It feels like it's been a long time since we talked about the 2024 Core Rulebook revamp and the Unearthed Arcana testing required for it. While I'm excited to investigate other RPG systems like Stillfleet and MCDM's as-yet-unnamed project, I have few illusions that I'm going to be playing D&D for many years to come, and I expect "converting" to this "5.5" or "5.0.5" edition will be relatively simple and easy to do, which means far less friction for my players (who don't all have their own obsessive gaming blogs where they break down everything WotC does with the game).
Playtest Eight came out almost precisely two months ago (likely precisely by the time I finish this post, given that it's almost midnight,) which has tended to be the interval between playtests.
The big question, though, is what the playtest will entail. WotC announced that the classes not featured in Playtest 8 had moved on to internal testing only - that the big questions of what the community was looking for seemed to be answered and that they were now ready to address concerns and balance things with enough confidence not to check in again with the community.
Now, we might presume, then, that the three classes featured in Playtest Eight might have hit that point as well - the Monk received a glowing reception from those who felt it had been unfairly hampered by its 2014 design. The Barbarian's new Brutal Strikes feature feels like a real winner, and solve the biggest remaining issue following the quality-of-life changes in previous versions (though the wording needs to be made clearer). The Druid... well, I think we're always going to have a big disagreement between the folks who want the flexibility of using lots of different stat blocks versus those of us who want sleeker, bespoke templates (just templates that don't utterly suck like the first playtest used).
But let's suppose WotC feels they have a good enough sense of what players like of the new design and what they don't. Meaning that we're done with classes.
I think we also need to consider the following: a leaked image suggested that the 2024 Player's Handbook would come out in May. That doesn't seem super soon here in January, but given that they want to print out physical books, I actually think that they maybe needed to have the final proofs for the PHB set up possibly before even now (maybe even last year) so it might not even be a question of if they want to keep testing PHB features than whether that's even a possibility.
I cannot recall the order in which the 2014 books came out, but I suspect that it's PHB, Monster Manual, and then DMG, if only because the PHB is the absolute core to the core rulebooks and really defines the way you actually play the game. The Monster Manual is technically just "content," but it's a big set of material to use if you're running the game. The DMG is the least "essential" of the Core Rulebooks - it has useful stuff to be sure (I'm a big fan of the Dungeon Master's Workshop chapter, and hope we'll see an update to that) but it's the one that you can most easily ignore if you're a seasoned DM.
As such, what I'm really hoping (oh, and it's past midnight now, so it's precisely two months) is that we get some stat blocks to test out.
I don't think anyone can argue that the revamps to the classes we've seen have been a buff. Maybe the Paladin got nerfed, but if we assume they didn't nerf a bunch of spells (Fireball isn'd doing 6d6 now - which... hot take, would probably be pretty reasonably balanced for a 3rd level spell) all the "quality of life" buffs and straight up power buffs are going to make for tougher adventurers.
That means that we probably need to see tougher monsters. It's a delicate touch, though - buffing low-CR monsters could make tier 1 games a nightmare (I consider it a DM's job to try not to wipe the party when they're level 1 - by tier 3, don't worry about it).
In a certain way, though, we've seen high-CR monster design in books like Morte's Planar Parade and Bigby's Glory of the Giants. And while I haven't done a ton with those, I can tell you that a Cradle of the Frost Scion does feel appropriately scary for a group of 5 level 17 characters.
In a sense, then, it might be more exciting to see what iconic monsters will look like in their spruced up mode. The Lich, in particular, is one that I'm eager to see (I've used the one from Flee, Mortals!, which was fine except for the lack of disintegrate and the players' use of Wall of Force to put him in a bubble - they didn't get his phylactery, so next time he's going to be prepared for that).
I'm also curious to see the handling of "monstrous races" that have subsequently been made playable - for example, Orcs are very coded around being murderous Gruumsh-worshippers in the 2014 MM, but with Orcs becoming a PHB species option and the overall movement away from in-born alignments for humanoids, I'm eager to see how this will look (I think to a certain extent you're going to need to have an Orc Eye of Gruumsh, but your standard Orcs and Orogs and such will presumably be "any alignment.")
What I think needs playtesting, though, are new philosophical concepts surrounding monsters - for example, we've seen that a lot of newer monsters don't have Legendary Actions anymore, and instead get multiple reactions per round that play a similar role.
I'd actually love if they stole MCDM's version of legendary resistance - in which the villain monster can change a failed saving throw to a success, but in this case taking some detriment like slowing their movement or reducing the number of attacks they can make, so it becomes a real choice for the DM and the players will feel like they're making progress even if they don't get to, say, Entangle them. Unlikely, but a boy can dream.
Overall, though, I don't really know what to expect from Playtest Nine except that I think it's unlikely we'll be getting any new class revisions. Fingers crossed it drops soon so we can dissect it and obsess like the nerdy little gremlins we are.
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