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!

 

[Maxperson]

Since I guess (shocker) I now need to defend myself from ad hominem attacks instead of discussing my position...

Yes, I have advocated for starting at a 16 in your primary stat, especially for spellcasters. I have had multiple games where we did not do that, and those characters felt bad to play. You can hate and deride me for my experiences, but that doesn't discount their existence.

Yes, I see no purpose in the Ranger Primeval Awareness feature by RAW. It costs a spell slot to tell you "some number of fey exist somewhere within a six mile sphere of your location". That information is largely worthless. It tells the player nothing that they didn't already suspect, because why would you attempt to detect dragons, fey, undead or other types of enemies if you didn't suspect they existed somewhere within 6 miles.

I'm struggling to see how you coming in here and admitting to exactly what I said constituted an ad hominem attack on my part.

As for the second half of Max's post, let me be clear. The 4e monk and the Beastmaster ranger aren't entirely unplayable and worthless, that is a strawman of my position. But they were badly designed and did not work properly. Something that in the case of the 4e monk, you yourself have agreed with.

I didn't say you said that, though. What I said was that they would seem bad, which again you just admitted to. So no Strawman or ad hominem there, either.

 

[Parmandur]

Yes, I see no purpose in the Ranger Primeval Awareness feature by RAW. It costs a spell slot to tell you "some number of fey exist somewhere within a six mile sphere of your location". That information is largely worthless. It tells the player nothing that they didn't already suspect, because why would you attempt to detect dragons, fey, undead or other types of enemies if you didn't suspect they existed somewhere within 6 miles.

As for the second half of Max's post, let me be clear. The 4e monk and the Beastmaster ranger aren't entirely unplayable and worthless, that is a strawman of my position. But they were badly designed and did not work properly. Something that in the case of the 4e monk, you yourself have agreed with.

It's situational, but very useful when it comes up.

The narrow point of disagreement is that I think the 4E Monk works as intended, the flaw was not adequate forming the correct intention to match desired user playstyles. Which is a design flaw, for real, but subtle.

 

[Argyle King]

It's possible to get an AC of 20 at level 1.

It used to only be possible with one or two specific combinations. Now, there are a lot more options (including some of the 13+Dex AC options in this UA) for getting there.

Casting Shield pushes that to 25.

That's at level 1.

Later levels will have items, feats and other things which add more.


Idea off the top of my head...

•Thri-keen 13+Dex baseline
+Max Dex for plus 5
+2 for a shield
...that's 20
•Hold an extra weapon in one of your extra hands so you can make use of the feat which gives bonus AC... I think that's +1
...that's 21
•Cast shield for +5 for a round
...26

I'm sure there are better options than that rough idea. I'm not much of an optimizer. That's just what sticks out to me at a glance.

 

[Chaosmancer]

The cantrip is guidance. One of my players likes using that on others. Like the Investigative rogue's Insight and Investigation weren't high enough already.

Last Friday, what with the druid's pass without trace, almost everyone was getting 25+ with Stealth checks, and several were getting 30+. Only the poor paladin with a +0 Dex and disad on Stealth checks because of armor kept rolling really badly. If it weren't for her, I'd be weeping in despair because what's a DM supposed to do when none of the baddies can hear the party coming?

100% agree. I love the spell in many respects, but as a DM I really struggle with the party being effectively invisible if they build dex and have access to the spell. Especially considering most standard enemies have a perception of +3

 

[Chaosmancer]

I'm struggling to see how you coming in here and admitting to exactly what I said constituted an ad hominem attack on my part.

I didn't say you said that, though. What I said was that they would seem bad, which again you just admitted to. So no Strawman or ad hominem there, either.

Because the entire point of your post was "Don't bother arguing with him, he has bad opinions, look at how unreasonable he is"

Seriously? This kind of sickens me and makes me wonder what your endgoal is here. Do you truly think it is appropriate to go around and dig up any positions you think I hold that are "bad" to discredit any conversation I ever have on this platform? These positions have nothing to do with the discussion, and your entire point seems to cut off a conversation by making me appear like some sort of bad actor who has bad opinions.

You want to discuss the 4e monk? Go ahead. That was what we were discussing. We weren't discussing anything else.

 

[Parmandur]

It's possible to get an AC of 20 at level 1.

It used to only be possible with one or two specific combinations. Now, there are a lot more options (including some of the 13+Dex AC options in this UA) for getting there.

Casting Shield pushes that to 25.

That's at level 1.

Later levels will have items, feats and other things which add more.


Idea off the top of my head...

•Thri-keen 13+Dex baseline
+Max Dex for plus 5
+2 for a shield
...that's 20
•Hold an extra weapon in one of your extra hands so you can make use of the feat which gives bonus AC... I think that's +1
...that's 21
•Cast shield for +5 for a round
...26

I'm sure there are better options than that rough idea. I'm not much of an optimizer. That's just what sticks out to me at a glance.

Which gets you up to about the toughest beings in the game, though I'm not sure you can mix the Shield and that Feat, even with the Thri-Kreen.

Nut to hit 30 requires some DM buy-in from magic items, with a focus on AC items over anything else.

 

[Parmandur]

You want to discuss the 4e monk? Go ahead. That was what we were discussing. We weren't discussing anything else.

We were also discussing the Phlogiston, which was slightly more on topic.

 

[Chaosmancer]

It's situational, but very useful when it comes up.

Honestly, there have been many large (multi page) discussions where I asked for a situation where it was useful, and I have never actually got an answer that couldn't be matched by the DM properly foreshadowing. But frankly, considering the context of this being brought up solely to derail the conversation and try and sabotage my arguments with things that don't matter, I don't even know if I want to ask you what those situations you are thinking of are.

After all, if I don't agree with you, then I'm just "unreasonable" and your "context" is maintained. And I highly doubt you are going to propose something I haven't heard before and don't find compelling.

The narrow point of disagreement is that I think the 4E Monk works as intended, the flaw was not adequate forming the correct intention to match desired user playstyles. Which is a design flaw, for real, but subtle.

Where as I think the "user playstyle" is more actually the way the game ended up being designed. I think my biggest problem with your phrasing is it makes it sound like the people who played the 4e monk and found it highly lacking, were just playing it wrong, and therefore the fault lies mainly on them. That is something I don't agree with. I think if that were the case, we would have more people explaining HOW to play it, but in general, we just find people saying that it doesn't work in the context of the game we received.

 

[Parmandur]

Because the entire point of your post was "Don't bother arguing with him, he has bad opinions, look at how unreasonable he is"

I, for one, do apologize if I said anything that made you feel attacked at all, that's not in the spirit of good fun. I think we are talking past each other, so I won't push on this topic any further, but I do not wish to impugn your character at all.

 

[Chaosmancer]

We were also discussing the Phlogiston, which was slightly more on topic.

I meant the discussion between me and you, not the page in general, which does have a few different discussions ongoing.

None of which Max's comments were relevant towards.