One D&D, the development code-name for what we were previously calling 5.5 or 6E (similarly to how 5th Edition was "D&D Next") is officially in testing as of a few weeks ago with the Character Origins UA.
I've gone into fine detail about that UA document, with a general feel that it's mostly good except perhaps for the changes to critical hits.
Now, it's certainly possible that the next bit of playtest material will be a revision of what we just got - perhaps addressing issues that players have put forward.
Of course, UA is only partially for playtesting. It's also marketing - a type of marketing that I really don't mind, as it genuinely reaches out to the community and makes us feel connected to the game. But the fact that it's marketing is one reason that I think we'll be getting different content. It also might be easier to put out revisions after they've done a few of these, and leave out the stuff that they aren't changing (I don't think anyone's likely to object to, for example, Tool Proficiency).
Now, the three main choices one makes when building a character are race, class, and background. Again, I'm pretty heavily in favor of changing "race" to "ancestry," because it's straightforward, distances the game from a concept that's grown outdated, and also has the elegance of making character creation "A, B, and C."
But, more to the point, if the playtesting elements they plan to focus on are starting with character creation, classes could be next.
But classes are big - of those three initial choices, your class really defines your capabilities as a character in a way that race and background don't.
Given the complexity and enormity of what a class represents, though, I suspect that they can't just knock them all out in a single (granted, large) document like the previous UA.
It might, then, be easiest to start with classes that are unlikely to see major changes.
Personally, I think the Paladin is one of the best-designed classes in 5th Edition - it does what you want it to do, and it's quite good at the job. If anything, I could imagine the class receiving some nerfs, though I hope not. Really, the only change I think is really needed is changing the name of Improved Divine Smite to something else, because the feature doesn't actually interact with Divine Smite in any way - it just adds d8s of radiant damage.
Thus, if it's getting minimal changes, those changes could probably fit into one of these initial documents.
On the other hand, if they wanted to get major changes into players' hands as quickly as possible, perhaps we'll see a UA dedicated to only one or two classes, with a full detail of the changes. The Ranger, for example, could turn the Tasha's revised changes into baselines for the class (though hopefully redesigning Favored Foe). The Monk could also maybe use a few tweaks to let it more effectively perform its roles (I think a d10 or even d12 hit die would go a ways toward improving the class).
Now, on the other hand, we could have a radically different possibility:
There are some game systems that are somewhat underdeveloped. The one that I think really needs the most robust build-up is crafting. In the Character Origins UA, one of the potential 1st-level feats is Crafter, which explicitly makes you better at crafting things.
But crafting is one of those things that's pretty vaguely defined in 5E - to be clear, there are rules in Xanathar's for crafting even magical items, but these rules rely on Downtime - something that many, in fact, most campaigns that I've played in haven't really made use of. The longest-running campaign I've played in had us going on a journey constantly, and rarely if ever returning to locations we had been to. Even though my Fighter had the Arcana skill proficiency, which is required to make enchanted items, I don't think I ever got a single day of downtime, much less the weeks (or tendays, as this was the Forgotten Realms) required to craft something (I really wanted to make a Headband of Intellect so that I could stop worrying about my spell DC and just focus on Strength and Constitution).
Item crafting - and in particular, magic item crafting - is a potential Pandora's Box for DMs, to be sure. If you let players make all the magic items they want, they can potentially become far more powerful than they otherwise would (it also sort of steps on the toes of the Artificer, which is basically a class built around making the magic items that you want).
But at the same time, it's clear that this is a system players expect to have, and that the game seems to partially support. I don't know if this means just working the Xanathar's rules into the new PHB or DMG, or if they want to go back to the drawing board and figure out how it will work.
But, given its potential impact, I think it would be a good thing to get in front of playtesters.
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