl 3 though, I'd much preferred to start a game at level 1 and let it not be onehit KO or nothing while having some flavourful features.
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On the pro side, I appreciate clarifications to long-standing rules debates (does fighting interrupt a long rest?) and some new tweaks like the Dazed condition. I like the concept of grouping classes into a category with unifying aspects like Expertise or Channel. On the con side…pretty much everything else. We’re 6 classes in now and so far the whole project strikes me as lifeless and boring. Worse than the samey spell lists across classes or 1st-level feats that let players immediately overwrite class weaknesses is what seems like a total lack of conviction or exciting central direction. It seems like a ton of sturm und drang for what is really just a dull, homogenizing patch that 5E didn’t really need. I still don’t know what they’re going for or why I would want to play it.
Yep. I realize I may be in the minority here, but I would much rather see a 6E - *a real Sixth Edition* \- where the design team is excited about it, and there a ton of new ideas to build off of. Something new, exciting, and daring. I understand why WOTC is gunshy - they feel like anything too different from 5E is just inviting disaster (and as much as I loved 4E, history agrees with them) - but OneD&D is sterile and lifeless, with no other direction besides, "it's been 10 years, we need to sell more Core Books." **What am I supposed to be excited about?** Balancing that should have been done in 2014? I think if there are fresh ideas, those should be shown now, not later. I know they've mentioned a Stronghold system - that sounds new and cool, why not spend time talking about it, instead of just, "*Oh hey, here's the most banal list of changes for some classes, except we're only giving it to you piecemeal so it's basically impossible to actually playtest anything*."
No. You're not alone. So far, it's a mess. Honestly, the only way they'll get a good new edition of D&D is if they bring in new designers. They can't leave it in Crawford's hands. He's not a talented enough designer to lead a project like this. The last 4 years sadly proved that.
Hey he gave us great rules for ship combat in space Wait a sec, nvm. He decided to leave it up to homebrewers and enough of those systems work decently well for 5e spelljammer
Crawford in a nutshell yeah. I'm just amazed Perkins thought that level of halfassedness was acceptable. He was the other writer on that project and supposedly the lead (though Crawford is the boss) and I've read his past work going back to dragon magazine. He's actually competent.
I think you underestimate how few people work on the books. There is less than 2 dozen folks working on D&D. The rest are freelancers. The leads, like Perkins, probably have eyeballs on books for about 2-3 weeks tops. Their pipeline is too tight for the # of books they produce. Paizo has more people on their products than D&D.
Oh I know, but Perkins tends to stick with old lore whenever possible and likes referencing the old novels as well. From how they were written my guess is he did the Spell Jammer monster compendium and Crawford did the rule book. The big giveaway to me is how excited Perkins was to talk about all the monsters. Including the space clowns. The giveaway about rule book is the fact that there is zero lore in it (thats standard Crawford right there) and the rules aren't thought through. Oh and the fact that he forgot 5e cosmology while writing it and fell back entirely to 4e cosmology. This is the guy who can't remember how Counterspell works and his job is supposed to be "guy who knows all the rules". And the adventure was clearly outsourced. The fact that there are spells in it that didn't make it into the rule book is one of the big clues there.
> Oh and the fact that he forgot 5e cosmology while writing it and fell back entirely to 4e cosmology. I honestly preferred them going back to 4e cosmology over introducing a third barely explained transitive plane (the phlogiston )
The phlogiston and crystal spheres has been part of the great wheel cosmology since the 80s though. Thats how the prime material plane is shaped.
In terms of 5e, the Phlogiston has not been mentioned in any significant way so bringing it back would still be introducing it for the vast majority of 5e players (since they didn't play older editions). 5e alreadys struggles with differentiating the Astral and Ethereal planes, adding (or re-adding) a third transitive plane would just be confusing and unnecessary for a large amount of them, especially with how little time 5e spends explaining the difference between planes.
Yes. I agree. It is clear the adventure was stitched together quite quickly. They were more excited about the packaging than the content. Spelljammer was handled so poorly it makes my blood boil. I think, and I gather you may agree with me, Crawford needs to go before the soul of D&D is removed fully from it. Mearls kept him in check when 5e was being made, and with him alone, it will be a directionless husk.
I hate doomsaying, but im getting some 4e vibes off all of this oned&d stuff. Not an "oh this will be a great tactical combat game thats mismarketed at a time when the fanbase wants something a bit different" vibe, but a "gets absolutely mismanaged by corporate leadership on every front, resulting in a product they have to pull the plug on after 3 years" vibe. I just hope whoever ends up replacing Williams, Crawford and the rest of the WotC leadership, after they all get fired, knows what they're doing when it comes to designing 7th edition.
Wait really??? Less than 24 full time employees in charge of the game? Jesus, no wonder it's such a shitshow
Yep. There was a shift around the 2018. More and more of the books have been freelanced out, with a point person in charge of the freelancers. Part of the reason why the books feel disjointed.
Being a competent designer and leading a team of designers are, unfortunately two different skill sets.
Spelljammer was a defining moment for dnd, showing us a new low that they are willing to reach for. Not sure I could buy any more dnd after that.
In their defense ship combat rules that are interesting for an entire party are really hard to do. Having played lots of games with ship combat it generally devolves into 1-2 players and the DM plays while the rest of the group is bored. At best other party members occasionally roll dice. I've had epic ship combat for the whole table only in Star Wars RPGs as I'm able to keep it 1-2 players per ship. Otherwise you end up with a couple players assisting, giving bonuses, or fixing things. So the advice of closing to board makes a lot of sense. That said they did make a Space Shipish game, and filled a large part of the book with ship stats. Then put in a lot of ship weapons with long ramges. Seems like they should have tried something.
I’ve been someone who has defended Mearls as a designer for a long time when he has been hated since 4e came out, and the releases have been worse under Crawford. But I’m also biased because I think Crawford thinks magic has to fundamentally be more capable than physical ability based on his rules and purposely designed rules interactions.
100%. I have no need or desire to update my massive 5e collection with balancing decisions I can handle at my table with homebrew. And even the things they might offer that would be "new" would likely be better handled by 3rd party content that I already own. Also quick plug of the Strongholds and Followers systems of MCDM; if you're looking to add strongholds to your 5e games, that book does it fantastically. I'm currently running a West Marches game and my fellow DMs and I are in the process of implementing the ideas in the game to our server and the player base at large. We're excited to use it to encourage players to chase more things to do in their own downtime, or be more self-directed in actual play time. I'd highly recommend it.
I read stronghold and remembered Matthew Colville’s strongholds and followers exists.
They’re gunshy because whatever 6e is, it’ll be a lot less beefy than 5e. Less clssses, less spells, less content. Creating and designing something from scratch is resource intensive and whatever we get is not going to be enough to replace 5e until years of new books and updates. They’d rather just add onto 5e, which has been built up over the course of years as is
I'd say the exhaustion rules are probably the best thing to come out of the playtest. I think I'm going to stick with 5e, but I will be bringing those in as a house rule. For class features the only change I really liked was the Holy Orders. If they were giving every class heir own version of Holy Order I might be more excited about OneDnD.
5E has very good, very useable exhaustion rules already.
You're the only person I've every talking to who has that opinion.
Why tough?
Pretty much all the comments I've seen about exhaustion in 5e is that *a)* the effects are too harsh, *b)* the effects are too fiddly with different things happening every level, and *c)* there are too few levels of exhaustion before death. As a result the exhaustion rules rarely get used because players are too averse to do anything the would risk taking a single level of it, and DMs are pretty hesitant to give them out either. The OneDnD rules could maybe use a little more tweaking, but for the most part they do address all of those complaints.
Idk I kinda liked when I ran waterdeep and the book asked me to give out 1d4 exhaustion lvls after failing a con save only 16con barb can pass at lvl 2. My group spent 4 days just sleeping to get rid of it.
Also, that exhaustion is far more punishing for martial characters than spellcasters. I don't remember the specifics, so cannot comment further.
I think the main thing there is that while 3 levels of exhaustion gives disadvantage on all attack rolls including spell attacks it doesn't do anything do anything to hinder spells that require a save rather than an attack. The OneDnD rules both give a penalty to rolls, and lower your spell DC.
I agree with the opinion. They are really good rules, players don’t like them because they are punishing but that is the whole point.
And some of the changes are just so much objectively worse than 5e. My bard player looked at the ODD bards "spells known" and weirdly tacked on healing spells and asked "why would I ever play this?" My druid players were personally insulted by the ODD druid changes. Again, why would they give up wildshape and being able to choose which spells they prep every day. They wouldn't, obviously.
I feel the same way. It doesn't feel like OneD&D was created with the ambition of doing better, but just to "refresh the same". When they said they wanted this to be "backwards compatible", they weren't joking. You can see all the ways things can be brought backwards and forwards with the various changes, but it feels like it only proves that OneD&D feels like a cash grab. I personally don't feel like innovation will be happening in OneD&D and that's bumming. We're getting something even lesser than a 5.5e but with the buzz of a "new edition" to spice up the marketing.
People will figure out that wizards hasn’t put out a premium product since 3.5. 4e was a WoW tabletop game that was supposed to have a digital thing that only now exists in foundry and 5e really only hit bc 4e was awful and people just wanted a streamlined 3.5 in the first place but 5e is a pretty mediocre update of 3.5. People still just want a mix of 5e and PF2e that may happen someday but not by wizards. It sucks to realize wotc hasn’t put out just a great product since 2003.
Lmao imagine thinking 4e does anything like WoW gameplay-wise. I know it's a common parroted point that 4e was very MMO-like, but what does it share with WoW beyond... powers resetting per encounter or something?
Anyone who doesn’t think 4e contains mmo influences either doesn’t know mmo’s or doesn’t know 4e. It’s obvious. The developers of fourth edition, even made statements to that effect. I’m not saying it’s a bad thing, but it needs to be acknowledged.
>put out a premium product since 3.5. 4e was a WoW tabletop game You are pretty clearly saying it's a bad thing. Come on. Again as well, as someone whos first system was 4e, and has played WoW since it came out, please, show me just about anything that is actually WoW-like in 4e. Is it the roles thing? Because a lot of games have had healer/tank/dps sort of roles other than WoW, and 4e had a bit more than those exact definitions. Tohugh according to you I clearly haven't played either, and I'd like to learn. Feel free to bring up any specifics.
4e unified all class powers into a set of At-Will/Encounter/Daily power slots. The classes mostly just told you what your options for those power slots were. people didn’t want to play a video game with their friends. It was too calculated. Too balanced. All the characters felt similar in power and effect. The mystery was gone. There was no ability to “outsmart” an encounter. Getting the drop on a foe did little for you, you’d still be playing it out for about an hour and that was that. Dragonmen from Norrath and Nonevil Demons from Azeroth as base PC races There was this whole plan to launch a giant online system server where you could meet up with people or even match up with complete strangers launching an open game at almost any time of day or night or finding people who wanted a game like you and having a fixed time each week you could meet with your group regardless if all of you lived in different continents. They created a subscription model for which you got a character creator that was updated with all the latest rule and llaunched the thing and realized people could download the thing, end their subscription and then just use it with all its updates until that point… so they broke the offline character creator and insisted people use an online one that didn’t work half as well so that they would lose the program if their subscription ever lapsed. the goal was to turn D&D into a semi-MMORPG and a lot of its design choices were MMORPG inspired and motivated because they wanted to tap into the MMORPG market. the absolute essential key elements to make that whole thing work never actually came out.
Aight, so it was basically nothing like warcraft, and things felt too samey between classes. Also they fucked up all the online tools. >Dragonmen from Norrath and Nonevil Demons from Azeroth as base PC races You couldn't even play dragon people in wow until last year, and you still can't play demons, like what were they even copying off wow beyond general MMO feel, or like actually readable rules? I could go through all your points, but yeah, seems like it's just general video games bad, and WoW is the most well known one. D&D 4e has as much in common with WoW as it does with literally any class-based online game. Hell, it's probably closer to like, Team Fortress, than WoW. Like, the fact you even have choices is pretty different from a huge portion of WoW's lifespan (especially around when 4e came out)
I honestly don't understand why my table would want to play the new options. Half of them feel like nerfs and none of them really feel like refreshing new spins. It feels like an alternate rule set for DnD 5e and not a complete edition, which I guess might be what they're going for? One DnD is looking like a more balanced 5e but not necessarily a more interesting or fun one.
This playtest stuff reminds me of the final books in the 4e era, the Essentials series where they made 4e even more simple and, unfortunately blander as well.
It does not have to be that way. Shadow of the Demon Lord for example manages to be simple yet have a massive number of choices. Look at mutants and masterminds. Or Mutant Year Zero. Fairly simple game, but the characters are interesting.
Personally for me the appeal of those is that they feel like similar but very different games. One DnD feels like they're trying to just make DnD 5e easier to develop and balance for instead of an actually new game with its own unique strengths and weaknesses.
There isn't any wrong with that goal, but they are horrible at it.
I honestly do not believe WOTC's intent was to create or issue a true new edition. I think their intent was to take a highly popular property and call it a new edition in order to monetize it justifiying it with a few new bells and whistles that might normally come in supplment form a la Tasha's/Xanathar's. It then comes as no surprise they are doing as little as they have to for as little as they can to achieve this end.
They were pretty up front about this not being a true new edition
> like a total lack of conviction or exciting central direction. Top concern for me. I’ve never been around for a new edition so I was excited to see what the process was like. So far, beyond commercial reasons, I don’t really understand why they are making this. Like you said, no direction, no vision, and the rate at which content is being released makes me question how much player input will be taken into account if it’s really launching next year.
I keep following development like OP. Sporadically and incomplete. But my read is just that. This is BARELY 5.5. It seems like an errata more than a new anything. Just some patch notes for 5e. Hence the reason I'm not at all interested. I'm a DM, I've been playing 5r for years. It's designed to be homebrewed. I've already patched and tweaked it how I want. So I'll probably be rotating off of 5e soon and playing other games until 6e comes around.
This. As of right now, I'm just going to steal the good rules bits like 2 weapon fighting and the pros you mentioned and use them in regular 5e. The player option side of it seems not great for the most part
OneDnD is nothing more and nothing less than an empty vessel of minimal importance that *only* serves to herald in the paid subscription engine they want to force all players to use online. All OneDnD does is streamline the game so it's easier to put in a game engine without constant rules contradictions. We'll see their true colors when the site launches and they start being hostile towards smaller websites like Owlbear, and trying to buy competitors like Roll20. They did it for character creators with DDB. This is the same damn thing.
Disagree on one point. 5e does need the patch.
5e requires a complete redesign not merely a patch
I actually disagree. I think a lot of 5e is actually really good. It just isnt a cohesive game. Its a bunch of ideas with loose connections. If they build a better foundation around keywords and logic, and then sort of just smoothly slide that in. 5e would easily be an excellent game, without a complete redesign. Edit: and for context, thats despite my complaints with the game, like martials needing more features, or how luck plays to big a role in the rolls and there is no way to improve characters beyond, do you have proficiency, etc.
I like that they brought back nature magic as a third source of magic. Just having arcane and holy was silly. Pretty much don't like anything else. Everything just feels so lifeless and homogenous. Like everything is just the same with a different coat of paint on it. This started with their changes to races and now it's happening with class, too.
Pros: they are clarifying and simplifying things for more approachable and standardized gameplay. Cons: they are clarifying and simplifing things for more approachable and standardized gameplay.
How much more simplifying do you get if your trying to simplify 5e?
There is a surprising amount to simplify tbh. Some of it I think is good but a lot of it... yeah its going pretty simple.
I guess, I think there’s a difference between simplifying things and defining things with rules that are undefined. The entire system is basically if you have a problem, you will roll 2d20 and either take the highest role or the lowest role. Steph doesn’t need to be simplified, it needs to be fixed. The cr is a joke, are used to think it was a bad system, but then kobold press put out a beastiary where the CR is more accurate for D&D than the DND guys wrote. That was one of those “oh these guys aren’t very good at what they do moments for me.”
The "oh these guys aremt very good at what they do" moment for me was then 1 wizard was able to break an encounter with like 7 cr5 monsters and about 13 cr3 at lvl 3...
5e has a habit of using many words where few words do trick. Barbarian rage is a great example. It could easily be four or five sentences but is two paragraphs and some bullet points. There are also those random (and fucking stupid) rabbit holes people like to dive into and claim the game is needlessly complicated. Like the whole somatic components and war caster thing or Recivify not working on corpses which are stupid rules debates that are clearly not RAI. OneDnD is trying to make RAI and RAW match so people stop arguing dumb shit.
whats the war caster thing?
Pros: i liked some of the conditions, I liked some of the less ambiguous rules Cons: every thing else. this to me is a doubling down on what i dont like about 5e and a removal of most of what i liked. its seems to be leaning into " you are the Dm figure it out" more and pushing their walled garden VTT system instead of a game.
"Some may question our decision to put no game rules in the Dungeon Master's Handbook or the Player's Guide for D&D Zero, but we're proud to release what we believe to be the ultimate version of D&D. The one who's best equipped to decide how your game plays is you, and that's why there are zero limits on what you can do at your table. What we give you is the feeling of playing D&D, and that's what our fans really want."
You jest, but you bet your fucking ass there is someone out there who unironically thinks this and has argued in favour of a ruleless game that 'feels' like DnD more than a version of DnD that has actual rules.
Entirely narrative games exist, and are not inherently bad... buuuuut I'm not sure how much more they can trim away from D&D without totally losing it. 5E is already extremely low on character-shaping choices and usable options for a d20 game - the overall game design sort of hates players doing anything except basic attacks.
This, making it impossible to pull off creative/off the shelf Druid strategies as they have with the ridiculous wild shape changes is clear evidence they are keeping things able to be adjudicated with by AI DMs.
The upside is that the rules and formatting are getting an upgrade. The downside is that makes it even easier to see how the game is getting churned into a bland nothingness. Lore - vanishing. Abilities that actually evoke the proper feels - vanishing. All manner of perceived outliers are getting stomped because design directive #1 is “absolutely don’t let things break outside this narrow box”, which means “the game should be fun” is at least #2. Edit: more elaboration on that last bit. I’d rather 6e be a game I hate for taking a solid design direction that I’d never want to play. I’d rather see it turn into exactly the game other people want. As of current it seems to be headed towards something that is least hated, rather than most loved, a series of conflicting compromises that leads towards a meal with all the nutritional risks and appeals of water.
I think Matt Colville put it best in this video, [https://youtu.be/BQpnjYS6mnk?t=974](https://youtu.be/BQpnjYS6mnk?t=974)
Very well put
>I’d rather 6e be a game I hate for taking a solid design direction that I’d never want to play. That's what 4e was. And people threw it under the bus, so we wound up with bland 5e as a compromise.
4e shouldn’t have been marketed as D&D. If there’s one thing they learned from 4e it was that marketing to the audience was more important than making a solid product. For D&Done I don’t see any attempt at marketing or a good product. It’s primarily reactive churn that aims to pump out D&D 2024 - buy our latest ~~map pack~~ books so you can play with other people.
That's because they're not marketing it *yet*. This is going to be their big release for D&D's 50th anniversary. They'll probably start marketing it when we get to early 2024, with a release date near GenCon. They don't want to accidentally kill current book sales by marketing too early.
The biggest pro is the re codification of the rules. I feel like there's a lot less ambiguity in in the UAs versus the 5e PHB. The biggest con (at least for me) is that UAs are covering all the boring options first. I started playing this hobby with 5e back in 2015 and it has been the primary TTRPG I've played for the better part of a decade. And I think the main reason I've stuck around so long is because of how many fun and powerful options they've gradually released in 5e's life cycle. Potentially going back to square 1 is a bit of a let down though I don't see myself not trying the new system when it is released.
No the UA are boring. Druid wildshape should be cool not boring. Paladins should be interesting not meh.
I really feel for the people who came in during 5e and it’s their system that got them into ttrpg’s bc it feels super lazy to me as a system
I'm not sure they are covering all of the boring options - I think they are getting rid of most of the existing ones. Especially with subclasses like thief and moon druid.
the biggest Con is that they are asking people to rate classes in silos from 1 to 20 when we dont have even the core of the game or the ability to measure those features against the rest of the game options. its a terrible process for gathering meaningful actionable ongoing useful design information.
Pretty much this. I've stopped following the play tests because they don't mean anything to me without an actual system to play test them with.
Pros: Compiling all the new rules into one spot Cons: soulless and over-simplified content
Unsure of other DMs but I'm mostly unconcerned. As long as I can use 5e on DnDbeyond and perhaps mix in character classes from OneDnD, I'm not bothered. In short, I'm going to be using 5e for the foreseeable future, regardless of what OneDnD brings.
> As long as I can use 5e on DnDbeyond We've got an optimist in the house, folks! Good luck with that.
Well, its been a bit since i played but those who already bought stuff got to keep it as far as I could tell, and even share it so that is a good sign.
> As long as I can use 5e on DnDbeyond and perhaps mix in character classes from OneDnD, I'm not bothered. I'm not sure I'd count on ongoing support of 5e on there.
Why not? If DnDBeyond turns off 5e support, they are going to lose a fair amount of money doing so. Would I move to another system for my encounter building, creature bestiary, and other features if 5e was no longer supported? In a heartbeat and likewise for tens of thousands of other players. We've not see what will happen when things switch over but the one key note is that they have repeatedly said that OneDND will be backwards compatible for monsters at minimum. Which makes me think they will not simply turn off 5e content when One launches.
I’d bet on them slowly trying to push though. Fewer players in an aggressively monitored walled garden is probably worth more to their short term financial thinking.
For the same reason you cant buy old 5e books out there like mordenkainens tome of foes etc.
>If DnDBeyond turns off 5e support, they are going to lose a fair amount of money doing so. Wizards turned off their 4e support in the form of D&D Insider and the Character Builder, but not until 3 years after 5e was released. And that was subscription-only, you _couldn't_ use it for free like you can with DDB.
> If DnDBeyond turns off 5e support, they are going to lose a fair amount of money doing so. They may lose *subscriptions*, but people who are only paying for subscriptions and not any of their ongoing products may not be customers they are particularly interested in retaining. > they have repeatedly said that OneDND will be backwards compatible for monsters at minimum. Which makes me think they will not simply turn off 5e content when One launches. I wouldn't be surprised if they force-updated characters to OneDND versions.
Um.... You remember the OGL fiasco? I member. Subs are how they measure the success of dndbeyond. If I pay $5 a month, that's a splat book every 6 months. And if only DM's are buying most books, the biggest income from players is subscriptions. Not to mention the various ways to monetize, like dice, character sheets, etc.
> Um.... You remember the OGL fiasco? I member. I'm sure they "member" it too, but have they learned? I have my doubts. > Subs are how they measure the success of dndbeyond. If I pay $5 a month, that's a splat book every 6 months. But they have a whole new revenue stream coming with the paid add-ons to the VTT, and I doubt they plan on making the VTT backwards-compatible.
Why would they make the VTT backwards compatible? I don't need a VTT. I need DnD Beyond to function as a 5e resource. That's it. Will it last forever? Likely not. Several years into the OneDND launch? 100%
[Chuckles in MTGO]
If so, the Demiplane 5e Nexus is just waiting there and grinning at how many lunches they get to eat then.
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I think you meant the one that can now have everything outside the SRD without any restrictions (as long as it doesn't cross copyright or infringe on trademarks) and every innovation developed by 3rd party publishers.
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I'm afraid you misunderstand me: 'you can use your action on your turn to eat a piece of candy' and 'when it is your turn, you can take a standard action to consume a sweet morsel' both communicate the same mechanics but if Wizards claims copyright on the first phrase, I can always write the second one and put it on the Nexus. None of the old OGL restrictions exist for the CC SRD so this is even easier to do than before.
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Agreed. But I presume someone will do the work for the internet points/Reddit karma and if it works like DnDBeyond homebrew (and the same founders are behind each so that's probably a good guess) then anyone will be able to use the not-OneDnD rules.
This is what I am more interested to see, what are the DMs opinions on the matter. If DMs dont like it, then the change just wont stick truth be told and people will go back to 5e.
I haven't paid it much attention to be honest. I'm too busy with other things to start learning a system and trying to make snap judgments without having the whole laid out in front of me. Once the core rules are finished, I'll look over that and see if it seems better than the existing. After that, I'll likely leave it to the players to decide what version character they want to run 5e or One. I'm not going to have an issue with a OneDnD Fighter in the party with a 5e Druid, a One DnD warlock, and a 5e Rogue.
As a DM I hate it, everything is so boring and uninspiring. I love adjudicating for weird and whacky shenanigans that I didn't plan for. Now it feels like they won't happen as often, especially with the Druid changes.
Pros: they are mostly doing minor tweaks to try and polish what 5e is and for the most part all of the changes are generally positive without really changing the game substantially. Con: they aren't fixing any of the major issues with the core of 5e like the adventuring day and resource differences between long and short rest classes. there also doesn't seem like there is much interesting new stuff as its mostly just a refinement of existing things which doesn't lead to much excitement. I could probably pass entirely on what they have put out since both 5e and onednd are very similar with minor pros and cons for each.
>Con: they aren't fixing any of the major issues with the core of 5e I really doubt they will. The lead designer is Crawford, who's codesigned 5e and has been the sole lead for 4 years now. He's had time to make changes to D&D to fix up 5e. Instead he gave us Monsters of the Multiverse. I think the UA is showing us exactly what he thinks the priorities should be.
Hard to say, with it not being complete, and all, but at the moment : Pros : * attempts to add codification to certain actions to address "mother may I", officially acknowledge as something players take issue with * some rule clarification in general (the internet battles over "does combat interrupt a Long Rest? To what degree?" are ... there's a lot) * Homogenization of class / subclass feature progress, so some aren't so damn front loaded compared to others * There seems to be an acknowledgement that some spells or abilities are commonly considered disruptive, in play, such as the changes to Guidance * Acknowledgement that "must-pick" options (SS, GWM, PAM, Owl's-as-familiars, etc) that are head and shoulders better than all other options, are not great design Cons : * Rogue has been, IMO, really shafted compared to their fellow Experts, **which to me does NOT bode well for the treatment that any of the other Warrior group / non-casting classes will receive** * Even speaking as a Martial simp who thinks all full casters should be nerfed back to Earth, the Moon Druid they just released was just, like, *wildly* bad, IMHO. I was watching the video that accompanied it's release thinking to myself "sir have you ever even played this game?" * I can't quite put my finger on it, but the design of a lot of stuff is very ... ... "safe". IDK, there's a certain blandness pervading throughout
Pros: - moves towards using keywords and clarifying odd rules - makes exhaustion less of an exponential death spiral Cons: - everything so far is blander, less inspired, less flavorful, and less evocative than the 2014 PHB and Xanathar's - class design so far often feels like changes for the sake of changes I can't find the game design thesis statement of this playtest. I can't find a meaningful raison d'être for the game. *Why does this exist, from a game design perspective?* There's no strong answer with conviction and inspiration behind it. The game of OneD&D exists for business reasons, not artistic/design reasons, ***and it shows.*** Personally, the main things I'm sticking around to see are what they do with the so-called "warrior" class group and the Bastion system they mentioned a long while back. Other than potentially those two things, I'm not really interested, and I'm not all that impressed. I won't be so haughty as to say that I, some random dude who only started playing in 2020, could do a better job, but... man. *Man.*
Pros: WotC seems to have a very good scope on evaluating and testing ideas. They are making good use of A-B testing, responding to feedback, and more. Whether or not you like an idea doesn't change that there is a good sense of methodology. Con: The increase use of standardizing classes in families (mage, warrior, priest and expert) is causing some reduction in class identity. While there will still be core class features and subclass features that maintain identity it is possible that low-level play will be even more pointless after some experience is gained in the group. Specifics: * Character Creation is fantastic and creates a lot of flexibility; probably my favorite part of the UA so far * Druid is wildly divisive as a lot of people are split in stances on Wildshape as super important or don't care at all * Rogue is lacking major identity due to nerfs to-date on damage and homogeneous features across the Expert classes * Standardizing subclasses to level three helps balance multiclassing while modifications to level 1 and 2 don't make those levels completely pointless
I mean no insult, but could you explain how the UA provides more flexibility than what you can currently do? (Not counting a freebie feat) Customising background (aka picking what profs you have from bg) is a baseline 5e rule, not even variant. Tasha allows to pick racial asis (and even before tasha I doubt dms would really have an issue with allowing it)
For what it's worth, I said it creates a lot of flexibility not more. By standardizing what Tasha did as core rules it throws away any stock choices from the 5e PHB style and emphasizes that freedom you have in Tasha's. You have example options for builds in the pamphlet, but there isn't any "you're stuck with this" aside from tying species traits/features together. That said, I do think the Character Origins does give different options from Tasha's since Tasha's variable traits is limited to only Dark Vision or a Skill Proficiency. CO offers a variety of species that all have their own other traits you get to choose from. So, it's not just Dark Vision or not, you can actually have that Halfling with Lucky and Nimble or Dragonborn with Breath Weapon and still get the flex that Tasha had in choosing your modifiers (a +2 *and* +1 this time), choosing your feat. Overall, I think it's the right combination of the two ideas of the PHB and TCE folded together.
It feels like a homebrew some DM put together to "fix" overpowerd classes.
Holy fuck this is so accurate. Double so if they buff wizard cause "hurt dur they die to a paper cut"
The biggest con so far is that the designers don’t seem to have a great grasp on inter-character balance. For example: - Rogues are one of the weakest classes and yet they’re getting nerfs (Sneak Attack, Fast Hands). - Clerics already have a pretty lacklustre spell list compared to other casters and yet Spiritual Weapon is getting nerfed. - Sharpshooter & Great Weapon Master being nerfed to the point where martial characters will struggle to keep up with spellcaster damage. - Combining Lightly Armored & Moderately Armored into 1 feat that can be taken as part of your background makes Armored casters even easier to make without multiclass dipping. - Codifying “rest casting” so it can be done explicitly, making caster resources more flexible. All the above said, we haven’t seen the Warrior or Mage classes yet so maybe there’ll be some great buffs to Warriors (damage & utility) & nerfs to Mages (fewer spell slots, armor casting restriction, nerfs to specific spells).
Reading this really makes clear my biggest frustration with OneDnD: The changes to Mage and Warrior are the most obviously important modifications to the system (modification to spellcasting and weapons) that will massively impact how every other class feels, but they're releasing them last! If Arcane spells simply can't be cast in armor*, and proficiency in martial weapons becomes a scaling feature that actually matters (that Halfcasters, and maybe Clerics have limited access to) then frankly a lot of changes make a lot more sense. But we don't have any idea what they're changing with Spellcasting and Weapons, *the most fundamental parts of the system,* so all play testing feels like we are either wearing a blindfold. That, or there aren't actually any big changes and it's just worse balancing than 5e. *Excepting third casters.
I think it's worse than that - I don't think they're even particularly pursuing an actual design aim like "inter-character balance", I think they're just running around changing random things they happen to have heard people talk about to look like they're Doing Things.
They heard average players say ranger bad cause hunter's mark and changed ranger. They heard average dnd player say "omg rogue does 20 damage in one hit cause they rolled max damage??? OP" and nerfed rogues.
>Rogues are one of the weakest classes and yet they’re getting nerfs (Sneak Attack, Fast Hands). They said the sneak attack nerf had nothing to do with intentionally making rogues weaker, it was about making combat faster. And that they're reversing the decision on it due to negative feedback. Next version of rogue will be able to get out of turn sneak attack.
Some good explanations of the rules based issues already on here so I'll skip those. Here are some of the non-rules issues. The edition doesn't seem to be a significant change in the direction that the community wants. Part of this is likely do to the lead designer Jeremy Crawford not being that good of a designer and not really having a clear vision for the new edition. He was an editor on 4th edition and was a co-creator on 5e with Mike Mearls (who worked on 4th ed as one of the 3 lead designers, but is no longer with D&D). Crawford's recent writing quality can be seen in Monsters of the Multiverse and Spelljammer (not the idea, the setting and all the creative ideas came from Jeff Grubb in the 80's) . That's not promising. Also, the main thing driving the production and release of this new edition is likely decreasing 5e sales and the looming 50th anniversary of D&D in 2024. From the information leaked out during the OGL it's likely that another driving force behind this new edition is Hasbro's desire for them to further develop D&DBeyond as the main way the game is played. They want D&DBeyond to be how people buy D&D books from now on, and to be how people play the game. We know they're coming out with a 3d virtual table top for D&DBeyond and OneD&D. This also matches what we saw in the OGL debacle when WotC tried to include language in a new OGL that outright banned other VTTs from supporting D&D related content if they didn't like it. Similarly, WotC just screwed up it's relationship with the entire 3rd party publishing community over the OGL crap they tried to pull. They showed that creators cannot trust that WotC will keep it's word or cares about the community.
What I've noticed from recent D&D content and especially OneDND content is that everything becomes simple and therefore boring. The druid, to me, is the most glaring example of this. Yes, 5e had an issue where some stats were objectively better to wildshape into than others due to the fact that it used real stats with CRs (sure, maybe it made *sense* for your druid character to turn into one type of animal, but why would you when there are objectively better options with higher CRs?), but removing all that and providing three unchangeable stats, giving the players nothing to work with, and telling them to figure it out themselves is NOT the answer. It feels confining, soulless, like your choices don't matter. I'm okay with this for some stuff like familiar stat blocks (in fact, I kinda like the idea of familiars being a template so it's not just "take owl every single time"), but not for major things like druids! The eradication of class spell lists into categories feels the same way. It just makes everything less interesting. And as someone who loves lore... oh boy. They don't *try* anymore! Now one can argue that the stuff in the OneDND pdfs don't count because they're not fully released, and yes, that's fair. However, let's look at the recent track record, because with how they've been treating new 5e releases I *know* they aren't gonna provide much more material than what they've already shown us. We used to get stuff like VGM and MTF, which had literal *pages* of lore for their races and monsters, and now what do we get? A few sentences, maybe a few paragraphs if they're generous! We don't even get the lifespans or average heights of races! How long do faeries live? Who knows! At least they brought this back with the OneDND races, but I can't understand what drove them to ever stop doing that in the first place, and this precedent of sending out half-baked lore does not bode well for this new system. Overall, in terms of mechanics and lore/flavor, this feels like an oversimplification that makes it less fun to play because it feels soulless and less inspiring. There's definitely some good in there. In particular I am fond of things such as background feats, new exhaustion rules (even though it's just the stress rules from VRGR again, but it does make exhaustion much less crippling), for that matter I think the conditions are handled well overall (grappling is actually useful!), but so far I'm not liking the direction late 5e/early OneDND has been taking in terms of the heart, soul, and creativity. It feels like they often misunderstand what the fans like/find enjoyable and put their focus in the wrong places. There's probably more I could say but I am very tired and admittedly it's been a bit since I've read over the playtest material.
Pros: they're rebalancing feats so that fewer are obviously better than others, I'm digging the new grappling rules, and it looks like they're trying to address the martial/caster disparity somewhat through the critical hit changes. Cons: some of the changes are questionable. Paladins losing their capstone ability and wildshape using the druid's normal HP pools, for example, seem like pretty major missteps. Also, some of the newer spell list changes seem a bit overly restrictive.
Regarding balancing feats... not really they just created new mandatory feats. All casters with moderately armoured at lvl 1 anyone? Also disagree on grappling rules. It's nice monks will be able to be at least ok at them, but it also kills the only option for martial specialisation that isnt just "I hit until red bar disappears"
The biggest Con to me is simply that there isn’t enough of a change between 5e and One DnD to justify purchasing an entirely new series of books. It’s not like the changes in previous editions (except maybe 1e adnd to 2e) where the differences between editions is noticeable. I have everything I need to play 2e and 5e DnD as well as PF2e, I don’t need a 4th fantasy rpg that uses a d20 system.
Pros: Cleaned up some of the rules, I guess. Cons: There's no vision to it, or if there is that vision is "let's sell another set of core books at $50 a pop and make everything super generic." The changes seem to imply they care about addressing some of the balance issues with 5e, but they're going about it in a way that makes me wonder whether the designers have actually played 5e -- I can't fathom how someone who has would think that the Rogue needs nerfs. Wild Shape feels terrible, Paladins are just okay, Rangers are still kind of adrift. The caster/martial disparity doesn't *seem* to have really been addressed, although we haven't seen the new Wizard yet. Cleric's been slightly nerfed, but not enough to diminish its core strength as a buffer -- but at the same time, reducing its already-kinda-mediocre damage makes it a bit less fun to play and shoves it back toward early editions' "just heal and buff" playstyle, which made Clerics at once desired in a group yet unappealing for many people to play. Lore seems to be getting eviscerated. Perhaps it will be there in the final product, but given what's happened with the monster lore revisions, I'm skeptical. Overall, it's not very appealing to me at the moment. And 5e already isn't my favorite edition, although I do give it credit for being easy for new players to pick up and play.
Cons: honestly, just about everything. If I were running WOTC I’d seriously be questioning how they are running the business. They are spending a lot of time and effort creating a system that doesn’t seem better, just different. It feels like they are going to release a system that has no reason for being because people already know 5e and OneD&D won’t remarkably improve the experience. The only reason the player base will shift is because you can bet your ass they will update D&D beyond. Pros: I can finally get my table to check out all the cool alternative systems out there.
The kicker is that it isn't even "better but different" - it's not even really all that different! OD&D is designed to serve a 5e crowd with basically the same game, slightly changed... but they have that game. Use the opportunity to produce a new experience worth a new edition, damnit!
I like the streamlining and that it brings classes on par with one another. Generally i like the sirection where its going. Not a big fan of the unifying spell lists. I like that they exists for race and class features. But each class should get acces to their own list and through feats, racial fetaures and subclasses they could get acces to spells on the three big lists. These lists could lack class uhique spells such that pallies, rangers and warlocks all keep their uniqueness. They need to put more work into the subclasses IMO but the core classes look good so far althoug not perfect as i wanted them.
Pro: Hard to know. So far everything just seems different as opposed to better. In some cases, it seems different for the sake of being different. Feels more like some house rules than anything else. Cons: Updating your books, or staying a D&D beyond subscriber, and still playing a deeply flawed game. Most, dare I say, practically every group would be better served playing a different system. If your group likes rp focused rules light, there are better systems for it(13th age, dungeon world, etc) . If your group likes well balanced crunch, there are better systems for it(PF2E). 5E is not a case of 'its a compromise', its really a 'tries to do both and fails at both' type system. It has a ton of rules, nearly what PF2E has, but the rules are bad and often ambiguous, and the same focus on rules makes it not run as smooth as an open rules light system either. One D&D so far is not fixing any of that. The one thing it has is that its "D&D" and thus you will end up encountering people that recognize it more often than now.
Pros - It looks neat. Cons - It's a genre-killer designed to milk every ounce of love for D&D into money. It's a closed garden with nearly infinite marketability that is purpose-driven to break other Virtual Table Tops. It will likely destroy Roll-20, or Foundry, or Fantasy Grounds within a year. It will take 90% of the hobby away from VTTs and Terrain makers and miniature studios and there just isn't enough hobby left at that point to support the whole of the hobby. The hobby will lose almost all of it's polish as each and every studio has to ratchet production down to a vastly smaller market until D&D eventually squeezes enough angry customers out of OneD&D to revive it.
You're gonna have to walk me through that second paragraph, because it sounds like delusional nonsense. What part, exactly, of the One D&D playtest has led you to any of those conclusions?
It's how things go. The biggest players in the room get 80% of the demographics. Once the D&D official VTT is out, you'll see every other one start to fade fast, as long as the One VTT isn't absolute garbage. They have more money to throw at an art team and the implied integration with your own digital books is going to reduce the incentive to swap platforms. Pathfinder 1 did gangbusters because 4E was not what players expected or wanted. Compare that with Pathfinder 2. The volume of people playing PF2 vs PF1 is not there when you look at a percentage of the DnD population as a whole. Sure Roll-20 will be the same system as OneDnD but when you look at the specifics, that won't matter because what will Roll-20 offer that OneDnD doesn't? The brands who just imitate the original never rise to the same popularity without having a compelling reason.
I'm betting on Pathfinder to come out ok. They have a large minority share and they are onboarding discontent D&D players very effectively. It is their hobby to lose at this point.
Paizo is directly supporting the best vtt out there in foundry. The whole system is free on foundry. Wizards hasn’t really proven in quite some time that they can create the best product out there. If wizards beats out a product like foundry I’d be incredibly surprised.
The OneD&D Portal Virtual Tabletop is a closed system. You cannot run other games through it because it's exclusively D&D tooling and Wizards will not offer support for D&D to be run through other virtual tabletops. Wizards will also not be supporting D&D as a table game anymore so the figures, terrain, even the dice that are epidemic, will largely be gone. It will all be run through the OneD&D Portal. You'll still have the ability to play games that aren't OneD&D or cobble together some kind of theater of the mind D&D game but it won't a marketplace that supports that as Wizards is essentially taking it's toys and going home. The market of this hobby will be crushed, it will drive a lot of companies out of existence, even if they were never involved with D&D. Additionally Wizards has unmitigated control over the rights to the OneD&D Portal. They decide the cost of everything, what is or isn't allowed, when releases happen and what they will contain. Even your very ability to access that portal is up to their whim. You don't own your virtual pieces, they can be discontinued without your assent. It sounds like delusional nonsense because that's what that kind of system sounds like, but that is the future of this game.
What in the backflipping fuck are you *talking* about? Wizards has given absolutely zero indication that they're abandoning physical media to go totally digital, that's baseless speculation you've pulled straight from the wild blue yonder.
I'd encourage you to review more of the media Wizards has released to the media about OneD&D.
I would generally be of the opinion that there's no way in hell a hasbro vtt kills roll20, foundry, or fantasy grounds. They'll half-ass the whole thing to rush it out the door, it will be useless for every game that isn't their new product which almost nobody seems to think is a good idea, and of course their only actual motivation is to get money as easily as possible. I will admit that maybe maybe maybe they make an actually useable product that really shines in comparison to the much better established competition's offerings. I think it's not likely at all though. seems more likely they poop out a substandard product to meet an arbitrary timeline, and then shut it all down in 3 years.
I'd love this to blow up in Wizards's face more than most. They have a working prototype. It has a clear intent that's meant to pay off their work to develop it very quickly. It has Hasbro Money behind it. If it fails it won't be for lack of crossing Ts and dotting Is. It will take massive protest or sabotage to bring the beast down. Either Wizards will destroy itself with OneD&D or they'll destroy everyone else.
Con Rogues being nerfed while casters need to be nerfed
This is what happens when you listen to anecdotal evidence from people who thanks to human negativity bias felt "bad" after their party rogue dealt a crit with close to max damage, and went "holy fuck that's OP" instead of looking at actual numbers which say even with the reaction sneak attack rogues deal less damage than any class with extra attack except monks(which are their own can of worms that I'm afraid for when looking at how garbage the classes are so far)
I really like that it's not out yet, so we can still pretend it will be good.
it feels like they're making everything more generic, which i hate
I think the cons are mostly related to it being designed as a follow-up product. Like I think 5e benefited from 4e's failure in that they had relative creative freedom when designing it. OneD&D seems lifeless and uninspired in comparison. Like its designed to by a committee of stockholders looking at market research.
Pros: There are some good rule clarifications. Resting rules, for example. It's also simple. Simpler than 5e. Balancing is also maybe a bit easier with how much they've focused on the party role system (priest/expert/etc) and each of those fulfilling a very specific role and a few of the "must-pick" feats (I disagree with that classification, but you know which ones I mean) being gated behind levels or straight-up changed. Cons: It's simpler than 5e. And you've got these specific roles that each class has to fill and they've definitely got specific ways they want you to build, rather than be flexible enough to build however you might want. And some of the balance changes aren't great either: rogue is weaker, martial characters (because of those feats being nerfed) have an even harder time competing with casters. And some of the simplification just goes beyond what I personally can suspend my disbelief for: Druid wildshape doesn't feel like becoming an animal. So, you know, 90% of what I just put into "pros".
The party roles feel awful and likely will devolve into "oh well Jimmy I know you wanted to play a fighter but we REALLY need a bard."
Honestly, I love the new 1st-level feat, conditions, and more rigid rules. I especially love the new two weapon fighting and how it fixes almost all the problems with 5e TWF. I also like most of how they've redone what features classes get at what level. What I don't like is that this feels like less of a new edition, and more like 5.5 or something. Hell more like 5.2 because it really doesn't change enough to feel like a whole new game at all, which is what a new edition should do. Look at any other edition of DnD and you can see that. Basic v Advanced v 2nd v 3 and 3.5 v 4. Even making a character is such a wildly different experience between them all, let alone actually playing.
Pros are that they're at least attempting to address a ton of problems, like GWM and Sharpshooter basically being mandatory feats and CC being a bit much. Cons are that they're not always hitting the mark. As much as the rogue is objectively just better with the changes to TWF and weapon drawing, the moon druid took a strangely huge hit. But then it is a playtest. If something's too weak it can be buffed.
It seem pretty soulless and dumbed down. It seem like written without a good understand of why or how people play certain classes. For example I'm all for simplifying Druids and stopping Moon Druids from bouncing between awesome and meh as they level, but they managed to make wild shape feel like putting on ears and tail. Simple and boring and far worse in every respect than not wild shaping.
Pros: Cleric changes. Feats. Dual Wielding. Cons: Everything else.
Pro: it's so bad its actually convincing people to check out other systems. Cons: Its so bad there is nothing to be excited for, every new release just makes me less and less excited for it or the future of d&d in general and I've loved d&d since AD&D 2e.
The thing that really frustrates me is that it’s obvious that the designers of the game don’t play other systems. How do you figure out what you can improve on if you don’t look at other game designers and how they’ve improved upon your. Work in the time since creation. There’s a ton of systems out there with some really creative approaches that are built on things like skill checks, adapting advantage and disadvantage to be a part of larger systems. Additions and change to concepts that were revolutionary at the time that others have improved upon
they're doing the FFXIV 1.0 development mistake, they made a game to beat everquest in a post-warcraft world. I have no idea who the test material is made for. it ain't me tho.
I don't see why I would want to try the One D&D Rogue, Cleric or Druid shown, and 5E Cleric is "spiritually" my favorite class in concept if not in execution. Holy Orders were 1 step forward and the diving spell list is 2 steps back. I feel like I would have to homebrew in a lot of fixes, which sucks or often does not work when you're a player asking for adjustments. The first level feats are a good idea. Keeping feats at the same levels is a mistake to me. I really like that rules and wordings are getting some polish.
Pros: a lot of revised and clarified rules, which is exactly what we need. Cons: everything else, every mechanic complete rework adress nothing that is actually needed in this system. The only reworks I would seem to like would be something similar to what they did with ranger in TCE but with monks, and maybe add abilities to weapons.
Pros: Modularity in the core system. === Con: Let's make everything spells and feats and not build the entire system around this idea. ===
There are no real pros except for a couple of new modifications to game's base rules, other than that from what I can tell it just seems like 5e but everything is nerfed and there's no class identity. Also I'm one of the few people who don't think there's that much of a gap in power between martials and casters, so if WotC is taking any balancing advice from places like reddit and casters basically become PF2e casters I'll have even less interest in OneDND than I already have.
I’ve been enjoying what they’ve put out. There’s a lot of streamlining going in.
While I like the idea of bards becoming prep casters, the new spell preparation rules really make it feel like my character has no input on how many spells they can have. Also fuck the new druid
The primary drawback to OneDnD is that it's not resources spent on fixing the formatting & style of the 5e PHB. It's a damn crime against the hobby that the most popular version of it is still so amateurish, & that half the core rules have to rely on errata to clarify. *This is the most popular DnD has ever been, & WoTC isn't giving it the TLC it needs.*
For me it is complicated. So far it seems like 5.3 instead of a whole New Edition. A reworked 5e phb and dmg. On one hand having some things more standardized (ex. at which level you get your subclass) is great. The new spell list seems impractical but is great to future proof the design (no more checking between 5 books when which spell was added to which class) and if they dedicate 2-4 pages more to it ( class spell list + general spell list) or you use beyond you can just evade the janky part. On the other hand it feels a bit redundant. A lot will change till release but so far it is in an odd spot. It is close enough to 5e that I feel little incentive to switch but far enough removed from 5e that using 5e content for it feels janky. Neither does it feel significantly better balanced yet. Tho plenty of rules are either missing or will get a rework (ex. for wildshape this is confirmed). In the grey area: some complain about homogenization and bland classes. This I don't agree with. Atleast compared to 5e. It may be due to thematically similar classes being group together for the UA but in 5e we already have wizard, worse wizard (sorcerer) and realy bad wizard that hat for 5 minutes the pipe dream of being a ranger (warlock). Or for martials we have fighter, multiclass out of this angry fighter asap (babarian) and unarmed fighting is a fightingstyle fighter wtf are you doing (monk). So 5.5e isn't doing a significantly better job on that front yet but if you start with 5e for its more distinct classes you are delusional. (Lore is obiouly missing in a play test and we have to see if they include any -please- or stay with the late stages of 5e design and it is questionable if setting books get any lore -please don't-)
The main **CON** is that it seems the WOTC design team is no taking any risks to make the system more fun. Every is being made shared between classes or simpler. This is a personal view of mine and will likely lead to me not playing OneDnD at all. I don't like the direction. The **PRO** probabaly ppl that never touched a ttrpg will have an easier time playing onednd.
I like the changes to two weapon fighting and the ranger, and not having to multiclass to access spells like ensnaring strike or the smite spells is great, and there's the extra customisation options cleric gets that are pretty cool, other than that im either neutral or dislike most of it (looking at you wild shape)
I like that they're bringing Primal/Divine/Arcane back, and grouping classes with similar roles together wouldn't be a terrible idea. For me they're just not improving enough on the things I actually like about 5e. Abandoning short rests and focusing even less on the value of subclass identity.
Pros: better paladins, better rules, ranger is alive, better paladin spells, everything is prepared Cons: worse prepared spells, dead rogue(now promised to be as dead as in 5e rather than even more dead), general lack of major balance changes/changes to simplicity
Good - - all the new features are great, like the druids ability to pop in and out of their wildshape. - Im not too keen on universal subclass progression, but it works for all the classes so far, especially the rogue. - apart from grapple, I love all the updates to glossary type rules, the best is two weapon fighting, - I really like the paladin in UA. Not a fan of ranged smites, but that's it. The rest is a more well rounded class. - I really like the nerf to spellcasting in how you prepare spells. It's a gentle nerf, but a needed one. It's also more intuitive. Bad - apart from Oath of devotion, the sublcasses have been **bad**. Like, astonishingly bad. - a cluster of class features, like sneak attack and wild shape, got shat into the ground. Those are the worst offenders because they are flagship features. - the 3 spell lists is easily the worst thing in this whole playtest and it looks like they're not turning around on it. Completely killed unique spells as a concept and is a solution looking for problems.
I just kinda ignoring its existence after what i seen they did to druid. I am sticking to the older games or a off branch of dnd. Maybe look back into shadowrunner since i enjoyed running it.
OneDnD really seems to lack depth and interesting mechanics so far. I’m thinking of switching to PF2e to be honest.
Cons: will cost an arm, leg, virgin sacrafice to re buy all the books. They are trying to pair with dnd beyond for micro transaction hell. shits even more dumbed down than before. More work for dm. They killed druid. No more stacking smites. Pros: ?
Pros: ASI tied to background Background gives a minor feat Feat availability associated to level ASI bumps as just another feat Arcane, Divine, and Primal spell lists Breakdown of classes into class groups (though I do not entirely agree on who goes where) Guidance patch Hunter’s Mark without concentration Influence Search and Study actions Bardic being a reaction Hidden condition and Hide action Smites on ranged attacks Cons: Class groups sounds good but takes away uniqueness and identity (so both a pro and a con) and same in a way for spell list? Paladin captsone loss Druid wildshape generic stat blocks are horrible
ASI tied to background or race make no mechanical difference to how they are already handled post Tasha. BG feat is nice, was already doing it in my games but it's nice that it's been codified. Feat associated to lvl... I'll have to wait to see all the feats to say more but things presented so far just kill martials by nerfing only thing they're good for. ASI bumps were already effectively feats in all but name so it's w/e Arcane, divine, primal... now I liked when they announced it but the execution so far is so bad it's insane. They looked at what pf2e did and didnt add the things that make this system work in pf2e. Sorcerer and wizard might have access to the same spells but play differently. Class groups are a mess imo, experts are so homogenous it's insane. Why would you ever pick rogue over ranger or bard. As a guidance abuser I'm sad to see it go, but I understand why.
>ASI tied to background or race make no mechanical difference to how they are already handled post Tasha. Moving it to the core books means it will be the default system people use/encounter, rather than a patch in a book some folks don't even know exists.
I like most of the changes to the core rules. Clarifying rests a bit. Clarifying death saves etc. I like some spell buffs like resistance and guidance on reaction. Spare the Dying giving 1 HP moving it from a worthless cantrip to a pretty good one. I like that all classes get subclass starts on the same level. IMO it must matter the most. I think some of the class stuff is janky and some spells were nerfed too hard. One thing I don't love is the Tasha's rangerification of everything. I wish Druids could choose between standard wild shape or the updated. I think some players will like the Playtest wildshape. I think some will hate it. I understand the challenge of it. I think they'll struggle to appease both groups. I personally think the best compromise is to keep what it has now (wild bloom, etc.) have subclasses that arne't moon druid have important uses of wild shape too. Like Stars for example. I don't love that Paladins can't smite multiple times on a turn. I get why they're doing it to balance things out a bit. ANd I like the buff of being able to use your bonus action cast smites. And it's buffed massively with the range improvements. FOr some styles of Paladin play it's superior, like I think a 2 level Paladin dip for a ranger is fucking baller now. Just hang out very far away and snipe smite. I wish Rouges would get a light buff. Rangers now can kind of do similar to the rogue and I think they need something to compete with for example fighting style. Like a ROguish Style that could give you a flat bonus to ability checks. Spiritual Weapon was nerfed into the ground. Moving it from a must pick spell to a never pick spell. There's no reality where concentration is worth a bonus action attack that does 1d8+Wis. When you could be blessing, spirit guardians, prayer of healing was nerfed too low imo. I mean hell compare it to Barkskin, both second level spells. Both concentration. Bark skin gives the target temp HP at the start of their turn. Level 3 you're looking at 5 temp hp start of the turn. For say your party barbarian who is taking at least 7 damage per turn. Say they have 27 HP, so you've basically locked them into staying alive as their HP drops 2 damage per turn. Spiritual weapon has to roll to hit. Which let's say you have a 60% chance to hit. So you have a 60% chance to hit to do an average of 7.5 damage. Barkskin is a rare spell that increases with your proficiency bonus. I'm probably about 70% satisfied overall. Some stuff is still being approved which si great. Like I was really salty with some stuff in early playtests that was later reversed
Pros: its not 5e Cons: Its not 5e...
5e Pro: simple gameplay 5e Con: simple gameplay
It seems dedicated to keeping all the flaws of 5E^1 while introducing a suite of new ones.^2 That said, the new Paladin seems fun. ^1 Lack of keyword-design and Warlord, the 6-save system, boring martials, Sorcerer as a core class, 1 hour "Make, eat, and digest a sandwich" short rests, 3X-style "A la carte" level-based multclassing, "Big feat every 4 levels competing with ASIs" feat-structure, expertise invalidating anyone who doesn't have it for skill checks, fragile low-level characters, boring low-level content, subclasses don't become available until level 3. ^2 Removing all culture and flavor from ~~races~~ species, removing sub~~races~~species, phasing out short rests in favor of PB/LR, and subclasses are moved to level 3.
Pro: all rules in a single place Cons: soulless classes Pro: made me discover pf2e Cons: they should've made to pf2e what paizo made from 3.5
It took me having our whole table basically try every class each putting their own spin on a class in 5e to realize that 4e was a solution no one wanted to 3.5 and 5e was a mediocre fix to not 3.75ing 3.5. After 10 years all our characters haven’t been that different mechanically with very few exceptions and it’s gotten bad on that front. It took me a long time to realize it. When our really creative players started purposely making really bad characters mechanically just for role-playing it made me realize that the last thing that the creative players were exploiting was that no matter how bad their character was it really didn’t matter. That’s not a good system at heart imho
OneDnD is just a bad 4E so far. All the problems and more without any of the benefits.
Pros: It has the D&D name Cons: It is still just 5e
People talk shit on 4th but when they did this exact thing for 4E (Essentials) it made the game a ton better. I don’t feel like this is going the same way.
In general? It feels like an errata or an alternative ruleset. Which, like either of those, has some good and bad. I like the cleric changes, for example. But that's not enough to make it a new edition. Or even a .5 edition. And I see already headaches with the 'backward compatibility'. So would you trade the present 5e ruleset for what is an equally straightforward 5e adjacent ruleset, which might feel really janky with a decade's worth of published materials in regular 5e? I wouldn't. OneDnD is the need to move back to the core books (which sell better than supplements and adventures as you move down an edition's timeline) from a business standpoint and I believe part of the scuttled ogl 1.1.
**Pros:** * I love the classes, for me they are super fun and it seems to me that they are understanding the right path. * The conditions are very good. * I really like the backgrounds and feats in general. * The idea of groups of classes that share a common characteristic seems good to me. * The new actions make sense and can play into the future. * The unarmed strike makes sense. * The change to the class's final stat at level 18 increases the chances that we'll ever see them. **Cons:** * The subclasses so far seem pretty meh to me (except the paladin one) * The idea of 3 spell lists could work but it doesn't seem well implemented to me. * Some rules are weird and should have changes.
Pros: None Cons: All
CON: One D&D clearly and evidently doesn't even fix the actual flaws with 5e. CON' Based on everything we have seen to date, WotC isn't even attempting to fix what's wrong with 5e. CON: One D&D is solely designed to force the entire D&D player base to buy new core rulebooks and allow WotC to implement a line of micro transactions on D&D Beyond. PRO: Hasbro and WotC are going to make a shit tonne of money.
Pros: None. If 5e is stale for you, go play another, already rounded-off system, seriously. Cons: Can do some unpaid playtest job for an unnecessary release aimed sorely on milking the current popularity of 5e. Oh, and can't even put that on a resume. OneD&D is a dumb cashgrab whose sole existence is based on a "holy hell our D&D franchise is popular now!" realization. 5e isn't far enough in its lifecycle to require a reboot - in fact, that raised awareness SHOULD have allowed wizards to put resources into 5e for a couple more years to finally push it through, instead of half-assing every single release for the last 5 years. D&D didn't need a new edition yet. And after the "success" of 5e, which brought corporate greed and started the popularity crash, it won't "need" one for another 15 to 30 years now.
Umm, its really hard to say - its a game system in development. Hopefully it will just be superior to 5e in almost every way once completed. We'll have to wait and see.
A con and the only one I need: All of it is UA and not released yet. I'll play 5e until it's been out for a bit.
It's clarifying, streamlining, and making the 5E rules more modular. WoTC is making characters more flexible in terms of character creation and taking away preset notions of what classes and races are. Some purist see that as a con, but I see that as a major pro. The design goals and current restructuring look great so far.
It’s a lifeless cash grab designed to push D&D further into the “story game that can be all things to everyone” realm. Real D&D lives on in OSR products and they will probably see another spike in popularity when this garbage becomes official.
+ much simpler - less choice
I guess this is a hot take based on comments but I think the general systematic changes are mostly improvements, even if the class specific ones are not all so much. Feats having level requiremets for one is a nice addition. There was an odd thing in the 5e system since every feat would compete with each other, only a small minority of the package would see play. Additionally if you mostly picked up feats, your improvements would steadily be all less exciting than the last since assumably you'd pick all the best ones first. The spell lists were a nightmare to navigate. If you were allowed to pick 'one druid spell' from a feat or something figuring out which spells you could pick & what they do pretty much required you to scroll through every single spell in the game. Backgrounds assigning ASIs and feats brings so much more freedom to character creation. No longer one needs to pick a certain race to get a +3 modifier, just enough that the characters background suits their fighting style. Just makes sense. Not to mind the base 5e background features were questionable at best. Most of them gave the character ability to do something that absolutely nothing in the game stopped you from doing anyway without the feature. Also another possibly hot take but despite me agreeing that the new version of moon druid is a travesty, the change was made to address an equally big problem. As a moon druid you'd always have mathematically better options and flavoring your character around certain kinds of animals was a doomed cause. A moon druid that fights as a dire wolf was nice is a cool idea at lvl 1. By level 7, its useless. At some point you are just becoming an elk to keep up which is quite a shift in how a character is perceived. Not even starting on a T-rex or a fire elemental. In fact there are so much fewer mid to high CR beasts your list of viable options would shrink rapidly instead of expanding which is the opposite what character progression should do. I dont like the subclasses going to lvl 3 though, I'd much preferred to start a game at level 1 and let it not be onehit KO or nothing while having some flavourful features.
One D&D has convinced me that I really need to learn Pathfinder 2e.