Unearthed Arcana Waterborne Adventures: New from Unearthed Arcana

I, for one, am very pleased with the different options for existing classes over completely different classes.

I don't really have an balance thoughts. Balance isn't an issue with me unless it's incredibly flagrant.

 

[Forged Fury]

WotC has just posted a five-page PDF written by Mike Mearls. "The new character options presented in this month’s Unearthed Arcana showcase a simple design approach to adventure on the high seas. These rules include new options for the Fighting Style, Roguish Archetype, and Sorcerous Origin class features, as well as a playable minotaur race from Dragonlance’s world of Krynn. Created to be specifically useful for nautical D&D campaigns, these rules are general enough that they can be useful in any campaign."

Find it here.

 

[Morrus]

Waterbourne Adventures: New from Unearthed Arcana

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[Jester David]

Sweeeet.
Minotaurs in a sailing article. Very nice, and ties into Dragonlance very nicely. And the sorcerer fans should be happy for the extra content.

I love them releasing content patches like this. Small little themed releases with just enough content to satisfy yet not enough to bloat and easy to ignore if you don't need.

 

[Staffan]

I haven't evaluated them for balance, but this is precisely the kind of thing I want to see more of in Unearthed Arcana - bits of rules that fit particular campaign types while not being useless for others. I just might incorporate the pirotaurs into my homebrew (who knew Dragonlance had useful stuff in it?), and the Swashbuckler rogue gives a nice alternative to the current negative-stereotyped thief and assassin subclasses.

Some quick thoughts on balance:

At first glance, minotaurs look a bit weak stats-wise (either +2 to Str, or +1 to Str and one of Int and Wis), but on the other hand they have some very good racial traits: a d10 natural weapon with some nice special abilities layered on top of it.

Swashbucklers will always sneak attack in melee: basic rogue rules say you can sneak attack a foe that is adjacent to an ally of yours, and swashbuckler says you can sneak attack a foe that isn't. I'm going to go ahead and interpret the phrasing "any melee attack" as not overriding the general sneak attack rule about only working once per turn, because otherwise it would be completely broken.

Storm Sorcerers get added spells known, as did the Favored Soul. I wonder if this is some form of "stealth errata," and they've come to the conclusion that sorcerers need more of those.

 

[The Myopic Sniper]

It is nice to see a subclass with a 9th level bonus spell. I am tempted to revisit the Cleric domains and maybe add more limited versions of high level spells in the 6 - 9th level spell levels.

The whole document is far more crunchy than I thought might be offered by the title. Good stuff and some interesting options.

 

[The Myopic Sniper]

Storm Sorcerers get added spells known, as did the Favored Soul. I wonder if this is some form of "stealth errata," and they've come to the conclusion that sorcerers need more of those.

I am definitely eyeing adding bonus spells to the dragon sorcerer. For the Wild Mage, I am considering some kind of "roll for your bonus spells" on a periodic basis. I need to look at previous iterations of the concept to see if there are any ideas for implementation.

 

[Blue]

Pretty nifty. I like the whole tone, and I'm glad they came out with another sorcerer option. Might want to multiclass this with a Tempest Cleric. Though we already saw some people saying the Favored Soul was overpowered because of extra spells known in a domain-like setup, and the Storm Sorcerer does the same thing.

The Mariner fighting style is quite flavorful for only being a small change. I like that. Technically it's power creep for the small niche of PCs who don't use heavy armor but would take Defensive, but I like it.

Giving us Minotaur stats that were based around Krynn's sailor minotaurs was an interesting choice to include. I'd almost rather see those as "Minotaur (Krynn)" instead of just minotaur so they don't occupy the space for another minotaur race to come out because of their specifics.

Does the 3rd level power mean that the swashbuckler can always use sneak attack? (Use it if an ally is within 5' of the target as normal per rogue, and use SA if no ally is adjacent to the target with this.)

 

[Staffan]

It is nice to see a subclass with a 9th level bonus spell. I am tempted to revisit the Cleric domains and maybe add more limited versions of high level spells in the 6 - 9th level spell levels.

That's not a 9th level bonus spell. It's a 5th level bonus spell which you get at 9th level.

 

[The Myopic Sniper]

That's not a 9th level bonus spell. It's a 5th level bonus spell which you get at 9th level.

Yeah, I caught that after the fact. I was used to the two bonus spells at every level that it threw me off. Still, it did give me an idea how to balance high level bonus spells by putting those kind of restrictions on usage.