Pillaging Starfinder for Spelljammer - Ship Building and Combat

 Some day, I really want to play in a Starfinder campaign, or run one (though I'm less confident about that unless I can find a player who knows it decently). As I said in a recent post, I prefer Starfinder's take on space-based sci fi over Spelljammer's version, the latter of which dispenses with many science fiction tropes and invents bizarre new physics to justify retaining D&D's more medieval setting.

As someone who grew up on Star Trek the Next Generation and Star Wars, I actually feel like we lose something by having literal wooden sailing ships out among the stars. I don't dislike Spelljammer, mind you, but I thing the futuristic sci-fi feel of Starfinder jives more with my overall aesthetic.

One of the perhaps more controversial ideas presented in the Astral Adventurer's Guide for Spelljammer is that using ship-mounted weapons is less efficient and effective than having players simply rely on their own character abilities. The siege weapons that are mounted on ships can deal a substantial amount of damage, but their use requires multiple actions (or multiple creatures using their actions) to launch ordinance. The Bombard, which has one of the most powerful weapons of any ship with its main cannon, which deals 16d10 damage on a hit, also takes four actions to fire it - three to load and one to shoot. As a result, the damage-per-action here is 4d10, and while that's still 22 damage, which is decent, player characters can pretty early on manage more damage, and likely with a better hit chance than the cannon's +6 attack bonus would give.

5th Edition D&D puts a lot of power into the players, independent of things like magic items. Player classes are the main source of power. As such, in most cases a Wizard with no magic items versus one of the same level with a bunch are not going to be all that different in terms of power. Characters are strong.

And so I think, philosophically, the intent with Spelljammer was not to overcomplicate things by driving characters to use a ship's mounted weapons when they can just cast spells instead.

Ships in 5E have damage thresholds - for example, the Bombard's is 20, so any hit that deals less than 20 damage is simply ignored - a bullet or arrow or fire bolt just bouncing off the hull.

In other systems, including Starfinder, rather than a damage threshold, large things like ships are simply operating on a different scale. A "Tiny" spaceship in Starfinder does not fit within a 1-foot cube. And shipboard weapons are assumed to be doing about 10 times as much as a personal weapon would. But they're also aiming at something that is much bigger. So, while your shipboard laser blaster is doing 1d10 fire damage, if it were to hit a person, that'd be the equivalent of 10d10 fire damage. And if you shoot a ship for 1d10 piercing damage, you're really doing next to nothing to it.

Ship combat in Starfinder also has a different rhythm to it - ships act as a unit, with players manning different stations to perform different roles. Initiative thus determines the order in which ships, not players, act.

Players then use skills that are relevant to the combat role they're playing - piloting the ship and using the weapons involves making Piloting checks (a skill in Starfinder) while you might use Computer Sciences to hack the enemy ship computer, or Deception to harass the enemy captain into making mistakes.

Again, I haven't played the game myself, so I don't know how good these systems feel in play, but one of the things I love most about the Starfinder approach to starships is their Build Point system.

In Spelljammer, the cheapest ships are 20,000 gold. That means that it's unlikely a typical adventuring party will have the gold to buy one until well into tier 2. Naturally, DMs can make these ships available to a party early on (and can always have the party come across a windfall if they still want the party to make a purchase) but it does mean that getting a cool ship (like a Bombard) creates tension with other expenses.

To be fair, this actually helps to solve an issue with 5th Edition, which is that after a certain point, gold's more or less a scorecard. But the relatively narrow range on prices for ship means that it won't be super long before a party can afford the ship they want and not have to worry about it anymore, rather than having a progression of ships that they'll upgrade from over the course of a long campaign.

In Starfinder, ships are heavily customizable, and their progression system is more like leveling up than spending Credits (the sci-fi equivalent of gold). Rather than having any components of a ship cost Credits, instead you get BP - Build Points - that are determined by the Average Party Level. As the party levels up, they get more BP to put together their ships and can make them faster, tougher, more deadly, and generally more powerful. One can even swap out for a different kind of ship.

At its core, Starfinder wants your ship to be your party's home base, and to be a source of shared identity. Each character has their own class progression, but the party as a whole has ship progression.

Indeed, the abbreviations for some things conveniently make it clear that the ship is kind of an RPG character in its own right. Player characters have Hit Points and Stamina Points (the latter being easier to regain - one takes damage to your SP before you start dipping into your HP, and this kind of distinguishes between momentary pains versus serious injuries) while your ship has Hull Points and Shield Points, which work similarly.

I would be tempted to just pull the entire Ship system from Starfinder into a Spelljammer-like D&D game, except for the one problem: while ships have their own weapons and damage and capabilities, using things in combat requires the use of Starfinder skills, and Starfinder is built to allow these skills to progress much higher than they do in D&D.

For example, if you want to play a character who's really good at piloting, you might be a Dexterity-focused character like an Operative, take the Ace Pilot theme (themes are similar to Backgrounds) and then take feats and invest skill ranks into piloting. Your Piloting bonus might go up by 1 every single level, so that by the time you're level 10 or so, you might have a +20 or something to the skill.

The most focused D&D characters cannot, I believe, get to a bonus like that unless your DM has somehow allowed you to use multiple Manuals of Quickness of Action. A level 20 Rogue with +5 to Dexterity and Expertise in Stealth has a +17 bonus - outstanding in 5E but not terribly impressive in Starfinder.

So, I wouldn't really think that you could just fully take the Starfinder system without making any adjustments.

For one thing, D&D doesn't have the sort of sci-fi proficiencies that Starfinder uses. Here, we can see how Paizo's decision to make a similar but ultimately separate game to Pathfinder helps the game grow into its own systems.

But, if we're sticking with the Spelljammer approach and not making "Stars & Spaceships" or "Star Frontiers" (the old TSR sci-fi game that some of the Spelljammer races are based on,) how can we make this work in 5E?

One thing that might help is letting the hit bonuses on weapons scale up not with player stats, but with the weapons themselves. This is already how siege weapons in D&D are treated - a Mangonel (your classic catapult, as opposed to a trebuchet) has a +5 to hit with attacks, regardless of the person operating it.

In Starfinder, the various defensive systems increase the AC or make it harder to hack the computer's systems, in addition to letting shield and hull points increase in quantity. What I might do is, rather than have the various crew abilities rely on the player character's statistics, instead allow more advanced weapons to come with larger to-hit bonuses.

Alternatively, if we really want to muck around, we could add new systems to spend build points on (and then also probably increase the build points per level) that would increase your accuracy. Do you invest in heavier weaponry that will do 3d10 damage instead of 2d10? Or do you upgrade your targeting computer to give your weapon attacks a +8 to hit instead of a +6?

Ideally, this would scale at roughly the rate that player power in Starfinder would, but because it's all integrated into the ship's systems, you could toss D&D characters in there and still let them function.

The other alternative here would be to take Starfinder's ship-building mechanics purely as an inspiration and rebuild them with D&D's numbers and skill proficiencies in mind. This might make keeping that science fiction flavor a little difficult - perhaps instead of a computer that uses the computer science skill, you have some kind of arcane matrix that uses the Arcana skill. And then, the armor plating on your ship only raises the AC of the ship a few times - maybe taking it from 14 to 20 at the most.

To do it this way, I think the number of upgrades you would get over time would be far fewer - weapon scaling in D&D is a much flatter curve than it is in Starfinder. But I think you could still implement the Build Point system to have a ship gradually get more powerful as the party does.

What Should Be in the 5E Planescape Book? A Page-Count Breakdown

 I realize I've probably visited this topic before, but I think that it bears some looking into again.

As I've written in recent days, Spelljammer: Adventures in Space is a mixed bag. I think that the product is not necessarily what players expected it to be, and while what is there is great, it's missing a lot of the elements that I think people wanted from a campaign setting book. Apart from the Rock of Bral, there's not much "setting" to the product.

Planescape, as a setting, is arguably far weirder than even Spelljammer. But the thing that, to me, strikes me as the biggest challenge to getting the setting into 5th Edition is that there are two very big elements to the setting that could both take up an entire lengthy book.

As I see it, these elements are The Factions and The Planes.

The Factions

Ooh, check it out: I'm actually using Blogger's heading system to make this post easier to read!

One of the most iconic things that Planescape introduced was its Factions. These are massive organizations that have members spanning the various planes of the D&D multiverse. The Factions are all unified by a shared philosophy. For example, the Athar believe that nothing fundamental separates the gods from mortals, and that divine power is achievable for anyone who works hard enough at it. The Guvners believe that the universe fundamentally adheres to foundational laws that determine everything that happens, and that if one were to master all those laws, one would be omnipotent.

The Factions are found in the various planes, with bases and headquarters usually in planes that fit with their alignment - the aforementioned Guvners like the Lawful Neutral clockwork plane of Mechanus while the Athar prefer the Astral Plane, pointing to the husks of dead gods as evidence that these so-called Powers aren't all that they claim to be.

The Factions are particularly prevalent in the city of Sigil, which is the central hub of adventure for Planescape. The city is filled with portals to every other plane of existence, which allows parties to just find the right portal and go have an adventure on one plane or another and come home to relax and look for their next quest.

The original "Planescape Campaign Setting" box set really focused on Sigil and the Factions, along with a description of The Outlands, the True Neutral plane that Sigil ostensibly exists within (though one can only reach it through portals, so for all practical purposes it's its own plane.)

A 5E Planescape book could easily follow this model, maybe focusing in on Sigil as a city of adventure - I believe that the critically-acclaimed CRPG Planescape: Torment takes place entirely (or at least predominantly) in Sigil.

However, the reason I'd recommend they don't simply do this is that, well, it's very, very similar to the other "city dominated by factions defined by radically different philosophies" setting book: Guildmaster's Guide to Ravnica. Indeed, I think a lot of people have suggested that Sigil may have served as a major inspiration when Magic the Gathering introduced the plane in 2005 (this was after Wizards of the Coast took over D&D, so it wasn't like anyone would sue them).

I think if I weren't in the middle of a Ravnica campaign that had been going for over two years, I'd be more excited about a Faction/Sigil focus for Planescape. I don't know how popular Ravnica has been as a setting, honestly. I'm just the one who's been deep in it since 2020 (and planning for the campaign started well before).

Still, I cannot imagine a D&D sourcebook for Planescape (for a new edition and not as an add-on) that doesn't involve Sigil or the Factions. I just think that it'd probably be best if the book is not so Faction-focused as GGtR is on its guilds.

The Planes

The thing is, there's an absolute ton of stuff that Planescape has to cover, because there are 17 planes that one needs to cover - and that's just the Outer Planes! We mustn't forget that there are the Elemental Planes, and also the Feywild and Shadowfell.

2E D&D also had a bunch of quasi-elemental planes and such - but I'd leave those out and just focus on the four elemental planes. Then, I'd want to touch on the Ethereal and Astral planes (technically, Spelljammer now takes place entirely in the Astral Plane, with Wildspace being the overlap between the Astral and Prime Material.)

Breaking it Down by Page Count

That's a ton to cover, but I think there's a model that we can look at to try to do the planes some semblance of justice. Regular readers of this blog would not be shocked to discover that, yes, it's Van Richten's Guide to Ravenloft.

Van Richten's has a number of Domains of Dread that they go into detail about, dedicating roughly 6 pages on average for each of them. These descriptions give you a summary of the vibe of the place, details about its Darklord, and ways you can make an adventure set there that feels very much "of the domain."

I think a similar model for planes would be fantastic.

Ok, so how many pages are we looking at, then?

For the Outer Planes, including all 16 on the rim of the Great Wheel and then the Outlands, that means 102 pages.

Now, let's add similar entries for each of the four main elemental planes and then also the Feywild and the Shadowfell. That gives us 36 more, for a total of 138 pages dedicated to the planes.

The Astral and Ethereal Planes are more transitional planes, and so I think you could get away with just giving them 2-3 pages each. We'll be conservative and say 2, so now we're up to 142 pages.

Now, let's go back to character creation. We're likely to get new backgrounds and feats (as seen in the Wonders of the Multiverse UA). There's also possibly a new race with the Glitchling. There is not, however, any indication of a new subclass (there are giant-themed ones coming in Bigby's, and perhaps a whole swath of new ones in the Book of Many Things).

Van Richten's has 26 pages dedicated to character creation - unless we're missing something big, that's probably more than what we need for a Planescape book to cover the background, feats, and race. But let's just make that room here. So, this puts us up to 168 pages.

Now, the Factions. The most obvious analogue here is the Guild sections in Guildmaster's Guide to Ravnica. The full "Guilds of Ravnica" chapter is 70 pages, so an average of 7 pages per guild. However, this is more the player-facing side of the guilds. Chapter 4, Creating Adventures, is another 50 pages, with sections on how to make adventures centered around each guild.

Personally, I think that if we give the plane descriptions as cited above, there will be plenty of fodder for adventure stuff. The treatment of renown might also not be as big of a deal, and the backgrounds seem to be generic for all the factions, rather than a separate one for each. So, honestly, I think we could probably cover each faction in 5 pages a piece.

But how many factions are there? In 2nd Edition, there was a storyline called the Faction War that saw the factions leave Sigil, many disbanding or getting wiped out. So, do we just move forward in Planescape without those factions? Something tells me that, like how 4th Edition broke the Great Wheel cosmology, people would much rather go back to what came before. So, let's assume that we're going with all 15 of the original factions. At 5 pages per faction, this would take 75 pages.

So, now we're at 243 pages, and we're starting to get a pretty hefty book.

Next, we've got to talk about the Bestiary. While 5E has given us a pretty healthy number of outer-planar beings (Mordenkainen's Tome of Foes was kind enough to give us at least one monster from Pandemonium and one from Acheron, as well as plenty more demons, devils, and yugoloths,) there's lots of other weird stuff from Planescape that I'd be eager to see.

The bestiary in Guildmaster's Guide to Ravnica is 45 pages long. The section in Van Richten's is 33 pages. Obviously, Boo's Astral Menagerie is 64 pages, but that's an outlier (for those complaining, not entirely unjustifiably, about Spelljammer's relative thin-ness, I do think we got an absolutely stellar - pardon the pun - monster supplement). So, let's assume something closer to Van Richten's in length. That puts our page count at 276.

Ok, then what about treasure and spells? One would have to assume there are some crazy magic items out on the planes. Explorer's Guide to Wildemount, which I think is one of the most treasure-rich setting books if memory serves, has a 16-page chapter for treasure. This puts us up to 292.

Oh, and I almost forgot! Sigil! Guildmaster's Guide to Ravnica dedicates 22 pages to describing the Tenth District. Eberron: Rising from the Last War spends 32 pages describing the metropolis of Sharn. These are the two most detailed descriptions of specific urban spaces in 5E, so I think we could cover Sigil in a comparable span of pages. Let's take the average and say 27 pages to describe Sigil.

Throw in, say, three pages for spells and we're at 321.

So, this would definitely put the book on the hefty side of things. But books of this length are not unprecedented. Explorer's Guide to Wildemount is 304 pages. Eberron: Rising from the Last War is 320 pages.

So, yes, by this very guesswork-heavy method, we've produced a page count that would make this the longest setting book in 5th Edition.

But honestly, shouldn't it be? I mean, Planescape is the ultimate big D&D setting. And I think I've been pretty thorough here in what a Planescape book should entail.

I don't know what to expect next year when the book comes out. I'm sure we'll start to get a better sense of it about a year from now. But I really hope that they go all-out and truly bring as much of this setting to 5th Edition as they can. Much as Ravenloft can be thrown into other campaigns by having a brief side-adventure into the Domains of Dread, many campaigns (especially those going into the higher levels) take sojourns into other planes. We saw in Critical Role's first campaign several trips to other planes - going to the Nine Hells to permanently kill a Rakshasa that had been plaguing them (and coming closer to a TPK than they ever would again,) and going to Elysium to prove worthy of their patron gods to get the power necessary to seal Vecna beyond the Divine Gate. That campaign was, of course, the original Exandria campaign, but stuff from Planescape made it into the game as well.

This could be a fantastic book, and a great one to go out on as we move on from 5th Edition to whatever they're calling One D&D. This is another setting I think there will be a lot of hype for, and I hope they can do it right.

Obviously, take all my math here with a huge grain of salt. We don't know what the book will prioritize, and indeed if it's just going to be a single book (though as I've said before, I think the decision to make Spelljammer a box set rather than a single volume feels like it constrained the product too much. 64 pages was plenty for Light of Xaryxis and Boo's Astral Menagerie, but I think the Astral Adventurer's Guide wanted about 50-60 more pages for examples of Wildspace systems. I wonder how much of that was a creative decision from the D&D team and how much of it was because of Hasbro pressure - the company that owns Wizards of the Coast.

Spelljammer vs Starfinder

 Some time ago (what is time in this apocalyptic age?) I got the Core Rulebook for Starfinder, as well as the first Alien Archive, the game's repository of creatures, with stat blocks and many rules for making the creatures within playable races.

Starfinder was created as a science-fantasy adaptation of Pathfinder, itself an RPG created after the introduction of 4th Edition D&D, intending to replicate and synthesize a D&D-like fantasy adventure RPG that hewed closer to 3.5 Edition's model, rather than the dramatic changes of 4e.

Like Pathfinder, and D&D in 3rd edition and beyond, Starfinder's a d20 system, so the very basics of it should look familiar to players who have played 5e - when you want to do something that could succeed or fail, you roll a d20, add the appropriate modifier, and the GM tells you whether or not you've succeeded. It has races and classes, feats, equipment, skills, and other familiar elements.

Spelljammer is D&D's space-based setting/meta-setting. First published in the late 80s, the setting was a flop at first, only getting a new publication... like a couple weeks ago.

What I find interesting is that the two games take wildly different approaches to the concept of "fantasy RPG in space."

Spelljammer is built around the idea of preserving familiar D&D rules as best as possible. This goes to the extent that space even works differently than it does in the real world. Space ships are literally ships that sail in space, and have open decks that one can walk upon without the need for a spacesuit.

Ultimately, Spelljammer is a setting rather than a new set of rules, and the only real modifications to what we know of D&D is how things work in that environment. If your spelljammer vessel lands on Toril, and you get out to do some adventures there, there's nothing whatsoever that is different from a Forgotten Realms-set adventure or campaign, other than that when you're done you can hop in your ship and leave the planet.

Starfinder, on the other hand, is genuinely a different rules system than Pathfinder. It's similar enough that the Core Rulebook gives you a guide to converting existing Pathfinder characters to work in the system, and also gives you the stats for the base, classical fantasy races (elves, dwarves, orcs, goblins, gnomes, halflings) in the back of the book.

The distinction, I think, is that Starfinder really wants to build a futuristic setting. Skill proficiencies like Computers and Piloting place this firmly in a sci-fi, or at least technological realm.

Starfinder's default setting is, in fact, the same solar system as its Pathfinder game, except that the primary world has mysteriously vanished and been replaced by a giant space station.

Starfinder's rules are comprehensive to allow for science fiction tropes. Not only are there many different kinds of weapons, including many types of firearms that deal different sorts of elemental damage (also melee weapons that do,) but there are items like cybernetic implants and body modification and modules (some magic-based) that can be installed in armor and weapons to add various effects.

Vehicles also get extensive rules systems - there are rules for land-based vehicles, but the real centerpiece is the rules on Starships - allowing a party to customize their ship with various elements, automatically getting to install fancier upgrades as the party's average level goes up (and divorcing this system from Credits, the sci-fi equivalent of gold).

While magic and deities and planar outsiders are still very much part of Starfinder, the game leans in hard on the science fiction tropes popularized in the 1970s and 1980s onward. The ships are futuristic, and indeed the technology behind faster-than-light travel is explicitly technological and not magical (there's a god who prevents magic from being used to enter The Drift).

Comparing the two systems - one of which is not even a system of its own - shows, again, markedly different approaches.

Personally, as someone who grew up on Star Trek the Next Generation and later Star Wars (and who lists The Expanse as one of my favorite TV shows ever,) I really love to sprinkle in some true science fiction into my fantasy.

Spelljammer's approach is mostly more whimsical (though there are some truly terrifying aberrations in Boo's Astral Menagerie). The weird conception of space in it seems more like something someone in the late 19th Century would imagine - there's a certain George Melies vibe to the idea of tall ships sailing among the stars (or, as a more recent reference, Disney's Treasure Planet, which came out when I was at that age where I felt Disney movies were behind me, so I never got around to seeing it).

So, honestly, I've got to say that I prefer the approach Paizo took with Starfinder, letting players go all in on sci-fi tropes without really losing any of the fantasy elements.

But.

Starfinder, like, I assume, Pathfinder, is a really fiddly, crunchy system. And D&D 5e has so many resources at this point to build off of. It's also, crucially, a system that both I and my players are familiar with.

I've heard a lot of people on social media constantly bemoaning people complaining about things in D&D and recommending they check out Pathfinder 2e or the like. And I get that. D&D looked fairly complicated when I first started playing it, but now it's mostly instinctive to me. (Though I've been beating myself up for the past week after doing a little bit of railroading in my last Ravnica session - I'm hoping the next session will make up for that.)

But even though I'm game to try to figure out Starfinder and run at least a short campaign/adventure, I doubt that my friends, many of whom even after years playing D&D are still shaky at it (because they don't obsess over it as much as I do) would want to learn a new system.

So, what I think I'm probably going to do is try to cannibalize elements of Starfinder and work them into the limited (I think) Spelljammer game that I'm going to be running for my Sunday group (which is a "game while we're on a break from the main campaign" for a "game while we're on a break from the main campaign.")

The first, and simplest, thing to implement, is that I'm going to allow for four kinds of elemental weapons - Cryo, Plasma, Sonic, and Shock weapons will work the same as normal, except that they do cold, fire, thunder, and lightning damage, respectively (Sonic I might make rarer because there's way less resistance to Thunder damage). The weapons will cost 3 times the usual amount and are not magical items. Also, renaissance firearms are available at their normal price, but also have elemental equivalents. (Likely these items won't be guaranteed available, but I'll toss them in at shops that the party comes across).

I figure this isn't game-breaking, but can give us some sci-fi flavor. A Plasma Greataxe, for example (inspired by the Plasma Doshko from Starfinder) is a pole at the end of which is an array of jets that shoot a fan of superheated plasma in the shape of an axe blade.

I'm tempted to do a similar thing with the cybernetic implants - at least the ones that just add storage space. We'll have to wait and see how necessary those become.

Starfinder's ship-building system is very cool, but I'm going to play cautious and simply take the Spelljammer approach for now. While I was tempted to simply pull the whole Starfinder ship system into the game wholecloth, given that it's somewhat divorced from individual player power, the fact is that it does still rely on skills like Computers and Piloting, and furthermore expects the much higher progression of such skills that Starfinder grants (even at level 1, the Operative - equivalent of a Rogue - that I made has a +15 or something to Stealth, and had to hit a 21 on Stealth in order to get its "Trick Attack," roughly equivalent to Sneak Attack.)

I still really want to try Starfinder at some point, but there are so many games piled on top of one another that I have no idea when I'll get a chance to.

Let's Talk Crits!

 One of- scratch that, the most controversial element of the Character Origins UA (I think we're just going to keep talking about this until the next comes out, sorry) is contained within the D20 Test segment of the rules glossary.

Let's talk about the simplest change:

In 5e, natural 20s and natural 1s only mean anything special when making an attack. If you're some high-level paladin with a +14 to hit with your sword, and you're attacking a lowly zombie - some minion of the lich boss you're trying to defeat - who has an AC of 8, getting a natural 1 means that even though your total to-hit roll is 15, it still misses.

The benefit here is that it gives the roll a little unpredictability. Yes, with that hit bonus and the monster's very low AC, the chance of you missing is tiny, but this gives you the opportunity for a moment to screw up and miss despite how grand and powerful you are.

I think the opposite scenario is far less likely - the highest AC of any monster in the game is 25 (though Sul Khatesh can cast shield on top of a base AC of 22, putting hers at potentially 27). Most characters have a +5 to hit with their main weapons or spells at level 1, so a natural 20 even at that low level would still hit a Tarrasque anyway without the "crits always hit" rule. But in the unlikely event that you wouldn't (perhaps you're a wizard caught in an anti-magic zone and need to use a light crossbow or something with a fairly low Dexterity score,) this allows you that one-in-a-million (ok, one-in-twenty) shot, which can be a fun, dramatic moment.

Anyway, I think most players are pretty happy with the crit mechanics for attacks.

What the UA changes is that this effect now applies to the other d20 tests - ability checks and saving throws.

I want to tackle saving throws just to get this out of the way:

I don't think I've seen anyone complaining about the potential to crit success or crit fail on a saving throw. The saving throw is something that, in-game, has very clear mechanical consequences for success or failure. Much like an attack, a saving throw's binary outcomes are usually to be expected one way or the other, and it's not disruptive to have a success or failure.

The difference that this change would make is that it would allow, rarely, for people to succeed on saves against very powerful foes. Some monsters have saving throw DCs that go above 20. For example, a Black Greatwyrm's save DC against their breath weapon is 26. Without stacking things like Aura of Protection, Bless, and other bonuses, I'd say that even most level 20 characters would automatically fail against that. You actually need proficiency in Dexterity saves or some way to artificially boost your Dexterity above 20 in order to hit that even on a natural 20.

As the stat block reads right now, the DM simply gets to do an average of 78 damage to players in the cone's area. This change would give players a chance - just a tiny, 5% chance - to reduce that damage to 39.

The one scenario I can imagine this being a problem is if a DM wants to make sure players fail against, say, a poison that knocks them unconscious to set up a scenario where, for example, they have to escape from some prison. I think this is a situation where DMs need to simply make use of "cutscene magic" to say that something happens, despite the efforts of the players. DMs should also talk with players ahead of time to make sure that the players are ok with momentary loss of control like that.

The controversy arises with ability checks.

Ability checks' are the broader, catch-all d20 tests that handle things usually outside of combat and regimented, initiative-based play. This is usually where players get creative, using their skills in unexpected ways.

The classic scenario here is "can I seduce the big bad?" Your party's bard might have a +5 to Charisma, expertise in Persuasion, and thus expects that they can get a super-high number on a roll. And then they nat 20, so that's an automatic success, right? So that means the bad guy is now going to do whatever they say, right?

Unlike attack rolls and saving throws, players have a tendency to roll these unprompted, and they often like to set their own parameters for success or failure. While they'll still respect the DM to set a DC, they expect that a success means they get to do what they intend.

And that's the problem.

And I think it's as much a cultural problem as a rules problem. Ideally, in-game, players would say something like "I want to try to seduce this evil necromancer," and it would be up for the DM to ask for an ability check - or to not ask for one.

The DM could respond in a couple ways. "No, the necromancer does not seem responsive to your attempts to arouse their interest." "Make an insight check," and then if they succeed, they'll realize that the necromancer is too committed to their plan to entertain such thoughts, or maybe they're not interested in the player character's gender, or perhaps they're already in a really fulfilling, committed relationship and don't want to screw that up.

The problem here arises when the player just rolls the check without prompting and then expects the DM to respect the result.

On the DM side of things, you also need to know when not to allow a roll - the guidance suggests that if a roll would require a DC of less than 5 or more than 30, you shouldn't bother - less than 5 should succeed without a roll and over 30 should be considered impossible. Don't make someone roll for something if you don't want to proceed with either outcome.

Now, all that being said, one of the philosophies behind One D&D changes - and I think very much including this one - is to try to meet players where they are, and reflect the way people actually play. And that practice of players calling out their ability checks is one of those ways people just play.

In that case, I can understand why a lot of DMs want to restrict this rule. I think that the rule can stay if we just make sure that DMs are the ones who determine if an ability check is warranted.

But we're not done!

The other change, and one that I think has more people up in arms, is the change to critical hits.

There are three main aspects of this change - all which reduce the power and presence of crits.

The first is the limit on what crits: only weapon attacks and unarmed strikes would crit under this rule.

Let's unpack that: this means that attack-roll spells like Guiding Bolt or Chromatic Orb would no longer benefit from a crit upon a natural 20. This would also apply to a lot of cantrips like Fire Bolt or Chill Touch.

Now, I get that spell crits can be insane - Guiding Bolt is a 1st level spell, but on a crit, it does 8d6 damage - the equivalent of a fireball (though only to one target). The thing is, most leveled spells require not an attack roll, but a saving throw on the part of the enemies. Fireball, for example, requires a dexterity save, and even if the target succeeds, it winds up taking half damage. Thus, these saving-throw-based damage spells are often "safe." Even if you get unlucky and all the enemies beat your save DC, you still did something useful in combat.

The risk, then, with an attack-based spell is that it can be totally wasted. That risk should come with a reward, and I think that award is easily implemented with a critical hit.

The next aspect of the change is that the critical hit only affects weapon (or unarmed strike) damage. Note here that unarmed strikes only benefit from a crit if you have some feature like Tavern Brawler or Martial Arts to give yourself a damage die. But this means that any additional damage on top of your attack would no longer benefit from a critical hit.

The two classes I see getting hit the hardest by this change are Paladins and Rogues (though I think Rangers who use Hunter's Mark would also feel a bit cheated).

Flashing back to when I was a new DM and we had a paladin in my group. When he rolled a critical hit, I was flabbergasted that he got to see the roll before he decided to use Divine Smite. Thus, a conservative paladin could hold spell slots for those moments to do an absolutely devastating amount of damage. It was an eye-opening experience for me as a DM. Later, in Curse of Strahd, I'd play a paladin and I will tell you this: there is no rush in D&D that I've felt that is more exciting than smiting on a crit.

Rogues, of course, get most of their damage from Sneak Attack. Their actual weapon damage is fairly negligible - using a 1d4 dagger versus a 1d6 shortsword makes very little difference when you're doing 5d6 damage on top of it either way. Rogues want to crit even more than paladins, and indeed, basically the only reason to play an Assassin rogue is to get those guaranteed crits against Surprised targets - it's the subclass built for taking out an enemy before the fight even starts.

Now, I'll grant that the intention here might have been to try to rein in some of the higher-damage classes to be more in keeping with other martial classes (though the Great Weapon Battle Master Fighter in my Ravnica game needs no help at all doing damage - on a recent boss he did something like 89 damage in a single turn.) Still, this feels like the least fun way to do so.

The final proposed change is that only player characters can crit anymore. Monsters would be unable to do so. First off, this clearly makes adamantine armor and the Grave Cleric's Sentinel at Death's Door basically useless. On the other hand, I have had experiences at low levels when an errant crit auto-killed a player character. (In one scenario, a character introduced about 5 minutes earlier was torn apart by a swarm of Gremishkas before they had a single turn in combat - hilarious, but not exactly ideal in a scenario where it was a character that the player was invested in). However, the most consistent mark of character growth as they level up is higher HP, and pretty soon it becomes pretty unlikely that a monster can one-shot a character with an attack, so I think the threat of crits comes down to a reasonable level.

The proposal that Jeremy Crawford mentioned in the hour-long interview introducing this UA was that monsters will have more recharge abilities, allowing that, rather than crits, to be the "big scary ability" that they can use. Because a monster doesn't have to use that ability, this gives the DM a little more flexibility to tune the fight on the go (something any veteran DM learns to do).

For the most part I only really think this solves a problem at the lowest levels of play - even by level 3, player characters are resilient enough to take the odd crit, as long as it's not from some way-too-high-CR monster.

So, I'd say the opinions I've landed on are the following:

Crit success and failure on saving throws: no problem, totally fine.

Crit success and failure on ability checks: fine as long as players understand that the DM gets to decide when an ability check happens.

Inspiration on a Nat 20: We didn't talk about it here, but yeah, it's great and I love it. Already made it a thing in my game.

Only weapons critically hit: Not really into it. Seems like an unfair nerf.

Only the weapon damage crits: This is a big fun-killer. Big no.

Monsters don't crit: Mostly no. I might stealthily apply this for a level 1 or 2 party, but even then, probably not.

Cosmic Structure, Inner Planes, the Feywild and Shadowfell, and Primal Magic

 The Great Wheel cosmology evolved over the course of multiple editions. These planes became central, though, to the Planescape setting, which was truly formalized in 1994 with the Planescape Campaign Setting box set for 2nd Edition, and had several subsequent releases that fleshed out the various planes.

In 2nd Edition, you had the Prime Material Plane, and then the seventeen Outer Planes (including The Outlands in the middle, home to, sort of, Sigil). You had the Astral Plane linking them, and then you also had the Inner Planes.

The Inner Planes were primarily the various elemental planes - the four standard ones, but then also various quasi-elemental and other mixtures, adding elements together for a plane of Mud for example, but then also introducing the idea of the Positive and Negative energy planes - and the way those interacted with other elemental planes.

There's... a lot of elemental planes in 2nd Edition.

But beyond the elements, there was really just the Ethereal Plane.

The Great Wheel, I believe, remained the standard through 3rd edition, but in 4th Edition, the structure of the multiverse was profoundly rewritten, creating the World Axis, with its concept of a Thousand Points of Light.

The World Axis broke the Great Wheel and instead presented the Material Plane as being between the Astral Sea and the Elemental Chaos. It created a dichotomy of Gods and Primordials, where the Gods were of the Astral Sea and the Primordials were from the Elemental Chaos, and some - but not all - of the old Great Wheel planes were found in one or the other.

One thing of note is that this created a very strong distinction between devils and demons. In this cosmology, devils were fallen angels, and the Nine Hells was in the Astral Sea. By contrast, demons were corrupted elementals, and the Abyss was basically a giant hole drilled into the Elemental Chaos.

The idea of this redesign was to remove what some designers felt was "needless symmetry." They felt the Great Wheel had gone overboard with all of its planes - did we really need a plane between the Neutral Good and Lawful Good planes?

And honestly, I actually get that. It just happens that some of those "in-between" planes are, I think, the coolest, conceptually. Acheron is a lot weirder than the Nine Hells, and I love that about it.

It was a bold move. And a lot of people didn't like it.

Now, granted, I think nerd culture (and D&D is no exception) has a tendency to have very knee-jerk hatred of anything that changes something they're already into. I think you can see that right now with the reactions to One D&D, where most of the changes are things that players have wanted in some form or another all along (I'll agree that I don't like the critical hit changes, but that's maybe the only thing I don't like).

However, 4th Edition also brought us two new planes - right next to the Prime Material, between the Astral Sea and Elemental Chaos, were the Feywild and the Shadowfell.

Regarding the Feywild, there had already been some ideas of the "realm of faerie" within the Outer Planes. Planescape described the Seelie Court of Queen Titania as existing primarily in Arborea (the chaotic good plane,) while the Unseelie Court (which feels more like a weird undead hive mind) has its home in Pandemonium (the chaotic neutral/chaotic evil plane).

But the Fey feel like they break all the rules on alignment, which makes the Outer Planes an odd home for them (though granted, the whole concept of Planescape is that alignment is only the beginning of a very nuanced range of complex philosophies). The fairy Otherworld is pretty central to the myth of fairies in the first place, so the Feywild fit quite well.

The Shadowfell, then, is a bit more unusual. In some ways, it allows the undead to have a plane of their own. But it also became a convenient new place to have the Ravenloft setting (in a demiplane within the Shadowfell, but certainly the most notable part of the plane). As I see it, the Feywild and Shadowfell are both kind of emotional planes - the Feywild is the manic, high-energy realm where feelings rage uncontrollably. The Shadowfell is the depressive, bleak realm where energy is drained by emotions of despair and ennui.

5th Edition restored the Great Wheel cosmology as the default, but it carried over the Feywild and Shadowfell from 5th Edition. There is, admittedly, some redundancy here. The Shadowfell and Hades (known in 2nd Edition as the Grey Wastes) are both realms of bleak despair, though one is an outer plane and thus the afterlife for neutral evil creatures and typically a realm for gods of death (such as Hades from Greek myth). The Shadowfell is different - it has something to do with the dead, but seems more like a place to pass through, especially given the prominence of the Raven Queen. But if you had any doubt that the two were similar, the optional rule suggested in the DMG for Hades is to simply use the "Shadowfell Despair" mechanic found earlier in that chapter.

Ok, so:

One D&D will be introducing a new concept of spell categories - distinct from school or from class list, but three broad categories that spells can exist within, which are Arcane, Divine, and Primal.

Primal spells are typically used by Druids and Rangers.

And, in the past, we've seen that these classes play a little with Fey stuff - spells that conjure fey beings are often available to Druids. The Feywild is often thought of as being linked to the natural world.

One of the ideas behind the spell categories is where the spellcaster draws their power from. Divine magic calls upon gods and the Outer Planes (even philosophy clerics are likely drawing from outer-planar power.) By contrast, Primal spells are calling on the power of the Inner Planes. And yes, that often means that they draw on the power of the Elemental Planes. But we've certainly got some Druid features that are linked with the Feywild - the Circle of Dreams, for instance, has a lot of explicit fey stuff.

So why not the Shadowfell?

I'd love to see Druid and Ranger subclasses delve into the Primal Shadow (which is actually a thing from my homebrew world that is kind of the essence of the Shadowfell and is actually sort of inspired by Armus from that one episode of Star Trek TNG where Tasha Yar dies).

But what if we already have?

The Monster Slayer Ranger, I've always thought, makes me think of gothic heroes like Solomon Kane or Abraham Van Helsing (Rudolph Van Richten, his not-so-subtle D&D equivalent, is considered a priest, but oh well). I could imagine that features like Slayer's Prey are tapping into the power of the Shadowfell to bring swift death to the foes they face.

The Circle of Wildfire, of course, is presented with a more benign interpretation, where the Wild Fire spirit is some benign dog or fox made out of flames, and it's all about the natural cycle of renewal. But I've always wanted to play one that is a bit more menacing - a pyromaniac pagan like something out of a Folk Horror story - indeed, my Wildfire Spirit would appear as an ever-burning wicker man. Indeed, you could even imagine that the Feywild and Shadowfell represent life and death, respectively, and in excess. For Druids that believe in the cycle, perhaps they need those shadow druids to keep things running properly.

I will say that my homebrewed Circle of Monsters subclass would fit quite well with the Shadowfell.

It'll be a while before we get more One D&D playtesting materials. I don't know if we'll be getting class stuff next, and if so, which classes we'll be looking at. But I think it would be cool to explore this side of the Druid.

Spell Categories and Spell Lists

 Ok, we're nearly done picking apart every tiny detail of the new Character Origins UA, our first playtesting document for the One D&D Player's Handbook. (Reminder, "One D&D" is a code name. They claim they're not going to be using terms like "6th Edition," but whatever they wind up calling it, for now it's One D&D).

One of the new things presented in the UA is three new spell lists. The lists are Arcane, Divine, and Primal. Cosmologically, Divine Spells are linked to the Gods but also the Outer Planes in general. Primal Spells are linked to the Inner Planes - the elemental planes and the Feywild and Shadowfell (the latter of which might be a bit more surprising given the flavor of Druids and Rangers, but I think this could open up some fun new ideas). Arcane Spells are then linked to the multiverse entire - the system by which these planes interact. I might also draw a connection to the Astral Plane, which would seem fitting. These lists were likely included in this UA to showcase how the new Magic Initiate feat is going to work, but there's context the article makes clear we're missing: In future Unearthed Arcanas, we're going to see how Classes use these lists, and how they interact with Subclasses as well. (Again, the style guide clearly indicates a lot more use of capitalization to make it clear when a term has specific mechanical implications.)

I've seen some people speculating that the very idea of class spell lists is going away. I'm not ready to make that leap - while there's certainly a lot of overlap between, say, Wizards and Warlocks, there are also some spells that really fit with the flavor of one class over the other.

I'd speculate that these spell categories will act as an additional tag, similar to its school of magic, to give a sense of the flavor of a spell while also just giving another thing for features to latch onto.

Unlike Schools of magic, these categories are not mutually exclusive. All three lists have Detect Magic, and Cure Wounds is found on both the Divine and Primal lists.

Now, this is why I don't think these are replacing class lists: Bards and Artificers are considered Arcane casters, but unlike Wizards, Sorcerers, and Warlocks, they've historically had access to healing spells - none of which are found on the Arcane list.

And, again, there are spells here that have historically been limited to one class - Armor of Agathys, for example, is a classic Warlock spell that is on the Arcane list. I doubt that this will simply mean that any Arcane spellcaster can pick it up.

Because of the overlap between lists, I think it might be hard to implement scenarios in which one type of magic is banned. For example, Vassalheim in Exandria (the setting that includes the continent of Wildemount) looks down on arcane magic, and is a city of the Prime Deities (the good and neutral gods of the setting, whose pantheon is basically the same as the Dawn War Pantheon with one or two additions.) In my own homebrew setting, the Shadow City of Kez-Dhazam forbids the practice of divine magic or the establishment of any temples or houses of worship.

In practice, this mostly means that you might have NPCs react negatively to certain classes casting magic. This could potentially give you opportunities to call out specific spells, but again, because Detect Magic or other shared spells could come from different sources, I don't know how easily one could implement them.

Searching existing PHB spells by class, I figured I'd see what's missing on each list.

Arcane:

Here, I'm looking at cantrips and 1st level spells (the only ones we have access to) that are available to Artificers, Bards, Sorcerers, Warlocks, and Wizards.

Missing from the list are:

Cantrips: Eldritch Blast, Guidance, Spare the Dying, and Thorn Whip

1st level: Animal Friendship, Bane, Command, Faerie Fire, Healing Word, Purify Food and Drink, Sanctuary, Speak with Animals

The lack of Eldritch Blast certainly raises some eyebrows. This cantrip is central to most Warlock builds, and so removing it from the game would really fly in the face of this whole "backwards compatibility" philosophy behind One D&D. Thus, I think that the much more likely explanation is that Eldritch Blast is going to become a class feature for Warlocks. All Warlocks will get it, but other classes won't be able to pick it up via Magic Initiate or Spell Sniper or other things. In earlier editions (I want to say 3rd was when the Warlock was introduced,) EB was a class feature - I think this might have been before the idea of cantrips was introduced, so Warlocks were special in getting this unlimited spell attack (Wizards would carry light crossbows if they didn't want to spend a spell slot on their turn).

The other spells are all spells that only the Artificer or Bard from among the Arcane classes have access to - these two classes stray the farthest from the classically arcane feel, with Bards often getting Primal-feeling spells and Artificers sometimes getting Divine-like ones (though with a very different flavor to how they're probably working).

Divine:

Here, we're looking at just Clerics and Paladins.

Missing from the list are:

Cantrips: Mending

1st level: Create or Destroy Water

So, in this case there's very little missing from the list. Both of these have always been available to the Cleric, so it's odd to see them missing. Mending, of course, I can see as being thought of more in terms of Arcane (it feels like a must-have cantrip for Artificers). Create or Destroy Water is only shared by the Druid, so might be thought of as a more Primal spell (it does deal with physical matter).

Primal:

Finally, Primal spells are used by Druids and Rangers, so we'll take a look at that list.

This one actually gets more options in some cases, which we'll list after those that are missing.

Cantrips: None

1st level: Charm Person, Protection from Evil and Good, Searing Smite,

The spells that this adds that are not currently available to Druids or Rangers: Message, Spare the Dying

Ok, so this is interesting. I imagine that they might be adding those cantrips to the Druid spell list, because Rangers don't get cantrips by default, making Druids the only class that would use Primal Cantrips.

In the case of the missing spells, Protection from Evil and Good and Searing Smite were added to the Druid and Ranger class lists, respectively, with Tasha's Cauldron of Everything. Both of these are pretty classic Divine spells (Smite spells are usually the exclusive domain of Paladins).

    So, what is the actual point of all these lists?

At the present moment, we only really have the new Magic Initiate feat, which has you choose one of the three as the source of your spells. It seems possible that subclasses could also open up options here as well.

I wonder if the intention is to move away from expanded spell lists, or subclass spells, and instead say that, for example, a Nature Domain Cleric could pick up Primal spells (whether having access to the whole list or just a select few). I could imagine implementation similar to the flexible spells for Eldritch Knights and Arcane Tricksters. EKs can only learn Abjuration and Evocation spells from the Wizard list, but at certain levels, they get to pick up spells that aren't of those schools - my EK took Mirror Image at 8th level, for example. You could possibly have something where an Oath of the Ancients Paladin can prepare up to half their proficiency bonus in Primal spells.

Again, we really don't have the full context for these lists, so this is all speculation.

Going Deep on Feats

 There's another big thing to look at in the Character Origins UA. Feats, which are technically an optional rule in 5th Edition, are going to be central in One D&D, because every character starts off with one (humans get two).

Feats are chosen as part of your background, and are meant to exhibit some of the special skills you've gained thanks to your pre-adventuring experience.

The biggest change here is that feats can now have level requirements and prerequisites. The list of level 1 feats is thus curated to ensure that none of these will be game-breaking at first level. Also, none of these feats give you an ability score bonus of any kind.

I'm very curious to see how higher-level feats will work out. Ability score improvements are precious, only coming five times for most classes, and with most campaigns ending before level 12, there are really only two opportunities to pick them up, and doing so usually means not getting your primary ability score maxed out.

But for now, these level 1 feats are baseline options, which everyone will be able to get (at least one of).

One of the design intents for a lot of these was to make them a more logical fit for characters built around their core concept: for example, the Healer feat in the 2014 PHB is quite good - unless you're already a healer. Clerics and Druids who carry a lot of healing spells aren't going to get much out of it, while it'll be quite good for a Rogue. The 2024 version, however, has a very useful effect for anyone doing any sort of healing, and thus a healing Cleric would probably take that feat very happily.

So, let's get to it:

Alert:

The redesign makes this less powerful in certain ways, but a lot more flexible. You now get to add your Proficiency Bonus to your initiative rolls. The old version gives you a flat +5. So, in other words, this is a nerf from levels 1-12, but is a buff from level 17-20.

The second part of the feat is that you can now swap your initiative after you roll with one willing ally in the same combat. (You can't do the swap if you're incapacitated.) The old version of this gave you immunity to being surprised, which was very powerful but could also be frustrating for DMs. Here, you get a really cool tool that doesn't really have any precedent. If you start combat with a bunch of enemies clustered up, and you want to make sure that the Wizard or Sorcerer gets to drop a Fireball on them before your melee characters charge in and make doing so risk friendly fire. I like this.

Crafter:

This one's brand new, I think. First off, you get Tool Proficiency (and I like that they're capitalizing important phrases with rules meanings) with three different Artisan's Tools of your choice. So, first off, that's a lot. An Artificer who took this (fittingly) would get one from their background, three from their class (and a fourth from their subclass at level 3) and then three more from this feat - they'd be proficient in seven (and later eight) tools! Now that the rules on Tool Proficiency are a little more explicit, this could be very fun.

Next, they get a discount when buying nonmagical items of 20%. The implications here are pretty crazy. First off, does this character then automatically hold the party purse-strings? We saw with Alert that having anyone with that feat in the party can help everyone, and so maybe this does the same. My one concern here is figuring out how to account for roleplaying haggling but then also accounting for this discount - does everyone have to take this discount? If they don't, that's going to feel like the DM is invalidating an element of the character, but then, is there an in-world explanation for this? If the Artificer with -1 to Charisma gets a natural 1 on their Persuasion check to knock some more off the price, do they still benefit from this 20% bonus?

Finally, if you craft an item using a tool with which you have Tool Proficiency, the required time to craft it is reduced by 20%. I really hope that means we're getting clearer rules on item crafting.

Healer:

As before, this feat allows you to use a charge of a Healer's Kit to actually restore hit points and not just stabilize a creature. The heal, though, in this case, requires the creature to expend one of its hit dice, and roll the die and add their PB to the roll, regaining that many hit points. Other limitations on the use here are gone.

However, in addition, you now get to reroll 1s on any healing spell or the use of the Battle Medic (the above feature using Healer's Kits). This will make super disappointing heals much less frequent. The ultimate effect of features like this tends to be fairly subtle in the long run, but on a psychological level, making those really bad rolls less likely can feel a lot better.

Lucky:

This one works similarly to how it did, but you now get PB Luck Points per day - meaning that this is a nerf at levels 1-4, but a buff at levels 9-20. Interestingly, the wording on its uses also suggests a subtle change to some rules:

The phrasing for using it to gain Advantage is: "Immediately after you roll a d20 for a d20 Test, you can spend 1 Luck point to give yourself Advantage on the roll." By 2014 5E rules, you can't ever give yourself retroactive Advantage - things like Inspiration have to be spent before you see what you've rolled. But now, because it's using that phrasing, rather than simply "you can roll a new d20 and choose the result," I'd imagine that other instances of granting advantage could now be doable retroactively. As before, you can also force an attacker to re-roll an attack roll if it targets you, which also uses Disadvantage to describe what you are imposing. This has always been a good and popular feat, and given that it's only nerfed for tier 1, I expect it will continue to be very popular.

Magic Initiate:

This is one of those "same, but different" feats. You still get two cantrips and a 1st level spell, but rather than picking from class lists, you now pick from one of the three new spell categories - Arcane, Divine, and Primal. All your spells need to come from the same list. You can pick this feat up again, but only if you pick another spell list.

Much like the new format for racial spells, you can cast this once for free per Long Rest, but you can also cast the leveled spell with spell slots (allowing you to upcast it, for example).

Another nice thing is that you can pick between Intelligence, Wisdom, or Charisma for your spellcasting ability. This means that if you wanted to say, pick up Shillelagh on your Paladin so that you could just carry a club or staff, you could make that spellcasting ability Charisma, so that you could focus in on making your Aura of Protection and spellcasting great without having to worry about Strength (other than enough to wear heavy armor). Honestly, I kind of want to make this build.

Of note, though, for those of you who want to use this to get Eldritch Blast on your, say, Sorcerer, Bard, or Warlock (or other classes because, hey, you can just pick your class' spellcasting ability,) Eldritch Blast is actually notably absent from the Arcane spell list. I suspect that this means it's going to become a Warlock class feature, but we'll have to wait and see. Still, looks like you can't grab it (though honestly, without Eldritch Invocations to prop it up, you're probably fine with Fire Bolt).

Musician:

Another new one, this first grants you Tool Proficiency in three Musical Instruments of your choice. If Crafter is perfect for Artificers who want to lean in, this would be great for Bards.

In addition, though, you get Inspiring Song. At the end of a Short or Long rest, you can play a song on an instrument with which you're proficient and give inspiration to a number of allies equal to your PB if they can hear it.

This one... I feel like they could jazz it up a little if you'll pardon the pun. Inspiration becoming a bigger part of the rules is cool, but I'm not convinced this is enough to justify choosing this feat.

Savage Attacker:

Ok, so this one is, I think, technically a nerf compared to the 2014 PHB version. To benefit from this, you have to be taking the Attack Action, which I think only happens on your turn (I don't think an Opportunity Attack counts). Rather than re-rolling your weapon damage, you now roll twice and choose which roll to use. In other words, you would, in theory, need to declare this before rolling, rather than possibly saving it if your first attack does high damage. On the other hand, if Lucky is using the terms Advantage and Disadvantage, maybe the intention here is to let you reroll, but it really isn't phrased that way.

In other words, at best, this is unchanged, but it's likely slightly worse. Still, it's free, and probably not a bad choice for any weapon-based character build.

Skilled:

This can be taken multiple times. You gain proficiency in three Skills you didn't have proficiency with before. No longer applies to tools. Still, pretty good if you want to be a skill monkey, which of course makes it a strong option for Rogues.

Tavern Brawler:

Ok, both versions here are fairly complex. There's no ability score bonus here, as is the case for all level 1 feats (unlike the old version). Again, your unarmed strike damage can be a d4+Strength (note that it doesn't have to be, so this won't glitch with Martial Arts or other things that make that damage higher). 

Next, you can reroll 1s on Unarmed Strike damage.

Once per turn, if you hit a creature as part of the Attack Action with an Unarmed Strike, you can deal damage to them and push them 5 feet away - essentially combining two elements of the new Unarmed Strike umbrella term (which now covers the old unarmed strike, as well as shove and grapple).

Finally, you can use furniture as a Weapon, treating Small or Medium furniture as a Greatclub and Tiny furniture as a Club. Now, because they are calling these out as specific weapon types rather than improvised weapons, this means that a Monk can use any Tiny object (technically furniture, but I'd probably rule it as any object) as a Monk Weapon, because clubs are an option for that. Sadly, this doesn't apply to Small or Medium objects because a Greatclub, while it's a simple weapon, is disqualified from being a Monk Weapon due to its heavy and two-handed properties. This must be corrected so that we can truly get our Jackie Chan on.

This seems like an obvious choice for Monks, given the damage reroll. But I think other Strength-based melee builds could actually get a lot of use out of this.

Tough:

This one is unchanged, giving you extra max HP equal to twice your level. So, with the new racial traits, a Dwarf Barbarian with the Tough feat would be the ultimate damage-sponge. But this is an obvious choice for anyone who wants to play a tank-like role - though it could also be nice for Wizards and Sorcerers who want to be more resilient.

And that's it!

There are only 10 choices here, but I think that's a good thing: 1st level feats should be something relatively simple and easy to understand while still having a big impact on your character, and limiting the selection makes these both manageable for a new player and also allow them to feel like one of those big choices you make like race or class. Of these, I think that the Musician feat might need a boost, though we'll have to see if the new rules around natural 20s winds up getting players to actually use their Inspiration.

I'm curious to see how other feats wind up looking. What distinguishes a level 4 feat from a level 8 feat (just to be clear, these are minimums - you don't have to pick these at their designated level, and indeed, you can pick up more of the ones listed here at higher levels if you want).

Assuming they don't get significant changes in publication, the feats tied to backgrounds in the Wonders of the Multiverse UA can also be taken at level 1. Those are set to be published before these rules "go live," but will presumably fit into the context of this free feat.

Making feats a default feature of the game does unquestionably complicate it - DMs can, in the current game, just say no to them. One reason I might actually consider doing so is that it gives players opportunities to boost stats that aren't strictly relevant to their character's build, but might reflect some in-character thing. For example, you might have conceived of your Monk as being a slick charmer, but you couldn't justify boosting Charisma over Dexterity (or Wisdom. Or Constitution).

On the other hand, players can choose to engage with feats as much or as little as they want after level 1, which means that more complicated ones like Great Weapon Master are something a new player can avoid.

Also unquestionable is that this makes player characters more powerful. Many of the changes and revisions to the game have made things more efficient, allowing players to pick up features that might have been out of reach before - for example, my Dragonborn Fighter got a fairly useless Charisma bonus when I made him, when he wanted Intelligence or Constitution. Today, I would have been able to put all of that into the mechanically useful ability scores. It's a subtle change, but would make him just a little more powerful. We'll have to see how the new Monster Manual and perhaps tips on creating challenges in the new Dungeon Master's Guide addresses that increase to power.

Spelljammer's Problem is the Astral Adventurer's Guide

 Conceptually, Spelljammer opens up something I think a lot of D&D fans are excited for - bringing in a bit of science fiction flavor to a game primarily set up for classic fantasy. The setting makes a lot of big leaps to justify using the same system, and creates a fantastical version of outer space that works very differently than the one we believe exists in our universe (and we have people who have actually gone into space, so at least within the range of the moon, we can be pretty confident our conception of how space works is accurate).

I'll confess that I actually prefer the more distinctly sci-fi way that Starfinder presents space, but there is a lot of whimsy to Spelljammer's presentation.

Unlike previous 5E releases, Spelljammer came in a box set. This is something that was done a lot in earlier editions. For example, the Planescape Campaign Setting set came with a Player's Guide, a DM's Guide to the Planes, a Monstrous Supplement, and Sigil & Beyond, which went into greater detail about the city and the Outlands.

I've seen complaints that Spelljammer: Adventures in Space is disappointing, especially considering all the hype around it, and the fact that it's been about 30 years since the last Spelljammer book. The fact that each book is only 64 pages, which even totaled up makes it shorter than most Campaign Setting books that have come out for 5th Edition is another source of complaints. I would argue that more pages does not inherently make a book better or more useful. Personally, I think Eberron: Rising from the Last War goes into such minute detail that my eyes kind of glaze over - I don't think I've ever been able to get through the entire section on Sharn.

Looking through the three volumes of Adventures in Space, I think that the critiques that it's too thin and bereft of content don't really apply to Boo's Astral Menagerie or Light of Xaryxis. Boo's (as I guess I'll be calling it) gives us more monster stat blocks than I think any other setting book has. And a lot of these are quite interesting - many aberrations to serve as your weird and gross aliens, as well as whimsical stuff like Vampirates and Space Clowns (ok, the latter also being potentially terrifying).

Light of Xaryxis is thin, of course, as a full published adventure, but compared to other campaign setting starting adventures, it's really beefy - you get four full levels' worth of content that span multiple space genres - a bit of cosmic horror here, a bunch of space opera there, a weird gladiatorial fight that feels like a staple of the old "planetary romance" genre (though this happens on a space station rather than a planet).

That leaves the Astral Adventurer's Guide.

This is actually the first campaign setting (I think?) to not give us any new subclasses. I'd thought that this would have been a great opportunity for an Artificer subclass, or perhaps a Rogue that might reflect some kind of Han Solo archetype.

The setting brings six new races, all of which are pretty cool (the only one I'm not really impressed by is the Astral Elf. I think slapping another kind of elf into things is the laziest way to make a new fantasy race. But hey, people like to play hot people, and that's kind of the elves' deal.)

The actual chapter on how space travel works is pretty short, with rules about how Wildspace works and then how travel in the Astral Sea works. And we get some specific worldbuilding about the Rock of Bral.

But the bulk of the book is taken up by ship deck plans. This is all well and good, and actually genuinely useful for designing encounters. The emphasis here, I think, is to make ship-to-ship combat run smoothly and easily.

But there's basically zero guidance on how to actually build a Spelljammer adventure.

Here, I'm going to have to trot out my favorite book they've made for 5E, which is Van Richten's Guide to Ravenloft. Van Richten's has an extensive exploration of the horror genre, and then a dense and detailed guide to creating domains of dread and their darklords. There is a section of optional rules to enhance the feeling of horror. There's a section on using safety tools to ensure that everyone at the table is having a good time. And even with the guide on homebrewing domains, there's also a chapter that gives many canonical domains pretty thorough descriptions, each with a different guide on how to build adventures specific to those domains - running a plague cycle in Richemoulot, or a siege in Falkovnia, for example.

The AAG relies on the Light of Xaryxis to be an example of how a Spelljammer adventure could work, but it doesn't get into how to build one of your own.

There's also no real description of specific Wildspace regions. We don't get what worlds can be visited in Realmspace or Krynnspace or Greyspace. And while, yeah, I'm a big homebrew guy who likes his own setting, if part of the appeal of Spelljammer is the ability to travel between these settings, it'd be nice to get at least a sketch of what the various Wildspace areas are like.

I'd also love to have seen some details on how you might change the availability of certain items. Giff, for example, have a racial proficiency with firearms. But should DMs just open up all firearms in the DMG? Or just renaissance ones?

I think the AAG could have been so much more if they'd given it room to breathe. As it is, the catalogue of ships and deck plans - something that absolutely should be in the book - feels like a waste of space simply because the other elements are so thin.

I'm actually kind of shocked that there isn't some DM's Guild supplement like Domains of Delight, which came out alongside Wild Beyond the Witchlight. I'm not exactly a fan of D&D DLC as a concept, but I think the three-book concept here might have actually really held WotC back when making this product.

Is the set useless? Absolutely not. And I'm going to be running some Spelljammer in the near future (taking on two homebrew campaigns is... maybe ill advised, but here we go!)

I just think the AAG, which seems like it should be the primary book of the set, should have been more substantial.

Is One D&D's Wealth of Content a Bad Thing, Actually?

 To save you the post if you just want to know my opinion, my answer is no.

But let's get into it:

With the next iteration of D&D, codenamed One D&D (much as 5th Edition was called D&D Next,) the intent is for all existing 5th Edition content to still be usable in future games, using the future rules books.

Officially, the core rulebooks that come out in 2024 will not be "6th Edition." WotC is retiring, at least for now, the concept of separate editions moving forward. The purpose here is to make sure that if you want to run Curse of Strahd with the new rulebooks, you should be able to without their having to publish an updated version of it or forcing the DM to go through the adventure and rebalance encounters and such.

Given how many D&D players got their start with 5th Edition - myself included - and how hugely popular the edition has been, and how invested many people are in 5th Edition books (I've got, I'm almost certain, over a thousand dollars' worth of D&D books myself,) this decision is meant to allow us to feel like our books haven't suddenly vanished into obsolescence.

However, from another practical perspective, this also means that One D&D is hitting the shelves with a ton of pre-existing content.

When I got started, Volo's Guide to Monsters hadn't yet come out, which meant that the character options, monsters, and subclasses were very limited. However, at this point, we've had a massive influx of new options of that sort. Monsters of the Multiverse came out both to revise existing options and to collect them in a single volume. Indeed, the Rules Expansion box set, which contained that along with Xanathar's and Tasha's, became the best option for new DMs who had the core rulebooks but wanted to expand to other options.

But beyond that, there are tons of monsters, races, and subclasses (though Tasha's republished most of the setting-specific ones we'd seen in previous books) that 5th Edition has accrued over the last 8 years.

I'm a pretty open-minded DM who likes to let players have a lot of options available to them. But I've seen complaints, or maybe just concerns, that the number of options available is getting dizzying and overwhelming.

There are some who wish that we were truly getting a 6th Edition, and putting the books published in the last 8 years fully in the rear view mirror.

Honestly, I want to try to see things from their perspective, and I can sort of understand the desire for a more curated experience, but I ultimately disagree emphatically with the argument.

First off, let's look at this from WotC's perspective. D&D makes money by selling books. Not exclusively, of course, but the main "product" that the D&D team produces at the center of the brand is its books.

The popularity of 5th Edition means that most of us haven't gone through an edition transition. And there have been times when that process seriously did not work out for WotC. I don't have any numbers, but the transition from 3.5 to 4th Edition saw a ton of players move on. Hell, this is how we got Pathfinder (not to say that competing fantasy RPGs is a bad thing, but again, I'm looking at this from WotC's perspective). While it never came together, a few years before 5th Edition came out, a friend of a friend offered to start running a game, and when I asked if it would be D&D, she said "well, D&D kind of sucks now, so we'll use Pathfinder instead."

Alienating players is a great way to lose business. And with so many more players than they previously had, I have to imagine that WotC's number one priority is to make the transition to One D&D as easy and painless as possible for those used to 5th Edition.

So that's why I cannot imagine that WotC would change tack on their overall One D&D strategy (it's right there in the codename, so that suggests a pretty strong commitment.)

But let's now address that feeling of being overwhelmed:

I'll confess that I have always wanted to gobble up the new and exciting additions to established games. I'm always eager to play the new class, the new race, whatever new option is available to me. So my general attitude is going to tend toward being very pro- "everything including the kitchen sink."

But I am sympathetic to players who are perhaps less comfortable with these kind of choices and decisions. They might feel like they're expected to memorize the differences between a Tabaxi and a Leonin or a Lizardfolk and a Dragonborn. And it's a lot to take in. There are like 30 races in Monsters of the Multiverse.

D&D's 5th Edition class design also strongly favors spellcasting - only the Fighter, Rogue, Monk, and Barbarian don't get spellcasting of some sort by default. Adding spells means that the decisions you make in building your character involve selecting a lot of spells, and as those lists expand, you have a lot of books to balance.

Do you want Chill Touch or Ray of Frost? Ray of Sickness or Ray of Enfeeblement? If we see more and more spells added, that's more and more variables.

So I get it.

But, I also think that this is where a DM can act to curate the list. For example, with my Sunday group dealing with our main DM being busy with work and the player who was running a Kids on Bikes game feeling overwhelmed with a lot of work recently, I volunteered to run a short, or at least episodic, Spelljammer game.

While my policy is that you can play what you want in almost any case, I pushed the players to take a look at the new Spelljammer races, and as such, the three people who have started working on their characters picked from those new races - we have a Giff Paladin, a Thri-kreen Artificer, and an Astral Elf Monk.

Now, if any of those players had told me that they wanted to play a Warforged or a Centaur, I'd have no problem with that. But by simply allowing that book to stay on the shelf and only bringing it out if someone is feeling a need to try something else, we can keep the options from feeling overwhelming.

Granted, this requires that one of the people in the group knows the vast breadth of options and can walk newer or at least less experienced players to walk through the choices.

For this reason, I think that ideas like the Rules Expansion Set are a really good idea moving forward.

5th Edition moved away from titles like "Monster Manual II" or "Player's Handbook III," in favor of more flavorful book names like Volo's Guide to Monsters or Xanathar's Guide to Everything. But I think that it might be wise of them in the future to make it clear that certain publications are meant as the sort of "primary" expansions.

I think a new DM could potentially be overwhelmed and feel like they've got to pick up every single book to run their game. (I'll admit this is sort of my impulse - I probably don't need to have all the adventure books given that I tend to run homebrew stuff). Let's say there's some 18-year-old DM who picks up the core 2024 rulebooks in two years, falls in love with the game, and wants to get more content for their players? I could imagine them thinking they've got to get all the books that came out since they were 8 years old. In fact, they're probably going to get enough to keep them busy for many years to come if they pick up the Rules Expansion Box Set.

So, what I'd like to see in One D&D is to have a clearer delineation between the books everyone ought to have versus those that are there if you want to, for example, run something in a particular setting or run a particular adventure.

For example, if someone were getting into 5E right now, and wanted to run games for their group (and no one had any of the books,) maybe after trying the Starter Set, I'd say start with the Core Rulebooks. If they want to run published adventures, I'd go for a tried and true one like Curse of Strahd or Tyranny of Dragons. If they want to homebrew, I'd next point them toward the Rules Expansion set. Then, I'd ask if they want to do their own world-building or run something in an established setting.

If they want a really detailed setting with tons of information about the way the world works, I'd then send them to Explorer's Guide to Wildemount or possibly Eberron: Rising from the Last War. If they want to do more worldbuilding homebrew but within an established space, I'd recommend Van Richten's Guide to Ravenloft, or if they're very, very homebrew focused, Spelljammer: Adventures in Space (something I have thoughts on for a later post).

I also think that Fizban's Treasury of Dragons is very cool if you want to run a very dragon-centric campaign. I'll be curious to see to what extent Glory of the Giants matches its model.

So, yeah, there are a ton of 5E books (and more coming). But the overwhelming content issue could be solved pretty easily by experienced DMs, and, I'd recommend, making a guide on the D&D website.

At the heart of this, though, is that it feels that choosing to make older books obsolete would be not only a bad choice from a business perspective and from a respect-for-players perspective, but it would also seem to require fixing a bunch of problems that aren't broken.

There's plenty in 5th Edition that needs fixing, for sure. But I think the iterative, evolutionary approach that they're using is going to work a lot better than upending the table and starting from scratch.

Going Deep on Race (...in the Context of D&D)

 Yeah, that post title fits the pattern I established but also sounds like something that should engage with the writings of James Baldwin.

And, honestly, there are discussions to be had about D&D's treatment of race, and what the best way it is for WotC to evolve the way they handle it. I'll personally advocate, as a first step, changing the term "race" out for something like Lineage or Ancestry. Lineage was already introduced in 5E to describe the options in Van Richten's Guide to Ravenloft, and while in that case it distinguished these as things that players could become, rather than being born that way, the word "Lineage" does kind of imply that it involves the people who came before you (even if said people are vampires or hags).

The Character Origins (I've been saying Character Creation all this time, but it's Origins) UA presents the nine races (and yeah, we'll use that term for now because it's what WotC is using) that will appear in the new Player's Handbook.

First off, the selection should be very familiar to those who have been playing 5E. The only new addition is the Ardling, which is kind of the mirror of the Tiefling (though distinct from the established Aasimar).

The baseline here is otherwise the same, except that "Half-" races are no longer there.

Why is that? Philosophically, the idea is that characters can have broadly mixed backgrounds. Half-Elves and Half-Orcs are not being removed from the canon, but are instead being treated differently than they have been in the past. The idea now is that, on a mechanical level, you can pick one of your ancestries and use that as your race, while still understanding that on a story and visual level, your character's mixed heritage can show in various ways.

The benefit here is that human/elf and human/orc ancestries are no longer the only recognized one. Your Halfling can have a Dwarf parent, or your Tiefling can have have a Gnome grandparent.

In the 2014 PHB, the only way you could have orcish ancestry was playing a half-orc, and it wouldn't be until later publications that the Orc was presented as an option (that was also weirdly distinct from the Half-Orc on a mechanical level). Here, however, the revised version of the Orc as seen in Monsters of the Multiverse is graduated to the Player's Handbook as one of the standard options in the Player's Handbook. Given how classic Orcs are as a fantasy race, this feels fitting.

Like the Monsters of the Multiverse revisions, there are a couple broad things. The first is that racial abilities don't tie into cultural things. Elves and Dwarves, for example, don't get proficiency in particular weapons anymore, because that's really a cultural thing - if your Elf grew up in some Halfling community, you wouldn't just know how to use a Longbow thanks to your genetics.

Another rather huge change is that sub-races are being handled differently. In some cases, they're simply eliminated. Halflings and Dwarves now come in one-size-fits-all (the Duergar, seen in Monsters of the Multiverse, still exist, but are treated as a separate race, though they still count as dwarves for things like the Belt of Dwarvenkind). However, those races that retain sub-races now treat the sub-race as a single racial trait, where you choose one of a number of options, usually with the term "legacy" or "lineage" attached to it.

This actually expands the Tiefling, which now has three Fiendish Legacies. In the 2014 PHB, Tieflings were basically narrowed down to those who traced their origins back to the Nine Hells and devils. Here, however, you can choose whether your fiendish traits come from lawful evil planes (infernal), chaotic evil planes (abyssal), or neutral evil planes (chthonic).

What's great about this is that it would seem to make the Tiefling more in line with how it was initially presented when they first introduced it with Planescape. 5E natives have a picture of tieflings as basically always having horns and a tail, usually with red skin (though Jester from critical role was blue, explained by the fact that her father was a water genasi - and see! We've already been using this method to allow mixed heritage!) But in 2nd Edition Planescape, they basically just looked weird - there's a tiefling NPC who has snakes for eyes, and some that have porcupine-like quills for hair. The examples presented for the Chthonic and Abyssal tieflings are fairly varied. I like the idea of a Chthonic tiefling with Merrenoloth ancestors and thus has a skeletal-looking face with gray flesh. No one is stopping you from playing the "tiefling classic," which looks and works fairly similarly to how it already did, but you have other possibilities.

All right, well, I said we were going deep, so let's go deep.

Oh, one broad thing first: like we saw in Monsters of the Multiverse, every race has a minimum walking speed of 30 feet, so Halflings, Gnomes, and Dwarves don't have to struggle to keep up anymore.

Humans:

Humans' biggest benefit in the original PHB was their versatility. The standard human got a +1 to all ability scores, which, while less focused, wound up a net of twice as many bonuses than any other race. However, most players I've encountered instead picked the variant option, which gives you two +1s, less than what other races get, but allows you to put them in whatever ability scores you want. And then you get a feat, which is the biggest appeal.

With the Tasha's changes that allowed any race to move around their ability score bonuses, the flexibility of the variant human became a lot less exciting. I'd argue that the base human still got a pretty cool benefit, though lacking the feat from the variant human made it feel a little too generalized.

The new Human traits are, I think, something of an update to the Variant Human.

The first major change is that Humans can now choose between Medium and Small size. The whole point of Humans as a playable race is that they should reflect every kind of human in the real world. And there are plenty of people in the real world who fall within the size range of "Small," so this makes total sense.

The brand-new trait for humans is Resourceful, which causes them to gain Inspiration when they finish a Long Rest. Inspiration, originally at the sole discretion of the DM to reward good roleplay (or good/particularly bad jokes at the table) is now granted automatically when you roll a natural 20, so this just gives humans a little boost at the start of the day.

As with the variant human, humans now get an extra Skill Proficiency of their choice. And, like the variant human, you get a free Feat. The feature, Versatile, suggests Skilled as the feat to choose, but any of the level 1 feat options are available. This is in addition to your Background feat, meaning that while humans are no longer totally special in getting a feat at level 1, they get to pick two.

Again, because only select feats are now available at first level, you might be a little disappointed not to get something like Great Weapon Master here, and still have to spend an ability score increase on picking it up. But this does mean you can now have a little more customization at character creation.

Ardlings:

The Ardlings are the new playable race in the PHB. Effectively the Upper Planes equivalent of the Tiefling, Ardlings actually look very different. In Planescape, many celestials (or what we'd now classify as celestials) are actually animal-headed, from things like Hound Archons in Mount Celestia to the Guardinals in Elysium. This also draws on real-world myths, such as Anubis or Thoth in Egyptian mythology.

Just as Tieflings are not bound to the alignments of their evil planar origins, Ardlings are not inherently good people, and are just as free-willed. Also, like the tieflings, Ardlings come in different varieties that determine certain traits - specifically their inherent spells. Like the Tiefling, the Ardling chooses between the Chaotic, Lawful, and Neutral planes of their side of the good/evil divide, with Exalted, Heavenly, and Idyllic representing those alignments respectively.

Ardlings can choose between being Small or Large, much like several other races including Humans.

All Ardlings get Angelic Flight. This lets them gain a fly speed as a bonus action equal to their walking speed, but only until the end of their turn, after which they will fall if not standing on a solid surface. They get to use this PB times per day.

Next is Celestial Legacy. This grants a fairly standard racial spellcasting feature - gaining new spells at different levels, and being able to cast the leveled spells once per day for free, but also with your spell slots if you have them, and being able to choose your spellcasting ability for them from your mental stats. Each gets a cantrip at level 1, and then leveled spells at levels 3 and 5.

Exalted Ardlings get Thaumaturgy, Divine Favor, and Lesser Restoration. Heavenly Ardlings get Light, Cure Wounds, and Zone of Truth. Idyllic Ardlings get Guidance, Healing Word, and Animal Messenger.

The fact that two of these get healing spell is pretty interesting - giving your Wizard, Sorcerer, or Warlock some decent healing capabilities. I'll also note that Light is going to probably be a lot more useful for a Heavenly Ardling than it is for an Aasimar, given that Ardlings do not get Darkvision by default.

Finally, all Ardlings get resistance to Radiant damage. This is one of those damage types that is really more common among player characters than dangerous monsters, but I also think when they do deal radiant damage, it tends to be for a lot.

The presence of the Ardlings really re-emphasizes the effects of the Outer Planes on the worlds of D&D, and with 5E Planescape coming next year (I'm already so eager to get my hands on it) it looks like planar stuff will be more commonplace. I will say that throwing in a brand new playable race means that homebrewers will need to think a bit about how these folks fit into our settings. I very much built my Sarkon setting in an effort to accommodate all the PHB races, but I've also happily added and expanded things to make room for other playable races that have been added (even the MTG-setting-only ones).

Dragonborn:

Now, here's a race that very recently got new versions, but oddly, the UA doesn't really embrace the three Dragonborn options from Fizban's Treasury of Dragons. Here, instead, they're consolidated back into a single race.

Dragonborn in the 2014 PHB basically only have their damage resistance and breath weapon as race features.

Here, they get slightly more: First off, all Dragonborn know Draconic instinctively (so I guess my Eldritch Knight would have four languages even with the new background rules).

Dragonborn also now get Darkvision - which is a nice bone to throw to them.

As before, you pick a Draconic Ancestry, which determines the elemental damage type of your resistance and your breath weapon. One thing of note, though, is that while the 2014 PHB actually suggests that Dragonborn have, over time, intermixed to the point that most have the same vaguely brownish color, here they say that dragonborn vibrantly reflect their draconic ancestry in their appearance.

I find this interesting because I think this is a case of WotC just noticing the way that people have been playing and changing the rules - or in this case, the flavor text - to reflect that. Absolutely no one I've ever seen play D&D has played Dragonborn as looking like they do as described in the 2014 PHB.

The big thing here is that the way that the Breath Weapon works has changed. First off, like the change in Fizban's, you now get to use it PB times per long rest, rather than once per short rest, which, in the long run, is a buff.

Beyond that, though, all breath weapons, regardless of ancestry, affect a 15-foot cone, with a Dex save to take half damage. The DC is still based on your Constitution modifier. The damage, however, has changed. It now deals 1d10 plus your level in damage.

Ok, so let's math this out:

The Fizban's versions deal 1d10 per tier - so at level 5 it becomes 2d10, at level 11 3d10, and at level 17 it's 4d10. Fizban's also allows it to take the place of an attack if you have Multiattack, which is a big deal (for martial classes).

However, we'll instead compare this with the PHB version. Here, you get 2d6 at level 1, then 3d6 at level 6, 4d6 at level 11, and 5d6 at level 16. That means the average damage goes from 7 to 10.5, then 14, then 17.5.

At those levels, the new version deals an average of 6.5 at level 1, 11.5 at level 6, 16.5 at level 11, and 21.5 at level 16. The damage is a little higher, but it's also much more consistent - at level 16, you're doing 17-26 damage, as opposed to 5-30, and thus have a far narrower range (it still stings to remember when I rolled double 1s on a breath weapon and both monsters dodged it, taking a measly 1 lightning damage each).

As such, the new breath weapon should feel more satisfying to use, as you're never going to get absolutely terrible damage from it. I still like the Fizban's version more (though mainly because my Dragonborn is a Fighter - this version would be better for a Wizard or Druid or the like).

Dwarf:

The biggest change here is that Dwarves are now just one race... except for the Duergar, who are also Dwarves, but are the only ones that are physiologically distinct enough to count as their own thing - what with the whole psionic experiments by the Mind Flayers.

As before, they get Darkvision. They also have Dwarven Resilience, which continues to give Poison resistance and advantage on saving throws to avoid or end the poisoned condition.

One thing I think is interesting is that I think many people treat this as advantage against any poison damage, such as a green dragon's breath weapon, but I think technically that's not the case. But if an effect does poison damage and also poisons you, this does work? That's not a change, though.

Dwarven Toughness is basically the old Hill Dwarf trait that gives increases your max HP by your level (worded in a weirdly inefficient way).

Forge Wise is interesting in that it sort of seems to go against the cultural/physiological distinction that D&D has been working with. However, the justification here is that this is the gift of the divine creators of the Dwarves, meaning that this is actually a physiological thing. (I guess it's akin to the Giff propensity for firearms or the Dragonborn's instinctive grasp of Draconic). You get Tool Proficiency with two of the following of your choice: Jeweler's Tools, Mason's Tools, Smith's Tools, or Tinker's Tools. How are Brewer's Supplies not in this? The options are expanded from those found in the 2014 PHB, but it really feels like Brewing is a classic Dwarf trade (I've always thought their Poison resistance was what allowed them to drink so prodigiously).

I'm not sure how I feel about handwaving racial traits that feel more cultural by just invoking the gods. Maybe it's fine? Or maybe this just recreates the problem in a new way?

Stonecunning is now a totally different feature, but one that is likely to get used a lot more. As a bonus action (and usable PB times per day,) dwarves can touch a stone surface (or stand on one) and get Tremorsense out to 60 feet for ten minutes. Tremorsense has historically only appeared on monster stat blocks, and only gets defined in the Monster Manual, so it's interesting to see it here as a racial trait. But I also think this makes a ton of sense as a kind of instinctive ability to sense danger while in caves or mines for a people who are built for such environments. This is both a really useful feature and one that has a lot of flavor to it, so I give it a big thumbs up.

Elf:

Elves, the race with the most variations in D&D and indeed most fantasy games (WoW has four playable elf races, and Elder Scrolls does too given that Orcs are a type of elf in that world,) are here represented as a single race. However, unlike Dwarves, they retain a sub-race like feature that is now simply a choosable trait similar to Draconic Ancestry. (Of course, Astral Elves, Eladrin, Sea Elves, and Shadar-Kai stand as their own playable races in Astral Adventurer's Guide and Monsters of the Multiverse, but count as elves, for example, to avoid being paralyzed by a ghoul - bet you forgot that was a thing!)

For the most part, elves will be fairly similar to how they are in the 2014 PHB, including that they come in High Elf, Wood Elf, and Drow varieties.

Elves get Darkvision, as well as Fey Ancestry, Keen Senses (proficiency in Perception), and Trance. Interestingly, unlike the MotM and AAG elves, you don't gain any new proficiencies during your Trance, making it work much as it did in the 2014 PHB.

Your Elven Lineage, then, gives you a choice between Drow, High Elf, or Wood Elf. Each choice gives you a cantrip at level 1, and then other spells at level 3 and 5, which, like most racial spells, you can cast once for free per long rest, and but also cast with spell slots if you want to use them more. Also as with other racial spells, you choose a mental stat for your spellcasting ability.

In addition, your lineage will give you some other passive bonus (which will look familiar).

Drow get Dancing Lights, and the range of their Darkvision extends to 120 feet. They no longer have Sunlight Sensitivity, which is fantastic. At 3rd level, you get Faerie Fire, and at 5th level, Darkness. In other words, they're nearly unchanged.

High Elves get Prestidigitation, however, they can swap out that cantrip for any other Arcane (one of the new spell categories) cantrip after a Long Rest. At 3rd level, they get Detect Magic, and at 5th level, they get Misty Step. That last one is pretty great, as that's a really good spell.

Wood Elves get Druidcraft, and their speed is increased to 35 feet. At 3rd level they get Longstrider, and at 5th level they get Pass Without Trace.

So, all in all, the main thing elves lose is their racial weapon proficiencies, which were only useful in certain edge cases (such as my Wood Elf Monk being proficient in Longswords, thus allowing him to designate them as his Dedicated Weapon, which meant he could use his Sun Blade as a Monk Weapon).

Wood Elves and High Elves get a bit more magic, but for the most part, the race looks much as it did in 2014.

Gnomes:

Like Elves, Gnomes retain their "sub-races" but now as a single racial trait. Deep Gnomes/Svirfneblin remain an alternative option (though I cannot for the life of me think of anything in the game that mechanically singles out Gnomes). Gnomes get Darkvision and retain Gnomish Cunning. The Gnomish Lineage trait lets you choose between Forest Gnome and Rock Gnome.

Forest Gnomes look fairly similar, but they work slightly differently. They still learn Minor Illusion, but they now get to cast Speak with Animals for free PB times per day (and can still cast it more using spell slots). This means it will expend a resource now to speak with beasts, but there is no longer any size limit, and you get the full effects of the spell, rather than only being able to communicate simple ideas.

Rock Gnomes learn Prestidigitation and Mending. Then, things get complicated: using the Prestidigitation spell, you can spend 10 minutes creating a tiny clockwork device with AC 5 and 1 HP, requiring 10g worth of raw materials, which you provide while casting. The device can replicate any single effect from the Prestidigitation spell when activated as a bonus action (usable by you or another creature). The effect has to be a specific one - for example, a fire starter can only ignite, but not extinguish, flames. You can have up to three such devices active at a time, and each one dismantles itself 8 hours after its creation, or you can dismantle it as an Action. The material used to make it can then be reclaimed and reused.

So, that's a lot. This is similar to the old Tinker trait, but it uses this magic instead of tinker's tools, and the item takes less time to make but also lasts a shorter time. The options for what the device does are broader, though you can't make an ambulatory toy, I think.

Honestly, I think that this has always been more of a flavor feat than something that will come into play all that often, but granting both Mending and Prestidigitation is nice, as these are two of my favorite cantrips.

Again, Gnomes haven't undergone some crazy full reinvention, just a few tweaks, and I think they're fine.

Halflings:

Unlike the Elves and Gnomes, Halflings have followed the example of the Dwarves, consolidating the subraces into a single Halfling race option. The distinction between Stout and Lightfoot Halflings has always felt pretty nebulous to me on the story side of things, so this makes a lot of sense.

Halflings retain Brave, their advantage on saves against or to end the frightened condition. Halfling Nimbleness allows you to move through a creature that is of a larger size, but you can't stop there. That latter part is not actually in the 2014 description of the trait, though may have been implied.

Naturally Stealthy, which had been a Lightfoot trait, now simply gives you proficiency in Stealth.

And finally, Lucky is now called Luck, but works the same (albeit using the new term "d20 test.")

Only very subtle changes here. The old Naturally Stealthy had a fun flavor to it, but I think that just getting Stealth for free is probably a more broadly appealing feature. (And as a DM I'd probably allow such shenanigans for any Small character.)

Orcs:

With "half-" races now being more of a story and aesthetic choice rather than a mechanical one, Orcs come into take the place of Half-Orcs in the PHB. The design here is, I believe, unchanged from its revision in Monsters of the Multiverse, which took in the old Half-Orc's Relentless Endurance and combines that with Darkvision, Powerful Build, and the unique Adrenaline Rush trait, which allows you to Dash as a bonus action PB times per long rest, and when you do so, you get temporary hit points equal to your proficiency bonus. Unlike the old Orc version of this trait, you don't need to move toward an enemy to do this, meaning that Orcs can be quite mobile in many scenarios (I actually have an Orc Cleric as a backup character in one campaign who would likely use Adrenaline Rush to get to allies who need healing - a Cleric who can get back up after being knocked down seems like it would be very powerful).

Tiefling:

The tiefling's biggest change is that you can now pick different Fiendish Legacies. While 2014 Tieflings were linked to devils and the lawful evil plane of the Nine Hells, this restores a bit of the diversity to the tiefling they had when introduced in Planescape. Again, sub-races are treated simply as a trait that gives you a few options.

On a visual level, tieflings can be a lot more varied now. Infernal Tieflings, which are the ones 5E veterans are familiar with, have the usual horns, tails, golden eyes, etc. But they can also be connected to Acheron or Gehenna, and less explicitly devil-like. (Spikes are another suggested feature, as well as the odor of sulfur or smoke). Abyssal Tieflings are connected to the Chaotic Evil planes: Pandemonium, The Abyss, and Carceri. Suggested traits include Horns, but also fur, tusks, dark blood, and peculiar odors. Finally, Chthonic Tieflings are linked to the Neutral Evil planes, Gehenna, Hades, and Carceri. Suggested appearances are to look cadaverous and skeletal, or perhaps possess the unearthly beauty of an incubus or succubus, or to borrow features of a yugoloth or night hag. (Personally, my concept would be a sort of skeletal Merrenloloth-derived look.)

Like Ardlings and Humans, you can be Medium or Small.

All Tieflings get Darkvision as well as Thaumaturgy (the ability for which is the same you choose for your Fiendish Legacy trait).

Fiendish Legacy is where you choose which planes you're connected to. Each grants a damage resistance, a cantrip, and spells at 3rd and 5th level. You pick a spellcasting ability for these between the three mental stats.

Abyssal Tieflings get resistance to Poison damage and learn Poison Spray. At 3, you get Ray of Sickness, and at 5 you get Hold Person.

Chthonic Tieflings get resistance to Necrotic damage and learn Chill Touch. At 3, you get False Life, and at 5, you get Ray of Enfeeblement.

Inernal Tieflings get resistance to Fire damage and learn Fire Bolt. At 3, you get Hellish Rebuke, and at 5 you get Darkness.

So, in practice, old school Tieflings basically just add Fire Bolt and their free Hellish Rebuke is only 1st level (though as with all these racial spellcasting traits, you can cast them again with a spell slot).

My worry for Abyssal Tieflings is that, at least in the 2014 Monster Manual, so, so many creatures are immune or resistant to poison damage and being poisoned, which makes two of their spells underwhelming. Granted, maybe they'll pull back on that a little (I'll also admit that I'm someone who likes to run supernatural monsters, meaning fiends, undead, and constructs might show up in my games more than other peoples', so maybe there's plenty of opportunity for poison to come up).

I really find myself most excited about the Chthonic Tiefling, and partially that's because I think the word Chthonic is very cool - and it's a nice word to throw in there with Abyssal and Infernal. Chill Touch is a really, really powerful cantrip (even if it has the most misleading name of any spell in the game - seriously, shouldn't this be called "Death Blast" or something?)

And with that, we've pretty exhaustively gone through all the revised PHB races.

In most cases, we've seen tweaks rather than significant reworks. I will say, much as I did when Monsters of the Multiverse came out, I think we've seen a little bit of homogenization. This is sometimes the price we pay for balance. I liked, for example, that Dwarves in the 2014 PHB could ignore the Strength requirement on heavy armor - so your Life Cleric didn't have to worry about buffing their Strength. Still, I think that there are a decent number of unique traits, like Trance, Stonecunning, or Angelic Flight, that the selection here could inspire players to get excited about their choice.

I think the intent behind the changes to mixed-heritage characters is good, but we'll see where it lands ultimately on execution. I've said my piece on this matter in previous posts, so I won't reiterate it here.

Tonight (possibly) I'm going to be doing character creation for a short adventure/campaign (we might do Light of Xaryxis, or otherwise some homebrew thing,) and I intend to playtest these changes through them with my players. The survey for these will open in about two weeks, and will remain open for another two weeks. After that, we can likely expect to see other designs. I'm very, very eager to see the class revisions (big things to watch out for: Artificers in the PHB, Fighters all getting Maneuvers, and Warlocks getting Eldritch Blast as a class feature).

It's an exciting time for D&D, and I hope most people will look at this playtest (starting two years before publication) as a real opportunity to help shape the game. D&D Next, which was 5E's codename much as One D&D is for this new iteration, helped turn the edition into the massive success that it was. All the little (or big) issues that have bugged players for the last 8 years have a real opportunity to get addressed in this, so I'm going to try to participate as much as I can.