What is One D&D?

Wizards of the Coast is currently playtesting and tinkering with “One D&D”, which they claim will be the definitive version of Dungeons and Dragons for the foreseeable future. One edition to rule them all, and potentially in the darkness to bind them. But what exactly is it? Is this a new edition or just an update? Should you be excited or afraid? And most importantly, are they messing with your favorite character classes? Hold onto your core books and kiss your old character builds goodbye as we go through everything you need to know. Support the Channel: RPG Dice Subscription: https://www.skullsplitterdice.com/products/rpg-dice-subscription Amazing dice every month, no repeats. Andrar's Vault is Open - Over 100 Unique Magic Items: https://www.skullsplitterdice.com/products/andrars-vault
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Episode Transcript

(00:00):
Wizards of the Coast is currently playtestingand tinkering with one D and D,
which they claim will be the definitiveversion of Dungeons and Dragons for the foreseeable
future. And if that makes youcautious, I completely understand why. But
what exactly is it? Is thisa new addition or just an update?
Should you be excited or afraid orkind of both like I am? And

(00:22):
most importantly, are they messing withyour favorite character classes? Well, let's
get into it. Before I getinto the video, I should probably talk
about the elephant in the room,the elephant that we're probably all aware of,
but is still here anyway. Theannouncement of one D and D came

(00:45):
in the middle of a massive debacleregarding the OGL, the virtual tabletop,
and a ton of confusion about whatone D and D even is or is
meant to be. You can goahead and skip to this point in the
video if you want to avoid hearingabout the OGL for the millions time,
But for any of you quite familiarwith it, let's just go over that
really quick. The OGL stands forOpen Gaming License, and it's the legal

(01:06):
document that allows third parties to createD and D content and sell it themselves.
I won't go into the legal easeand details, as that is far
outside the purview of a dungeon masters, slash videographers, slash whatever it is
I do. But the short versionof the story is that along with one
D and D Wizards of the Coasttried to sneak in a change to the
OGL that would demand royalties from thirdparty developers and grant themselves way more power

(01:29):
over the market. Alarm bells wereraised in the community, rightfully so,
and after a huge backlash and fight, WATSY capitulated and backed off from their
proposed change. Instead, they've putout a new OGL that actually grants third
parties a bit more access to corefy V rules to use for their own
There's a problem, though, WATSYhas essentially pulled a gun on third parties,
misfired and then put the gun awayand promised not to do it again.

(01:53):
They've shown their intention is to clenchdown on the market and kill third
parties, which has already caused alot of players and creators to find different
systems to work with. If you'recurious what my short version of thoughts are
on this whole situation, watsy,we never needed you to play D and
D. Another thing to cover inthis discussion is the topic of virtual tabletop.

(02:15):
A big part of one D andD's announcement was that this wasn't just
an update, but a unification ofthe D and D experience, including book
codes for virtual copies using DND Beyond, and a new D and D exclusive
virtual tabletop. The idea of buyingan adventure path and automatically getting not only
a virtual version of that book,but also the encounters, monsters and terrain

(02:35):
from that adventure sounds amazing, butthere's a catch. Firstly, until they
backed off the OGL, their planwas to make their virtual tabletop the only
virtual tabletop where you could play oneD and D, striking down with the
banhammer on other third party virtual tabletopsthat tried next and this is only rumored
and not confirmed, but there's stilla good chance the plan was or still

(02:57):
is to make this whole one Dand D package a subscription service for twenty
dollars a month. Every corporation drulesat the thought of subscription services these days,
and this rumor falls right in linewith Hasbro's overall goal of getting better
monetization out of D and D.The virtual tabletop doesn't even exist yet,
and there's no point getting upset aboutwhat hasn't happened yet. Obviously, but
I'm not looking forward to paying amonthly fee for playing Dungeons and Dragons,

(03:21):
and we'll see if I do.Finally, I should add that a lot
of the rule changes make a tonof sense when you think of it in
terms of a virtual tabletop and whatit can handle. Rules are much more
compacted and make fewer outside references,which is good in and of itself,
but they do seem to be changesmade with the virtual tabletop in mind.
Let's cut through some of the nonsensehere. This is five point five edition.

(03:43):
Trying to claim this isn't a newaddition is just marketing wanting to have
their cake and eat it too.No, this isn't a full new addition.
It's definitely just a five point fiveWe've been in a new golden age
of tabletop RPGs with fifth edition Dand D as the shining front runner,
but now that it's time for anupdate, they're very hesitant to say anything
close to new addition, and Iguess I kind of understand why this edition

(04:05):
update is the hopefully happy middle ground, keeping the skeleton of five E and
then tinkering with the details. Thisis like three point zero moving to three
point five or the Pathfinder Unchained update. A big fix and update, but
you don't have to throw out allof your old books or anything. Before
we get too deep into this,I think it's important to note that at
the time of recording, all theavailable information on one D and D is

(04:26):
from unearthed Arcana playtest material. Nothingis set in stone, and tomorrow they
could decide to throw out all thetest content for something else entirely. So
if the current playtest is gutting yourfavorite class, just hold off on your
rage a little bit until the finalversion is released. So let's get into
what's changing, because it's quite abit. Actually, we won't go through
every little change, since at thatpoint you may as well just be reading

(04:49):
the actual playtest. But what wewill go over are the big, sweeping
changes and the changes that will affectyour games the most. Starting with categorization,
a lot of five's clunky bits aregetting streamlined down by creating overarching categories
that can be referenced rather than havinga million instances of reminder texts, patch
rules, and references. Some ofthe big ones are spell sources. For

(05:11):
instance, rather than each class havingtheir own specific class list, there are
now three primary spell sources they drawtheir spells from, Arcane, Divine,
and Primal. You'll also find thata lot of the spells that were previously
class specific aren't on those lists andare now special class spells that are a
part of their class features. There'salso class groups. All classes now belong
to a class group, which,as a category, divide all the classes

(05:33):
into Expert, Mage, Priest,or Warrior. This makes a mechanical distinction
that allows for buffs or abilities thatcan only be used by several classes as
a group. There's also D twentytests. A lot of the abilities would
previously say when you roll a Dtwenty four X, Y or Z,
and they've simplified that down into asingle mechanical D twenty test. This doesn't

(05:55):
actually change much, but it willcut down on the wording. There's also
skill act a ton of things.Previously we're done with a skill check to
do X thing. Now those thingsare properly codified actions that you are making
a D twenty test using a skillto achieve. A good example is the
new Influence action that envelops all thepersuasion and intimidation based things that the DM

(06:15):
previously just winged but are now condenseddown into a concrete rule. I know
a lot of you are curious aboutweapons. A ton of the weapons got
little tweaks, but the big changeis the addition of a new weapon masteries.
These weapon masteries are extra effects orabilities that each broad weapon category is
capable of, but only if youhave the weapon mastery. All the martial
classes get to choose one or moreof the weapon mastery options to unlock.

(06:40):
To sum all that up, martialclasses get a few favorite weapon types,
and if they use their mastered weapons, they get to do things like tripping
attacks or a little extra damage.Another thing that's changing are practically all the
character creation options. There are morecharacter options changing than there are staying the
same, and we'll go through eachrace and class that is significantly changing on
their own, but here are thegeneral changes that you can anticipate. First,

(07:02):
we have later subclasses. A weirddesign change they're trying out is pushing
all archetypes to third level with uniformadvancement scales. This awkwardly means your cleric
won't pick a god they worshiped fora few levels, sorcerers won't have a
source of their magic, and paladinsstill won't take an oath until later.
Flavor issues aside, This seems tobe an attempt to reduce the complexity at

(07:24):
first level and potentially leads a crossclass archetypes down the road. Next,
we have epic boons. All theclass capstone abilities have been moved down to
earlier levels, and instead each classgets to pick their own epic boon at
twentieth level. These are like superfeats that boost a stat up to four,
increase your maximums to thirty, andprovide some big benefit. They're trying
to push for post twenty game content, but we'll see how that goes.

(07:47):
I'm honestly very interested in the idea, and I've kind of done that with
some NPCs at this point, soyeah, we'll see. Next, we
have origins. We're finally getting ridof the socially sketchy term race and replacing
it with species. Personally, fora fantasy universe, I feel like heritage
or lineage would have been better,but you know, to each of their

(08:07):
own I feel like species is abit more of a sci fi RPG term,
but I'm on a tangent anyway.Skill features have been stripped out of
the races and sprinkled back into thebackgrounds. They're also shifting the starting ability
score increases from your species to yourbackground, which is a change that I
really appreciate and know a lot ofpeople have been hoping for. Backgrounds also

(08:28):
start you off with a feet,which replaces the sort of awkward background features
they had before. Finally, mostspecies can be chosen as small or medium
versions. With all the overarching stuffout of the way, let's go through
each species and backgrounds and see whatmost of the major changes are. Let's
start by talking about the ardling.The Asamar are gone, and now we
have animal angel people. The theminghere is weird, but our celestial blooded

(08:54):
race now has animal heads and beastfeatures, like a strange mixture of the
Asamar and shifter. Time will tellif it sticks, but I'm sad to
see the Asimar go and excited tosee what people do with these things.
Next, we have the dragon BornBreath weapon is a touch weaker, but
in exchange, the dragons finally getdark vision. And they get magical wings

(09:15):
at fifth level made out of theirdraconic element cool stuff, and seems like
an overall buff. When it comesto the Dwarf, the sub races have
been sort of combined into one,and they made stone cutting useful. Stone
cutting now grants tremor sense on stonesurfaces. They have tweaked how tremor sense
works a bit, but it's stilla powerful new addition that replaces a feature

(09:35):
that hardly ever had an effect.And then when it comes to the Gnome,
it's mostly the same, except anextensive update to the tinkering feature for
rock gnomes that is more like havingtiny mechanical minions than the previous glorified noisemakers.
Wordy and a bit confused, buta definite buff. And then when
it comes to the Goliath, theylose the elevation trait, stones, endurance,
and the powerful build feature that nevermatters, and in return they gain

(09:58):
five feet of extra move the abilityto grow large at fifth level, and
their choice of a giant ancestry feature, one of which is stones and endurance.
Again, the giant ancestry stuff isboth a mechanically strong and flavorfully interesting
and it's a big win for thegiant kin that was an unintentional rhyme,
and then with the halfling, likethe dwarves, the halfling subclasses were sort

(10:20):
of combined into one, meaning youessentially just get more features for the same
halfling price. Other than that,the big change is their thirty foot movement
speed, which replaces the unpleasant twentyfive. And then we arrive at the
human. Gone is the era ofbanning variant humans. Humans just get a
feet at first level flat out.They also get a feature that automatically restores
inspiration on a long rest, whichmeans hopefully we'll see inspiration getting more use

(10:43):
in the future. Also leave acomment if you want me to do a
video about inspiration in cool ways touse it or just even basic ways to
use it if you're confused, Iwould love to talk about it because I
think it's easily the most underused mechanicin D and D that should be at
more tables. Anyway, onto theORC. Mostly the same, except the
aggressive feature has been tweaked into adrenalineRush. You can still dash closer to

(11:07):
a target as a bonus action,but now you also gain temporary hit points
at the cost of making the useslimited to your proficiency bonus per long rest.
It's worth noting here that it seemsthat half Orcs and other half races
are gone, at least for nowand next. With the Tifling mostly the
same features, but the original Tiflinghas been combined with a couple of the
alternative fiendish varieties of tifling. Youmainly get a choice of the racial spell

(11:30):
sets from before, not a buffor a NERF, but a streamline.
Now to get into the real meatof all the changes, we have to
talk about classes. Some classes gotminor tweaks, but some are complete overhauls.
So far, we have a playtestversion of every class except for the
Artificer and the Monk. So let'sget into this starting with the Barbarian.
Low level Barbarians will feel hardly anychanges at all, but tiers three and

(11:52):
four got massively shuffled. The majorityof the changes. We're taking the Tier
four features and shifting them down intoTier three. Probably the most extreme shift
down was indomitable might, an eighteenthlevel feature originally that has been shifted all
the way down to ninth level.Beyond that we get some minor common sense
tweaks to rage no more hitting yourselfto keep rage up, and overall the

(12:15):
class seemed stronger. Also, thepath of the Berserker is finally playable.
They got rid of the exhaustion mechanicand fixed up the bonus action conflict that
made Berserker just so bad. Andnow moving on to my precious Bard class,
bart has been pushed more towards ahealer role, with a base alternate
use of Bartic inspiration for healing anda feature called Songs of Restoration that gives

(12:35):
you a list of healing spells thatare always prepared in addition to your other
spells. Bartic inspiration uses are linkedto proficiency bonuses rather than charisma bonuses now,
which means fewer uses early on,but also means that they'll go up
later on. Except font of inspirationhas also been pushed up two levels to
seventh, meaning you're going to haveto be really sparing with that inspiration until

(12:56):
much later. Now. I've gotto say it feels very weird nerve core
mechanics like this while also trying topush Bards hard into a healing role,
which has always been more of aside option to them. It's just a
very surprising nerf and shift as I'vealways heard people complain that Bards are overpowered
if playgroups allow it. I suspecta lot of players will stick to the
original version of the class, andI don't really blame them. I'm conflicted

(13:24):
about this. This feels like thekind of thing you would do to the
Bard in a video game, notin an update to five. I'm not
going to harp on this for toolong. When it comes to Clerics,
a lot of the features have beenchanged slightly or shuffled around. For example,
the Blessed Strike feature turns all thosearchetype features that add damage into one
core feature for the class. Thebig change here is starting the archetype at

(13:46):
third level instead of first, whichmeans you'll be sort of a generic holy
man until you pick a god atthird level, which is very odd.
Actually, you know, I'm goingto take that back. That might not
be that odd when I think aboutit. A lot of party just kind
of start at third level anyway,and maybe they want that first to second
to third level for early parties togive them give them time for an arc.

(14:09):
You know, maybe I like that, Maybe I like this decision.
I don't know. I'm still thinkingabout it. They've also shifted down and
changed the turn undead feature, gettingrid of the weird turned quasi condition and
replacing it with the new dazed condition. We really need to talk about the
Druid because according to a lot ofDruid mains, including my wife, they've
kind of killed it. Wild shapeis utterly gutted. Instead of being able

(14:31):
to turn into any sort of beast, you're stuck with three set stat blocks
that represent land, air, andsea creatures with none of the flavor.
Then, to add insult to injury, they still lock the air and sea
forms behind even higher levels than wehad before. They also strangely shift Druid
to be more like a cleric,putting their healing powers front and center alongside

(14:52):
a channel Divinity like feature called ChannelNature. And I won't mince words,
and I think a lot of youprobably share my opinion. I hate this
new version, but I can seethe logic three forms is a lot easier
to implement in a virtual tabletop thanpotentially infinite animal forms from random bastieries.
I understand it, but that doesn'tmean I have to like it. And

(15:15):
again, this feels like a videogame thing as opposed to a tabletop update.
I'm trying to take my own adviceand not get too mad about something
that isn't final yet. I justI'm just surprised. They've definitely put the
fire up as the poster child forthe new weapon mastery features, giving the
Fighter more of them than any otherclass, and a new feature that lets

(15:37):
you swap them out on a longrest. Action Surge got a minor nerve,
but in practice it will essentially bethe same. Probably the biggest change
is a nerve to second wind,making it twice per long rest rather than
once per short rest. It doesseem like the Fighter archetypes are just straight
up gaining more features as their exampleof the Champion archetype is getting more features
and some features earlier than they werebefore. Moving onto the Paladin, it's

(16:00):
practically unchanged and unscathed, a littlebit of shuffling in the later tiers,
but you should find Paladins mostly thesame. Moving onto the Ranger, Hunter's
mark is now baked into the classand you don't have to concentrate on it,
which at this point I asked myselfwhy it's even considered a spell.
But here we are, which isa sizable buff all Rangers are starting with
spellcasting at first level rather than waiting. They're getting better late game features,

(16:23):
and that quasi invisibility feature that wasterrible is now straight up invisibility, which
is great. Overall, it seemslike the class got buffed and a lot
of the mechanics that just never workedwith Ranger have been stripped out. When
it comes to the Rogue, thecore class is passing through practically unchanged,
with just some late tier feature shufflingand some slight rewording to make sneak attack

(16:45):
clearer. The Thief archetype, however, has been completely reworked and now allows
you to take the new search inslight of hand action as a bonus action
using your cunning action. Thieves arealso getting a built in climb speed and
bonuses to jumps, along with juststraight up advantage on stealth checks. And
when talking about the Sorcerer, morespell slots, more metamagic and more new
features, Sorcerer makes out like abandit in this new addition, and probably

(17:08):
rightfully so, as part of atrend that will hold for all the other
spell casting classes. You're also gettingsome specific class spells that are always prepared
for you and you don't count againstthe rest of the spells that you know.
For Sorcerers, their class spells areChaos Bolt and Sorceress Burst. Chaos
Bolt is unchanged and Sorceress Burst isessentially the cantrip version of it, dealing

(17:29):
a small amount of a damage typeof your choice. Once you hit fifth
level, you also get a newunique Sorcerers spell, Sorceress Vitality, which
gives the paper thin sorcerer a wayto heal themselves. All of this adds
up to a big buff, andyou're going to be able to metamagic spells
a lot easier. Now. Thefact that the class spells are now baked
into the class means you'll be seeingthose spells a lot, but it will

(17:49):
help distinguish each major class from theother. The one thing that hurts is
moving the archetype to third level,which means all Sorcerers will be very sammy
in the early levels. But asI mentioned earlier, that might be a
benefit to role playing in some ways. And now we've got to talk about
the Warlock. It hurts a little. It looks a lot worse than it

(18:10):
is, but it still hurts.The class has essentially been taken apart,
twisted inside out, and put backtogether into something new. It's definitely a
departure from what you've played before.Firstly, packed magic is no more now
they just have a spellcasting feature andregain spell slots on a long rest like
everybody else. Next, a lotof what we're warlock features have been morphed
into class spells and baked back intothe class. You get medium armor for

(18:34):
every Warlock, and the Book ofShadows is a cantrip now that lets you
shuffle spells around. I don't personallylike these changes, and I've seen a
lot of people share that sentiment,but I suspect this is a resistance to
change rather than logical objections to thechanges themselves. It's easier if you think
of it as an entirely new class, since the differences are just so extreme,

(18:56):
and then with wizards at early levels, they won't feel much different.
Most of the changes concern consolidating someof their rules together and making them easier
to understand. Adding a spell toyour spellbook is now a spell called scribe
spell you automatically get, and youcan use your spell book as an arcane
focus, which is a nice changewhere wizards will feel different is in tiers
two and three, which get youa set of special class spells that let

(19:18):
you modify spells and even create newones. They're trying to push wizards as
not just spellcasters, but as spellcrafters, which is an amazing route that I
can't wait to play around with andmore importantly, see some of my wizard
means at my table play around with. They did technically get a nerf in
that arcane recovery has been pushed tosecond level, but it's a minor nerf
at worst. I have to putemphasis on the detail of being able to

(19:40):
make your own spells. I thinkthat's absolutely amazing. It's about time.
There are so many old RPGs thatessentially allow you to do that already and
encourage it, and yeah, abouttime. Can't wait for that. It's
almost pointless to try and draw aconclusion on playtest material, as everything we
just went through could be completely differentby the time this video comes out.

(20:00):
But in general, they seem tobe streamlining things that were clunky, restructuring
the character creation system in a goodway, and putting great efforts towards making
the system ready to function in avirtual tabletop only time will tell what changes
stick in how the community at largewill react. But surrounding issues aside,
I'm seeing mostly positive changes that shouldcreate better gameplay, or at very least,

(20:21):
I see a lot of changes inthe right direction that could just use
a bit more refinement. Let's justhope that Wizards of the Coast actually continues
to focus on implementing these positive changesand making better gameplay as opposed to rolling
out a paid subscription service that canmake them a bit more money. Again,
Wizards of the Coast, we don'tneed you to play D and D
and we never did, and Idon't need to pay twenty dollars a month

(20:45):
when I have so many other thingson my mind that I want to buy
for my D and D table thathas nothing to do with your stupid update.
Thank you guys so much for watching. I really appreciate it. Be
sure to like and subscribe because weput out new content like this all the
time. And if you have strongfeelings about one, D and D and
anything surrounding the OGL or anything elsewith Wizards of the Coast over this past

(21:08):
feels like a year, but Iknow it's shorter than that. If you
have any feelings about any of that. Please let me know down in the
comments. My name's Patrick Ferguson fromskull splitter Dice and until next time,
farewell everyone,