Is Combat Healing Fixed with Playtest 8?

 If playing a healer in RPGs appeals to you, you might come to D&D and roll up a Cleric, eager to be the person slapping Cure Wounds on your allies on your turns, keeping your Fighter, Rogue, and Wizard at top form while they're the ones killing the monsters.

But anyone who has actually played 5E D&D will know that this isn't really how it goes: Healing is not action-efficient.

In most situations, a Cleric or other healing-capable character is going to tend to be more useful helping get rid of the dangerous monsters than healing up every scratch that falls upon the party.

The main reason this is the case is that healing spells, historically, have been pretty weak.

And that's kind of understandable in terms of broader game design.

D&D is an attrition-based game. Player characters have resources that they spend over the course of an adventuring day, and the challenge is, in part, managing those resources in the most efficient way you can to ensure that you've got enough to survive until your next long rest.

The universal resource in that design is HP. A party of Fighters, Rogues, and Warlocks can remain pretty near full effectiveness after many battles, but eventually, if they don't rest, they're going to be unable to survive the damage the monsters can do to them.

In practical terms, a healing spell can play two roles: one is to extend that resource at the expense of the healer's spell slots. The other, and what I think is more common in 5E's design, is to respond to emergencies and either get an unconscious ally back in the fight and prevent them from dying, or to stave off an ally from going unconscious.

This is part of the reason why I've seen a number of Paladin players use their Lay on Hands only one point at a time - if you pump five points into a friend instead of one, it doesn't really make a difference if they're about to be hit for ten damage. But if they're at two failed death saves, going from zero to one HP makes all the difference in the world.

But spells like Cure Wounds can't really keep up with monster damage - they're great in getting saving someone from death, but each fight is still probably going to be a drain on HP overall, and now you've gone and expended a spell slot to boot!

Now, there are some exceptions. At high levels, Clerics (and in some cases Druids) get access to some genuinely powerful healing spells. Heal is a 6th level spell that restores a flat 70 HP, which will tend to out-heal the damage any one monster is doing to the target unless they're a really beefy foe. Mass Cure Wounds, a 5th level spell, and Mass Healing Word, a 3rd level spell, work a little better because of their multiplicative bonuses - 3d8+Wisdom isn't very much on a single character, but if it's hitting every member of the party, you could potentially have 18d8+six times your Wisdom modifier, which is a lot of healing overall.

But what about those basic heals?

Well, in Playtest 8, we saw buffs to a number of core healing spells. And potentially most impactfully, we saw Healing Word and Cure Wounds get a significant buff.

Each spell currently heals for 1d4 and 1d8 (respectively) plus your spellcasting modifier. Each spell level beyond 1st adds another of its die type to the total.

Now, you can see how this might not be much in the middle of a fight - 1d8 plus your main ability score is the same as the damage a typical monster will do with something like a single longsword attack.

The new version doubles the dice. Not only do the 1st level versions of each spell heal for 2d4 and 2d8, respectively, plus your ability modifier, but they also add 2 dice for each upcast level. Effectively, it's like getting the 2nd level version of the spell when casting it at 1st level, the 4th level version when casting it at 2nd level, etc., to the point that a 9th level Cure Wounds would be like the current version cast at "18th" level.

Does this make them worth casting in combat?

I'll also note that both "mass" variants have also gotten buffs - they have higher base healing, adding two dice to the base version, but the scaling is still a single die.

So, if Mass Cure Wounds is generally worth a 5th level spell slot, how does Cure Wounds cast at that level compare?

The new version of Mass Cure Wounds heals up to 6 targets for 5d8+Wisdom (I realize it doesn't have to be Wisdom, but we're just going to use this as shorthand). If I'm 9th level, we'll assume I've got a +5 to Wisdom by now (though with the new feats it might be more reasonable to expect +4) so we're healing up to 6 creatures for an average of 27.5 HP. A 5th level Cure Wounds will heal a single target for 10d8+5, or an average of 50.

In other words, we're getting a little over half the healing but to six targets, or if you look at it the other way, a little under twice the healing but on a single target.

That might seem unbalanced, but consider that sometimes healing up one person is more important than healing up the group - if you have your one Ancestral Guardian Barbarian or Armorer Artificer who has successfully gotten the monsters to really focus its attacks on them (particularly likely in a single-monster boss fight) it's possible that the rest of the party has barely taken any damage while the tank has gotten the crap beaten out of them.

If we go down to low levels, let's consider 1st level characters. If we assume people are starting with somewhere between a +2 and a +3 to Constitution, that means the lowest starting HP could be a Wizard or Sorcerer with 8 HP, and the highest could be a Barbarian with 15 HP. A Cure Wounds at this level, with a +3 to Wisdom, is going to heal on average for 12 HP - enough to get most characters from 0 to full HP. In other words, it's just as good as someone casting Power Word Heal on them.

Still, that might not be a great point of comparison: 1st level characters are like wet tissue paper, and even a tanky Fighter's going to be looking rough after a single successful hit against them.

It is worth noting that both of the "Mass" healing spells are also getting buffed. Mass Cure Wounds is going, at baseline, from 3d8 to 5d8 - a difference of nine points on average, but potentially up to 54 points. With a +5 to Wisdom, that means 18.5 average healing per target to 27.5 per target, or a bump of about 49%.

Mass Cure Wounds I think already saw some play - but it's more valuable when you're getting the benefits of the "AoE" multiplier while your foes are not in terms of raw healing versus damage. That being said, that scenario is more likely in the case that a single player character is taking most of the damage.

Mass Healing Word is also getting buffed, its baseline becoming 2d4 plus your spellcasting ability. So, at level 5, if you have a +4 to Wisdom, you'd do an average of 9 HP versus the old version's 6.5. This is a 38% bump.

    So, what's the upshot of all of this?

I suspect that this will make healing feel more effective - so often, I've seen Clerics complain that they cast Cure Wounds on a target only for the entire heal to be undone by a single attack. This will cut down on the chance for that to happen.

Still, I think on a fundamental level, D&D is built to reward damage prevention more than healing, and the most effective means of preventing damage is to kill the monsters before they can hit you any more.

Looking Closely at Brutal Strikes

 Playtest 8 will probably be remembered mostly for the changes it brought to the Monk, but the Barbarian also saw basically one major change (along with getting a single Rage back on a short rest - which is honestly a pretty big deal but doesn't really warrant too much in-depth discussion,) which is the removal of Brutal Critical and its replacement with Brutal Strikes.

First, I think we should talk about the implications of Brutal Critical's removal.

In the 2014 version of the class, Barbarians get to deal extra damage when they land a critical hit. At level 9, this adds an additional weapon damage die (after the normal doubling for a critical hit, and at levels 13 and 17, you add one more to that.

This did two major things:

First, it made critical hits more rewarding for a Barbarian.

Second, it incentivized using weapons with the highest damage die you could get your hands on.

While the difference is for certain subtle, Greatswords and Mauls typically have a higher average damage roll than a Greataxe, even though all three weapons have the same maximum roll. 1d12 has a minimum of 1 and a maximum of 12, while 2d6 has a minimum of 2 and a maximum of 12, and thus the average damage for a Greataxe (before any flat bonuses) is 6.5, while for the other weapons it's 7 (the most famous "average roll" for a set of dice in all of gaming, lucky number 7).

But, with a Barbarian, thanks to Brutal Critical, on a crit, your Greataxe was going to do significantly more - at level 9, a Greataxe is dealing 3d12 (or 19.5 on average) while a Maul is doing 5d6 (18.5). This gap expands as you get to higher Brutal Critical levels - 4d12 versus 6d6 (26 versus 21) and then 5d12 versus 7d6 (32.5 versus 24.5).

Now, I've done some napkin math on this and it turns out that even though your crits start to deal significantly more damage with a Greataxe, because crits are relatively rare, this benefit doesn't really kick in until you get the final Brutal Critical bonus (though I should note that I was not taking Advantage into account here - and Brutal Critical is one of the ways the game tries to incentivize Barbarians making Reckless Attacks).

But this incentive to use these sorts of weapons disappears now that Brutal Critical goes away. I don't think that means the death of the Greataxe, though, as players might want the high damage combined with the Cleave mastery, which neither the Maul nor Greatsword provide (though more and more I'm finding myself drawn to using polearms on anyone using a two-handed weapon, so you might just go for a Halberd).

Frankly, for maximizing damage, I actually think that Barbarians in 2024 and beyond are likely going to actually prefer fighting with light weapons - specifically using one with Nick in the off-hand. Even at 1st level, your Rage Bonus is granting +2 to the damage of that off-hand weapon, so without any two-weapon fighting style, you're still doing on average 5.5 damage with a nonmagical handaxe (two main-hand light weapon attacks are likely dealing 8.5 damage per hit while a Greataxe is doing 11.5, so... we're pretty close to balanced until we start getting magic weapons and a higher rage bonus).

But let's talk about what Brutal Strikes does.

The main goal, I think, of this new feature, is to give Barbarians a more reliable boost. Even with advantage from a Reckless Attack, you're still only rolling a natural 20 about 9.75% of the time.

Brutal Strikes, gained at level 9, is defined as the following:

If you use Reckless Attack, you can forgo Advantage on the next attack roll you make on your turn with a Strength-based attack. If that attack hits, the target takes 1d10 damage of the same type dealt by the weapon or Unarmed Strike, and you can cause one Brutal Strike effect of your choice, from the following options:

Forceful Blow: the target is pushed 15 feet straight away from you. You can then Move up to half your Speed straight toward the target without provoking opportunity attacks.

Hamstring Blow: The target's Speed is reduced by 15 feet until the start of your next turn.

    Let's break that down:

First off, as a reminder, Reckless Attack officially triggers when you make your first attack on your turn, allowing you to choose to gain advantage on Strength-based attacks until the start of your next turn, in exchange for all attacks made against you during that time having advantage.

Thus, the attack on which you are forgoing Advantage will be the triggering attack. This means you can only really use a Brutal Strike once per turn.

This also means that if that attack misses, you get no benefit from this.

We should also note, here, that it says that to use Brutal Strike, you "forgo Advantage on the next attack roll you make." This does not specify that this is only the advantage granted by Reckless Attack. So, if you were, say, flanking or attacking a prone target, you could not use Reckless Attack to get Brutal Strike while still being able to attack with advantage. Any time you make a Brutal Strike, you are at best rolling straight (and you might be doing so with Disadvantage, such as if it's invisible. If you're forgoing Advantage, you won't have anything to cancel out the Disadvantage).

    So, in a bizarre way, this is going to be a feature that is more reliable to use, but which makes your attacks less reliable. If you have a 50% chance to hit a target (say you have an attack bonus of +9 and the target has an AC of 20) Reckless Attack would normally give you a 75% chance to hit them. Here, we're remaining at that 50%.

But, we're also giving ourselves an extra d10 of damage.

Here, again, I think there's a subtle encouragement to dual-wield as a Barbarian. Imagine the following scenario:

If I have a Handaxe in my main hand and I attack Recklessly, (and I have a +5 to Strength and +4 Proficiency bonus and my target has an AC of 20) I've got a 75% chance to hit. The damage I deal with this nonmagical handaxe (because apparently my DM is a hardass and hasn't given me a magic weapon despite being level 9) is, on average, 1d6+8, or 11.5. So, we get 75% of 11.5, which is 8.625, and add 3.5x9.75% for the extra damage on a crit, which is .34125, and we get an average of about 8.97 damage with this first attack.

If we instead make a Brutal Strike, we've got a 50% chance to hit, but our damage is now 1d6+1d10+8, or 17, or 8.5, plus a 1-in-20 chance to add 9 (1d6+1d10) to that, or .45 damage, giving us a total average damage of 8.95 damage with that first attack - which is only .02 damage off on average (basically negligible) and we also get a powerful secondary effect.

The reasons I think this encourages dual-wielding is twofold:

The first is that weapons that deal more damage are going to make critting more attractive - the extra d10 of damage doesn't thrill me as much with Brutal Strike if my weapon would already be dealing 1d10 more on a crit.

Also, if I'm dual-wielding, I'm going to be getting two additional attacks that will benefit from Advantage, rather than just one.

Honestly, we could look into the math of this in a lot of scenarios.

The caveat to this math is that, at this level, a monster with an AC of 20 is pretty rare - we're probably going to get a higher chance to hit overall, which dilutes the power of critical hits and will favor Brutal Strike (which of course can still crit, but is not reliant on advantage to get that extra damage).

    Like Brutal Critical, Brutal Strike gets two improvements at levels 13 and 17.

At 13, you get two new options for your Brutal Strike:

Staggering Blow gives the target Disadvantage on the next saving throw it makes, and it can't make Opportunity Attacks until the start of your next turn.

    Curiously, I think technically, as written, there's no expiration to this saving throw effect - meaning that if the monster flees before it needs to make a saving throw, it might have disadvantage the next time you face it - maybe even years later. I think realistically we should just make this until the start of your next turn.

Sundering Blow gives the next attack roll made by someone other than you against the target a bonus to the attack equal to your Rage Damage.

    This is interesting, as I think it might be one of the few times a class feature gives a flat bonus to an attack roll rather than rolling a die or just granting advantage.

At 17, the improvement is simpler: the bonus damage of a Brutal Strike increases to 2d10. At this stage I think it's almost always going to be more overall damage than the higher chance to hit and crit you get with advantage, perhaps unless you're using a weapon that has a lot of extra damage dice, like the Adz of Annam.

    And really, that's kind of the point. Brutal Critical encouraged you to go for critical hits, but even if you used something like a Butcher's Bib or multiclassed into Champion Fighter, the 19% chance to deal an extra 3d12 damage is probably not going to be as good as a 60% to deal an extra 2d10 (though they're close) and the secondary effects make any rare cases in which the damage should swing the other way still make this a more worthwhile feature.

Breaking Down the Basics of What 2024 Will Be Doing with 5th Edition

 5th Edition is the most popular D&D edition ever, and while there are differing opinions on why that is the case - whether it's the accessibility compared to crunchier versions of the game in the past or if it's because of pop culture exposure - the fact is that if you play D&D, there's a very strong chance you either got started with 5E (like me) or it's your default system for running fantasy TTRPGs.

And that's why, rather than coming out with a full new 6th Edition, Wizards of the Coast is marking D&D's 50th anniversary with updated, revised core rulebooks that are, in theory, compatible with all the existing 5E products that have come out since 2014.

We've gotten 9 "Unearthed Arcana" playtests (though because one of these was added beyond the planned 10, we're officially only on "Playtest 8.") There are some big ideas that have been put forward in them, but also a lot of walking back of some of the more radical ideas, like three universal spell lists or class groups (the latter of which had very little downside, but oh well).

Until we have the 2024 Player's Handbook in front of us, we can't say for certain whether any of this stuff is going to stick around, but there are elements that have received glowing reviews in testing that are almost certain to stay.

If you've been keeping up with the Unearthed Arcana articles coming out in the past year or so, this will all be pretty old news, but if you haven't, here's what to look out for:

Ability Score Bonuses Are Tied to Background, Not Species (Also, "Race" is now "Species")

    In all honesty, this change has effectively been in place since Tasha's Cauldron of Everything, but officially, now, Gnomes are not inherently smarter than Orcs and Dwarves aren't inherently stronger than Elves. Your ability score bonuses will be based on the background you choose and not your ancestral lineage.

Custom Backgrounds Are Assumed:

    In case you were worried, then, that to have a decent Fighter you'd have to go with the Soldier background, at least as of the last time they tested this (which was either Playtest 2 or 3,) while backgrounds like Acolyte or Charlatan are still in the book, they're presented as "sample backgrounds," while you'll be able to use, but ultimately you'll be able to swap things out as you see fit - maybe you don't really care about having a bonus to Intelligence as a Charlatan and instead want to take Constitution (you've endured getting beaten up by marks who got wise and have built up a tolerance for pain) or Wisdom (you've gotten better at reading your marks and spotting a hidden blade).

Feats are Core Rules:

    Rather than the oft-forgotten background features in the 2014 version, Backgrounds will now grant every character a Feat at level 1. However, feats are also now divided into different categories. 1st level Feats grant a general benefit, while 4th level feats (which can be taken at any level you could take an ability score improvement) will grant both a benefit and a single one-point bump to an ability score. Feats are no longer an optional rule in the sense that DMs won't be able to decide not to allow them at the table (though of course they can in the sense that the DM can always disallow any character option, though I think most will allow them,) but the default option for a feat will be... Ability Score Improvement, which works just as it has since 2014, only now it's listed as a feat.

    However, we should take a moment to reiterate that 4th level feats will all come with a single ability score bump. This will likely make them more attractive, as while it will be harder to cap out your primary ability, you're still making progress on it even if you pick up a bunch of things like Sharpshooter and Crossbow Expert along the way.

Hybrid Species for All, Meaning No More Half-Species:

    The 2024 PHB will see the elimination of the Half-Elf and Half-Orc options. Orcs will then be added as one of the core species, along with the Goliath (which is seeing a big redesign). Characters with mixed heritages will now simply choose one of their ancestries to represent their statistics mechanically. So, a traditional Half Orc can be built as either a Human or an Orc, and a traditional Half Elf can be represented with the Elf or Human options (as an aside, this is actually what happened with Elrond and his brother Elros in Tolkien's Legendarium, both born of elf and human parents, but with Elrond choosing the way of the elves and Elros choosing the way of humanity). But this will also mean that if you want to play a half-Dwarf, quarter-Halfling, quarter-Goblin, you can simply do so and use any of those to represent them.

All Classes Get Subclasses at Level 3 Now:

    Every class now begins at level 1 without a specific subclass, and that decision gets delayed until level 3. Clerics, Druids, Sorcerers, Warlocks, and Wizards now wait a little longer to choose their subclass. The other levels at which subclass features remain the same (there was a period in the testing where this had also been standardized, but that was walked back).

Inspiration is Now Heroic Advantage:

    The distinction between Bardic Inspiration, a core class feature, and Inspiration, a reward for the DM to hand to players, has historically caused a lot of confusion. This should help clear that up.

Actions Are More Clearly Defined:

    When you cast a spell, use a magic item, or otherwise perform a bit of magic, this uses the Magic Action. This is one of those subtle changes that will likely not affect much, but it does open up a back door for certain features. For example, the Eldritch Knight Fighter can cast first cantrips and then any spells at the cost of some of their attacks while using the Attack Action. Fighters' Action Surge now allows any action except the Magic action, but Eldritch Knights will be able to get around that because they usually won't be casting magic with the Magic action.

Weapon Mastery:

    One of the bigger new systems being introduced, Weapon Mastery is a feature that is currently gained by Barbarians, Fighters, Paladins, Rangers, and Rogues (and sometimes gained from subclasses) that adds bonus effects when you attack with particular kinds of weapons. This adds a lot of new tactical options, allowing you to slow enemies, push them around knock them prone, and get various other benefits. Thus, there will now be a functional difference between a Battle Axe and a Longsword (assuming they don't have the same mastery - as of Playtest 8, they do not).

Various Class Changes:

    Going into all of the various changes with the 12 PHB classes would take far longer than this already long post. Generally speaking, most of the core systems remain the same. Spellcasting is basically the same as it was, and attacking with weapons works basically the same.

    Classes remain associated with their core themes - Barbarians will still typically be unarmored beefcakes going into Rages, Rogues will still be sneaky punks fighting dirty, and Wizards will still be going absolutely broke trying to copy as many spells into their spellbook as possible. But in most cases, there are some new ideas that add a little to the classes and some areas where stuff that wasn't working too well is cleaned up a bit.

    If you ask my opinion, I think most classes are becoming a little more powerful, but it's hard to comment on spellcasters until we see how the various spells have been reworked.

    As a note, though, each of these classes could be labeled as "Class Name" B, because officially you can still play the 2014 version of, say, the Cleric even if your fellow players are all playing the 2024 versions of their classes. That being said, I think in almost every case, you're going to probably prefer playing the new one.

    I think there's going to be some power creep with these new books, but rather than nerfing more powerful classes (though we've already seen broken spells like Conjure Woodland Beings utterly redesigned) I think instead we're going to see monsters buffed as well, meaning that this extra power will be balanced against tougher foes.

Potential New Systems:

    As a bit of a surprise, we got a small Unearthed Arcana post in October that detailed a "Bastion" system, which is a means by which players can have a home base - sort of player housing for D&D, with various facilities that will, over time, generate useful items and bonuses.

    We haven't seen a lot beyond that, but it does suggest that there's stuff we're not seeing in the public playtest that could shake the game up. Still, this doesn't appear to be poised to take over the core gameplay systems.

And there we go. These are what I think are the biggest elements of what we can expect to see next year. It's very much a refinement rather than an overhaul, but I think when you add up all the pieces, it should feel like a welcome refresh to 5E, and I'm confident I'll be running things with the new rules when they come out.

Compatibility Check: Soulknife Rogue

 Unlike the Drunken Master Monk, the Soulknife, since its introduction in Tasha's Cauldron of Everything, has often been considered among the best Rogue subclasses - it's certainly one that I have wanted to play (I've never played a Rogue of 3rd level or higher in D&D, only getting to try out my Dhampir Rogue concept in the House of Lament, which ends with the party hitting 3rd level).

Given WotC's emphatically reiterated goal of making the 2024 Core Rulebooks backwards compatible with all previously-existing 5E books, I thought it would be good to pass through some of the various subclasses from books past and see how well they would work with the latest UA versions of each class.

The most recent playtest Rogue was way back in June, but thanks in large part to the very cool new Cunning Strike feature, I think the reception was very positive, and it's one of the classes that went to internal testing and refinement.

As with the Drunken Master, we're going to go subclass-feature by subclass-feature and see how each works with the new Rogue.

Level 3:

Psionic Power:

This is the base psionic ability that the class builds on, and while it shares a lot of mechanics with the Psi Warrior Fighter, it's ultimately kind of a closed system (though I'd allow a Fighter/Rogue multiclass to use the Psionic Energy Dice they get for each subclass to fuel either set of features).

Rogues are still going to be making skill checks and have a reason to like getting telepathic communication, so I think this is all fine.

Psychic Blades:

Ok, to be fair, this feature already had an existing problem, which is that you couldn't get magical versions of your Psychic Blades. It's the old Monk problem, but not solved with things like the new +X Wraps of Unarmed Mastery. I'm hoping the new DMG will have items that can boost the power of summoned weapons (including the Path of the Beast Barbarian natural weapons).

But Psychic Blades also runs into a new problem, which is that Rogues, along with basically every other class that has any reason to use a weapon (except the latest Monk - the one sour note in an otherwise very welcome buff,) get Weapon Mastery.

While the Psychic Blades do the damage that a Shortsword and a Dagger would (though they deal Psychic instead of Piercing damage) they don't actually have an official weapon type. And because of that, they won't have any Weapon Mastery.

This doesn't technically break the subclass, but I do think it is somewhat punishing, as all the other Rogues are going to be happily benefitting from things like Nick (particularly useful given that Rogues like having a spare bonus action) and Vex (getting tons of advantage and thus Sneak Attacks? Sign me up!)

I think there's a fix you could make here where you classify the weapons as a Shortsword and a Dagger with altered properties, but that will require some errata.

Soul Blades:

At level 9, you can start spending your Psionic Energy dice to boost the attack rolls of attacks that miss, but this only works with your Psychic Blades. In other words, you're forced to choose between whether part of your subclass works or part of your class works. The teleportation aspect of this should work just fine, as while it thematically uses your psychic blades, it's really just a flavor thing.

Psychic Veil:

Your 13th level ability to turn invisible should continue to work fine.

Rend Mind:

Once again, we have a feature that requires you use your Psychic Blades. Here, doing so can allow you to stun a target. This is somewhat similar to the "Knock Out" Cunning Strike option gained at 14th level, but they use different resources, so I think there's enough difference to keep it from being redundant.

    So, ultimately, we're just seeing a bit of an exacerbation of the issues with the summoned weapons that are at the core of this subclass. Giving up the potential for magic weapons was something less of a cost, especially because Homing Strikes (part of Soul Blades) could make up for the lack of a +1 bonus on a magic weapon and Rogues naturally care a little less about damage bonuses because so much of their power comes from Sneak Attack.

But Weapon Masteries could potentially be huge game changers for Rogues. Dual-wielding has always been very powerful for Rogues, and so the Nick mastery is going to be extremely attractive. And then Vex can potentially make Sneak Attack much more reliable.

Nothing here is technically "broken," in the sense that it doesn't work anymore or is rendered redundant by a new class feature. But we can see that the Soul Knife is being pulled in too directions by incompatible features.

Plane Shift, Teleport, Dream of the Blue Veil, and Class Feature Plot Points

 One of the most exciting reasons why I wanted to play a Wizard in my current campaign (or rather, the current campaign in which I'm a player and not a DM) was Plane Shift.

Plane Shift is a 7th level spell, so even dedicated spellcasters can only get access to it after hitting 13th level - which is beyond the point most campaigns get to, as they tend to cap out somewhere between level 10 and 12.

But with the new revisions coming to D&D, along with Matthew Colville's entertainingly and excitingly candid videos about designing his company's own tactical fantasy TTRPG, I've been revisiting a lot of my assumptions.

To take a step back, I'd say the classes I've played the most of are an Eldritch Knight Fighter, a Hexblade Warlock, my current Scribes Wizard, and a Drunken Master Monk (the Warlock and Monk being part of Adventurer's League, with the Warlock being my character going through Baldur's Gate: Descent into Avernus and the Monk simply going through a lot of one-off AL adventures).

The Wizard is only level 6 - lower than any of those other three classes (our Wildemount Campaign has only been able to play roughly every other week and is a relatively slow-paced, story-focused campaign, and also I think my DM just tends to run things at a slower pace).

But the point is, of the three I've gotten into tier 3, the Warlock is the only pure caster, but Warlocks are also very weird - they do get spells at the same power level as other full spellcasters, but they don't get as broad a selection. Granted, Warlocks also suffer a bit in their high-level spell options (I think I took Finger of Death because it was thematically right for a Hexblade Warlock - I really played up the Shadowfell connection).

But I've been thinking:

Does it even make sense for a player character to have a spell like Plane Shift?

Traveling from Plane to Plane is a big deal. Consider, for example, that in real world religious traditions, a living person traveling to, say, Heaven, is basically an unprecedented miracle. I mean, I think in Christianity I believe (and sorry to any Theologians who know better) Mary is the only living person ever to just go to Heaven without dying (though I guess you could argue that Jesus rises from the dead and then, while alive again, then goes bodily into Heaven). It's an enormous deal.

The Planes of D&D are not quite like those in real-world religion, though there's clearly a lot of inspiration from them. Mount Celestia is somewhat based on Purgatory from Dante Alighieri's Divine Comedy, and the Nine Hells are uncontroversially based on his Inferno. Hades and Elysium are naturally based on Greek myth (ignoring that Hades in Greek reckoning would be really True Neutral, and Elysium is technically just the nice part of Hades). Ysgard is largely inspired by Norse myth.

The point being: travel between these planes of existence (more than just worlds) marks a grand moment in almost any fantasy/mythological story.

So, should there even be a mechanical basis for it in the first place?

One of the concepts in the Planescape setting is that planar travel is far more often accomplished via portals than spells. This does, for one thing, make it easier to have a plane-hopping adventure at lower levels. But it also simplifies the geography of an adventure.

As a DM, if you have a location on another plane where you want your players to go, you can build around that - you can put the portal to that plane in a particular place - maybe a remote place, such that there's an entire adventure about just reaching the portal. And then you can have that portal be some place specific in relation to the area on the other plane you want the party to get to - maybe there's some dread fortress within Minauros, the third layer of the Nine Hells, and the party needs to raid the vault of some legendary miser who became a powerful devil after they died in order to secure some treasure they need for... McGuffin purposes.

Getting there becomes a potentially really cool adventure - having to find a way into the Nine Hells and then perhaps only arriving in Avernus (I can't recall, but I vaguely remember there being some rule that you can only go directly to Avernus, though obviously DMs can make it work however they like). From there, you get an adventure where you navigate the literal hellscape and cross the endless battlefields of Avernus, traverse the iron city of Dis, and then enter the fetid swamps of Minauros before reaching this fortress.

But if they're 13th level and have a Wizard with Plane Shift and the right tuning fork to get to Baator, one 7th level spell is all they need to arrive at their destination.

That tuning fork as a material component is there, of course, for a reason: to ensure that the DM ultimately has control over whether they can go there or not.

But perhaps that's too binary of a switch.

See, I think it is part of the fantasy of being a Wizard or other powerful spellcaster that you should be able to do such awesome things as traveling between planes.

But I also think that the spell slot system is kind of ill-suited to this kind of epic spellcasting.

Ultimately, the spell slot system is built to be a limited resource that forces players to judge how much they can expend to survive the day. But it's also meant to turn the "day" (or more accurately the interval between long rests) into the ultimate unit of D&D player power.

While there are downtime rules in D&D, the game kind of struggles with them, and different campaigns can make vastly different use of them. The campaign I'm running right now is designed to involve long periods of downtime (I'm planning to have a year-long gap after the current adventure) and so there is plenty of opportunity to engage in long-term projects. But I've played in campaigns where we haven't spent a single day not adventuring.

And honestly, that latter way of doing things kind of feels like the way 5th Edition is intended to be played. Other than hit dice or more than one level of exhaustion, you get everything back on a long rest (and the 2024 rules will also give you all your hit dice back). This means that you'll be fresh as a daisy as long as you can get your beauty rest, but it also means that there's no real stakes to expending vast resources if you have any sort of time on your hands.

(As a side note, I've imagined running a campaign where the party is cursed at the beginning to die in 13 days, which I figure would really push the players to try to progress as much as possible and push themselves to the limit without just taking a long rest if things get hard. Obviously would want player buy-in at the start.)

If we compare two 7th level spells, we can see how there's a kind of disparity here.

Delayed Blast Fireball is a powerful Evocation spell that can deal a lot of damage in the right combat situation (ideally giving it some time to charge up in power). That's the sort of thing that a combat-focused adventurer like most D&D characters are would want to have ready to use once a day.

Plane Shift, on the other hand, is a spell you basically want to use ideally on a day when you don't have other pressing matters, so that, as a Wizard, you can swap it out and prepare Delayed Blast Fireball, or perhaps only keep prepared to use as an emergency exit button.

Would a campaign not be better served by simply having the party find a portal?

Or, alternatively, should a powerful spellcaster need to prepare some special ritual, some grand project, to travel to another plane?

I mean, consider that in the real world, if you want to fly to another continent, that's a pretty big commitment of money and needs to be planned well in advance in most cases.

In a certain way, I can almost see now how and why I'm drawn to half-casters and third-casters - lower-level spells tend to be more immediate, practical, tactical things. To be sure there are plenty of those at high levels (Meteor Swarm is great if you want to roll all the dice for all the damage now).

But also, I think that this sort of spell is kind of why the game has a reputation for breaking down at higher levels. Things like "Scry and Fry," where you cast Scrying on the boss monster or key treasure of some castle and then cast Teleport while looking at that place to automatically get in safely, right at the target destination, forces DMs to come up with all manner of contrivances to prevent such shenanigans.

I'm curious about MCDM's intentions to make their game go only to 10th level. In a vacuum, of course, this could mean nothing. Level 20 means nearly godlike power in D&D while it was historically the "just out of the racial starting territories" in World of Warcraft (before various level squishes and level scaling were introduced).

But common wisdom says that a lot of D&D campaigns only go up to about level 10 anyway - and there's plenty of fun to be had at level 10, with pure casters getting 5 levels of spells, and most classes starting to really feel like they've hit their stride. Would we, actually, feel the game needed more levels if there wasn't already a tradition of 20 levels? Indeed, in previous editions there were "epic level" sourcebooks that took players up to level 30, but isn't level 11-20 kind of already "epic level?"

But even if we accept and indeed want to see adventurers hitting higher levels (and I think I do - certainly as a player, and as a DM I feel I've gotten pretty used to running stuff for tier 3 characters - just in time for them to hit tier 4) I do think these sort of instant-travel spells, particularly the ones that take you to new planes or new worlds, might actually be a case of mechanicalizing something that should be more of a plot point.

Dungeon Dudes Content On D&D Beyond

 D&D Beyond's sale to Wizards of the Coast a few years ago seemed like it would be a mixed blessing.

On one hand, the possibility of uniting the physical and digital purchase of books was raised - in practice we've really seen this instead as bundles that are, admittedly, at a discounted price, but not the hope of "buy the book, get the digital version free" that some of would have loved to see.

But it also signaled a direction that some have warned about, which would be the narrowing of D&D into only its official releases. D&D Beyond initially had only a little non-WotC-produced content thanks to the inclusion of Matt Mercer's Blood Hunter class, but that seemed like a bit of a one-off.

Last year (earlier this year? What is time?) the company surprised everyone by announcing that Tal'dorei Campaign Setting Reborn, which is published by Darrington Press, Critical Role's publishing wing, would be added to the service as well.

This was a big deal, but I think I, and I imagine a lot of other D&D players, assumed that this was kind of a special, privileged thing for Critical Role in particular because of its profound success and role in evangelizing D&D - many credit it, along with Stranger Things, with the vast popularity of 5th Edition. (For me it was Penny Arcade's Acquisitions Incorporated games at PAX that got me curious - and it was my players in my first campaign that turned me on to Critical Role.)

But now they're putting the Dungeon Dudes' stuff up there.

The Dungeon Dudes I primarily know for their YouTube channel, where Monty Martin and Kelly McLaughlin talk various D&D topics, and generally have a fun and affable vibe. But they also publish D&D books, and their adventure, Dungeons of Drakkenheim, is getting published on D&D Beyond.

The potential here is huge.

See, I think that because D&D Beyond is such a useful tool, it's very popular to use - I don't even have a physical character sheet for the Wizard I'm currently playing. And I've seen in the various silly memes about D&D on social media that the inclusion of the Blood Hunter on the service has sort of allowed it to slip in as almost a core class (not quite as ubiquitous, but it's part of the conversation.)

I genuinely believe that by including something on D&D Beyond, Wizards of the Coast is signaling to the vast player base - not all of whom are constantly watching obscure YouTube channels, browsing the DM's Guild, or hanging out in game stores - that "this here is real D&D stuff."

It's easy to imagine a world where the money people at Hasbro insist that D&D Beyond only push WotC-created content to ensure a full vertical integration and shut out independent creators as publishers.

But despite the recognizability of D&D as a brand, the game really thrives on being a broad community with lots of contributors. This game is just better when more people are tinkering with it, more people are contributing to it. And there's no way to monopolize it without cutting off the game's own air supply.

Now, do I trust Hasbro to fully open the gates and let D&D thrive? Maybe not.

In an ideal world, whatever company owns D&D would see it as something of a position of stewardship - something to safeguard and provide as a public good in the same way that broadcast networks used to provide news services (to see how that broke down, watch the movie Network, one of the greatest satires of all time).

This is actually something of a step in that direction.

Compatibility Check: Drunken Master Monk 2024

 One of the big messages WotC is pushing with the 2024 Core Rulebooks is that they'll be backwards compatible. While many of the PHB subclasses are getting updates in the new PHB, in theory any of the Wizard or Cleric subclasses from 2014 and any of the other subclasses in Xanathar's Guide to Everything, Tasha's Cauldron of Everything, and other sourcebooks from the past nine years should also work alongside the new versions of the core classes (in theory you should even be able to use the old Way of Shadow with the new Monk or the new Warrior of the Hand with the 2014 Monk... though I wouldn't recommend either).

With a lot of excitement over the Playtest 8 (really 9, but they're not counting Bastions and Cantrips in the numbering) giving us a Monk that, dare we say, might actually finally be caught up with the other classes in terms of power, I thought I'd revisit one of my earliest D&D characters - the Wood Elf Drunken Master Monk, Kaz Kariko.

The Way of the Drunken Master is one of the subclasses out of Xanathar's, and admittedly, it's not considered a very powerful one. But flavor-wise, Drunken Boxing is a really cool style of martial arts that, admittedly, might only exist in Kung Fu movies or as a performative style, rather than being a historically effective fighting style.

Still, the concept of it is really cool - through unpredictable movements that draw inspiration from someone who is stumbling drunk, you become difficult to read and extremely slippery.

Playtest 8 gives us the second version of the Monk in the current round of testing, which has done a lot to enhance various aspects of the class, such as making some mobility features free, allowing us to deflect all attacks rather than just ranged ones, and broadly giving us more ways to regain Discipline Points - the new name for Ki Points.

We do, here, come across the first thing we'll technically need some kind of update document to clarify, because old subclasses will refer to Ki Points and the new class does not have any of those. But that's a pretty minor quibble.

So, let's go through the Drunken Master subclass features and determine if they work with the new version of the Monk, if they create some redundancies, and whether they've gotten any better or worse thanks to the newer design.

3rd level:

Drunken Masters get two features at level 3. The first is some bonus proficiencies - in the Performance skill and in Brewer's Supplies. While I try to make tool proficiencies worthwhile when I run my games, they are admittedly sometimes ignored. Performance, likewise, is pretty rarely made use of, so this whole half of the level is kind of "ribbon" features.

Drunken Technique is a bit more substantial. When you use Flurry of Blows, you also gain the benefit of the Disengage action and your walking speed increases by 10 feet.

    Disengaging is now pretty easy as a Monk, given that the new Patient Defense allows us to Disengage as a Bonus Action for free (and we can spend a DP to get it along with a dash and doubled jump distance with Step of the Wind). That said, getting it along with both a movement speed bonus and a Flurry of Blows does still help a lot with hit-and-run tactics. There's nothing here that is incompatible or redundant with the new Monk, and arguably this gets a little buff with level 10 giving us a third Flurry of Blows attack.

    Now, I think you could still argue that this would need a bit of a buff to make it a full level's worth of features, but our main focus here is just seeing if the new Monk breaks this subclass.

6th level:

Our one 6th level feature is Tipsy Sway, but this is actually two features wrapped up together.

Leap to Your Feet allows you to spend 5 feet of movement, rather than half your speed, to stand up from Prone.

    The only real downside to this feature is that getting knocked prone is not super common (not super rare either, to be fair). But yeah, this seems to function fine with the new Monk, and will save you a lot of feet of movement.

Redirect Attack lets you use a reaction when a creature misses you with a melee attack roll and spend a Ki Point (or DP) to cause that attack to hit a different creature of your choice (not the attacker) that you can see within 5 feet of you.

    There is definitely some overlap here with the new Deflect Attack, but they're triggered in entirely different circumstances. And because of that, while both eat your reaction, there's actually some decent synergy here - if a monster hits you, you can Deflect the attack, and if they miss, you can redirect it. Deflect Attack is arguably more important to use, though, as it's a big part of your defensive capabilities, while this is actually more of an offensive ability.

    The key to this feature is that you can create an auto-hit of friendly fire between foes. That's really powerful when you have hard-hitting monsters, but hard-hitting monsters are also the kind you want to have Deflect Attack ready for. So, while this isn't a true redundancy, I think Deflect Attack becomes a more important use of your reaction - this becomes great if you know that the monster is making its last attack and misses, but unless they've missed you on all of their attacks, you've probably used Deflect Attack already instead.

11th level:

Drunkard's Luck allows you to make d20 test that you would otherwise have disadvantage on as a straight roll if you spend 2 DP.

    There's nothing about this feature that gets broken. The only problem with it is that it really, really sucks. Two Ki Points/DP only to cancel disadvantage (not gain advantage) is entirely too expensive, and I'd argue that it's too expensive at one. But again, this is not broken by the new system. It's just already brokenly bad.

17th level:

Intoxicated Frenzy is the Drunken Master's 17th level feature, which improves your Flurry of Blows in the following way: when you use Flurry of Blows, you can take three additional attacks (on top of the normal two, for a total of five) as long as each Flurry of Blows attack targets a different creature.

    So, the first question to ask is: do we keep the number of additional attacks the same or the total the same? Because the current Monk gets three attacks as part of a Flurry of Blows at level 10 and higher. But this feature explicitly says three additional attacks for a total of five. This is very shaky rules-parsing, but I would favor the "three additional attacks" because the clarification that it's a total of five is in parentheses (I assume this reminder is to ensure people didn't think that it would simply be three Flurry of Blows attacks total).

    However, even if we take the generous (and I think more correct) interpretation, there's still a bit of a dilution of this power. If our Flurry of Blows is two attacks and we can get five, that's 150% more attacks (not counting our Attack action). If it's three attacks and we get six, that's only a 100% increase.

    The rider that these must be against separate targets, as well, has always been a real weight on this as a capstone subclass feature, because it goes against most of the common wisdom of how melee classes work - you're really rewarded in D&D for focusing down individual monsters, and spreading your damage like this could help against very weak foes, but it might be more valuable in a round to land three attacks on one target rather than one attack on six targets.

So, in summation:

The only feature here that is truly broken in the sense that it's not clear how it even works anymore is Intoxicated Frenzy, but I'd say that the appeal of Tipsy Sway has also taken a beating here.

Personally, I'd love to see an overhaul of this subclass because I adore its flavor (while it's probably the closest after the Open Hand/Warrior of the Hand to portraying a traditional martial artist, I find the overall vibe of this so much more fun - if Open Hand is Bruce Lee, this is Jackie Chan - who starred in the Drunken Master movies, so... not subtle.)

Anyway, as much as WotC tries to say there will be no conversion documents required to use the 2024 Core Rulebooks, it's clear that there will be little subtle things that could require a new clarification.

The bigger question, of course, is whether they'll revisit these existing subclasses to revise them and bring them in line power-wise with the newer design. And I'm of two minds on this: on one hand, I'd love to get a badass Drunken Master that is powerful and cool. On the other hand, I don't want to see the next ten years simply rehashing and revising all the existing things from the last nine at the expense of new concepts and ideas.