Wizards of the Coast has boldly announced the playtest for “One D&D” or what fans will colloquially call Dungeons & Dragons 6th Edition or perhaps 5.5 Edition. The plan for One D&D is to revise the three core rulebooks (The Player’s Handbook, Dungeon Master’s Guide, and Monster Manual) without throwing out any of the rules introduced in 5th Edition. All of the books, expansions, updates, and errata for the last edition will be backward compatible with One D&D. The first playtest for the new system called Character Origins is available now on the D&D Beyond website.
Why One D&D will likely be dubbed 5.5E by fans
Regardless of how Wizards of the Coast wishes to brand this as One D&D, the backwards compatibility of the 5th edition rules makes it obvious that this is an update to the ruleset rather than something entirely new. As described in the trailer above, the developers didn’t want to “take away anything” from 5E players, and instead wanted it to be about “giving you more options, giving you more choices you can make, more character types you can play, more spells you cast.” In this way, One D&D will largely work in similar fashion to what 3.5 is to 3rd Edition, or what 4E Essentials is to 4th Edition. It’s just 5.5 Edition when you come down to it.
A one-hour breakdown of the first playtest with Game Design Architect Jeremy Crawford reveals several notable additions, with some nods to D&D’s main rival, Pathfinder 2E. Player backgrounds or origins will now be accompanied by a first-level feat. Given that 5E is rather feat-starved, any new ways to improve player versatility are welcome. On the flipside of Tieflings, Ardlings are a new race from the upper planes, while Dwarves now have a light version of tremorsense. Spells are now divided into Arcane, Divine, and Primal lists, though spells no longer trigger crits to see if this will help martial classes keep up with casters in the endgame. Even more controversial, crits are planned to be only for player characters, not for enemies or bosses (though many have Legendary Resistances which players don’t have).
With Wizards of the Coast’s purchase of D&D Beyond, the company hopes to bundle physical and digital versions of the books together for One D&D. It will also introduce a full digital 3D play space that, if done well, looks like it may come to replace Roll20.
In other news, Xbox Free Play Days for August 2022 will make three games free this weekend, and the Pride Flag mod for Spider-Man Remastered has caused controversy over account bans.
