It looks like this will also follow the template of the Spelljammer books, with some player options, setting information, and DM facing content (adventure & creature statblocks).

A breakdown and debunking of an ancient aliens Netflix 'archeology' series

This is a tiny YouTube channel of an old hand in this hobby who typically has an even kneeled and optimistic outlook on the new releases. His enthusiasm for this subject matter always feels sincere, I hope you guys enjoy!

As always, I've crossposted this over to the OneD&D subreddit in the link below. Feel free to upvote there to raise visibility.

https://www.reddit.com/r/onednd/comments/14ufvvq/is_the_dance_bard_all_that_good/

As part of preparing player characters on behalf of my less UA invested friends for a one-shot I'm running tomorrow, I made a Dance Bard. The player was excited to hear the concept, and I thought it was a really neat idea when I first read over it.

But the act of actually making it lead to a conclusion that this isn't that great.

Yes, Charisma + Dex armor is neat, but since ~~Shield + Light Armor would get you to the same level of AC, it isn't an upgrade over the baseline Bard starting out.~~ (For some reason I thought Bards got shield proficiency. This is still sub-par AC for anyone going into melee, especially without an on-turn disengage or shove) Later on when you can max out your Dex and Charisma to 20, it would be eventually higher AC, but full casters typically don't want to put a lot of investment outside of their casting stat.

"Okay," I thought to myself, "then let's look at this as not a caster, but as a melee combatant who prioritizes Dexterity." Well that's not great either. You get to use your bonus action to cast a spell to help your attack damage, but that is limited to the 1d6/level Smite spells^1^, or Zephyr Strike. Shadow Blade isn't on any spell list now either, and if it was it doesn't bookend with any of these features anyhow so you can't play it like a Bladesinger who is able to dump spell slots into single-target damage. But even if you did do this, that's in direct competition to your free attack on a Bardic Inspiration.

The fact that this subclass doesn't get a second attack at 5th or 6th level really torpedoes any sense that you'll be getting that much out of their 'bardic-martial-art' die damage. Not even to mention they don't get to pierce Bludgeoning/Piercing/Slashing resistance.

So what's left?

A bard who can get an extra hit in if they're next to an enemy when they inspire an ally, as well as use their reaction to reposition allies and get another hit in.^2^ This is the only reason to close to melee range on your own turn. The bard as a fullcaster would be better off using spellslots that don't require being in melee range with their action, most of the time. What that effectively means is that you can use your attack action in lieu of a cantrip, so you get essentially 1 extra cantrip. In tier 2, they can boost their party's initiative by an impressive amount.

That kit is flavorful, but it will be playing very much like a very normal Bard with some neat features. This feels like a faint shadow of what a Monk can do, not a replacement. Almost every Monk subclass has some way to avoid getting hit while darting in and out of combat^3^, while also having high movement speed. This Bard doesn't do any of that.

Of anything that I mentioned, the repositioning of the ally and the initiative boosts are the best thing about this subclass. Everything else are ribbon abilities. If you think I'm off base, please feel free to let me know how. I'll also be posting a followup after my playtest, but having just playtested a neat session with two monks, conceptually this doesn't feel all that exciting.

edit: I just realized that taking Tavern Brawler at 1st level fixes this subclass's (and Way of Mercy's) problem with engaging in melee, and is actually quite powerful. Each time you hit someone with your unarmed strike, you can push them away. I think that it could be a mandatory feat on anyone who wants to really lean into the dance-fighting vibe of this class.

^1^ Altho Searing smite might be OP since you get two instances of the damage before the target gets to save and negate the burn. Which means its the best scaling Smite in the game, and exceeds what a Paladin with half-caster progression can achieve if the target fails its save once.

^2^ And note that Bardic Inspiration is tied to your Charisma modifier. So as resource hungry as the Monk is, this is worse.

^3^ Way of Mercy is the odd one out.

This post is crossposted to /r/onednd here . Please feel free to upvote it there for higher visibility.

This post is a brief overview of my takeaways from running a playtest game which included the latest 1 Arcane Rogue and 2 Monk(Mercy & Elements).There was also a Frenzy Barbarian, rounding out the group to a solid 4 characters, but since the Barbarian’s playtest came and went, I’ll be only touching on them briefly. All characters were level 6

The game was cut a little short, so we didn’t get too much combat in. However, what little we did had a great set of fascinating moments.

This is written mostly from a GM (my) perspective, but I will be peppering in player takeaways wherever I can.

Elements monk = FUN

The Warrior of Elements Monk was a skirmishing speed demon. With the +15 movement speed from their monk feature and the +10 movement speed from their level 4 feat, this character had 55 feet of movement. There was some theory crafting that the max possible speed could be 70 feet of movement, with Wood Elves +5 movement bonus and Longstrider, but that seems like gilding the lily.

But even with just 55 feet of movement, the ability to have 10 minutes of 15 foot ranged strikes let this Monk contribute fully without needing to put themselves at risk. Additionally the ability to make enemies struck move backwards or forwards by 10 feet on each attack roll means that they were able to punt enemies around the battlefield, sometimes chasing targets down on follow up attacks to send them careening 20-40 feet across the map.

This also translated to being able to take enemies that had closed distance to push them well away, before disengaging beyond their movement. Without ever having to spend a ki point on ‘step of the wind’ this Monk was fairly untouchable, and was only ever in melee range of enemies at the beginning of a surprise combat.

Mercy Monk is situational

The Mercy monk had a bit less of a rip-roaring time. The one notable enemy in the playtest so far had poison immunity, which made their lives a bit harder. However, it was agreed that the ability to simply inflict Poison without a saving throw seems strong. Further playtesting will tell, but it feels like a hold-over from 5e.

This monk took the Charger feat, which let them deal upwards of 5d8+Mod(4) unarmed attack damage on a perfect round of combat. If they use their Way of Mercy 1/turn damage boost, this rises to 6d8+Mod(4), which felt hefty and contributed well at the table.

Ranged Rogue feels solid, but not exciting

While the Ranged Rogue didn’t have much time to shine, the new Cunning Attacks combined with Shortbow Weapon Mastery allowed them to trip enemies while reducing their movement speed. This effectively nailed most enemies down to only having a 10 foot range on their turn, making the loss of 1d6 damage feel more than worthwhile when it worked.

However, this simply resulted in the enemies attacking people who had already closed to melee instead. It hemmed me in as the DM, and did force me to attack the party’s preferred frontliners, so it wasn’t without impact, but the rogue player themselves didn’t really feel too excited by their contribution. This would have been better if the rogue wasn’t at the bottom of the initiative, and the most threatening enemies at the very top of the order in our combats, as the Rogue couldn’t delay their turn to go just after the enemy to make sure they were prone for the rest of our melee damage dealers.

Also to be honest, our table isn’t sure what the utility of Disarm is supposed to be. If there’s a MacGuffin, it’s quite clear that it’s a great way to take it off an enemy. But to take the weapon off an enemy has a few problems.

1. If another player doesn’t use their free object interaction to pick up the weapon, AFAIK the disarmed creature can just pick it up with a free object interaction. This isn’t a new issue, it’s been a problem with Disarm since the beginning of 5e.
2. If you do allow disarming-and-swiping of a weapon, as a DM I don’t know how to feel about that. For verisimilitude, it feels fine, but from a CR balance perspective it means that I have to contrive reasons why the target’s damage output doesn’t immediately crater, thus throwing off the CR fight balance.

It feels like Disarm needs to have a more well defined mechanical consequence if this will be a common effect achieved by any Rogue player.

Otherwise, the rogue felt like they fell far behind in damage, which is a known issue.

Barbarians have toolkit & a high damage floor

The Barbarian in our group was able to swap between Cleave, Graze, and Topple weapon masteries as required. The end result is that they were able to feel like they were making conscious decisions each round of combat. And even on the round of combat where all they could do was throw hand-axes, they were able to deal an impressive amount of damage on what would have otherwise been an unimpressive turn.

Before factoring in damage die, the Barbarian deals 2d6 (avg 7) Frenzy +2 Rage +4 STr Mod damage on a hit. If they use graze, then that’s a guaranteed +4 if they miss once, raising a single-hit damage round’s damage floor to an average of 17 damage. Simply put, our Barbarian did not feel bad about a single round of combat. This player is typically quite loss averse, and gets annoyed when they whiff on their turn, and they felt like they never had a ‘down’ turn.

Musings on Damage Resistance

One notable fight was with a Water Elemental Myrmidon. The Myrmidon deals Force Damage, and it has resistance to Bludgeoning/Slashing/Piercing (BSP). The legacy version of the Myrmidons had magical weapons, which specifically mentioned how they pierce through magical resistance to BSP. Also note that none of my players had magical weapons.

It was rated as a medium encounter, and it felt like a medium fight. It lasted 3 rounds, and everyone was able to contribute to its defeat in a number of ways, each player making conscious tactical decisions. The rogue and Barbarian were dealing half damage, while the Monks were cutting straight through the damage resistance. Even though the Monks would be doing less damage than the damage optimized Barbarian typically, they were the number 1 & 2 contributors to the total damage on the creature, and this served as a GREAT spotlight moment for those players.

This made me wonder: SHOULD every martial character get magic weapons that bypass BSP resistance? I could use more datapoints, but this combat came in solidly at a Medium fight by general eyeballing and feel at the table. It didn’t feel like a token encounter to blast through, and while the Monks weren’t lighting the world on fire with their fight contribution in other combats, this one made them feel rather impactful. Additionally, the Barbarian didn’t feel like they were laughing off the damage, and I was able to make sure everyone felt suitably tested without flirting with rocket-tag like I would otherwise have to do in 5e.

I have a theory that could use more testing, but I believe that Damage Resistance is currently an underutilized tool in 5e, and that we should not expect that all Martials will be able to bypass it. Additionally the ability of some creatures to bypass Barbarian Rage BSP resistance seems like a net positive for the game.

Edit: I had forgotten my other takeaway! Full disclosure for this next section, one Monk player is my spouse, and we really workshopped optimizing their Mercy Monk. We tried finding a way to get Weapon Masteries integrated into their build, but none of the options really seemed like a better choice than simply using the d8 Martial arts die.

Weapon Mastery feels vestigial on Monks

The only weapon that can match the d8 in damage output is the Staff, and the Flex mastery that it possesses is incredibly dubious in terms of potential impact. You cannot use an offhand attack with the Light or Nick properties unless the mainhand is Light. So you will never have a moment where you wouldn’t be able to wield a Staff with two hands.

In fact, the only weapon mastery that seemed to have any purpose at all was a dart’s Vex mastery allowing their monk to have limited ranged options while setting up their next melee attack roll with advantage.

Additionally the other monk saw no need to have any masteries whatsoever. The only masteries that MIGHT fit into their kit are Offhand Nick and Vex from a mainhand light weapon, but by level 5 you are lowering your damage of your mainhand attack (necessary to trigger offhand) in order to unlock a +1d4 nick attack. With an average of 2.5 damage, that is a net increase of 1.5 raw damage, which is so little for a lot of bother.

This discussion has been linked on the r/OneDND subreddit. Please feel free to upvote it there for more visibility over here.

I had made a previous post in this community regarding how I predict that the 2024 revision of D&D5e will be vastly improving CR. In that post, I laid out a lot of ideas on how I think the future playtests will go, and so far I haven't been wrong yet.

If you want to read it all, you can find it here. For everyone else, I will now provide a brief summary.

All the changes so far should not be looked at in terms of individual abilities and their power compared to each other individual ability, because that has not been the focus of the playtests so far. Instead, the focus has been in standardizing how damage output functions, with the purpose of closing loopholes.

This includes making par (or arguably sub-par) spells like 'Spiritual Weapon' now requiring concentration. THis isn't because Spiritual Weapon was doing too much damage, but because it was a persistent spell that dealt damage each turn, and did not require concentration. It doesn't matter that the damage was low, because it functioned in a non standard fashion, so balancing it was needlessly harder to do and it was a potential loophole to place more damage than intended into a Divine spellcaster's round.

Other examples can be found in the previously mentioned post.

However, I'm making this post now to unpack what I see as frustraitingly shallow takes on how the playtest is progressing. I will link the following PackTactics video not as endorsement of the views (altho he has several observations I agree with), but as an example of what I'm talking about.

https://youtu.be/40D0-Ezxlho

This is a rigorous look at Monk in isolation, and in this video he is obsessed with the idea that each ability needs to be assessed in terms of a buff or nerf. I believe that focus immediately stops him from considering further on what the possible motives behind the changes are.

The best example of this tunnel vision, is his assessment of the level 6 feature, Empowered Strikes. This allows the Monk to deal force damage instead of normal damage types with their unarmed strikes. He calls this a nerf, because it is now a damage type that can sometimes be resisted where before it was damage that could go through resistance trivially. He makes this judgement, without acknowledging that this is the new system standard. All features that once would go through magical Bludgeoning/Slashing/Piercing (BSP) resistance, both on Monster statblocks and UA material, now change the damage type away from BSP. So this isn't a nerf, it's the new normal for everyone and a sign of a shift in system design.

I'm writing this post with the hopes that someone who is performing this same reflexive reaction to changes in a strict comparison of higher or lower performance will now take a moment to consider. Why would intelligent game designers who want to do a good job and like the hobby make a bad decision on purpose? Because I don't think it's a rational position to think that the development team at WotC are not earnest.

As a closing thought & followup on my previous post, I believe that what will come next are spell nerfs that will bring their effects and capabilities in line with the current slate of controller abilities we've seen introduced. Most afflicted conditions will become 1 turn in duration, or will end on a repeated save. This will rein in how warping to fight balance controller spellcasters are on the battlefield.

After this is done, numeric balancing will begin, at about the dead-end of the playtest. This is in part because I don't think WotC devs require the internet's opinion on what is essentially a set of Math problems. Additionally, they couldn't know how much to really change the numeric content of abilities and spells until they had standardized how damage and conditions are applied, because the non-standard methods that we have in 5e are rife for optimization abuse (say hello to my Gloomstalker/Fighter build).

I told people that this would happen! But now we just have a precious small amount of time to SPECULATE as to how extensive the revision of the spells in the next UA.

There are spells that I hope they simply remove (or drastically change) without comment or recourse for feedback. Such is my distaste for Shield, Counterspell, and many others.

Shield should just give resistance to damage if it has to stay around. The +5 to AC is a problem.

If Counterspell has to hang around, it should either impose disadvantage on the spell attack, and have saving throws be performed at advantage for the duration of the spell while causing no damage to be taken on a successful save.

Forcecage, Hypnotic Pattern, and other crazy powerful spells need to come down in potency as well. I hope we see it, as this is another big step towards getting a CR system that works.

This is an old topic, but I'm curious what a more recent assessment for the ultimate support build would be in D&D5e.

Previously, Treantmonk has pushed the idea of the 'God Wizard' who is built around spells that shut down enemies and empowers allies. Area control, vision control, area denial, and the odd buff to assist allies.

However since his build was popularlized, there have been a number of fascinating subclasses that are built around support, specifically between bards and druids. With that in mind, what are the best support builds? These are builds that help win the fight without dealing any damage, preferably

A meticulous look at how OneD&D will be more balanced between different classes & loadouts.