Written By Dave McTingley

Well everyone, the beginning of a new era for D&D™ is upon us. Call it One D&D and say you’re removing the concept of editions from the game all you want, but we’ve heard this song from other bands before **cough cough looking at you Windows 10 cough cough**. The way I see it, you’ve got a new edition any time you actually make substantial changes and reprint the entire Player’s Handbook and Dungeon Master’s Guide and that’s exactly what we’re looking at for 2024. But let’s not dwell on the name. We’ve got a 21 page Unearthed Arcana mostly about Character Origins to dive into so let’s get to it!

First up is their new system for how your character’s Race will work. Your character’s Race will now determine their creature type, size, speed, life span, and give a special trait or two. There will certainly be more Race choices available as time goes on, but at the moment we only have details for: Humans, Dragonborn, Dwarves, Elves, Gnomes, Halflings, Orcs, and Tieflings. They also introduced a new playable race called Ardlings. They are the Upper Planes counterpart to the Tiefling that take on some animalistic traits while still being a bipedal humanoid. My mental image is of those weird looking mid-transformation poses on the Animorphs book covers. Go ahead Wizards of the Coast, tell me I’m wrong.

The term “Subrace” doesn’t appear anywhere in this new document and has been replaced with Lineages. Only Elves, Gnomes, Tieflings, and Ardlings get these options. Dragonborn get to call their choice “Draconic Ancestry”, but their ancestry really only determines the damage type they get from their ancient dragon parents. Sorry Stout Halflings, no more poison resistance for you.

Lineages give your character some cool abilities like extra spells, better darkvision, and a damage type resistance depending on which you choose. Much of what came in 5e is still there but has been tweaked with new functionality. For instance, Wood Elves will still increase their base speed to 35 feet but now they also gain a few spells like their High Elf cousins, losing the ability to hide while lightly obscured in the process. Speaking of speed, all Races now have a base movement of 30 feet. The Dwarves, Gnomes, and Halflings of the party no longer need to fall behind and get crushed in that collapsing tunnel like they used to simply because of the length of their legs. Two thumbs up from me on that as I love playing mobile characters and have actually avoided playing a Dwarf multiple times simply because of how slow they were.

Two of my favorite Race options have also been removed here: the Half-Elf and the Half-Orc. In their place we now have a brief text box saying that your character can be the “Child of Different Humanoid Kinds”. The process is pretty simple as you choose one Race to determine which Race options your character gets. Then you get to pick and choose the physical traits your character takes from each of your parents. Most tables that I have played at would allow this kind of narrative description anyway but it’s nice to see it being codified in the rules.

My only gripe here is that I wish there was a system to choose different aspects of their parent Races’ game traits in addition to their appearance. How cool would it be to play something like a Dragonborn/Gnome combo, a Dragognome if you will, where you have fire breath and the ability to make a clockwork device using Prestidigitation? I’m sure there will be a way to make that particular concept happen through class and spell choices but I still think it would be great to see that level of customization at this stage too. I understand that it would be a mechanical balancing nightmare for WotC, but a boy can dream.

“But wait, Dave, what about my character’s Ability Score boosts and my languages?” Those have been moved over to your character’s Background so let’s follow along to the next section of this UA. The default recommended choice for your Background now is to actually build it yourself. The option was always there in 5e but many didn’t notice it because they were too busy looking at that stern-faced, morningstar-wielding acolyte on page 125 of the PHB, you know the one. They still provided plenty of sample backgrounds to choose from such as Sailor, Hermit, and Noble for those who need inspiration or just want a quick start option but these are also fully customizable under the building rules.

Your Background will now determine your character’s ability score boosts, skill proficiencies, tool proficiency, language, equipment, and starting feat. That’s right, level 1 feats look like they are going to be official in the next edition of D&D but we will get to that later. Let’s start with the biggest change. You now get to choose your ability score increases as part of your Background instead of your Race. Your options are to give yourself a +2 to one ability score with a +1 to another, or to give a +1 to three different ability scores. We saw the start of this in Tasha’s Cauldron of Everything which allowed players to choose these boosts if they didn’t feel like the ones associated with their Race in the PHB made sense for their character. I think the decision to move this to Background is a good one as it puts the emphasis on how your character’s training affected them rather than who their parents are and whether or not they have horns.

Starting languages are also getting a bit of a shake-up. Every character gets to start the game knowing three languages. Everyone speaks Common, you choose one from either the Standard or Rare language lists as part of your Background, and one additional one from the Standard list. I like to think of it as the first choice which allows for Rare languages to represent your character’s training/experience while the other language is more about what was spoken where your character was raised. But it’s your Background, feel free to come up with your own “totally not evil, I swear” reason explaining why your character knows Abyssal.

The other biggest change is adding in those first level feats that I mentioned. Gone is the Folk Hero feature that allows you to just crash at any random commoner’s house for the night. Instead we get direct access to the juicy stuff like Alert, Magic Initiate, and Savage Attacker right from the start. First level feats are something that most home games I have played in already use, so it’s great to see it replace the largely situational (aka useless) Background Features from the 2014 PHB.

Most of the feats in this UA share names with the feats from the 2014 PHB but a lot of their wording has been tweaked in hopes of making them more intuitive. One common design element is that the feats are more closely tied with your proficiency bonus. The Lucky feat for instance now gives you a number of uses based on your proficiency bonus rather than just a flat 3 uses per long rest. This allows these early feats to scale with your character as they level-up.

Feats will also now have three new aspects: Level, Prerequisite, and Repeatable. The level is just the minimum level that your character must be in order to take that feat. The prerequisite will show traits that your character needs to already have in order to take that feat. None of the feats in this UA have prerequisites but it will be interesting to see how they apply that to higher level play. And the last is if a feat is repeatable (aka can be taken more than once). This applies to things like the Skilled feat that grants three skill proficiencies each time you take it.

The rest of the background choices are similar to how they have worked for the last 8 years. You choose two skills to get that proficiency boost, one tool proficiency, and 50 gold pieces worth of starting equipment. The sample backgrounds don’t include weapons or armor so that 50 gold likely is meant to replace the weird hodgepodge of items Backgrounds previously gave. Plus if your character is a minimalist, all the gold you don’t spend just goes straight into your pocket.

Alright, I know that’s a lot of info but we’re almost to the end. The last section is called the Rules Glossary. It doesn’t really tie in to the overall theme of Character Origins but instead seems to be there to explain the new terms introduced earlier in the UA. The first major takeaway is that spells are now being split up into three groups depending on the source of the magical power. Arcane will cover spells generally associated with Bards, Sorcerers, Warlocks, Wizards, and Artificers. Divine will cover what you expect from Clerics and Paladins. And Primal will cover the Druids and the Rangers. There isn’t any mention of removing class specific spell lists but all spells will at least be identified as being from one of those sources of magic going forward. These three lists are found on the last page of the pdf and only cover cantrips and 1st level spells.

Rapid fire time for the rest:

• Anytime you roll a d20 it will be called a Test.

• Rolling a 1 on the d20 will always be a failure and a natural 20 will always be a success whether it is an Ability Test, Attack, or Saving Throw.

• Only Weapon and Unarmed Strikes can score Critical Hits. Spell Attacks won’t be able to Crit anymore. I wouldn’t be surprised if this changes down the road in particular or at least becomes a commonly changed house rule.

• The Grappled condition is way better for the grappler and way worse for the one being grappled.

• You gain Inspiration when you roll a natural 20 and you lose it at the start of a long rest.

• If you already have Inspiration when something else would grant it to you, you can give it to another player instead of wasting it.

• There’s a new condition called Slowed that makes the target easier to hit and… well slower

• Tool Proficiency can now stack with a Skill Proficiency giving you advantage on the check

• Grappling and shoving are now included under the Unarmed Strikes umbrella.

• Grappling now is an attack roll against the target’s AC instead of being a contested check. The target then later makes a check against an escape DC based on the grappler’s Strength modifier.

There, you have my “not quite brief but at least it’s shorter than 21 pages” overview of the first playtest material for One D&D. I think it’s an overall great start towards a new edition of D&D™ with some things that are worth trying out at your table. We’ll keep following along and recapping the new Unearthed Arcana as it gets released so be sure to check back here in the future.