Unearthed Arcana, in its current form, has been an avenue for D&D designers to present players with in-progress fifth edition materials like class archetypes, species, and rule variants. Through playtests, designers like Jeremy Crawford are able to see how audiences engage with these new mechanics, and are able to make adjustments before these additions are canonized in core books. Supplements like Planescape and Tasha’s Cauldron of Everything were publicly playtested as Unearthed Arcana. The playtests have also been used to trial big edition updates D&D 2024, which Wizards of the Coast released through Unearthed Arcana in June 2023 and received over half a million feedback responses.
The 2024 Artificer release, however, is the first time the supplemental materials for the updated edition have been playtested in this format. The Artificer class, which was created in 2019 for fifth edition, is a class which melds magic and science, using “ingenuity and magic to unlock extraordinary capabilities in objects.”
A large source of conflict from players surrounding this updated edition is its supposed backwards compatibility with the original fifth edition. Earlier this year, the D&D Beyond virtual tabletop faced serious challenges integrating updated rulesets with older ones. Though the updated Player’s Handbook and Dungeon Master’s Guide has been met with general praise, independent designers have worked to fill the gaps Wizards of the Coast left in D&D 2024, creating products like Subclasses Revivified.
This new iteration of Unearthed Arcana signals that the team at D&D is looking to build on the momentum of what Wizard’s vice president of franchise and product Jess Lanzillo called “an unprecedented print run.” It’s unclear how long these playtests will run, how many D&D is planning on conducting, or what their final iterations might look like.