D&D: Playtest the Mystic and Artificer through DM’s Guild
The Artificer and The Mystic (and all the supporting rules) are available now on the DM’s Guild for your Playtesting Pleasure.
You heard right friends, the Artificer and Mystic have been updated and released as free .pdfs that you can pick up today from the DM’s Guild. This is part of a big playtesting initiative from Wizards of the Coast to see how these two classes shape up as quickly as they can, while still making these usable. Moreover, because these two classes have been released on the DM’s Guild this opens them up to the community at large. For those of you who haven’t been over there, the DM’s Guild is a site run by DriveThruRPG, partnered with WotC, and it’s their community hub. You can find a lot of community-generated content there, running the gamut from classes to adventure modules (some are free, others aren’t).
It’s basically a big modder’s database for the tools of the 5E engine. And now there’s been a big update to them. Because with the Mystic it means you also get the 20-odd pages of rules for Psionics. So with those out there for people’s official DM’s Guild content, I’m excited to see what the community does with it. I really want to see both of these classes shape up well–they’re great ideas, though they each are clearly still in playtest draft. BoLS has covered both the Mystic and the Artificer before, so I won’t go into too much detail here–but the gist of it is that these classes are great overall, but when you get down to the specifics of things like how certain subclasses or powers work, that’s where there’s still some work needing to get done.
Here’s Mike Mearls, talking with Dungeon Life about these new classses being available on the Dungeon Master’s Guild–it’s a good overview of both of the classes and a peek into the design process.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O65g7GYczbw
Essentially, Wizards wants to reach out to as many people and to have a centralized hub for any future updates to the playtesting documents, so they’ve released the two as .pdfs. If you’ve ever picked something up through DriveThruRPG you know that they’ll let you know if there’s an update or a new version of the document available, and all you have to do is go download it.
This is a great opportunity to help shape the future of the game (especially if we want to see these classes sooner), so hop in on the testing cycle–which is a little bit like a light cycle, except for the whole being a light cycle thing. There’s a writeup on the state of Subclasses/other Unearthed Arcana playtesting materials over at WotC’s website, but here’s a taste.
via Wizards of the Coast
he subclasses we’ve created have fallen into two categories. Some have proven to have mechanics or story concepts that players have embraced. These subclasses have moved on to deeper design and editing passes and further playtesting. We’ll have news soon about where they might turn up next.
Other subclasses were not embraced. Some had mechanics that were dull or confusing. Others’ concepts were too niche, stepped on the toes of other classes, or just didn’t resonate. Our plan is to either redesign these subclasses from the ground up in a future design cycle or push them aside in favor of new concepts.
AdvertisementWe have already rereleased a few subclasses for further comment. You’ll see a few more revised subclasses in the June installment of Unearthed Arcana.
tarting today, we are adding both the mystic and artificer to the DM’s Guild. They are both resources you can use to create your own material to share and sell on the Guild. We are also going to release additional surveys to delve deeper into the classes and identify headaches. Between watching the design work done on the DM’s Guild and monitoring feedback data, we’ll continue to revise these two classes.
Once the classes have robust sets of features and options that are hitting the approval levels we aim for, we will make those classes available for playtesting in the D&D Adventurers League. This step indicates that the new class is slated for official release as part of a D&D product. This step’s goal is to put the classes through the same rigorous testing and DM feedback that the core fifth edition classes received during their open playtests.
Man, it sounds like the Adventurer’s League is going to get interesting when these classes are organized-play ready. Again, I’m betting their deadline is November, so my guess is we’ll see these sometime in the Adventuer’s League before too long.
Read more about the Mystic and the Artificer
Psionics, magitek guns, and more await!
