Just got around to looking at the latest UA

[Spectre9000]

Are they just trolling us now? It was bad enough they cut down to once a month, but they haven't released anything substantial that could see real play in months now. I can't believe they've run out of ideas. 3.5, Pathfinder, and all the Homebrew material should be more than enough to draw new ideas from.

[Easy_Lee]

If I'm being open minded, I would assume they're working on D&D Beyond right now. Whatever team they dedicated to that is not doing UA with that time, and I doubt they hired a team of contractors to do Beyond without any internal management.

[Spectre9000]

If I'm being open minded, I would assume they're working on D&D Beyond right now. Whatever team they dedicated to that is not doing UA with that time, and I doubt they hired a team of contractors to do Beyond without any internal management.

I don't see what the hype is about D&D Beyond... I have no interest in ever using it. Partly due to just not seeing a need for it, but mainly because it requires I have a twitch account to sign up. Who thought that was a good idea? Roll20 is beyond adequate for online D&D gaming and I use it every week.

[Easy_Lee]

I don't see what the hype is about D&D Beyond... I have no interest in ever using it. Partly due to just not seeing a need for it, but mainly because it requires I have a twitch account to sign up. Who thought that was a good idea? Roll20 is beyond adequate for online D&D gaming and I use it every week.

I haven't seen any hype. It seems as though WotC dropped the ball with beyond. It could have been cool, but sadly isn't due to required Twitch integration, ads, and having to purchase materials twice.

[Anonymouswizard]

If I'm being open minded, I would assume they're working on D&D Beyond right now. Whatever team they dedicated to that is not doing UA with that time, and I doubt they hired a team of contractors to do Beyond without any internal management.

You're kinder than I am. I assumed it was to lower our expectations so that we won't react negatively to anything in XGtE (joke's on them, I'm not buying the book until they release official pdfs). We might complain about how bad 'detailed exploration for unimaginative people' is, but we'll still be saying 'at least it isn't greyhawk experience or three pillars initiative'.

Plus don't remind me of beyond. That character creation program disguised as a pdf replacement *shudders*.

[Finieous]

Are they just trolling us now? It was bad enough they cut down to once a month, but they haven't released anything substantial that could see real play in months now.

It's free content for you to playtest and provide feedback on if you want. It's not a magazine for which you paid a subscription. What makes you feel entitled to a certain quantity and quality of this material?

I can't believe they've run out of ideas. 3.5, Pathfinder, and all the Homebrew material should be more than enough to draw new ideas from.

Perhaps they're specifically trying not to emulate the profusion of 3.5, Pathfinder and Homebrew material with their official content. Maybe they got what they needed for their expansion book, and the volume of new playtest material will decline now. Maybe they're just busy with a big new release coming up and the convention season underway.

You must really like playtesting to get upset about the amount of playtest material being released!

[jaappleton]

For clarity:

They went back to once a month. That's what it was before.

[Gorgo]

One theory is that they've finalized the content of XGtE and don't want to release anything significant until that book ships in November and resets what's official content and what's experimental.

[Maxilian]

I like to think that they are play testing some of the XGtE material just to make sure it comes out as balanced as they can.

[Beelzebubba]

Are they just trolling us now? It was bad enough they cut down to once a month, but they haven't released anything substantial that could see real play in months now. I can't believe they've run out of ideas. 3.5, Pathfinder, and all the Homebrew material should be more than enough to draw new ideas from.

If you just want ideas, there is literally 40 years of D&D material to draw upon.

There is no reason to put that kind of pressure on the current team.

[Kite474]

If you just want ideas, there is literally 40 years of D&D material to draw upon.

There is no reason to put that kind of pressure on the current team.

Yeah "pressure" im sure the team is utterly busy working on a system everyone stopped caring about when they announced prices, a book in which the community did all the hard work, or maybe another adventure that takes all the good parts from a previous one that no one except the really old folks remembers.


Look I want to be on Wizards side. But unless you somehow cant get enough of adventures then they have basically told you to scram and things like the new XP system and initiative do not inspire confidence.

[Finieous]

a book in which the community did all the hard work

Wow, what book is this? I know I'm a slacker, but I haven't done ****!

[Anonymouswizard]

Just for fun, lists of UA I'd like to see.
-Planescape, random tieflings, outlines for portals, advanced planar adventuring.
-Mystic v4.
-Dark Sun, defiling, elemental clerics, psionic subclasses for most core classes.
-Spelljamming rules, I'd never use them but it would be cool for Spelljammer fans.
-A bunch of new races. Don't really care what.
-More feats, maybe in the theme of backgrounds.
-Detailed outdoor adventuring rules.

I know it's insanely player focused, but it gives the idea of what I want, crunchy stuff that adds instead of replaces.

[Kite474]

Just for fun, lists of UA I'd like to see.
-Planescape, random tieflings, outlines for portals, advanced planar adventuring.
-Mystic v4.
-Dark Sun, defiling, elemental clerics, psionic subclasses for most core classes.
-Spelljamming rules, I'd never use them but it would be cool for Spelljammer fans.
-A bunch of new races. Don't really care what.
-More feats, maybe in the theme of backgrounds.
-Detailed outdoor adventuring rules.

I know it's insanely player focused, but it gives the idea of what I want, crunchy stuff that adds instead of replaces.

I doubt we will get 1,3, and 4 anytime soon. Mainly because Wizards seems to stay as far away from other settings unless they can be conected to The Realms

In terms of races well get the rest of the FR hogepoge

For outdoor rules I have no idea. Wizards could do with it though considering how much they want to support "Three Pillars" but only support combat.

Background ish feats we kind of got with the skill feats

Mystic will probably get published before a V4

[Tetrasodium]

Just for fun, lists of UA I'd like to see.
-Planescape, random tieflings, outlines for portals, advanced planar adventuring.
-Mystic v4.
-Dark Sun, defiling, elemental clerics, psionic subclasses for most core classes.
-Spelljamming rules, I'd never use them but it would be cool for Spelljammer fans.
-A bunch of new races. Don't really care what.
-More feats, maybe in the theme of backgrounds.
-Detailed outdoor adventuring rules.

I know it's insanely player focused, but it gives the idea of what I want, crunchy stuff that adds instead of replaces.

I want some proper eberron books for 5e, but warforged/shifter/changelingartificer/etc that are actually good enough to play & are eberron themed would be a nice start. I'm tired of my players needing to say things like "shifter/warforged is beyond awful but I really want to play one, can I use $race & we just say it's a shifter/warforged?"

[MaxWilson]

Are they just trolling us now? It was bad enough they cut down to once a month, but they haven't released anything substantial that could see real play in months now. I can't believe they've run out of ideas. 3.5, Pathfinder, and all the Homebrew material should be more than enough to draw new ideas from.

Are you kidding? The recent UA isn't perfect, but exploring actual rules variants is exactly what UA should be--not just subclass bloat. It's nice to see Mearls put on his designer's hat and do stuff like this UA.

Leave the subclass bloat to the 3PP publishers and DM's Guild.

[Foxhound438]

One theory is that they've finalized the content of XGtE and don't want to release anything significant until that book ships in November and resets what's official content and what's experimental.

That's my bet. Probably more work on Mystic and Artificier after Xan's guide, and maybe some more classes as well. Think PHB2.

But in the mean time there are a lot of non-class related things that Unearthed Arcana can flesh out, like:

-crafting (even though we've had one, it was so vague it's basically worthless)
-falling speed per round without busting out the differential equations book
-more disease effects
-clarifying what's "magical" and what's not, so to make it clear what does and doesn't work in an anti-magic field (PF's ex, su, ma system worked well)
-character backstory guides... I know, this seems like something you shouldn't ever need, but god damn if my playgroup couldn't use some help developing a "character" to go with their "build"
-rules on choking, arm bars, and other ways to make grappling a viable plan of attack
-object statistics, and not the crappy generic stats based exclusively on size like in the DMG.
-situational bonuses+penalties that aren't just advantage or disadvantage. Something like a +2 to attacks for having high ground, or +1 when attacking a grappled target

Granted, I could generate all of those things myself and implement them in my own games, but I don't expect anything I come up with to be implemented by other DM's in my group. If it's WOTC content, it would at least be something that I could reference when a situation that a game I'm in brings doubt as to what should happen. Choking an enemy to unconsciousness has for certain come up in multiple campaigns that I've been in with new players, every time resulting in "there's not rules on that so you can't do it".

[MaxWilson]

That's my bet. Probably more work on Mystic and Artificier after Xan's guide, and maybe some more classes as well. Think PHB2.

But in the mean time there are a lot of non-class related things that Unearthed Arcana can flesh out, like:

-crafting (even though we've had one, it was so vague it's basically worthless)
-falling speed per round without busting out the differential equations book
-more disease effects
-clarifying what's "magical" and what's not, so to make it clear what does and doesn't work in an anti-magic field (PF's ex, su, ma system worked well)
-character backstory guides... I know, this seems like something you shouldn't ever need, but god damn if my playgroup couldn't use some help developing a "character" to go with their "build"
-rules on choking, arm bars, and other ways to make grappling a viable plan of attack
-object statistics, and not the crappy generic stats based exclusively on size like in the DMG.
-situational bonuses+penalties that aren't just advantage or disadvantage. Something like a +2 to attacks for having high ground, or +1 when attacking a grappled target

Granted, I could generate all of those things myself and implement them in my own games, but I don't expect anything I come up with to be implemented by other DM's in my group. If it's WOTC content, it would at least be something that I could reference when a situation that a game I'm in brings doubt as to what should happen. Choking an enemy to unconsciousness has for certain come up in multiple campaigns that I've been in with new players, every time resulting in "there's not rules on that so you can't do it".

+1, all of these are excellent ideas.

[Jama7301]

Alternate grapple rules would be incredibly fun.

[Zalabim]

a book in which the community did all the hard work,

Even if they printed a book consisting solely of direct quotes taken from various forum suggestions, it would still be hard work collecting the good ideas through all the internet noise and presenting them with an appealing layout instead of just grabbing whatever's popular and throwing it in a book.

That's my bet. Probably more work on Mystic and Artificier after Xan's guide, and maybe some more classes as well. Think PHB2.

But in the mean time there are a lot of non-class related things that Unearthed Arcana can flesh out, like:

-crafting (even though we've had one, it was so vague it's basically worthless)
-falling speed per round without busting out the differential equations book
-more disease effects
-clarifying what's "magical" and what's not, so to make it clear what does and doesn't work in an anti-magic field (PF's ex, su, ma system worked well)
-character backstory guides... I know, this seems like something you shouldn't ever need, but god damn if my playgroup couldn't use some help developing a "character" to go with their "build"
-rules on choking, arm bars, and other ways to make grappling a viable plan of attack
-object statistics, and not the crappy generic stats based exclusively on size like in the DMG.
-situational bonuses+penalties that aren't just advantage or disadvantage. Something like a +2 to attacks for having high ground, or +1 when attacking a grappled target

Granted, I could generate all of those things myself and implement them in my own games, but I don't expect anything I come up with to be implemented by other DM's in my group. If it's WOTC content, it would at least be something that I could reference when a situation that a game I'm in brings doubt as to what should happen. Choking an enemy to unconsciousness has for certain come up in multiple campaigns that I've been in with new players, every time resulting in "there's not rules on that so you can't do it".

+1, all of these are excellent ideas.

Like this. -1, those aren't all good ideas: Crafting might be book-worthy already after the last round of feedback; falling speed per round is too minor for a UA; disease and disease-likes have some room to grow; defining what's non-magical would be huge, messy, and necessarily incomplete (while they already do define what is magical, which should be sufficient); someone actually wrote a really neat "previous adventures for characters starting at higher levels" pdf which is real fun so I'd have to +2 this one (to make up for my global -1); if I see a repeat of AD&D's unarmed combat table I might choke someone myself; expanded object statistics would go well with weapon and armor degradation for the Dark Sun setting though that may not be what you had in mind; and more minor combat bonuses would best be delivered as pretty much what you already wrote (just say, "you can do that").

So numbering them 1-8:
1, 3, 5, 6, 7 and 8 could fill a UA, but 1 already has, and 6 and 8 probably shouldn't. If a player wants to choke someone to death with their bare hands, you probably shouldn't have forced them to use that new initiative variant I'm inclined to call that unarmed strikes while grappling.

Sorry for making an example out of you. Agreeing on 3 or 4 out of 8 is actually pretty good.

[Anonymouswizard]

I doubt we will get 1,3, and 4 anytime soon. Mainly because Wizards seems to stay as far away from other settings unless they can be conected to The Realms

In terms of races well get the rest of the FR hogepoge

For outdoor rules I have no idea. Wizards could do with it though considering how much they want to support "Three Pillars" but only support combat.

Background ish feats we kind of got with the skill feats

Mystic will probably get published before a V4

Sure, it was more a list of example stuff I'd be more than happy with.

But can someone please inform WotC that, while there are many people who like the Remembered Realms, there's also people who dislike them and prefer other settings. I'm not annoyed at the support the FR are getting, it's good they're supporting one of their flagship settings, I just wish they'd also pump out some support for other settings. Even if it's just an unofficial UA of decent rules.

I want some proper eberron books for 5e, but warforged/shifter/changelingartificer/etc that are actually good enough to play & are eberron themed would be a nice start. I'm tired of my players needing to say things like "shifter/warforged is beyond awful but I really want to play one, can I use $race & we just say it's a shifter/warforged?"

Sure, and if they don't want to publish these books and won't open DMsGuild, UA is the place to put the rules stuff. As I said, Forgotten Realms isn't annoying, only FR is annoying.

[McNinja]

If I'm being open minded, I would assume they're working on D&D Beyond right now. Whatever team they dedicated to that is not doing UA with that time, and I doubt they hired a team of contractors to do Beyond without any internal management.

Beyond is being developed by Curse, not WotC. The only influence WotC has on beyond is the pricing, that's it. Curse has a license to use the D&D IP, so jeremy crawford, mike mearls, etc, have literally no input on what happens with DDB.

[McNinja]

I haven't seen any hype. It seems as though WotC dropped the ball with beyond. It could have been cool, but sadly isn't due to required Twitch integration, ads, and having to purchase materials twice.

WotC didn't drop anything except the foreknowledge to release official PDFs.

Beyond is developed by Curse, which is owned by Twitch.tv. That's why there's twitch integration, because using twitch's login system is infinitely easier than creating your own from scratch.

WotC allows Curse to use their IP and has say in the pricing of the books. That's all.

[EvilAnagram]

a book in which the community did all the hard work,

Oh, child, I know you feel that whiteboard theorycrafting and posting half-formed "fixes" on forums is the "hard work," but a hell of a lot more hoes into writing a book than that.

[Theodoxus]

It doesn't seem like it would be too difficult for the community to do most of these suggestions. Unless you're really only wanting the WotC seal of approval...

There are a lot of good DMs who've already converted a ton of 3.P modules and adventure paths to 5th Ed. 3.P is really easy to convert (it's less conversion and more direct import with slight corrections). I don't see why 2nd Ed material - Darksun, for instance, would be much harder. Converting the psionics would be a little messy, since it would be an entirely new mechanic, and 2nd Ed psionics were pretty horrid... But there's no reason elemental clerics, muls, half-giants, defiler and preserver magic, etc couldn't be incorporated with minor tweaks into the 5E framework.

Google 5E crafting, there's a crapton of options from the simple to the wholly complex and everything in between...

And then there's DM Guild... which I'm not a fan of, the price points are all over the place and the quality is damn near impossible to ascertain without buying the stuff (something I'm loathe to do). But the community at least has a place to consolidate their ideas and are kinda sanctioned by WotC, if that's the primary concern.

Really though, it just sounds like most of you want someone else to do the work, so you can use it or poopoo it all...

[Tanarii]

Are you kidding? The recent UA isn't perfect, but exploring actual rules variants is exactly what UA should be--not just subclass bloat. It's nice to see Mearls put on his designer's hat and do stuff like this UA.

Leave the subclass bloat to the 3PP publishers and DM's Guild.

Exactly my feelings. UA is actually going in a useful direction.

Not as useful as the average Angry DM article. But we can't expect Mearls to hold himself to a gold standard any time soon, given his history.

[Anonymouswizard]

Exactly my feelings. UA is actually going in a useful direction.

Not as useful as the average Angry DM article. But we can't expect Mearls to hold himself to a gold standard any time soon, given his history.

I think we should agree to disagree, I find Angry to be about the copper standard while Mearls doesn't even get into coinage. This is of course just opinion, I like different types of games to Angry but in his nonangry moments he's actually written well and I can see where he's coming from.

These last two seem poorly thought out, like Mearls didn't fully develop them fully and shoved them out the door as quickly as possible. This is unfair for Greyhawk Initiative, he did develop that and with a lot of tweaking it could be good, but TPE sets level 20 at the low low price of 950 rats (assuming rats are never counted at 5XP per kill). Even if you ignore that problem (most people won't kill 950 rats fast enough for it to matter) you can level up at least once an evening from talking to people at the royal ball.

Oh, and it's feasible to go from level 1 to level 20 by having two rogues in the party. Get a valuable item and just have them steal it from each other until you hit the level cap, it's 100% legitimate. I don't know why people say Wizards are the best at getting the party XP under the system.

[DanyBallon]

I think we should agree to disagree, I find Angry to be about the copper standard while Mearls doesn't even get into coinage. This is of course just opinion, I like different types of games to Angry but in his nonangry moments he's actually written well and I can see where he's coming from.

These last two seem poorly thought out, like Mearls didn't fully develop them fully and shoved them out the door as quickly as possible. This is unfair for Greyhawk Initiative, he did develop that and with a lot of tweaking it could be good, but TPE sets level 20 at the low low price of 950 rats (assuming rats are never counted at 5XP per kill). Even if you ignore that problem (most people won't kill 950 rats fast enough for it to matter) you can level up at least once an evening from talking to people at the royal ball.

Oh, and it's feasible to go from level 1 to level 20 by having two rogues in the party. Get a valuable item and just have them steal it from each other until you hit the level cap, it's 100% legitimate. I don't know why people say Wizards are the best at getting the party XP under the system.

You realize that no sane DM would allow for such shenanigans as you talk about? Also that no game is designed to prevent such abuse? It may work for theorycrafting, but we are not playing theoretical game, we are playing a game with other humans that wants to have fun and will point out that such tricks, while feasible, are not fun at all to pull in a game.

Three Pillar Experience and Greyhawk Initiative are both alternate system that are worth to read. They are flawed, and highly perfectible, but at least they offer an interesting twist on initiative and experience, and may help new ideas to emerge. That's the whole point of UA articles.

[Tanarii]

These last two seem poorly thought out, like Mearls didn't fully develop them fully and shoved them out the door as quickly as possible.

Agreed. What I meant is thinking about these things, as opposed to subclass bloat, or worse, new classes, spells, or feats, is a vast improvement. All of those things I consider either generally unnecessary, or actively harmful to the game. Ways to improve running the game are helpful and useful, so I like that they're thinking in those terms.

[Jama7301]

Even if the UA is Bad, it at least lets people think about ways they'd implement their own version of whatever it was. After Greyhawk Initiative, there was a rush of people posting potential fixes, or their own Initiative rules. In the past week, we've seen an influx of people discussing XP distribution methods. I feel like the rules ones prompt more of this sort of discussion, compared to the subclass and feat UAs.