I haven't finished playtesting yet. But I went ahead and answered here based on my current impressions. If my opinion changes, I'll update the answers. The only thing I'm dissatisfied with overall is the Ardling. Mostly because I think it still doesn't work for a majority of players as we've seen here. I want it to be something people get genuinely excited about and it's just not quite there yet.
The Goliath, I think is the biggest A+ win of this UA. Turns Goliath into one of THE most interesting species in the game, and opens up a ton of roleplay and gameplay potential.
Dragonborn I'm glad to see they made the major fix to the breath weapon that everyone loved, and overall took a loveable but low-tier species and made them just as viable as any Dwarf or Elf. Solid, but nothing too mind blowing.
I think Cleric seems solid, but I'm really going to have to see how other spellcasters feel before calling this a major win. They definitely didn't "break" the cleric, and although they made them less viable as a single-class dip for multiclassing, in the long run that's probably a good thing. I like that they have even more built-in versatility.
Ardling... oh man, the Ardling. I think at this point their best bet is to separate the Celestial Ardling and the Beastfolk into two separate races, because they do not play well together. I think in the previous UA people didn't really "get" the Ardling. None of the existing Beastfolk from 5e have been added to OneDnD yet, so for many players they saw Ardling and thought that was the role they were meant to fulfill. With this new UA it seems like WoTC have leaned into that, and tried to make them into a customizable Beastfolk that can feel like a lot of different species... but they still have that celestial background and features that don't quite gel. At this point I think they're better off splitting into two separate races, because not everyone who wants to play as a celestial also wants an animal head, and not everyone who wants to play as an animal-person wants to be a celestial.
I haven't playtested it (yet) but I love that the Goliath is going to be a core species. And the changes made make the Goliath way more interesting and flavourful.
Our resident Cleric Player is playing a Goliath (Frost) and is absolutely loving it. They only wish that there was another cleric subclass other than Life to playtest. Nothing particularly wrong with Life, but not their favorite.
Oh, and that instead of Enlarging, they would have liked to have Cold Resistance.
Aardling and the Spiritual Weapon changes were the only things that I really needed to comment on. Aardling still doesn't have a clear identity, and making Spiritual Weapon concentration means it's competing with all the other concentration spells that Clerics have to choose from, which means it won't be taken.
Banishment is too powerful as it currently is, but allowing a save each turn probably makes it too weak. I suggested making the save at disadvantage to give more of a chance of it sticking.
Making Channel Divinity key off proficiency makes a single level dip too tempting, since proficiency bonuses scale regardless of class level. A two level dip for Channel Divinity and heavy armour is still a viable option.
I put that I was very satisfied with the goliaths and the dragonborn, not sure yet about the cleric, hated the ardlings because they’re just too muddled up and not sure what they want to be, and had mixed feelings about the various spells.
My table tried, but we couldn't actually test the Cleric.
... Because the Domain features (both the number of features and the levels at which they are gained) are different between 5e and the doc.
So we could only test the Life Domain provided in the doc (which is... The same Life Domain as 5e, except the features are gained at slightly different levels and its variant of Divine Strike was nerfed in some ways and buffed in others and moved to be a universal Cleric feature).
Clerics, as a class, are so dependent on their Domain for determining how they play that without the actual domains, we could say nothing about whether, for instance, the Holy Order and Blessed Strikes features were overpowered, underpowered or just right, because that would depend very heavily on what Domain the various options were combined with.
To me, everything is generally satisfying, needs just a few tweaks here and there. Except ardlings. They have no clear direction or vision, and in their current iteration, they're simply weak.
The Ardling is mechanically sound other than the flier, but no-one really asked for the furry/celestial hybrid.
The Goliath has a bit of a problem with level scaling (burning your reaction for 1d8 damage is almost never worth it, burning your reaction to prevent 1d12+Con damage is only worth hit at fairly low level; the other abilities kind of fade in relevance at higher levels but aren't actively detrimental to use). Also, no-save knock prone?
The Dragonborn is now fine for a fighter-type, but if I make, say, a dragonborn sorcerer, I'm never using the breath weapon. I'd rather breath weapon were just higher damage and still took your full action.
and making Spiritual Weapon concentration means it's competing with all the other concentration spells that Clerics have to choose from, which means it won't be taken.
That is the meaning of the change. It makes the Spiritual weapon + Spirits guardians combo pretty much not the only viable option in the Cleric's arsenal. You will have to choose between one or the other, depending on the situation. That among other options. In my opinion it is a good change.
and making Spiritual Weapon concentration means it's competing with all the other concentration spells that Clerics have to choose from, which means it won't be taken.
That is the meaning of the change. It makes the Spiritual weapon + Spirits guardians combo pretty much not the only viable option in the Cleric's arsenal. You will have to choose between one or the other, depending on the situation. That among other options. In my opinion it is a good change.
Tbh I have no idea why Spiritual Weapon wasn't a concentration spell in the first place. (happy Christmas, btw)
and making Spiritual Weapon concentration means it's competing with all the other concentration spells that Clerics have to choose from, which means it won't be taken.
That is the meaning of the change. It makes the Spiritual weapon + Spirits guardians combo pretty much not the only viable option in the Cleric's arsenal. You will have to choose between one or the other, depending on the situation. That among other options. In my opinion it is a good change.
Tbh I have no idea why Spiritual Weapon wasn't a concentration spell in the first place. (happy Christmas, btw)
Because if it's concentration it's worthless.
Bless, a level 1 spell, completely outclasses it as a concentration spell.
Damage (and roll to hit damage at that) is not worth spending concentration on. It's one of the reasons Witchbolt is also worthless. Spirit Guardians forces a save, always does at least half damage, and hinders movement to boot.
and making Spiritual Weapon concentration means it's competing with all the other concentration spells that Clerics have to choose from, which means it won't be taken.
That is the meaning of the change. It makes the Spiritual weapon + Spirits guardians combo pretty much not the only viable option in the Cleric's arsenal. You will have to choose between one or the other, depending on the situation. That among other options. In my opinion it is a good change.
There is no "choice" between Spiritual Weapon and Spirit Guardians. If you have to choose between them then you're taking Spirit Guardians every time.
The toss up is between Bless and Spirit Guardians, and that depends on the makeup of your party.
and making Spiritual Weapon concentration means it's competing with all the other concentration spells that Clerics have to choose from, which means it won't be taken.
That is the meaning of the change. It makes the Spiritual weapon + Spirits guardians combo pretty much not the only viable option in the Cleric's arsenal. You will have to choose between one or the other, depending on the situation. That among other options. In my opinion it is a good change.
There is no "choice" between Spiritual Weapon and Spirit Guardians. If you have to choose between them then you're taking Spirit Guardians every time.
The toss up is between Bless and Spirit Guardians, and that depends on the makeup of your party.
Well, in that case your cleric will not choose spiritual weapon because other options seem more attractive to you. But that's what it's all about, not forcing all clerics to pick the spiritual weapon + Spirits guardians combo because otherwise they're playing suboptimally. And it is that it really is a very powerful combo, that is why the designers look for ways that it cannot be done. And of course, having both spells spend concentration seems like the best way to prevent them from being used together.
I understand that there are people who do not like this change, since it is a nerf to the go to go of the clerics. But it's necessary. Now we will have to explore other options with the cleric, which is very good.
I just hope they give more options to his arsenal of spells. Not more powerful, but other equally valid options. And that each player chooses one or the other according to how they want to play their character. Right now there was no such option. If you didn't do the SW + SG combo, you were playing suboptimal.
I really liked the newest playtest PDF myself. I thought the species were good and I love how Wizards seems to be taking feedback into account because this Ardling is way better to me than the previous appearance they made! I also liked the Cleric overall.
I do have some issues with Cleric though especially how two elements in the PDF kind of step on Paladin toes with Preserve Life in the Life Cleric subclass - that's basically Lay On Hands and Smite Undead...it's basically in the name, rename that and it's good. Preserve Life is a good feature for a Life cleric so if it stays I won't hate it - same with Smite just again rename. I did find the Life subclass to be anticlimactic though; it definitely fills the concept butBlessed Healer and Disciple Of Life to me were too similar and so it felt like really a wasted feature slot; I'd rather see Blessed Healer become Disciple Of Life and then that 10th level spot be something which removes a condition like Pertified or something.
Also Divine Intervention was cool, but the odds of you actually using it at that level was almost 0% because you have get a 11 or lower using the percentile dice method, if I'm reading that right in the section, and that's actually really hard to do. I'd rather see a set DC for it or 0-40% it doesn't work, 41-69% it does but not exactly how you asked, and 70%+ it works because yeah again the odds of rolling less than 11 to have it work based on the wording in the PDF is going to make it so hard to use and if you can't use it it's a wasted feature really. There's already dead levels to the class at higher points so you don't want another.
I admittedly didn't understand the "rate these terms" element of the survey because it didn't have why they were asking. I assume this has to do with changing the term "race" in coming books; in that case I still say they should have an OTHER option for Ancestry. I know some say they won't use it because of Pathfinder but still there's linage or something better than "species"; "species" is arguably better than "race" but honestly "ancestry" is better than both.
I do hope we see new rules in the Rules Glossary section because that's beginning to feel like the same 10 things over and over again which makes the section almost pointless now.
Clerics & Species was a really good PDF I thought for getting me personally excited about One D&D; I do wish it had more content beyond one class in the group, but still I liked it.
My table tried, but we couldn't actually test the Cleric.
... Because the Domain features (both the number of features and the levels at which they are gained) are different between 5e and the doc.
This is something I'm going to face since one DM we have said I could play it for their campaign if they're picked next to DM again.
I'm excited to try it based on how it reads so I'm taking the approach of using the One D&D path where you get a subclass at 3rd so whatever the first level option was in the PHB or whatever book you're using that is now 3rd and so forth and if something falls in the same level then you just get both the subclass feature and the One D&D feature. It all equals out in the end really I feel. It's arguably no different than now with how you get dual features with some classes in the game now at some levels.
My issue with playtesting is it's also hard to do because not ever DM let's you and you don't really have a lot of time to test between it and surveys going up and timing out. Yes this time is a month, but before it seemed like a few weeks and they were on to the next so you got maybe a few sessions to test which isn't a lot. You almost have to be doing intentional playtest one shots to really go through levels and maybe play mid tier to get a sense of all the features...otherwise you're switching PCs every other month which might be fine with some groups but annoy others and then again you may be asked to pick one and stick with it by the DM for story realism.
I really don't know how some are doing it beyond one shots; I fully admit my surveys are based on my reading of the PDF and thinking about gameplay because I like consistency with my campaigns and so if we changed rules each time the PDF changed something I don't think my OCD could take that. Ha
But nobody is forced to take Spirit Guardians and Spiritual Weapon.
It was an optimal choice, yes, but you didn't have to take it.
Now you won't take Spiritual Weapon. You are "forced" not to play it.
If it becomes concentration it will almost never be played, period, because when you can only choose one concentration spell you will choose the one that gives you the best bang for your buck, which is not Spiritual Weapon. Even Bless, a level 1 spell, is better.
Remember that Clerics already are limited by how many of their spells require concentration. There are very few which actually compete with Spirit Guardians and Bless, except very niche ones like Beacon of Hope or Aura of Vitality which you aren't using all the time.
Just curious how people rated various parts of the UA.
She/Her Player and Dungeon Master
I haven't finished playtesting yet. But I went ahead and answered here based on my current impressions. If my opinion changes, I'll update the answers. The only thing I'm dissatisfied with overall is the Ardling. Mostly because I think it still doesn't work for a majority of players as we've seen here. I want it to be something people get genuinely excited about and it's just not quite there yet.
The Goliath, I think is the biggest A+ win of this UA. Turns Goliath into one of THE most interesting species in the game, and opens up a ton of roleplay and gameplay potential.
Dragonborn I'm glad to see they made the major fix to the breath weapon that everyone loved, and overall took a loveable but low-tier species and made them just as viable as any Dwarf or Elf. Solid, but nothing too mind blowing.
I think Cleric seems solid, but I'm really going to have to see how other spellcasters feel before calling this a major win. They definitely didn't "break" the cleric, and although they made them less viable as a single-class dip for multiclassing, in the long run that's probably a good thing. I like that they have even more built-in versatility.
Ardling... oh man, the Ardling. I think at this point their best bet is to separate the Celestial Ardling and the Beastfolk into two separate races, because they do not play well together. I think in the previous UA people didn't really "get" the Ardling. None of the existing Beastfolk from 5e have been added to OneDnD yet, so for many players they saw Ardling and thought that was the role they were meant to fulfill. With this new UA it seems like WoTC have leaned into that, and tried to make them into a customizable Beastfolk that can feel like a lot of different species... but they still have that celestial background and features that don't quite gel. At this point I think they're better off splitting into two separate races, because not everyone who wants to play as a celestial also wants an animal head, and not everyone who wants to play as an animal-person wants to be a celestial.
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Only 7 votes but the Ardling is not looking good here. The rest seems promising though.
I wish DnDBeyond UA Forums saw more traffic.
She/Her Player and Dungeon Master
I haven't playtested it (yet) but I love that the Goliath is going to be a core species. And the changes made make the Goliath way more interesting and flavourful.
[REDACTED]
Our resident Cleric Player is playing a Goliath (Frost) and is absolutely loving it. They only wish that there was another cleric subclass other than Life to playtest. Nothing particularly wrong with Life, but not their favorite.
Oh, and that instead of Enlarging, they would have liked to have Cold Resistance.
She/Her Player and Dungeon Master
There is currently a Poll going on Reddit for the Cleric. Seems pretty well received for the most part.
Poll how did you rate cleric overall
She/Her Player and Dungeon Master
Aardling and the Spiritual Weapon changes were the only things that I really needed to comment on. Aardling still doesn't have a clear identity, and making Spiritual Weapon concentration means it's competing with all the other concentration spells that Clerics have to choose from, which means it won't be taken.
Banishment is too powerful as it currently is, but allowing a save each turn probably makes it too weak. I suggested making the save at disadvantage to give more of a chance of it sticking.
Making Channel Divinity key off proficiency makes a single level dip too tempting, since proficiency bonuses scale regardless of class level. A two level dip for Channel Divinity and heavy armour is still a viable option.
I put that I was very satisfied with the goliaths and the dragonborn, not sure yet about the cleric, hated the ardlings because they’re just too muddled up and not sure what they want to be, and had mixed feelings about the various spells.
My table tried, but we couldn't actually test the Cleric.
... Because the Domain features (both the number of features and the levels at which they are gained) are different between 5e and the doc.
So we could only test the Life Domain provided in the doc (which is... The same Life Domain as 5e, except the features are gained at slightly different levels and its variant of Divine Strike was nerfed in some ways and buffed in others and moved to be a universal Cleric feature).
Clerics, as a class, are so dependent on their Domain for determining how they play that without the actual domains, we could say nothing about whether, for instance, the Holy Order and Blessed Strikes features were overpowered, underpowered or just right, because that would depend very heavily on what Domain the various options were combined with.
To me, everything is generally satisfying, needs just a few tweaks here and there. Except ardlings. They have no clear direction or vision, and in their current iteration, they're simply weak.
I had issues with all of them:
That is the meaning of the change. It makes the Spiritual weapon + Spirits guardians combo pretty much not the only viable option in the Cleric's arsenal. You will have to choose between one or the other, depending on the situation. That among other options.
In my opinion it is a good change.
Tbh I have no idea why Spiritual Weapon wasn't a concentration spell in the first place. (happy Christmas, btw)
[REDACTED]
Because if it's concentration it's worthless.
Bless, a level 1 spell, completely outclasses it as a concentration spell.
Damage (and roll to hit damage at that) is not worth spending concentration on. It's one of the reasons Witchbolt is also worthless. Spirit Guardians forces a save, always does at least half damage, and hinders movement to boot.
Happy Christmas to you.
There is no "choice" between Spiritual Weapon and Spirit Guardians. If you have to choose between them then you're taking Spirit Guardians every time.
The toss up is between Bless and Spirit Guardians, and that depends on the makeup of your party.
Well, in that case your cleric will not choose spiritual weapon because other options seem more attractive to you. But that's what it's all about, not forcing all clerics to pick the spiritual weapon + Spirits guardians combo because otherwise they're playing suboptimally. And it is that it really is a very powerful combo, that is why the designers look for ways that it cannot be done. And of course, having both spells spend concentration seems like the best way to prevent them from being used together.
I understand that there are people who do not like this change, since it is a nerf to the go to go of the clerics. But it's necessary. Now we will have to explore other options with the cleric, which is very good.
I just hope they give more options to his arsenal of spells. Not more powerful, but other equally valid options. And that each player chooses one or the other according to how they want to play their character. Right now there was no such option. If you didn't do the SW + SG combo, you were playing suboptimal.
I really liked the newest playtest PDF myself. I thought the species were good and I love how Wizards seems to be taking feedback into account because this Ardling is way better to me than the previous appearance they made! I also liked the Cleric overall.
I do have some issues with Cleric though especially how two elements in the PDF kind of step on Paladin toes with Preserve Life in the Life Cleric subclass - that's basically Lay On Hands and Smite Undead...it's basically in the name, rename that and it's good. Preserve Life is a good feature for a Life cleric so if it stays I won't hate it - same with Smite just again rename. I did find the Life subclass to be anticlimactic though; it definitely fills the concept but Blessed Healer and Disciple Of Life to me were too similar and so it felt like really a wasted feature slot; I'd rather see Blessed Healer become Disciple Of Life and then that 10th level spot be something which removes a condition like Pertified or something.
Also Divine Intervention was cool, but the odds of you actually using it at that level was almost 0% because you have get a 11 or lower using the percentile dice method, if I'm reading that right in the section, and that's actually really hard to do. I'd rather see a set DC for it or 0-40% it doesn't work, 41-69% it does but not exactly how you asked, and 70%+ it works because yeah again the odds of rolling less than 11 to have it work based on the wording in the PDF is going to make it so hard to use and if you can't use it it's a wasted feature really. There's already dead levels to the class at higher points so you don't want another.
I admittedly didn't understand the "rate these terms" element of the survey because it didn't have why they were asking. I assume this has to do with changing the term "race" in coming books; in that case I still say they should have an OTHER option for Ancestry. I know some say they won't use it because of Pathfinder but still there's linage or something better than "species"; "species" is arguably better than "race" but honestly "ancestry" is better than both.
I do hope we see new rules in the Rules Glossary section because that's beginning to feel like the same 10 things over and over again which makes the section almost pointless now.
Clerics & Species was a really good PDF I thought for getting me personally excited about One D&D; I do wish it had more content beyond one class in the group, but still I liked it.
This is something I'm going to face since one DM we have said I could play it for their campaign if they're picked next to DM again.
I'm excited to try it based on how it reads so I'm taking the approach of using the One D&D path where you get a subclass at 3rd so whatever the first level option was in the PHB or whatever book you're using that is now 3rd and so forth and if something falls in the same level then you just get both the subclass feature and the One D&D feature. It all equals out in the end really I feel. It's arguably no different than now with how you get dual features with some classes in the game now at some levels.
My issue with playtesting is it's also hard to do because not ever DM let's you and you don't really have a lot of time to test between it and surveys going up and timing out. Yes this time is a month, but before it seemed like a few weeks and they were on to the next so you got maybe a few sessions to test which isn't a lot. You almost have to be doing intentional playtest one shots to really go through levels and maybe play mid tier to get a sense of all the features...otherwise you're switching PCs every other month which might be fine with some groups but annoy others and then again you may be asked to pick one and stick with it by the DM for story realism.
I really don't know how some are doing it beyond one shots; I fully admit my surveys are based on my reading of the PDF and thinking about gameplay because I like consistency with my campaigns and so if we changed rules each time the PDF changed something I don't think my OCD could take that. Ha
But nobody is forced to take Spirit Guardians and Spiritual Weapon.
It was an optimal choice, yes, but you didn't have to take it.
Now you won't take Spiritual Weapon. You are "forced" not to play it.
If it becomes concentration it will almost never be played, period, because when you can only choose one concentration spell you will choose the one that gives you the best bang for your buck, which is not Spiritual Weapon. Even Bless, a level 1 spell, is better.
Remember that Clerics already are limited by how many of their spells require concentration. There are very few which actually compete with Spirit Guardians and Bless, except very niche ones like Beacon of Hope or Aura of Vitality which you aren't using all the time.