D&D 5E New Unearthed Arcana Today: Giant Themed Class Options and Feats

A new Unearthed Arcana dropped today, focusing on giant-themed player options. "In today’s Unearthed Arcana, we explore character options related to the magic and majesty of giants. This playtest document presents the Path of the Giant barbarian subclass, the Circle of the Primeval druid subclass, the Runecrafter wizard subclass, and a collection of new feats, all for use in Dungeons & Dragons."

Giant Options | Unearthed Arcana | Dungeons & Dragons

Explore character options related to the magic and majesty of giants! This playtest document presents new subclasses for the barbarian, druid, and wizard, and a collection of new feats, all for use in Dungeons & Dragons.

dnd.wizards.com

New Class options:

• Barbarian: Path of the Giant
• Druid: Circle of the Primeval
• Wizard: Runecrafter Tradition

New Feats:

• Elemental Touched
• Ember of the Fire Giant
• Fury of the Frost Giant
• Guile of the Cloud Giant
• Keeness of the Stone Giant
• Outsized Might
• Rune Carver Apprentice
• Rune Carvwr Adept
• Soul of the Storm Giant
• Vigor of the Hill Giant

WotC's Jeremy Crawford talks Barbarian Path of the Giant here:

 

[glass]

I think they are saying that in the U.K. in the 80's, the term Café was used for something more like greasy diners in the U.S. More Dennys than Starbucks.

Without having any familiarity with "Dennys" I cannot say for certain, but that sounds about right. Except generally indpenendant rather than part of a chain.

_
glass.

 

[Leatherhead]

Okay everyone, here's a challenge for you. What's the most cool or thematic Primeval Druid companion you can come up with that isn't just "I have a dinosaur"? Dinosaur answers are acceptable if you can incorporate them into a particularly thematic build, but I want to see what other ideas people can throw out. There's no reason not to grab at cave bears and giant sloths and other large beasts.

My most thematic idea so far isn't anything crazy. Just a yuan-ti with a giant snake. It's a classic for a reason, and I think you could make an interesting background around trying to escape the demon snake gods and create a more natural and druidic snake magic tradition.

I'm already planning on making a small sized Hadozee with a Gigantopithecus companion. And yes, I will be naming them Kong.

 

[LuisCarlos17f]

If it is a minisetting with prehistoric beasts and dinosaurs, these should be added some "special touch", like a "digievolution mutation" to show "our dinosaurs are different, buy our toys, not the figures sold by the rival company".

It could be an unknown or unexplored zone from a popular setting, but I guess a mini-settings should allow more creative freedom to add later more things, for example the pearl dragons and the reef giants in the coasts.

Or it could be something like a "lost world" in the sense of a special place receiving visitors from different zones of space-time.

 

[James Gasik]

I would make The Isle of Dread such a mini-setting.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

If it is a minisetting with prehistoric beasts and dinosaurs, these should be added some "special touch", like a "digievolution mutation" to show "our dinosaurs are different, buy our toys, not the figures sold by the rival company".

It could be an unknown or unexplored zone from a popular setting, but I guess a mini-settings should allow more creative freedom to add later more things, for example the pearl dragons and the reef giants in the coasts.

Or it could be something like a "lost world" in the sense of a special place receiving visitors from different zones of space-time.

How about "can turn into giant robots"?

 

[Ruin Explorer]

Yeah, some people don't like fun, lol? My friends and family like randomness in a game.

The argument is that it is actually you who does not like fun, because the argument, which tends to be quite elaborate and often gets heated, is that rolled stats overall decrease fun, rather than increase it.

The is unquestionably the majoritarian view at this point, I'd suggest. By a large margin too. I have to admit, I feel like, whilst it's narrower than people admit in terms of fun, but the way D&D handles randomized stats is at best, fun-neutral.

Never has an issue, across multiple editions.

I mean, you say that but there's a reason clearly the vast majority of people use fixed HP gain and use stat array and point-buy. Every survey with a reasonable number of recipients I've seen in the last decade concurs on this, as did all the evidence from DNDBeyond. Going back to earlier editions, huge numbers of people who did roll stats or HP had house-rules or simply traditions allowing re-rolls of poor rolls, too. At this point truly random stats and HP are basically confined to the OSR and unpopular or optional approaches in more mainstream games.

Even serious 5E fans like you may have to admit some of your preferences are somewhat idiosyncratic.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

I mean, you say that but there's a reason clearly the vast majority of people use fixed HP gain and use stat array and point-buy.

We use point-buy so players can create characters outside of game time. Even for the best of us, the probability of rolling six 18s rises dramatically when the roller is unobserved.

We use fixed hp because players make mathematical errors or erase their max hp and then forget what they were. With fixed hp it's always possible to work out what they should be.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

We use point-buy so players can create characters outside of game time. Even for the best of use, the probability of rolling six 18s rises dramatically when the roller is unobserved.

We use fixed hp because players make mathematical errors or erase their max hp and then forget what they were. With fixed hp it's always possible to work out what they should be.

Yup those are other factors that also factor in. The creating characters out of game time thing is particularly big. A side-benefit is that I've found that players come up with more interesting and less repetitive characters if you let them create them outside game time, because they have as long as they like to consider their options.

 

[James Gasik]

I think having an extra +1 over someone else isn't really a big deal. Maybe have everyone roll stats, then record only the highest numbers to create an array, but, unless you actually rolled one of those numbers, you have to have a score 1 lower.

So for example, let's say that after all players roll, the highest stats are:

17 (player 1)
16 (player 2)
16 (player 3)
14 (player 4)
14 (player 4)
12 (player 1)

Player 1 gets 17, 15, 15, 13, 13, 12.
Player 2 gets 16, 16, 15, 13, 13, 11.
Player 3 gets 16, 15, 16, 13, 13, 11.
Player 4 gets 16, 15, 15, 14, 14, 11.

 

[glass]

How about "can turn into giant robots"?

Works for me. Although it might not help the prehistoric feel.

We use point-buy so players can create characters outside of game time. Even for the best of us, the probability of rolling six 18s rises dramatically when the roller is unobserved.

Back when I was a teenager, and we used rolled stats for want of any better ideas, I would have been strongly opposed to the suggestion that would ever cheat on my stat rolls. But the average stats of my characters were definitely higher than the statistical average for the stat roll method!

Not quite to the extent of six 18s (the method we used in those days did not really spport that), but I had at least one characer with two.

_
glass.