Ok so, the long playtest continues. My observations and conversations with community members over last months Character Origin playtest have been divided on only a few things in the playtest, it was mostly the d20 auto fail/pass on natural 1s/20s and critical hits stuff. So naturally they removed that from the next part of playtest.
The next part of the playtest drops tomorrow, most likely at 12:00 PST. This one will be a bit more interesting as it seems to focus on three classes; the Bard, the Ranger, and the Rogue. These are to be know as the Expert classes group.
Expert is group of classes that are defined by their expertise in a particular area. As a broad generalization, Rogues are stealth experts, Rangers are survival experts, and Bards are performance experts. One of the defining features of the Expert classes will be Expertise. The Bard and Rogue already had this feature, but now the Ranger will also have this feature. Expertise doubles your proficiency for two skills that you are already proficient with.
Other groups mentioned (but are not part of this upcoming playtest) are Warrior, Mage, and Priest. Now I'm of two minds with class groups. One is "well yeah, sure, that make sense" and the other is "does this smell like 4th edition". I like the idea of grouping the classes and giving group based abilities and feature to just one group, it can help with the power creep. But I also remember 4th edition, with its 4 classes that are just flavored with different power sources. Now I'm pretty sure they aren't going to repeat the mistakes of the past, but this is WotC, so who knows.
The next things is changes to spellcasting. My understanding is all spell lists are going to be prepared. This is how most classes worked but the Bard, Sorcerer and Warlock all had "fixed" spell lists. So while this is a small change, I think its a good one. The other change to spellcasting is Ritual Casting. It sounds like if you can cast a spell, and a spell with the Ritual tag is on your list, you can just cast it as a ritual. Doesn't have to be prepared, it just has to be on your list. Since the Character Origins condensed almost all spells down to three lists, that make the Magic Initiate feat a lot better. Rituals aren't really that over powered, so this might expand their usefulness.
Lastly, is an experimental rule for gaining inspiration. So in Character origins, you could gain inspiration by rolling a Natural 20. I liked this, it made it easier to get inspiration. The change is minor but interesting. Instead of a Natural 20, you get it on a Natural 1. I think it is mechanically more useful. I wouldn't call it Inspiration, I would call it Resolve. Same benefit, different name.
Personally I'm looking forward to the release tomorrow. So what you do you think about the OneD&D playtest so far? Let me know in comments. Until next time!