Hey, Aren't We Due for a New UA?

 While we got the "Bastions and Cantrips" Unearthed Arcana on October 5th, that means we're about a month and a half out from our most recent UA for the 2024 core rulebooks. And if we're only counting the "big" ones, we got Playtest 7 on September 7th, which is over two months ago.

Now, granted, they've already announced that some of the classes are basically done with public tests (they'll still be refining them in-house, but the final polish is not going to be done in the public eye).

Most importantly, the Monk has only had one test so far, so it will be getting another look.

The Monk is a class that I think could use a radical redesign. One of the simplest changes that I think would be very good for the class is an upgrade to a d10 hit die. It has never really made sense to me that a class that is all about physical conditioning and training one's body to be capable of mixing it up amidst foes in full armor should have the same HP scaling as Warlocks, Clerics, Druids, and Bards. A Rogue I can kind of get because their whole shtick is to attack from the shadows or otherwise avoid harm by not being there when the enemy is ready to retaliate, but I'd like to see a version of the Monk that can stand their ground and be just as effective of a front-line tank as a Fighter, Paladin, or Barbarian.

Other classes had gotten more radical redesigns, and so I was pretty shocked to see the Monk's fundamental features more or less unchanged from 2014. I do wonder to what extent the potential power of Stunning Strike is getting in the way of Monks' other capabilities, but I'd prefer a version that loses that but can effectively stay in melee (I've also generally been growing more in favor of both monsters and player abilities that don't fully shut down a creature on the battlefield for a full turn, but instead just partially hinder).

Now actually looking things up and not relying only on my memory:

It looks like the three classes planned for the next playtest are the Barbarian, Monk, and Druid, with the other 9 PHB classes moving onto internal testing. I remain a little skeptical of the new design for Divine Smite (mainly its requiring a bonus action to use) but hopefully that can be ironed out during internal revisions (I'm not even opposed to limiting it to being once per turn if that's necessary to cut down on Nova potential, but Paladins are getting way more options for their bonus actions anyway).

We do know that the Brawler Fighter is getting cut from the list - I wasn't opposed to the broader fantasy of a Brawler, but I think if you were going to make such a subclass, I'd put it as a Monk one first (more or less what the Drunken Master could have been) and Barbarian second, and only Fighter third. But oh well.

But let's talk about what we want to see with the three remaining classes:

Monk:

    We've covered most of this already, but in a broad sense, to reiterate, I want the Monk to feel like it is just as capable of front-line fighting in the thick of it as any other heavily-armored or otherwise defensively boosted class. And I'd be willing to see a severe nerfing to Stunning Strike if that gets us that capability. Also, probably either increase access to Ki/Discipline points or reduce reliance on said points for their features.

Druid:

    So, I actually like using templates for animal forms, it's just that the ones we got in the first crack at the Druid were so bad that you were probably better off just staying in humanoid form. The second take was better than the first and is probably more balanced than the 2014 version, but we'll see what new concepts they can come up with. I imagine that this will be the main thing they revise.

Barbarian:

    I haven't really ever played much of a Barbarian, but the thing I've always suspected was that they could potentially run out of rages too easily, and that too many of their features rely on Rage. But again, that's an outsider's perspective. I like the direction of the last playtest that made Rages last longer and have more out-of-combat use, and especially giving Barbarians the ability to extend their Rage even if they have nothing to fight at the moment. Perhaps we'll see iteration on that.

Ultimately, with 2024 swiftly approaching us, we're going to need to get the rest of the UAs finished up relatively soon. I imagine that with the internal testing process that follows and then the vast challenge of editing the books and getting them fully ready for publication and then actually printing them, they're going to need to be done with the UA process in at least the first half of the year, if not the first quarter.

For all the complaints I've lodged about the conservatism with which they've approached these new books, the changes do add up to quite a lot here, and so I have to imagine that the next playtest should be coming soon.