The latest Unearthed Arcana for June 2023 has made additional changes to seven classes in Dungeons & Dragons 5e, including popular ones like Rogue, Cleric, Bard, and Monk. As part of Playtest 6 for the upcoming revised edition of the Dungeons & Dragons Player's Handbook, these class changes can be implemented and tested out in current campaigns. And while these aren't official quite yet, they do indicate the many upcoming class changes coming to D&D in the next year.
As revealed earlier today on the official Dungeons & Dragons YouTube channel, the newest Unearthed Arcana introduces changes to seven popular D&D classes: Bard, Cleric, Druid, Monk, Paladin, Ranger, and Rogue. In the video, Game Designer Architect Jeremy Crawford and D&D's Senior Content Consultant Todd Kenreck walk viewers through the changes to each class - and in alphabetical order.
The changes in Unearthed Arcana Playtest 6 follow the previous ones that altered classes like Sorcerer and Warlocks in Playtest 5, and these make further modifications to classes that were previously playtested for One D&D and the upcoming Player's Handbook in 2024.
What D&D Classes Are Changed In Unearthed Arcana Playtest 6
One D&D has already made numerous changes to the Dungeons & Dragons 5e ruleset, and Wizards of the Coast has been steadily introducing playtests via Unearthed Arcana to see what works (and what doesn't) ahead of the 2024 rules update. The seven D&D classes being modified in Unearthed Arcana Playtest 6 are:
- Bard
- Cleric
- Druid
- Monk
- Paladin
- Ranger
- Rogue
There are several notable tweaks to these classes in June 2023's Unearthed Arcana, including Bards getting more streamlined choices of which School of Magic they want to invest in, introducing new domain changes for Clerics, and making some alterations to Monks to ensure players don't run out of points too quickly. As mentioned in the video, there are a lot of changes, so further details are available at D&D Beyond.
Because each of these D&D classes is getting its own refinements and subclass changes, it's recommended that players and DMs check out the updates list in Unearthed Arcana Playtest 6 and designer notes for full details, since the video gives an overview rather than listing each and every change in-depth. Overall, many of these latest changes seem to be focused on making classes more powerful ahead of future D&D book releases, while addressing issues players had in feedback from the previous Dungeons & Dragons playtests.
Source: Dungeons & Dragons/YouTube, D&D Beyond