Today on The Character Sheet we are breaking down the biggest fantasy and TTRPG news, and today that is our review of the new D&D Unearthed Arcana playtest 8 which has just dropped from Wizards of the Coast! So have Dungeons & Dragons FINALLY started making real changes to their classes…is the Monk actually GOOD now? Do the Barbarian and the Druid feel like they have some great new options? And has D&D finally given us a Playtest in Playtest 8 that Dungeon & Dragons fans actually want?
We’re breaking down the buffs and the major changes to Monks, Barbarians, and Druids all found inside D&D Playtest 8, and letting you know if this unearthed arcana actually restored our faith in the 2024 D&D Core Rulebooks in our brutally honest review of D&D Playtest 8 Unearthed Arcana!
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Has Dungeons & Dragons FINALLY dropped a Playtest that everyone can get behind? Or is it too little, too late?
wait, but, they dropped the word Barbarian remember?
As someone who has actually played a monk and enjoyed it (shocking, I know 🙄) and heard a lot of admittedly valid criticisms of the monk character, I’m all in favor for these changes. The monk actually sounds really tough now. It is also nice to see that barbarian and druid have gotten meaningful updates as well.
As exciting as this UA drop might seem, one can only ask how many of these proposed changes will actually make it through to the actual book?
There's also the matter of non-player facing UA such as Monsters and DM content. With 2024 almost here, the design team doesn't have much time left to iron these two items out via UA as the player facing stuff.
honestly there was a small improvement but it's still not enough, I also don't really like the idea of the barbarian skill monkey or the actions that modify the combat. I prefer help to damage and that it is a big fat damage. I'll try it as soon as I can but for now I'm very skeptical
welp thats good but hopefully we see more
It’s dumb that half casters get weapon masteries but monks don’t get ANY
3:35 Lol what? Its just factually incorrect. 5e monk was probably the best among all its terrible iterations. Tim Kask and Gary Gygax hated monk as a fantasy archetype with passion and intentionally made it terrible in AD&D. And 3.5 monk is famous for its "flurry of misses" and low hp.
Love the Barb and Monk options. Getting more and more excited for the 2024 release. Wish they would’ve thrown some of these creative attempts at the Ranger though.
So you are telling me that monk might actually feel good to play in the new version of dnd?
Fuck yeah I've avoided monk for a decade because it was just too all over the place.
Every second of this video is captivating.
They need to be honest and call it 5.5e. It feels like the difference between 3e and 3.5e and their "forever version" just isn't believable. It might be true, but it is predicting the future, which is folly.
1:46 right here astral self just get 18 dex and max out wisdom and con you will be fine because you can use wisdom on everything
The new Conjuring spells is interesting, and the redo of Cure Wounds is fantastic
I would change primal knowledge to "fuelled by anger"
A reaction that lets you use a charge of rage when you are about to fail a skill check(or if this is op, after the dice fall) to add your strength modifier to the roll. It would still cover the same skills as primal knowledge, but I think that both utility and roleplay wise, this is better, since you're using your resource already. You could also make it so that if you use this, you can either enter a rage, or reset the duration of an existing rage.
Even if the playtest doesn't suck, WOTC still does. Support companies that do not hate their fanbase.
Still feel like this is kinda pointless
Good changes, but I still need to see some improvements to the Ranger, including removing dependency on Hunter's Mark, Hunter's Mark going back to no longer requiring concentration, and some of the other nerfs to it being undone.
As a Barbarian player, I'm so glad that they actually gave us features past level 8! It was really weird that they made an 8 level class for DnD, but I guess better late than never to actually make them work properly!
Love the direction that oneDnD is going.
I will play this for the next 10 years.
I really like the monk changes. The spell changes need some work though and the healing changes seems like a strange experiment that will cause more problems than help them.
The changes overall i thought were ok. Monk definitely better than others.
My main issue is just how chonky everything is, in its current state. I hope that after getting whatever satisfaction score they need, a lot of effort then goes into editing down all of the clutter. Some terms are there on purpose to avoid edge cases but on the whole i think 20-30% of the content is either bloat or pandering to people deliberately trying to break the game.
I myself enjoy some power gaming every now and then, but theres a line in the sand that some people ignore.
There should just be a clear TRDSIC (the rules dont say i cant) section to give a blanket statement that if in doubt, go for the RAI interpretation.
The nerf to druid is trash. Wildshape HP should be double your level at a minimum. Even then I can already get more temp health from some subclass features so why the fuck would i waste my bonus action to wildshape if it basically gives you a shittier attack and less temp hp than existing options?
They'll probably retract everything and make only small changes…