Waiting for Playtest 7

 So, we've had a bit of a dry spell with the "One D&D" playtest. The last that came out was playtest 6 on June 29th, meaning we're now over two months without any new material to test. Now, to be fair, we're only just over that. I have a strong suspicion that the next playtest will come either this week or the next.

Last time, we saw the latest versions of Rogues, Bards, Rangers, Druids, Paladins, Clerics, and Monks. In the latter case, it was our first glimpse of the revised Monk and... well, it was a bit underwhelming, arguably nerfing a class that many feel was already among the most underpowered. Of course, I hope that we'll see a more ambitiously revised version in the future.

But what 6 gave us was revisions of the other six classes, along with four subclasses for each of them. (In the case of subclasses published in Tasha's Cauldron of Everything, they simply referred players to the existing version, though whether that means they don't intend to change them or if they're simply holding off on revising them until later, I don't know.)

I think it's likely we'll see the five (non-Artificer) classes that were not included in that packet given a similar treatment, giving us revisions and subclasses for the Barbarian, Fighter, Sorcerer, Warlock, and Wizard.

We know that Warlocks will be getting Pact Magic back, but it remains to be seen what form, exactly, that Pact Magic will take.

Naturally, I'm most excited to see what subclasses are included as PHB options. But I'm also curious to see what deeper, fundamental changes they make to the classes.

I will say, given how conservative their approach to the Monk was, I find myself wondering why they didn't come out with the Fighter and Barbarian in the first place. The delay, putting the Monk basically one playtest behind the other classes, might have been justified if they had made really big changes to the class, but they did shockingly little.

It would be nice to see Monks looked at again in playtest 7, but I have to imagine that even if the survey for playtest 6 closed a while ago, it was probably still too late to have a big impact on the Monk such that they'd be willing to throw them back up onto the chalkboard for us to scrutinize.

2023 is now 2/3 over, meaning that there's only so much time before the 2024 launch of these new core rulebooks.

Granted, I think that the main focus of the testing will probably be these subclasses. I doubt we're going to see much in the way of monster design, and I'll be pleasantly surprised if there's UAs for the DMG's "Running the Game" chapter. 

So, we'll see.