D&D’s newest playtest materials offer revamped and new Forgotten Realms subclasses

With the recent release of D&D‘s 2024 edition, the number of subclasses natively available to the newest edition of the game was cut down to four per class. While your old books will work just fine with the new edition, there’s still something exciting about cracking open a new book and checking out new player options. There’s a light release schedule for D&D this year, but scheduled for late 2025 is something the game has needed for a while: a pair of books exclusively focused on the Forgotten Realms, and with it, new subclasses.

These new setting-specific books — which I hope we see more of in the future! — allow Wizards of the Coast to add subclasses that really focus on aspects of the setting they’re specifically from, rather than being generic concepts. We’ve had a very few Forgotten Realms subclasses available in the past (most notably the extremely weak Purple Dragon Knight of Cormyr for Fighters), but now a new Unearthed Arcana has been released for D&D that offers up a wide selection of subclasses for playtesting at your table — a few returning ones, but quite a few new ones.

Sorry, Barbarians, Druids, Monks, and Warlocks — there’s nothing new for you here. But for the other classes, here’s what you’ll find in this playtest packet:

• Bards get access to the College of the Moon, a subclass that traces its roots to the druidic circles of the Moonshae Isles, making it a sort of folktale-telling, fey-empowered bard. Moon Bards learn a smattering of Druid magic alongside their usual selections of spells, and learn how to invoke folktales that are imbued with buffs to things you are probably doing as a Bard anyway, like giving out Bardic Inspiration.
• Clerics get an updated version of the Knowledge Domain, and while it’s not as strongly-themed as many subclasses, there are a lot of deities on Faerun that focus on knowledge, like Oghma, Gond, Azuth, and Mystra. Knowledge Clerics now pick up an extra tool proficiency as soon as they gain the subclass, an updated list of domain spells that are always prepared, and the fairly powerful ability to use their Channel Domain charges to cast their domain spells without expending a spell slot.
• The heavily-revamped Purple Dragon Knight is back for Fighters, and it’s not only more powerful, it’s just more interesting. Purple Dragon Knights finally live up to their name; rather than simply evoking the emblem of Cormyr, they are now literally bonded with an amethyst dragon companion, which starts as a hatchling that accompanies you in combat but eventually even grows large enough to be your mount.
• Paladins gain the unusual Oath of the Noble Genies. Hailing from Calimshan (and, although they haven’t mentioned it yet, likely Zakhara as well), Noble Genie Paladins add extra elemental effects to their Divine Smite, learn a variety of spells that might make you actually want to use spell slots for something besides smiting, gain a bonus to AC equal to their Charisma when lightly armored, and eventually an aura of elemental protection for their allies. It’s a very different flavor for Paladins, and very cool in concept.
• Rangers gain a variety of very cool powers from the Winter Walker subclass. I honestly expected it to just be “we have Drizzt Do’urden at home,” but this is a whole concept unto itself instead. Winter Walkers learn to resist and deal extra cold damage, protect themselves and slow their foe when casting Hunter’s Mark, gain a variety of ways to bolster their own and their allies’ survivability, and even learn to frighten enemies that hit them — culminating in being able to turn into a snow phantom of some kind.
• Rogues can draw on the powers of the Dead Three — Bane, Bhaal, and Myrkul — with the Scion of the Three subclass. These rogues gain a variety of powers related to the Three, such as frightening foes with their Cunning Strike, resisting damage relating to one of the Dead Three per day, and being even better at killing enemies who are already weak. This feels like a real grab bag of powers early on, but has some real potential at later levels.
• Sorcerers can now tap directly into the Weave with the Spellfire Sorcery subclass. You learn to channel the power of an out-of-print CCG — no, sorry, just kidding, you learn to channel bursts of raw magical potential called Spellfire, which lets you heal allies, burn enemies, gain various fire and light related spells in your subclass spell list, and eventually even fly. Additionally, your direct connection to the Weave means you always have Counterspell learned from level 6 onward.
• Wizards see the return of the Bladesinger subclass, a popular one among “gish” (sword-and-spell gameplay) characters. The Bladesinger was already pretty good, and mostly has just received tweaks: they can now use Intelligence for both attack and damage rolls while the Bladesong is active, use their weapons as a spellcasting focus, learn additional weapon proficiencies instead of armor proficiencies (which makes sense — the Bladesinger wants to be lightly armored or unarmored!), and gain more flexible ways to work attacks in after casting spells. All of this should help you stay active in melee even when you remember that you’re a Wizard and have better things to do than swing a sword sometimes.