Player's Handbook UA 5

 The 50-page behemoth that dropped today for the One D&D playtest covers a lot of ground. This post will be a summary of the ideas presented, but we'll do other posts focusing on each of the 5 classes featured as well as the weapon mastery feature.

I'm planning on sort of reading and writing as I go.

The 49-minute interview with Jeremy Crawford gave us a few highlights, so let's take a look at them:

Warlocks are being heavily redesigned, most notably with the replacement of Pact Magic with the Spellcasting feature. While Warlocks will still be able to access higher-level spells at the normal full-caster level progression via the Eldritch Invocation that Mystic Arcanum has become, their actual spell slots now follow a half-caster progression, eventually giving you a total of 15 spell slots arrayed across different levels, which all recharge on a long rest. Eldritch Blast and Hex have now become baseline spells for the class that are also exclusive to Warlocks, with some change to their functionality (Hex appears nerfed, but I'll cover that in the Warlock post). Warlocks now get their Pact Boon at 1st level, while their subclass comes at 3. The boons are now built as free cantrips that provide the boon to you. Notably, Pact of the Blade now appears to allow you to use your spellcasting ability for your pact weapon. Warlocks also all get medium armor now, which should make Bladelocks more viable. Finally, you can now actually choose your spellcasting ability based on the boon you take. Blade and Chain Warlocks can choose between Charisma and Wisdom, while Tome Warlocks can choose between Charisma and Intelligence.

Sorcerers have gained their own class-specific cantrip, along with some other spells to reinforce their identity as being one with the force of magic.

Wizards have new spell-modifying and even spell-creating spells that they can learn, and they learn a new "Scribe Spell" spell that functions as their spell-copying feature for their spellbook. Also, to reinforce their smartypants nature, wizards now get advantage on all "Study" actions, which include most intelligence checks to recall information.

While the Weapon Mastery system seems to be a huge enhancement to all Warriors (and other classes can pick up a feat to gain the feature as well,) it appears Barbarians are mostly similar, but the biggest quality-of-life change is that you can now maintain your Rage with a bonus action if you haven't been able to attack on your turn, which is honestly a small but incredible change that should make the class much less frustrating to play. Also, Rages now last ten minutes, and can potentially continue through multiple combats because of that.

Fighters are built around being the masters of Weapon Mastery. I believe they still get their bonus feats, but the new class identity is built around being able to make use of these properties in new and special ways.

I'm going to make posts on the topics of the document in the order they appear, so we'll start the next one with those weapon masteries.