One Shot Sign up

Welcome back to How to Be a Better DM. I’m your host, Tanner Weyland, here with my cohort Justin Lewis. We’re here to help you tell better stories as you DM sessions of D&D. 

As you might have heard, Wizards of the Coast has announced that they will be releasing the next non-edition edition of Dungeons and Dragons. Rather than being a specific edition, this will instead be a constantly changing iteration of D&D called One D&D. We’ve talked about this on Episode 61 of the show if you want more in depth-information and opinion on the release. As part of OneD&D, Wizards of the Coast has decided that they will release bits and pieces of the new system from time to time, allowing us all to playtest and give feedback on the material. Well, a month or so ago they released the first grouping of this new content and today, we’re going to talk about it.

Main Topic: Unearthed Arcana: Character Origins

So today we’re going to talk about the first installment of OneD&D Playtest materials. You can get this by going to DNDBeyond. You’ll have to login and enable OneD&D playtest material but that’s free so no worries there. We’re going to mention certain points and then give our opinions about them after each point. 

• Choose Class First
• Choose Your Origin
• Origin is broken down into your race, background.
• Racial Traits:
• Size
• Speed
• Creature Type
• Life Span Special Traits
• Background Traits:
• Ability Score Bonus
• Skill Proficiencies
• Tool Proficiencies
• Language
• Feat
• Equipment
• Considered Starting Races
• Human
• Ardling
• Dragonborn
• Dwarf
• Elf
• Gnome
• Halfling
• Orc
• Tiefling
• New Racial Legacy Trait
• Applies currently to Tieflings and Ardlings
• Rules for Creating a Background
• “Background Features Ability Scores. When you determine your character’s ability scores, choose two of them, and increase one by 2 and the other one by 1. Alternatively, choose three ability scores, and increase each of them by 1.
• Skill Proficiencies. Choose two Skills. Your character gains Proficiency in them. 
• Tool Proficiency. Choose one tool. Your character gains Tool Proficiency* with it.
•  Language. Choose one language from the Standard Languages and Rare Languages tables (these appear later in the document). Your character knows that language. 
• Feat. Choose one 1st-level Feat. Your character gains that Feat. 
• Equipment. Your character gains 50 GP to spend on starting equipment. The character keeps any unspent GP as spare coin.
• Current Sample Backgrounds:
• Acolyte
• Artisan
• Charlatan
• Criminal
• Cultist
• Entertainer
• Farmer*
• Gladiator
• Guard*
• Guide*
• Hermit
• Laborer*
• Noble
• Pilgrim*
• Sage
• Sailor
• Soldier
• Urchin
• Feats 
• Feats have levels, prerequisites and repeatable tags on their descriptions
• 
  

Conclusion

Announcements:

To finish today’s show off, we just want to share a few housekeeping items.

First is that if you want to watch the upcoming October One-shot being hosted by none other than Bone Daddy Rob from This Dungeon is Occupied, then make sure to get on our email list. We’re going to send out a calendar invite with the date and time for that. I’ve gotten a glimpse of the storyline and let me tell you that Bone Daddy knows his stuff. Sign up for our email list by going to https://betterdungeonmaster.com/email and input your email and Name.

Next thing is that we are looking for feedback on the show. You can help us get you even more resources for creating amazing stories by going to https://betterdungeonmaster.com/feedback and telling us what you think. It’s completely anonymous and you can answer as many or as few questions as you like. 

betterdungeonmaster.com/discord

Thanks for listening to today’s show. We are deeply grateful for your support and for the opportunity to support your love of Dungeons and Dragons. If the small sample of those of you who’ve joined our one-shots is a good indicator of the type of people you are, we are the luckiest podcasters in the world because you are awesome and fun. We look forward to building an even deeper relationship with you.

We’ll be back next thursday with another episode of How to Be a Better DM.

Thanks for joining us in the tavern today. Until next time, let’s go ahead and roll initiative.

Mentioned in this episode:

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Discord

welcome back to how to be a better d m i'm your host tanner wayland

here with my cohort and friend justin lewis how you doing justin

either i'm good thanks tanner

great glad to hear it we're here to help you just and specifically you now

just getting you and everybody else that's listening

m

um tell better stories as you d m sessions of d and d h and

usually would say d and d five but as everybody knows one d and d

quote unquote is coming out so you know we'll see the world's change ing and

we might have to change with either way exciting things i bring it up because

we're actually going to be talking about these this one d and d the wizards

of the coast announced um and so what we're going to be doing is uh

we kind of decided to change the format usually we do a lot of announce

that man at the start we're going to do it at the end we just

want to you know get to the meat so that you guys enjoy it and

then if you want some we've got some exciting announcements at the end and some

questions we have so stick around but first off wizards of the coast and i'm

sure you've heard of this justin but they have been releasing in little chunks some

of the material uh for people to just look over try out see if they

like it or hate it you know and then give feedback and that's what we're

gonna be talking about the first little chunk which was of their unearthed arcana character

origins

exactly and we we talked about kind of wizards of the coasts one d n

d announcement back on episode sixty one of the show so if you want more

in depth information you can heck that out as well you can get the unearthed

arcana p d f for character origins by going to the link in the show

notes it's labelled d and d beyond you're gonna have to can and enable one

d n d play test material but it's free so no worries after that but

today our goal is to basically give the facts kind of fact by fact and

after each fact an opinion so here's one thing that the document says here's a

little bit of how we feel about that and the first thing that i noticed

and it's a super subtle thing you actually if you read pretty fast you won't

get it but the first thing i noticed is that in the first paragraph of

determining your origin it says after choosing your characters class coma it's time to can

are the characters origin now if you've read through the players

yeah

handbook you noticed that that's kind of a switch because in the player's handbook of

dand five e you pick your race first and and your class but it seems

that in one dad that's switching it and i think that might be more because

people come to the gaming table with the idea of oh i want to play

a cleric and it's like okay we'll tell em more about your cleric and and

then you say a little bit more about their background so i think maybe that's

why they're doing that yeah

yeah i agree i think that it's just a little it's kind of a flipping

over the way we think of it but in a way i kind of think

it's great you know because s they're kind of making this push to not just

making everything so like focused on like oh stereo typical you know your race is

that you know is this type of thing you're in or cool that means you're

just ter typical or like some of their changes i've noticed have been like to

break that apart so it's like hey you are you know this this race but

that you're that race within the context of the as and

hm

and it's even interesting kind of like if you move on to the next part

they break down like what your character origin is um and they break it into

three parts which that's great you know because it's not just like oh you're you're

a dwarf probably mind

hm

i guess you know

m

it's like no you've got to figure out each part so first they say who

are the characters ancestors that that's race and how did the character spend the years

leading up to a life of adventure that their background um and also you know

their language as well and so they kind of break it down into the character

origin overview and you have a lot of different things they're right

oh

like for for race traits

oh

you've got like creature type size speed life span special traits each of those can

be broken

oh

down a bit more but i'm glad that they kind of are showing that like

hey even within each of these races there

ah

are different traits you know

yeah yeah and i actually do like that in a way it is it is

making it more make more sense because you know s in whatever world you have

probably have tusks right they probably have green tinged skin but you might

hm

have differences between and orkshawman and or pre stan paladin or war caster and those

differences would also include some of their natural abilities because a lot of us go

towards things that were naturally better at than worse at ah and i just like

how they're kind of simplifying it and saying the things that everyone actually does share

for example human beings the race of human beings we all have five fingers right

yeah

those are going to be part of your racial traits but not every human bein

ing is smart athletic you know what i mean

yeah

but one thing i did want to mention also and this is kind of toting

my own horn before i read this back in episode sixty talked about a few

ways to better write back stories and it did talk about your ancestors basically describe

the type of people who led up to your birth you know your parents things

like that which

hm

informs on your racial traits as well as writing out your back story of what

did you do before adventuring and that should also lead to your background traits and

those background traits as we've probably discussed already include your ability so bonuses your skill

proficiencies your tool proficiencies languages feats that's pretty new actually

yeah

and equipment oh

yeah and and i was just earlier today i

yeah

was looking at the character raises

yeah

and something because we're commenting you know we're making

hm

given feedback i do like how for each of the races like they do have

like like obviously it's a small thing but the size i like how they have

like for some

uh

of them they've got like the medium like

ah

for humans

hm

let's take humans for example it's like medium four to seven feet tall or small

two to four feet tall and i'm like that's cool you know it's a little

bit of less work and it's another way

m

reconstructing the races because if you're first choosing class i think that that's going to

make it so that if you choose the class then you can choose whatever whatever

race afterwards

okay

but then like you can kind of customize each race as well by being like

oh even within each race like humans you could technically be small you

hm

don't have to be a handling if you're a rogue you know you could just

be a small human that's fine um

yeah oh

but i really love the special traits special traits is just honestly much better than

you know i feel like they've upgraded it significantly compared to what they've done in

the past because like dwarfs that's what they used in the video as an example

yeah like a dwarf they just get all these special traits like dark vision dwarf

and resilience you know dwarf

hm

and toughness forge wise stone cutting and these things i do something like specific um

and it's not just a one time thing you know it's not just a one

time stap buff like even like dwarf in toughness kind of seems like a boring

trade in terms of like mechanics but it's so much better than what you would

see in the old system like your hip point maximum increases by one and increases

by one again whenever you gain the level level so it's like oh so basically

the hip points it's not just initially you're getting plus

oh

one to constitution is like no you're getting like extra hit points and it adds

up each level you know i just like little changes like that that make it

so that your racial choices um actually kind of build on each other and are

useful throughout the time and not just at character creation right

i agree completely and it also it does speak a lot more towards that idea

of your race bestows the boons and curses of your ancestors and you get to

carry those but your background kind of deals with a lot more of your choices

that you've made and just so you know listener some of the races that in

character origins the sheet that wizards of the coast have kind of put out as

races that they're considering kind of being the starting races some of those races are

humans ard links which are kind of

uh

the not necessarily replacement

uh

for

m

a simar

m

but they are the samar equivalent they're essentially the opposite of teeflings there are dragon

born dwarf elf

oh

nom halfling this one i find very interesting is ork instead of half or it's

just or and then the final one is teefling uh and ah no doubt we'll

see a lot more races come out in later play test editions i guess but

this is what they're considering right now

yeah and and they have a great list like you're

oh

going to see pretty much all of the big ones you know that you expected

hm

but um but yeah so i would say for each of you take a chance

to look through each of them i think that they really have tried to make

each of the races like more you know more interesting more game player rather than

state like focused and and so take a look i still need to go through

with a fine tooth comb and see if there's

hm

anything that i that i just play and disagree with but

m

i like i like what i've seen so far um

yeah

and then moving on to character backgrounds so what i note with the character background

is you know obviously it's going to have a lot of um you know a

lot of the basic things that you expect right like ability scores like skill proficiencies

things like that but one thing that i really like is how they um how

they kind of make it more focused on like a profession like like well at

least their sample backgrounds do and i think the apple backgrounds are a great way

especially

hm

for beginners now if you don't want to put together your own situation then they

have a lot of wonderful things like the acolyte artist and cultist guard play no

guard farmer and each of these have like just a whole like let me take

a farmer right they've got plus two constitution plus one wisdom skill proficiencies animal handling

nature because they say that typically you know you're going to have you know two

of the skills that are going to get proficient with right tool proficiency carpenters tools

language hafflingum feet tough and so like i just like um like that as an

example is like hey your background it's not something break the game with but

hm

but it's a nice place to be like hey this is where you're starting from

and and it just adds a little it flashes out your character a little bit

mechanic like because obviously with the race they're not doing that as much and so

with the background there they're doing a little bit more of the typical stuff

for sure one thing i think is that a lot of people probably complained about

starting at level one with basically

s

being in nobody this this backgroud thing i think takes care that you know like

bill bulbaggans wasn't a nobody he was a fairly well to do haffling in the

shire who had land property and enough to eat you know and starting him out

at level one doesn't necessarily you know show that and i think these backgrounds really

do a few backgrounds that in the sample list are new because it did take

a lot of them from the players handbook in five e but it added farmer

guard guide laborer and pilgrim and i do like all of those because you know

how many times do you just want to be a farmer and be like cloud

to adventure

yep

another thing that i found very interesting was in talking about the background it said

there are three methods to picking a background and the first method was creating a

background the second method was choosing one from a sample background a third method was

choosing one from the sample background and then tweaking it and i find it very

interesting that they first listed creating a background and here's a justin prediction when one

d n d comes out or even in the months leading up to it and

after we will see a large explosion of kind of home brew content being centered

around creating backgrounds that are interesting new and unique and that give you kind of

different flavor so check back with me in like a year or two and i'll

tell you if i was right but i wanted to read the rules for creating

a background because i think that's really important because if you do want to play

test this out home this is how you start so you start with background features

ability scores when you determine your characters ability scores choose two of them increase one

by two and the other by one alternatively choose three ability scores and increase each

of them by one next choose your skill proficiencies by choosing two skills and your

character gains proficiency with those scales next for tool proficiencies choose one tool and gain

proficiency with it for language choose one language from the standard languages and a lang

which is tables and and those are later in the document and your character knows

that language next you choose one first level feet and you gain that feet and

finally for equipment you gain fifty gold gold coins g p points is that what

gold

g p

pieces

is for

probably

old

gold

pieces

pieces

gosh

yeah

i'm so stupid

you get no

fifty

gold points

gold

i

piece

love it

i was like gold points that's that's new it's not new fifty gold pieces

yeah

to spend on starting equipment and then you keep anything you don't spend so if

you want to do your own background right now that's exactly how you do it

yeah and as part of your background it'll especially if you're choosing one of the

sample backgrounds now just as in the side i said

ah

flippantly that you could create your own you can because like justin was saying there

is a there's a method to the madness you know you're like oh i choose

yeah

this for for the ability score is this for the the proficiency things like that

you can do that and that's great um but and then it's part of that

you can choose a first level feet or if you choose one of the background

like farmer that i was going through before their first level feet is tough um

and this

yeah

is another thing about making your character right from the get go a unique individual

who actually has something that they're bringing to the table rather than blank slate that

you kind of need build out um and so like tough it's a first level

feet something that mentioned here is you know each feet you sometimes they have pre

pre requisite sometimes they can be repeatable um pretty much all of these first level

feats are not repeatable or and they don't require pre requisites which makes sense because

their first level right like they don't there's no feet that you could have before

this so of course it's it doesn't have a pre requisite um but tough

oh

with the farmer would have

ah

um it has the feet means your hip point maximum increases by an amount equal

to twice your character level when you gain this feet whenever whenever you gain a

level hereafter your hip point maximum increases by an additional two point two hit points

so it's kind of similar strangely i don't know how this happened but like i

was reading the dwarf in toughness this tough is just like hey you don't have

to be a dwarf you can just be tough now if you had a dwarf

farmer then they would both have dwarf dwarf and toughness and they could and they

yeah

would just have tough so they'd be double tough you know

hm

um

that's a beefy farm boy

as a beefy farm dwarf you know

yeah

ah but

yeah

yeah i just like um i like that i like these feats for the first

level initially can i be honest when i first heard that they were like oh

you get feats at first

ah

level as like whoop do you do huh

m

um

m

but i do like in terms of building a character i think that it is

a small touch that can actually mean a lot it means that your character background

it has a lot more it's more fleshed out it's more three dimensional and i

think it can make new players especially get into their role faster right

ah um full disclosure i actually haven't read the next m by the time this

episode comes out the second edition of play test material has come out which is

expert classes i believe are expert tease classes so i haven't read thou so i

don't actually know what classes look like quite yet in one did but here's another

prediction that feats will have a bigger role and there might even be like tons

more specific for each individual class that will make kind of branching out in class

sub classes

oh

and even sub sub classes possibly much more sable because the feats will make it

much more customersable but also one thing i noticed and kind of back to my

point about there's the coast putting out first that they want you to create your

own background i think with this play test material it shows that they're much more

interested in players customizing their character and creating characters from the story up

yeah

because you start with a story and then it sounds like they want you to

kind of talk to your demand and find or create the background perfect for your

character rather than you know minmaxing from the get go which i find

oh

is very interesting yeah

yeah yeah i completely agree with what you're saying there i think that they are

making more character focused which i think for everybody makes it a better a more

inclusive game because i think a lot of people it takes a sec to get

the joy of minmaxing right because

hm

i think that that's a little bit for more experience players right m for new

players and players and honestly even experienced players like everybody can uh can find good

characters and good story approachable right

hm

so yeah i like the focus we'll have to see you know my guest is

that in terms of their making character origins they're probably not going to have to

make too many changes there is my guest because

yeah

pretty simple you can tell that

yeah

they're trying to keep it pretty simple as it should because creating a character shouldn't

take twenty days or anything but yeah i like how they're going so far

to be honest i completely agree i don't think they're going to change very much

of this

yeah

and when it first came out i wasn't too fond of kind of like they

nerved the race bit

yeah

you know and

yep

i wasn't too fond of that because i was like no like i love dwarfs

being dwarfs and or being orksand crap like that but this makes it so you

can't customize and still retain the dwarfiness of it if you want or you can

make something far off in left field and the d m doesn't have to do

as much work creating up all sorts of strange rules instead they're built in or

you can just make it a dwarf dwarf and you know everyone's happy or you

can't you know like either way so

yeah

i do like how they're moving it's gonna different though for sure

yeah absolutely and i think some people especially those that are experienced with the game

they're going to have some issues with that you know that's

hm

that's normal people are going to want to men ax and do it well and

and there's certainly a game and like certain groups that really thrive on that

yeah

but i think they're trying to avoid that for the average player now

yeah

hum

yeah i agree

m i mean otherwise there's not much more like in terms of this this first

material that they released on just kind of

hm

going through it here seeing if there's anything we missed

one thing i will say is

eh

that there are are ton of feats in there and i think they

oh yeah

even listed a few spells and and

oh

there's a big glossary

yah

at the bottom we didn't go over the fees because there's too many to really

go over and we didn't go over the glass because you should probably already know

that or you know if you don't please email us and well we'll figure something

out but the rest is mostly just kind of reference material

yeah exactly but honestly everybody get your get your sticky paws into this just

oh

just rummage through it make it all good but yeah i think that there's a

lot here worth looking at they aren't revealing anything to crazy at this point i

think they're playing it safe and they'll do some of the more questionable choice is

later so we'll have to we'll have to see that and we'll be right there

ground floor with you guys um but that is that's a podcast before we leave

we got a few announcements um first off we want to remind everyone of the

upcoming october one shot being hosted by none other than bone daddy rob from this

dungeon is occupied we've done a podcast with them he's great make sure that you

get on our email list if you want to be a part i believe that

one's full right

yes

yeah

but if you also want to watch it

yes

you make sure you sent up on the email list because we haven't quite nailed

down the time the date is october twenty second but the time is still in

flux right now i believe

yeah perfect uh yeah so once we get you on the list we'll send out

you know we'll send out a calendar invite with a date in

oh

time so that you've got that otherwise i mean justine you're saying that you got

a glimpse of

m

of rob's story how is it

m uh it's it's really cool so i'll just share this little bit to the

and this was it's funny so like the day before he told me this i

was reading in the monster manual and i read this specific part so and i

was like i should make a story about that and then rob did it but

whatever so essentially you have been charged by a specific group to investigate a colony

of kuatoa and cato are fish like people and they have this very strange ability

that as a group they can essentially through their faith and belief that something exists

they can make it real and some very strange things have been happening and from

what i've understood that legend of like this

yeah

quito group manifesting like an evil arched deity or something like that and you have

to figure it out so there's a little taste for you of bone daddy excellent

story and i'm i'm super excited

that sounds so good yeah but

oh

everybody who's heard that you should get excited because you can watch it it's going

to be great

hm

otherwise we also wanted and we're going to have the link for you to sign

up for our email list by the way

hm

otherwise we are thinking about doing a discord but want to see if there's any

interest right so if you are interested in in doing in us running a discord

kind of having a little community where we can chat talk about d n d

about demming specie italy um go to better dungeon master dot com forward slash discord

will also have that in the notes but and hen let us know we really

look forward to your feedback that's why we also always on every podcast we've got

the link for feedback we've shortened the form we just want any input that you

have at all it always helps our podcast be better

um

agreed

m go ahead

i was just going to say and the link for that is better dungeon master

dot com slash feedback and then the link for giving us your email to sign

up to watch the one shot is better dungeon master do com slash email

perfect honestly for you listeners we are so grateful every time that you do listen

we feel like the luckiest podcasters in the world ended you guys are just so

awesome and fun and we look forward to building deeper relationships with you will be

back next thursday with another episode thanks for joining us in the tavern today until

next time let's go ahead and roll initiative