Unearthed Arcana makes an unexpected return (the last one was back in May) with a three-page PDF containing two subclasses -- Path of the Wild Soul for the barbarian, and Way of the Astral Self for the monk.
Unearthed Arcana Unearthed Arcana: Barbarian and Monk
Unearthed Arcana makes an unexpected return (the last one was back in May) with a three-page PDF containing two subclasses -- Path of the Wild Soul for the barbarian, and Way of the Astral Self for the monk.
Sacrosanct
Legend
Charisma is not an attribute that impacts skill in a physical activity. And you aren’t using anaerobic methods when casting a spell. This is what I mean. You’re just changing the definitions of words to get the bonuses, so why bother having stats at all?
“Are you sure you can break through that door Bob?”
“Of course! After all, I won my debate team.”
“Huh?...”
bedir than
Full Moon Storyteller
Every time I read about the Barbarian I'm more interested in playing it
Leatherhead
Possibly a Idiot.
Let me put these new forum formatting tools to the test for a bit:
Path of the Wild Soul
Because when I smash stuff, it's not a sign of potential anger issues, it's just artistic expression!
Seriously, where is my living arcane bomb that everyone was implying to be here? No Elemental Chaos, no Demonic/Other Realm possession, not even a simple magic mutation caused by some wizard tying the weave into a knot around them. This is just some body-builder who is way too into magic mushrooms.
Lingering Magic
The ribbon is a ribbon. Fainting glowing yourself could be a cool party trick at least.
Wild Surge
Why are people so intent on forgetting the lessons learned from the old 3.x Frenzied Berserker? Uncontrollably killing your party whenever you Rage is just not a good design direction to begin with. It would be like having a Rogue subclass that is mechanically required to be a kleptomaniac.
Some of those abilities seem like they are worthy of being a core mechanic in their own right, but as a whole, this mechanic needs to be scrapped.
Magic Reserves
Ranges from Highly exploitable (dance around in a Healing Spirit for a bit to restock everyone's spell slots, and give them a huge Temp HP buffer for free!) to highly useless (here is 5 temp HP for the Warlock, sorry that you don't have low level spell slots to replenish anymore!).
It's not that the idea of a Barbarian who protects as much as they smash is a strange thing. The Ancestral Guardian has something along the same lines. Again, it's just the mechanic being bad.
Arcane Rebuke
I'm gong to start off by saying I like this one. Not only conceptually, but also mechanically. It's a "soft counter" to the Barbarians main weakness (spells, of course) that doesn't just totally negate the weakness. I honestly wish there were more abilities and mechanics like this in the game. My only complaint with this being that it doesn't scale at all. Something like tying the damage to the save DC would be appropriate and fun here. Or it could just scale with level, whatever.
Chaotic Fury
That thing you do that can just randomly kill your party? Now you can randomly do it every turn you rage instead of just the first! If you are scrapping Wild Surge (and you should) this is obviously going to have to go too.
Thoughts
The concept is silly and there is like one good ability. I wouldn't be sad if this was dropped. But I would be if this somehow made it into a book without a total overhaul instead of something that wasn't a "joke character" subclass.
Way of the Astral Self
Why yes, that is a Jojo's reference.
Arms of the Astral Self
Do you like punching things? What a silly question, you are a Monk, you love punching things! How about punching things that aren't standing right next to you? Sounds good? Well hold on, it's about to get better, you can punch stuff for Radiant or Necrotic damage at the low cost of 2 Ki for an entire 10 minutes, which is the best ROI on Ki you can get for low levels.
Unfortunately, right off the bat we have a major conflict that crimps on this Monk's intended style.
Bonus Action Scarcity. Counterintuitively, It takes a bonus action to summon your Arms, so you can't do the thing where you use your bonus action to attack more with your arms on the turn you summon them. Talk about a let down.
Visage of the Astral Self
You can spend 1 Ki point to get Devil's Sight or have Advantage in social situations. Having on-the-fly options are good. However, having to spend Ki to make it work drags it down a lot, as most comparable abilities are "always on."
Awakening of the Astral Self
This makes your Visage a full on Combat power. A really weird progression for an ability, but it works. Mostly, it's just some extra punching damage and a rather sizable flat damage reduction against elemental damage. It's nothing extremely special, but your Arms have been scaling all this time so it's kind of a double-dip.
Complete Astral Self
You become a Perpetual Punching Powerhouse.
Now this is a capstone. You are punching people up to 6 times a round (with one of them getting extra damage on top of it). But more importantly you are gaining Ki back every time a creature gets knocked out. Friend, Enemy, summoned creatures, that one guy you don't particularity care about. You essentially have no reason to not be in this form every time a combat starts up.
Thoughts
This is a fun looking subclass. And though it doesn't seem to start out powerful, it definitively ends up powerful. It's mechanically sound, evocative and fitting flavor (even if there is clearly a meme tied into it), and most importantly, unlike the above subclass, it works.
Also: I need to get myself a new avatar...
Path of the Wild Soul
Because when I smash stuff, it's not a sign of potential anger issues, it's just artistic expression!
Seriously, where is my living arcane bomb that everyone was implying to be here? No Elemental Chaos, no Demonic/Other Realm possession, not even a simple magic mutation caused by some wizard tying the weave into a knot around them. This is just some body-builder who is way too into magic mushrooms.
Lingering Magic
The ribbon is a ribbon. Fainting glowing yourself could be a cool party trick at least.
Wild Surge
Why are people so intent on forgetting the lessons learned from the old 3.x Frenzied Berserker? Uncontrollably killing your party whenever you Rage is just not a good design direction to begin with. It would be like having a Rogue subclass that is mechanically required to be a kleptomaniac.
Some of those abilities seem like they are worthy of being a core mechanic in their own right, but as a whole, this mechanic needs to be scrapped.
Magic Reserves
Ranges from Highly exploitable (dance around in a Healing Spirit for a bit to restock everyone's spell slots, and give them a huge Temp HP buffer for free!) to highly useless (here is 5 temp HP for the Warlock, sorry that you don't have low level spell slots to replenish anymore!).
It's not that the idea of a Barbarian who protects as much as they smash is a strange thing. The Ancestral Guardian has something along the same lines. Again, it's just the mechanic being bad.
Arcane Rebuke
I'm gong to start off by saying I like this one. Not only conceptually, but also mechanically. It's a "soft counter" to the Barbarians main weakness (spells, of course) that doesn't just totally negate the weakness. I honestly wish there were more abilities and mechanics like this in the game. My only complaint with this being that it doesn't scale at all. Something like tying the damage to the save DC would be appropriate and fun here. Or it could just scale with level, whatever.
Chaotic Fury
That thing you do that can just randomly kill your party? Now you can randomly do it every turn you rage instead of just the first! If you are scrapping Wild Surge (and you should) this is obviously going to have to go too.
Thoughts
The concept is silly and there is like one good ability. I wouldn't be sad if this was dropped. But I would be if this somehow made it into a book without a total overhaul instead of something that wasn't a "joke character" subclass.
Way of the Astral Self
Why yes, that is a Jojo's reference.
Arms of the Astral Self
Do you like punching things? What a silly question, you are a Monk, you love punching things! How about punching things that aren't standing right next to you? Sounds good? Well hold on, it's about to get better, you can punch stuff for Radiant or Necrotic damage at the low cost of 2 Ki for an entire 10 minutes, which is the best ROI on Ki you can get for low levels.
Unfortunately, right off the bat we have a major conflict that crimps on this Monk's intended style.
Bonus Action Scarcity. Counterintuitively, It takes a bonus action to summon your Arms, so you can't do the thing where you use your bonus action to attack more with your arms on the turn you summon them. Talk about a let down.
Visage of the Astral Self
You can spend 1 Ki point to get Devil's Sight or have Advantage in social situations. Having on-the-fly options are good. However, having to spend Ki to make it work drags it down a lot, as most comparable abilities are "always on."
Awakening of the Astral Self
This makes your Visage a full on Combat power. A really weird progression for an ability, but it works. Mostly, it's just some extra punching damage and a rather sizable flat damage reduction against elemental damage. It's nothing extremely special, but your Arms have been scaling all this time so it's kind of a double-dip.
Complete Astral Self
You become a Perpetual Punching Powerhouse.
Now this is a capstone. You are punching people up to 6 times a round (with one of them getting extra damage on top of it). But more importantly you are gaining Ki back every time a creature gets knocked out. Friend, Enemy, summoned creatures, that one guy you don't particularity care about. You essentially have no reason to not be in this form every time a combat starts up.
Thoughts
This is a fun looking subclass. And though it doesn't seem to start out powerful, it definitively ends up powerful. It's mechanically sound, evocative and fitting flavor (even if there is clearly a meme tied into it), and most importantly, unlike the above subclass, it works.
Also: I need to get myself a new avatar...
Last edited:
cbwjm
Seb-wejem
Oh damn, I didn't realise they exploded. That is awesome!
Paul Farquhar
Legend
Wild Soul - is it April 1st again already?
doctorbadwolf
Heretic of The Seventh Circle
Niche protection is only so useful.
A little magic doesn’t make it any less of a barbarian. One of the things Subclasses can do is put a twist on the class. That’s good.
doctorbadwolf
Heretic of The Seventh Circle
Y’all lack vision. Wild Soul is cool as hell.
So here are my 2p. The Wild Soul Barbarian actually looks interesting. I get the people who would like to receive more non-magical subclasses, but it is a criticism of the overall approach to class writing, not of this particular subclass. Complaints of the sort "I didn't get the subclass I wanted so I hate this one" simply won't lead to anything. I recommend people unhappy with the scarcity of non-magical options for barbarians to comment that in the survey for this UA - the more of you do so, the more likely it is you will get what you want.
Regarding the subclass itself, it carries a unique flavour, which is good. I personally think barbarians go along well with fey magic, given that the class is often (though not necessarily) associated with the wilds. The glowing part of Lingering Magic might be a little bit too much, but I see it more as an aura than an actual change of colour. At any rate, anyone who dislikes it can simply remove it, it is only a cosmetic feature.
What I don't particularly like mechanically is the too high chance of the flumph option. After all, rage is a core mechanic and barbarians always use it in combat, so you always have a 1:8 chance of triggering an effect with unpredictable consequences. All other effects can be more or less manageable (the barbarian simply runs ahead and rages, when no allies are around), but this one can go crazy. I don't mind that such option exists, as it is in line with the overall fluff for the subclass, I only wished it was on par with the Wild Magic Surge chance for sorcerers (which is 1:20). Maybe change the dice for a d12 and say that the remaining results (for instance 9-12) don't lead to anything? (I will make that proposal in the survey, by the way)
As far as the Way of the Astral Self is concerned, it didn't quite appeal to me at first, but on second read, it looks very interesting and definitely in line with the monk concept. Maybe it's just me, but I've always seen monks like a Shao Lin archetype, so having some mystical abilities is actually nice. It also shifts the focus from Dexterity to Wisdom, which is also in line with the presentation.
The six attacks available at level 17 seem a little bit too much, because by that time the damage die becomes a d10. I guess it is a way to make up for magical weapons which should be within the +3 range at that point, but it still looks a little bit much. The Ki point cost balances things a little, though you already have a reduced Ki point cost as of level 11, because you effectively get Flurry of Blows for free with Arms of the Astral Self and then you have that upgraded at level 17. I'd rather have the third extra attack dropped at level 17, because 6d10+30 damage per round (as I assume every monk will be at least at +5 WIS by then) seems excessive.
Regarding the subclass itself, it carries a unique flavour, which is good. I personally think barbarians go along well with fey magic, given that the class is often (though not necessarily) associated with the wilds. The glowing part of Lingering Magic might be a little bit too much, but I see it more as an aura than an actual change of colour. At any rate, anyone who dislikes it can simply remove it, it is only a cosmetic feature.
What I don't particularly like mechanically is the too high chance of the flumph option. After all, rage is a core mechanic and barbarians always use it in combat, so you always have a 1:8 chance of triggering an effect with unpredictable consequences. All other effects can be more or less manageable (the barbarian simply runs ahead and rages, when no allies are around), but this one can go crazy. I don't mind that such option exists, as it is in line with the overall fluff for the subclass, I only wished it was on par with the Wild Magic Surge chance for sorcerers (which is 1:20). Maybe change the dice for a d12 and say that the remaining results (for instance 9-12) don't lead to anything? (I will make that proposal in the survey, by the way)
As far as the Way of the Astral Self is concerned, it didn't quite appeal to me at first, but on second read, it looks very interesting and definitely in line with the monk concept. Maybe it's just me, but I've always seen monks like a Shao Lin archetype, so having some mystical abilities is actually nice. It also shifts the focus from Dexterity to Wisdom, which is also in line with the presentation.
The six attacks available at level 17 seem a little bit too much, because by that time the damage die becomes a d10. I guess it is a way to make up for magical weapons which should be within the +3 range at that point, but it still looks a little bit much. The Ki point cost balances things a little, though you already have a reduced Ki point cost as of level 11, because you effectively get Flurry of Blows for free with Arms of the Astral Self and then you have that upgraded at level 17. I'd rather have the third extra attack dropped at level 17, because 6d10+30 damage per round (as I assume every monk will be at least at +5 WIS by then) seems excessive.
Honestly I don't get an Eberron vibe from either of these at all. They are based on no prestiage class or Paragon Path from Eberron, they don't seem to tie onto any uniquely Eberron feature or story line.
But both are Planar based so I'll buck the trend and say it's for Volo's Guide to Spirits and Shades instead of the New Eberron book.
But both are Planar based so I'll buck the trend and say it's for Volo's Guide to Spirits and Shades instead of the New Eberron book.
Paul Farquhar
Legend
Yes, the context matters.
However, I don't tink the context is Eberron for a very simple reason: Mention of the Feywild. The Eberron equivalent is called something different. If you where writing something for a specific setting you wouldn't namecheck something that didn't exist in that setting.
Given the level of whackyess of exploding flumphs, I think Rick and Morty is a more probable context.
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