In the year leading up to the release of the 2024 revised core rulebooks, we got a ton of Unearthed Arcana posts suggesting new ways the classes and subclasses and other game systems could be structured. Early on, they took on some rather radical redesigns, such as grouping the twelve classes (and a special mention for the Artificer) into the categories of Experts, Mages, Priests, and Warriors, with associated mechanics. They walked back a lot of these more radical design shifts, which I think did raise a valid (though one I wouldn't agree with) criticism that the revision wound up barely justifying the release of new books. (There are also some camps that refuse the new version out of what I see more as hostility toward WotC as a company - which, fair. I still personally like most of the revised rules and systems).
Anyway, the point of the UAs was pretty clear: giving us a sense of the direction they were going for the new versions of these classes and other systems. And while there were some radical changes (much as I like the Soulknife, I think the Swashbuckler on a flavor side of things made more sense as a PHB inclusion, and I was bummed to see it dropped) we more or less got what had been tested.
While things went quiet for a bit once the PHB dropped, this year things picked up at a pace that has been almost staggering. There's so, so much stuff being tested.
But are these tests guarantees of future projects, or speculative?
As an example, I think that the existence of the Post-Apocalyptic subclasses and the Psion point heavily to some kind of Dark Sun campaign setting book. It has been a while since these UAs (we got a second pass on the Psion earlier this month) but we actually don't know about any books after the Forgotten Realms ones officially get published and Eberron: Forge of the Artificer gets its release after the delay in August (I believe it's now expected in December).
But we've also gotten horror subclasses (largely revisions of old ones,) as well as "arcane" subclasses, including the four Wizard ones from the 2014 PHB that didn't make it into the 2024 one, and now, as of I think Tuesday, a scattering of revised Xanathar's subclasses (and the Oathbreaker).
Now, as excited as I am to see updated versions of some of these old classics (I really want to play a good Drunken Master Monk, and the version in the UA was a big step in the right direction, though it needs some more work) I'm also kind of bummed that so much of what is being presented is old stuff.
D&D 2024 is backwards compatible, so there's nothing preventing you from playing a Storm Herald Barbarian or Transmutation Wizard now. Do those subclasses show their age? Sure.
But I worry that the model right now is to just sell us the same stuff we already had with subtle improvements rather than coming up with new and exciting things.
The truth is that I imagine future products are largely going to be a mix. The Forgotten Realms book gives us three revised subclasses and five brand-new ones.
But also, if you look at the early days of UAs for 5E, there was a lot more speculative design, with things like Modern Magic giving us the City Domain or Ghost in the Machine Patron, which never saw official publication (though notably, one of the PCs in Dimension 20's Unsleeping City is a City Domain Cleric, whose divine source is New York itself).
We did see some of that stuff see print: before we knew that Guildmaster's Guide to Ravnica was coming out, the Circle of Spores, Order Domain, and a Wizard School of Invention that would be turned into the Mizzium Apparatus magic item all hinted strongly at it.
So, are we looking forward to several new "splat books" in 2026 that just haven't been announced yet? Or is UA being used in a more speculative, experimental way, throwing spaghetti at the wall to see what sticks?
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