We don't know whether we'll be getting the "Mage" group or the "Warrior" group next in the One D&D playtest. But while I am very curious to see how the Warlock will change (I suspect Wizards and Sorcerers will get relatively minor reworks, though the spell preparation changes could have major implications for the Wizard's spellbook) I think I'm more eager to see how the Warriors - Fighters, Barbarians, and Monks - will be transformed.
Of these three, the Barbarian is the class I've played the least - I think in total a single one or two hour session with possibly no combat, and at level 1. I've run a campaign with a Barbarian now for three years, though, so I've seen it from the other side.
The thing that I find curious is a sort of implication of a lot more recent game design. First off, a lot of creatures that were republished in Mordenkainen Presents: Monsters of the Multiverse had the damage types of their attacks changed. This is most notable with powerful legendary creatures like the various demon lords. (MPMM actually marks their second reprinting, as they were first published in Out of the Abyss before showing up with various archdevils in Mordenkainen's Tome of Foes).
If we look at the MPMM version of Demogorgon and compare it with the ToF/OotA version, we see a couple of changes - the newer version has a bit more HP, for instance. But one of the most important differences, I think, and particularly for Barbarians, is that the old version's Tentacle attacks deal bludgeoning damage, whereas the new version deals force damage. Interestingly, the legendary-only tail attack deals a mix of bludgeoning and necrotic damage in both versions, but the new one's primary melee attacks deal force.
And that means that a Barbarian (who is not specifically a Totem Warrior with the Bear Totem defensive ability) will not be able to halve the damage of those attacks thanks to Rage - when they are hit, they'll take just as much damage as a Fighter or Wizard would.
Why might this change have been implemented? One possibility could be a very intentional nerf to the damage reduction of Rage, but I suspect that's not the reason.
Instead, there's this persistent oddity in 5E's rules where bludgeoning, piercing, and slashing damage are actually kind of each two different damage types. Supernatural monsters, usually like fiends, celestials, incorporeal undead, elementals, and golem-style constructs, often have resistance or immunity to these sorts of damage if they are coming from a nonmagical weapon.
As such, there's a sort of graduation point that you expect to happen around level 5 or so in which the weapon-wielding classes get access to a magical weapon - the most typical being a +1. While a +2 or +3 or other variants on the magical weapon types are often better, there's a profound transformation as soon as the character gets any weapon that counts as magical. They go from dealing the most commonly resisted damage types to a damage type that almost nothing resists - by higher levels, if you're fighting a demon lord, who has resistances to cold, fire, and lightning, and immunity to poison damage, the Fighter with a +1 longsword is going to have much more reliable damage than a Wildfire Druid whose main damage spells are all getting resisted (though to be fair, that's a subclass that should really consider getting Elemental Adept in Fire).
In addition to these changes to monsters, we've also seen that some of the class features in One D&D work a little differently.
Take, for example, the Devotion Paladin's Sacred Weapon. In the current game, this lets you add your Charisma modifier to your attack rolls and also causes the weapon to count as magical. But in the new version, it gives you the Charisma bonus but instead lets you choose whether you want the weapon to deal its normal damage or radiant damage (a type that, helpfully, very few monsters resist).
My suspicion is that One D&D intends to get rid of the distinction of magical or nonmagical bludgeoning, piercing, and slashing, and instead make it so that magical weapons deal some other type of damage, likely force in the case of your simple +X weapons. This will simplify stat blocks by letting a demon lord like Demogorgon simply be immune to those kinds of damage, on the assumption that the Paladin attacking them is using a magical weapon that does other kinds of damage.
So, how does this affect the Barbarian?
Well, Barbarians' defensive bonus from Rage doesn't actually care about whether damage coming in is magic or not. You can hit them with a +3 warhammer and that damage still gets halved, magic or no.
Historically, a lot of these magical creatures with resistance or immunity to "kinetic" damage (to borrow a term from Starfinder) have a trait called "Magic Weapons," which causes their weapon attacks that deal kinetic damage to count as magical. This trait is notably absent from, for example, the new version of Demogorgon, likely due to the fact that their main attack does force damage anyway - and there aren't any traits or features that resist "force damage from nonmagical weapons." Interestingly, this does mean that the old Demogorgon has a slight edge on the new one if they were to fight one another, because the new one's tail attack would not do as much damage to the old one, as the bludgeoning damage from it is not magical.
Player characters almost never (with the exception of the Heavy Armor Master feat, I think - something that you'll note works differently in One D&D) care whether attacks are magical, so these traits seem to exist primarily to allow one monster stat block to be used against another - you could imagine a fight where the party is fighting a group of Demogorgon's demonic minions while the demon lord faces off against a Solar who is the party's ally. That trait on the old stat block would mean that Demogorgon could deal full damage to the angel, and the angel's equivalent trait allows them to deal full damage to the demon lord.
But it does seem that this change could, potentially, screw over Barbarians.
A Barbarian will typically have a lower AC than other front-line fighters. With Point-Buy, if you absolutely tanked all your "mental" ability scores to 8, you could get 16s in Strength, Dex, and Con (taking the +1 to three scores "racial" bonus), which would mean you start off with a 16 AC (or 18 with a Shield). Over the course of your Barbarian career, you'd probably want to get Strength to 20, and then spend two more ASIs getting Con to 20. Maybe you'd get Dex up to 18 with your last if you don't want to get any feats, which would give you an AC of 19 (21 with a shield) at level 19 or 21 (23 with a shield) at level 20.
So, you know, it's possible to have a high AC, but remember that this assumes you've taken -1s to three different ability modifiers.
More likely, your Barbarian is going to hover around 14 or 15 AC to start with and only raise it by a couple over the course of a campaign. But you counterbalance your low AC by halving most of the attack you're taking. (Having a d12 hit die does also mean more HP, though compared to a Ranger, Fighter, or Paladin, you're only really getting one more HP per level on average).
Now, perhaps that's enough - maybe Barbarians are too hard to kill in the 2014 rules (they do, after all, have other traits that make them very tough to take down). But I'm curious to see whether the designers are accounting for the fact that this new design philosophy is a serious nerf to Barbarians' survivability.
I could imagine a new version of Rage where, rather than resistance to bludgeoning, piercing, and slashing damage, it's instead resistance to the damage of attacks (or even more narrowly weapon attacks). We'll have to see what it looks like when the Warrior class group UA comes out.
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