Unearthed Arcana Unearthed Arcana: Spirits Bard and Undeath Warlock

We have a new UA release with two subclasses. The College of Spirits Bard is a fortune teller or spirit medium type character with a big random effect table. Meanwhile the Undeath Pact Warlock is a a do-over of the Undying Pact Warlock.

 

[SkidAce]

Anyway, its fairly clear it's not a shaman class, so we can move in from that.

It will be when finish with it.

 

[MarkB]

that's a warforged druid.

Doubly so if you use the new subclass from Exploring Eberron, which lets you essentially transform into armoured mecha-beasts.

 

[Undrave]

Okay, here's this breakdown to illustrate how OP the Undead Warlock is now:

Okay, be level 20.

Aaaaand you lost me. It's level 20! If you're not OP broken at level 20, you're doing something wrong. Nobody cares if you're broken at that level, the game is about to end, and the majority of players don't even play at that level except for maybe a one shot. And you assume Magical items too.

Maybe redo your comparaison at more reasonable levels, like 5 and 10.

Anyway, the real meat of the power is that you can change your damage dice when you attack (spell or weapon, again) into necrotic damage, and add an extra damage die when you do so. That last part is a bit crazy, just add an extra damage die? When you hit someone with an Eldritch blast you deal 2d10 necro damage instead of 1d10 force? When you stab them with a greatsword you deal 3d6 necro damage (I guess you would want to use a greataxe instead)? At least I think that's what that says. You could even get your Two Weapon fighting going... Well ok probably not, because that form of combat would be crazily bonus action starved given you need one to change forms and one to drop a Hex.

You forgot the extra die is only in the Form of Dread, so it's not ALWAYS. And Necro has more reisistance than Force so there is that.

Romantic Era spiritualism, including occult secret societies and Romani reputations, sounds accurate enough.

Still.

In principle, stereotyping a Brit is just as problematic as stereotyping a Romani. I feel the class avoids being outright offensive. But it seems to be sticking its toes in to test the temperature of the water.

This is good example for: how does one be ethnically historically accurate while simultaneously avoiding reductionist stereotypes, or oppositely how does one borrow vivid flavor while simultaneously avoiding cultural appropriation?

One can see, why they want to playtest it.

They could just add more implements, like runic stone, non-skull bone charms (note that it does not specify a human skull, so you can use animals), primal totems, a tome, a magatama, an incense burner, a heavenly trigram board, a ceremonial knife, that sort of things really.

 

[Undrave]

-So for the College of Spirits Tales, I think they need to go with either all of them being beneficial or all of them being harmful to the target, or they let the Bard have more control over which tale they're going to use (like roll twice, or ready for later use). While I feel it's the most interesting feature of the subclass, it does need to be tweaked. Not everyone one is a fan of Wild Magic.

They could have it work like the Diviner portent. You just roll them when you finish a Long Rest and then unleash the effect later in the day instead of losing them at short rest and only having 1 stock up. It's not as original, but its a tried and true mechanic at this point.

 

[FlyingChihuahua]

Doubly so if you use the new subclass from Exploring Eberron, which lets you essentially transform into armoured mecha-beasts.

wait what.

 

[Parmandur]

I cannot bemoan Tales from Beyond enough. It has basically everything I hate about RNG based power design baked into it. The only thing it's lacking is an effect that just flat out harms you and your party, which will unfortunately mask it from general scrutiny, much like how the Alchemists random-brewed potion managed to make it through playtesting as it's core feature

Thinking on it a bit, this is my only real Isa with the Subclass. Cut out this subsystem, and replace it with something more like the Divners Portent ability (trade one inspiration for per Short Rest for a Portent, maybe), and this might work.

 

[Parmandur]

They could have it work like the Diviner portent. You just roll them when you finish a Long Rest and then unleash the effect later in the day instead of losing them at short rest and only having 1 stock up. It's not as original, but its a tried and true mechanic at this point.

Heh, great minds...

Trade an Inspiration Die for a Portent after any rest seems fair, useful and waaaaay more elegant than all of...this...

 

[Weiley31]

wait what.

The new Exploring Eberron book on DMguilds and released by Keith Baker has a Warforged Druid subclass that lets you Wildshape into mecha animals.

 

[Levistus's_Leviathan]

Aaaaand you lost me. It's level 20! If you're not OP broken at level 20, you're doing something wrong. Nobody cares if you're broken at that level, the game is about to end, and the majority of players don't even play at that level except for maybe a one shot. And you assume Magical items too.

Maybe redo your comparaison at more reasonable levels, like 5 and 10.

So, you reject that the subclass is OP due to the fact that I did a level 20 build, which is standard when talking about OP combinations in D&D, right?

I'm not redoing it, if you want to see those combos at lower levels, you can do them. If I can't prove something is OP by showing how powerful it is at the most powerful it can possibly be, and you can't assume that it also is broken at lower levels, that's not my problem.

Also, assuming magic items at level 20 is fair. Also, it doesn't need Magic Items, it is just easier to do it that way. Like I said, you can multiclass into Sorcerer to do the same thing.

 

[Haldrik]

They could just add more implements, like runic stone, non-skull bone charms (note that it does not specify a human skull, so you can use animals), primal totems, a tome, a magatama, an incense burner, a heavenly trigram board, a ceremonial knife, that sort of things really.

Heh ... using "rune stones" for divination could be cultural misrepresentation because the Scandinavians never used runes that way. Apparently the main method of divination was drumming the ground with a staff to induce a trance.

In the Hebrew Bible, the Great Priest had the "urim and tumim" for divination. One rabbinic tradition explains that the priest would interpret them based on how the oillamp lighting would reflect and refract of off them. I would need to doublecheck, but it is something like one stone was the message and the other stone was the context.

Talking about animals. It reminds me I-Ching oracles originated from solid or broken cracks that happened when placing a tortoise shell in the fire. The tortoise shell represents the entire cosmos, including the skydome and flat landplate.

Ultimately EVERY form of divination technique uses some kind of microcosm of the cosmos. Even the urim and tumim apparently refer to the universe being made out of light ( ≈ Big Bang).

Mentioning other cultural possibilities for divination rituals helps avoid ethnic reductionism.