D&D 5E Unearthed Arcana: Travelers of the Multiverse

New free content from WotC - the latest 4-page Unearthed Arcana introduces six new races: astral elf, autognome, giff, hadozee, plasmoid, and thri-kreen.

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dnd.wizards.com

Looks like Spelljammer and/or Planescape is back on the menu!

 

[JEB]

Random thoughts about the future of character race design, prompted by this:

• Pointing folks to the PHB tables for height/weight/age will either require them to keep defaults for the core races as reference (thus erasing whatever benefit they think this genericizing provides), or signals that everything will be distilled down to a more generic set of height/weight builds in the anniversary edition. As noted before, I at least hope they provide different ranges for Small and Medium races, because an eight-foot-tall Small-sized PC would be silly.
• I really hope the anniversary versions give us more nuanced information on possible cultures than we're seeing in these writeups. Each one only basically provides one or two traits, which will likely result in some players (and DMs) leaning into those few traits, rather than filling in the blanks themselves - more stereotyping, not less.
• PCs in general are going to have fewer proficiencies than they did in 5.0, unless we're getting an additional "culture" layer to add.
• How the heck are they going to make humans viable, if ASIs and proficiencies are off the table? Giving humans traits like we're seeing here is a non-starter...
• There doesn't seem to be as much trait parity between the character races as there was back when proficiencies were mixed in. Giffs and hadozee have notably fewer abilities than the other new races (and the usefulness of the traits they do have, in comparison to the others, is debatable). Going to make homebrewing tougher and more arbitrary (unless guidelines are provided in the anniversary books).

That all said, I don't hate the new format; I just see issues and room for improvement. (To include space for convenient defaults on ASIs and languages.)

 

[Scribe]

Man I don't look forward to players insisting they should be able to play these races outside of whatever forthcoming setting they are intended.

lol why?

 

[Faolyn]

Spelljammer is not an interplanetary Setting at all: it's all in the Prime Material, just the outer space parts.

Traveling around outer space is pretty much the definition or interplanetary.

 

[Scribe]

Random thoughts about the future of character race design, prompted by this:

• Pointing folks to the PHB tables for height/weight/age will either require them to keep defaults for the core races as reference (thus erasing whatever benefit they think this genericizing provides), or signals that everything will be distilled down to a more generic set of height/weight builds in the anniversary edition. As noted before, I at least hope they provide different ranges for Small and Medium races, because an eight-foot-tall Small-sized PC would be silly.
• I really hope the anniversary versions give us more nuanced information on possible cultures than we're seeing in these writeups. Each one only basically provides one or two traits, which will likely result in some players (and DMs) leaning into those few traits, rather than filling in the blanks themselves - more stereotyping, not less.
• PCs in general are going to have fewer proficiencies than they did in 5.0, unless we're getting an additional "culture" layer to add.
• How the heck are they going to make humans viable, if ASIs and proficiencies are off the table? Giving humans traits like we're seeing here is a non-starter...
• There doesn't seem to be as much trait parity between the character races as there was back when proficiencies were mixed in. Giffs and hadozee have notably fewer abilities than the other new races (and the usefulness of the traits they do have, in comparison to the others, is debatable). Going to make homebrewing tougher and more arbitrary (unless guidelines are provided in the anniversary books).

That all said, I don't hate the new format; I just see issues and room for improvement. (To include space for convenient defaults on ASIs and languages.)

Wizards needs to put the choice into the players hands via Backgrounds, and Cultures. Just part of the package in building your character, especially since those things are less important as of Original 5e.

 

[Parmandur]

Traveling around outer space is pretty much the definition or interplanetary.

Autocorrect messed that up: it's not interplanar.

 

[Levistus's_Leviathan]

Man I don't look forward to players insisting they should be able to play these races outside of whatever forthcoming setting they are intended.

In my spelljammer campaign, I had a player that wanted to play a Mountain Dwarf that just rowed a Rowboat to the Rock of Bral at the beginning of the campaign. A completely normal, non-Spelljamming Rowboat that has no mode of propulsion. I went along with it, and the moment that his character was introduced quickly became one of the most referred-to moments of any campaign at my table.

Sometimes letting players do ridiculous things that don't fit the setting is the answer to having a ton of fun while playing. I definitely would allow a player to play any of these races in any of my Forgotten Realms campaigns. Maybe they're a Giff that was abandoned by their squadron on Toril because they broke their contract (maybe by attacking another Giff), maybe they're an Astral Elf that managed to get sucked into a portal from the Astral Plane to the Sword Coast, or they could be a Thri-Kreen that left their tribe to adventure amongst the "civilized races", a Hadozee that was pushed off of their Spelljamming ship while they were in the upper layers of the planet's atmosphere, and only survived by gliding all the way down to the surface, or are a Plasmoid that fell from the sky on an asteroid and grew up from its original egg/spore into its humanoid-ish form near a human(oid) settlement, which taught them everything they know.

Players are the outliers. Sometimes your group can have more fun by allowing any option to be playable, even if there isn't a lore-reason for them to exist in the world. You do you, but I think that you're being a bit reactionarily exclusive, when including these races as options could possibly improve your campaign.

 

[Faolyn]

Autocorrect messed that up: it's not interplanar.

Whoops. In that case, you're right.

 

[Leatherhead]

Hmm. I missed the "one handed melee weapons that aren't light" part, so you are correct.

One interesting thing the Thri-Kreen entry doesn't mention, how do they get/wear armor?

I mean, it doesn't say they CAN'T benefit from armor (like Tortles) but you'd think medium or heavy armor is right out (or at least would have to be heavily modified), guess that's outside the scope of the UA article.

Presumably, they would have to get custom armor. There is a Variant rule in the PBH that covers this:

VARIANT: EQUIPMENT SIZES

In most campaigns, you can use or wear any equipment that you find on your adventures, within the bounds of common sense. For example, a burly half-orc won’t fit in a halfling’s leather armor, and a gnome would be swallowed up in a cloud giant’s elegant robe.

The DM can impose more realism. For example, a suit of plate armor made for one human might not fit another one without significant alterations, and a guard’s uniform might be visibly ill-fitting when an adventurer tries to wear it as a disguise.

Using this variant, when adventurers find armor, clothing, and similar items that are made to be worn, they might need to visit an armorsmith, tailor, leatherworker, or similar expert to make the item wearable. The cost for such work varies from 10 to 40 percent of the market price of the item. The DM can either roll 1d4 x 10 or determine the increase in cost based on the extent of the alterations required.

Getting a new suit of armor would just use whatever variant of the crafting rules you happen to be using.

 

[Henadic Theologian]

Alright, I admit, I want Space Magnum P. I. now. But still, Planescape and Spelljammer are very different genres, not to mention setups.

Just picture Picard, Jadzia Dax, and Sisko in Hawaiian shirts and Magnum in a Star Fleet uniform.

As for Planesjammer it's clear they are changing both settings, they've already begun the process, with changes to Nautiliods gaining the ability to Planeshift, ASTRAL (as in Astral Plane) Elves, possibly more. The one thing never you never hear about in 5e, the weird hard to spell stuff in the material plane, between crystal Spheres. If they get the Astral Plane to replace Phligion or whatever it's called, then they are 80% of the way there because it means they can travel between Hell and Aborea just as easily as Oerth and Toril via Spelljammer.

Astral Jammers radically change the Spelljammer setting, blurring the line between it and Planescape. In fact if one of the classic return setting books is Spelljammer, Planescape could be the cameo.

 

[Levistus's_Leviathan]

I really hope we never see an aberration playable race, tbh. I think it kinda kills the point of them, which is to be an anti-natural blight on the world that cannot truly be understood by any natural creature.

Flumphs say hi. So do Gnome Ceremorphs (they're specifically called out as "Any Alignment" in Rime of the Frostmaiden).