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!

 

[Chaosmancer]

What it doesn't work with:

Two-handed weapon + shield. Secondary arms can't be used to hold a shield or wield a two-handed weapon.
Bows + shield. Same as above, even if the secondary arms could potentially feed you ammo.

Two-handed weapon + Two Weapon Fighting. You need two light weapons for Two Weapon Fighting.

Lot of good thoughts, and thank you for the list, but I do wonder about allowing the two-handed + dual-wielding with the Dual-Wielder feat. Yes, the feat says "when the one-handed weapons you are wielding aren't light" but at the time it was written no one had more than two-hands.

I think it could be an interesting build though. Don't think it'd be broken damage-wise, because of Polearm master, but there would need to be some thought put into it.

 

[overgeeked]

Well well well

Dungeons & Dragons March 2022 Title: Wizards RPG Team: 9780786967865: Amazon.com: Books

At least some of our arguing could potentially be done within 3 days, it appears.

Time to check that Australian store.

https://www.aiegames.com.au/catalogsearch/result/?q=D%26D

Nothing new listed yet.

Hey, @Morrus

 

[Steampunkette]

The primary issue I have with substituting the Astral for Wildspace and the Phologiston is that in the Astral, nobody needs to breathe, eat, drink, or sleep and nobody ages. All of the supply issues that come with having a ship are simply gone. There's no risk if you fall overboard because you'll be (physically) fine even if you're not rescued for years. In Spelljammer, there were risks. If you fell overboard in Wildspace, you'd suffocate. If you fell overboard in the Phlogiston, you'd calcify and possibly become an undead horror. And that's not even including the monsters that could eat you first.

So for me, in order to make Planesjammer interesting, they'd have to change how the Astral itself works. Maybe make it so that the Astral is actually toxic (in a way that doesn't affect normal Astral travelers, the type who have a silver cord). A ship's air bubble protects you and also restores real time on the ship so you need to eat and drink. If you have an air supply (perhaps using one of the Spelljammer's "gadabouts") you can travel around the Astral OK, but too-long exposure to the Astral's psychic winds can cause physical and psychic mutations.

How about this:

The Astral Plane no longer does those things 'cause we're changing the rules. It's now the Astral Sea.

Instead of being uniform, the Astral Plane has Wildspace, Phlogiston, Astral Travel, and other stuff going on in it. Some parts of it work like "Normal" (Mostly in the region of the Outer Planes and Sigil) but once you get away from the "Shoals" it gets deeper and crazier.

Problem solved!

 

[overgeeked]

A release date of 15 March 2022. Isn't that kinda tight for it being connected to this UA? Five months out, including over the holidays. The UA dropped 8 October 2021. A week to argue about it online before they drop the survey. Say a week to argue about the survey. Anyone know how long it takes to get a few million books physically printed in the USA these days? With the supply chain apocalypse already delaying things, this will be pushed back at least a month.

The tagline is "Tune in on October 12 to find out what adventures await."

Could be a setting/adventure, a la Curse of Strahd. Could be an adventure anthology, similar to Candlekeep.

 

[Levistus's_Leviathan]

I don’t understand how “there have been friendly aberrations” is a counter to “there shouldn’t be friendly aberrations”.

“Is” statements do not counter “should” statements.

You're right, it doesn't. I guess my point was more that Aberrations are just as diverse as any other creature type, and there is a precedent to have non-evil aberrations.

 

[Hatmatter]

Not every detail has to be preserved to respect a setting's legacy. If you refuse to update anything, why even publish a new book? The themes and narrative weight can be carried on while less important surface details get shuffled around. Take the example of this year's Van Richten's Guide to Ravenloft that reworked many of the people and places while still retaining the core essence of Ravenloft. If you thought that book went too far, well, you're probably not going to be happy with the new Spelljammer book either.

Are the phlogiston and crystal spheres essential to Spelljammer? I don't think so. I had the whole dang novel series, and what was important was that it D&D In Space!(tm), not that fire spells were sometimes off the table. The locations, the politics, the strange new races and the old familiar races in new roles... those are what make Spelljammer cool. Not head scratching references to old disproven scientific theories.

Thank you for your contribution, Kurotowa, but your response, which quotes my posting, seems to suggest that you did not read my post, which directly refers to Van Richten's Guide to Ravenloft and my thoughts about the book viz a viz the 2nd edition version of Ravenloft.

If you took from my posting that "every detail has to be preserved," I do not know what to say. You are welcome to respond to me in a spirit of fun discourse, but no need to hit "reply" if you are making points that do not directly refer to the content of my post.

As to your point about what is essential to Spelljammer as a setting, or series of multiple settings, I think that is entirely subjective, so I will not try to contradict you. My posting was about the cosmology that Spelljammer used and my observations about how the D&D Studio has tended to shepherd the legacy of the game's lore. Also, I was saying in my post that I like the cosmology with the crystal spheres and phlogiston.

Cheers!

 

[Chaosmancer]

Wild shape: You retain the benefit of any features from your class, race, or other source and can use them if the new form is physically capable of doing so.
IE You can gain the benefits of your wild shape form, while changing your body type back to something able to pick up a weapon, and speak, and cast spells.

Not sure how much discussion has been had on this (how do we have 24 pages already?) but I would say that this doesn't work. Your new form (let us say brown bear) isn't capable of the plasmoid racial abilities because it has things like bones. So, I think this does not work

 

[Parmandur]

A release date of 15 March 2022. Isn't that kinda tight for it being connected to this UA? Five months out, including over the holidays. The UA dropped 8 October 2021. A week to argue about it online before they drop the survey. Say a week to argue about the survey. Anyone know how long it takes to get a few million books physically printed in the USA these days? With the supply chain apocalypse already delaying things, this will be pushed back at least a month.

The tagline is "Tune in on October 12 to find out what adventures await."

Could be a setting/adventure, a la Curse of Strahd. Could be an adventure anthology, similar to Candlekeep.

Based on prior UA, that's more than enough turnaround: Races of Ravnica went into UA on August 13, 2018, for a November 20, 2018 release date, a three month turnaround. 5 months is enough for turnaround, though obviously logistics are borked now. They at least have the advantage of printing in the USA directly.

 

[Faolyn]

How about this:

The Astral Plane no longer does those things 'cause we're changing the rules. It's now the Astral Sea.

Instead of being uniform, the Astral Plane has Wildspace, Phlogiston, Astral Travel, and other stuff going on in it. Some parts of it work like "Normal" (Mostly in the region of the Outer Planes and Sigil) but once you get away from the "Shoals" it gets deeper and crazier.

Problem solved!

Sure, that sounds much better. Half the point of Spelljammer is the travel. If the travel is of no risk to you because you don't need basic necessities, then there's no point in having the travel.

 

[Charlaquin]

Not sure how much discussion has been had on this (how do we have 24 pages already?) but I would say that this doesn't work. Your new form (let us say brown bear) isn't capable of the plasmoid racial abilities because it has things like bones. So, I think this does not work

By the letter of the rule, there’s no reason it shouldn’t. But, I think in this case it’s very clearly and obviously against the spirit of the rule.