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.

 

[FlyingChihuahua]

Hey! Anyone remember how the War Mage is basically a mix of the Evocation and Abjuration schools of magic for wizards? If they moved the Spirits bard subclass to the Wizard, it could be a Necromancy/Divination based subclass, so we could actually have another subclasss that takes two schools of magic and merges them into one.

You mean I could potentially make an Ace Attorney style Spirit Medium in 5e?

If that's the case then sign me up.

Anyone else like this idea? I personally wish they made more subclasses like this, that merge two schools of magic (Hypnotism from Illusion and Enchantment, Shadowfell from Illusion and Necromancy, Limbo-Mages from Conjuration and Transmutation, Fleshwarpers from Necromancy and Transmutation, etc).

Y'know, that's not a bad idea. Find a theme for mixing up the spell schools, and turn those themes into subclasses for the Wizard.

Could even come with mixed school spells, if they want to play around with that idea. The simple rule for that would be "The count as both spell schools for purposes of the _____ Savant Wizard subclass features (reminder: they let you scribe spells of that school into your book in half the time and I believe price.) and for the purposes of Detect Magic".

 

[Levistus's_Leviathan]

You mean I could potentially make an Ace Attorney style Spirit Medium in 5e?

If that's the case then sign me up.

Could certainly be played that way. That sounds cool.

Y'know, that's not a bad idea. Find a theme for mixing up the spell schools, and turn those themes into subclasses for the Wizard.

Yeah. There are a lot of themes that could be explored beyond the current subclasses by doing this:

• Order of Magicians with Conjuration and Illusion, summoning doves and rabbits and performing illusions.
• Necroblaster (would need a better name) with Evocation and Necromancy, that shoots people with necrotic energy and uses souls of the deceased to attack others upon death.
• Phaser as Conjuration and Evocation, where you can cause attacks to go through solid objects and flesh, warping the space around you to give resistance to creatures for certain damages, etc.
• Transitor, Illusion and Transmutation to create objects that aren't really there, but can be interacted with, and so on.

There's a lot of ideas they could play with if they leaned more into this way of designing subclasses for wizards, starting with the Spirits bard becoming a wizard subclass (or having both).

 

[cbwjm]

Hey! Anyone remember how the War Mage is basically a mix of the Evocation and Abjuration schools of magic for wizards? If they moved the Spirits bard subclass to the Wizard, it could be a Necromancy/Divination based subclass, so we could actually have another subclasss that takes two schools of magic and merges them into one.

Anyone else like this idea? I personally wish they made more subclasses like this, that merge two schools of magic (Hypnotism from Illusion and Enchantment, Shadowfell from Illusion and Necromancy, Limbo-Mages from Conjuration and Transmutation, Fleshwarpers from Necromancy and Transmutation, etc).

I like the idea of using dual schools of magic to create a theme for a magical tradition. I've thought of a few different traditions (mostly just names) but spiritualist didn't occur to me. I think two of them might have been your hypnotism (mind-bender) and shadowfell (shadow). I like the sound of fleshwarper, makes me think of the Phyrexians from magic the gathering but with undead instead of mechanical pieces.

 

[Twiggly the Gnome]

Hey! Anyone remember how the War Mage is basically a mix of the Evocation and Abjuration schools of magic for wizards? If they moved the Spirits bard subclass to the Wizard, it could be a Necromancy/Divination based subclass, so we could actually have another subclasss that takes two schools of magic and merges them into one.

Anyone else like this idea? I personally wish they made more subclasses like this, that merge two schools of magic (Hypnotism from Illusion and Enchantment, Shadowfell from Illusion and Necromancy, Limbo-Mages from Conjuration and Transmutation, Fleshwarpers from Necromancy and Transmutation, etc).

Yeah, if WotC gets around to revisiting Dragonlance that's the approach I hope they take with the Wizards of High Sorcery. White Robes (Abjuration & Divination), Red Robes (Illusion & Transmutation), and Black Robes (Enchantment & Necromancy).

 

[Micah Sweet]

I personally think that the Warlock's Form of Dread should be once a short rest, like Hexblade's Curse, which is a similar feature for another warlock subclass.

I don't think it's OP, just too available. The immunity to the frightened condition at level one isn't super OP for warlocks, and fits the theme, but it's super abusable for multiclass dips.

Would moving the frightened immunity to Grave-Touched be better, and the extra damage dice (fixed to be once a turn) be better if moved to the level 1 feature?

Everything I'm hearing is telling me that banning multiclassing is the right thing to do. Just use the UA options for concept. No one level dip, no problems. I don't like game ideas being shot down and missing the magic 70% because people are worried about multiclassing.

 

[Micah Sweet]

They explicitly ask us to think about it in the document.

"In early playtests such as this, character options are rarely tuned for multiclassing. We are nonetheless interested in multiclass-related feedback, accounting for it if we finalize the design for publication."

But even if they didn't, it's kinda rude to come out with effectively "the way you are playing is BADWRONGFUN".

The problem, is that balance for multiclassing is being used as a reason not to like something, which leads to too many great concepts being thrown in the trash because the ridiculously high percentage WotC requires for consensus can't be met. It is one of the reasons we literally can't have nice things. Psionics stands out as an obvious example. I don't see any scenario where enough people are going to like what they put out for it to actually get published.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

I’m super confused by you responding to it this way so it must have been a little subtle.

What’s the policy for commenting on moderation in thread? Do I need to give an example?

 

[doctorbadwolf]

What’s the policy for commenting on moderation in thread? Do I need to give an example?

Okay.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

"Making fun of white people is racism too."

I took the comment differently, but apparently we can’t talk about it.

 

[Levistus's_Leviathan]

Everything I'm hearing is telling me that banning multiclassing is the right thing to do. Just use the UA options for concept. No one level dip, no problems. I don't like game ideas being shot down and missing the magic 70% because people are worried about multiclassing.

I agree. Multiclassing is one of those features that is nice in concept, but as soon as you allow it, it causes a whole bunch of problems (I definitely wouldn't mind a removal of multiclassing in 6e).

UA isn't balanced for multiclassing, but it changes because of it. It seems like they should try to balance UA subclasses for multiclassing so they don't have to redo a ton after making something that would be abused with multiclassing and have to change it because of that abusable aspect in the subclass.