D&D's latest beta rules tinker with its classes and give Fighters the power to clobber fools real good with a chair

pcgamer.com:

A playtest for 2024's upcoming revised 5e ruleset dropped, and it's got some juicy implications—alongside a whole new Fighter subclass that's cool in concept but wimpy in practice. 

For the uninitiated, these playtests have generated a lot of buzz for something that's ostensibly a beta—while D&D's habit of publically sense-checking their stuff has been overall good for game balance, it does create a certain sense of anxiety. Players now have a direct hand in deciding which min-maxing headaches we'll all be dealing with for the next however many years.

Fighters, Barbarians, Warlocks, Sorcerers, and Wizards had a remix this time around. You can read the full materials yourself, but I'm going to sum up my gut responses as a casual theorycrafter.

The suggested tweaks to barbarians strike a major blow to one of its most beloved subclasses—the Totem Barbarian, which has been sensibly renamed to the Path of the Wild Heart. This subclass lets you choose an animal to draw power from, and bear used to be the go-to pick.

Under the current rules, when raging, a bear-flavoured Barbarian gains resistance to all damage types except for Psychic, cutting most punishment received in half. This is, as you can imagine, very good for a class that's already a sack of hit points. This nerf-in-progress clamps down on that, only letting you pick two extra types of damage to shrug off when you go into a rage. While that's still not bad, it pales in comparison.

Otherwise, barbs get buffs all round—Reckless Attack lasts longer, Intimidating Presence is a bonus action. Signs are good for those who would like to rage.

Fighters have some new toys to play with—Second Wind looks to be more versatile with the new class feature Tactical Mind, which lets