Dungeons & Dragons releases Villainous Options playtest

Wizards of the Coast has released a new playtest featuring four new "villainous" subclasses, along with two more feat paths designed to transform characters into either a lich or a death knight. Today, Wizards released a new "Villainous Options" Unearthed Arcana. The new document contains four subclasses - a Pestilence Domain Cleric, a Circle of the Titan Druid, a Hell Knight Fighter, and a Demonic Sorcerer, alongside feat paths intended to slowly transform a player character into either a lich or a death knight. While previous D&D books have brought back the concept of mini-feat trees, these villainous paths are intended to be used at every opportunity a feat can be taken.

The Pestilence Domain cleric's core ability allows it to confer exhaustion levels on opponents via use of Channel Divinity. Enemies who die while having one or more Exhaustion level can explode and inflict necrotic damage on others. The capstone ability allows the Cleric to transform into a swarm of pestilence-infused pests.

The Circle of the Titan Druid has a Wild Shape ability that transforms them into various kinds of kaiju-esque monsters, which eventually become gargantuan in size.

The Hell Knight Fighter deals extra Infernal damage that varies in type depending on the ability and eventually transforms foes into minor devils upon their death.

The Demonic Sorcerer likewise grants various kinds of sorcerer abilities Abyssal effects, culminating in the ability to summon a demon to the battlefield once per day for free.

The path feats are interesting - both culminate with a feat that can only be taken at Level 12 or higher and requires a player to have at least two other feats from the feat path. Death Knights gain a pool of Death Points that fuel various abilities, while the Lich gains a Soul Jar and eventually gains the mechanical benefits of being a lich.

The playtest is open now, with a playtest survey launching next week.

 

[Remathilis]

I mean, that shows that it is possible, yes.

Possible to royally mess it up. When the PDK was scrapped, they have a PDK-sized hole in the book they had to fill with a fighter/knight subclass that tied into Cormyr. So they took the old PDK, removed the PDK name off it, and then slap it in with the minimum amount of changes exactly because they were pressed for time. No second round of UA like the hexblade got. I question how much internal playrtesting it got due to how absolutely dogwater it plays. And its the prefect example of WotC overestimating how badly the PDK would be received and then having to scramble to meet a deadline.

There is absolutely no reason they need to do that again. I hope they never do. And if this is for the Champions Book, everyone better vote Bright Green all down the line on this UA or that December book is going to be a dumpster fire.

 

[Parmandur]

Possible to royally mess it up. When the PDK was scrapped, they have a PDK-sized hole in the book they had to fill with a fighter/knight subclass that tied into Cormyr. So they took the old PDK, removed the PDK name off it, and then slap it in with the minimum amount of changes exactly because they were pressed for time. No second round of UA like the hexblade got. I question how much internal playrtesting it got due to how absolutely dogwater it plays. And its the prefect example of WotC overestimating how badly the PDK would be received and then having to scramble to meet a deadline.

There is absolutely no reason they need to do that again. I hope they never do. And if this is for the Champions Book, everyone better vote Bright Green all down the line on this UA or that December book is going to be a dumpster fire.

I mean, granted as far as it goes, I don't see any of that as a reason to not suspect this could be for Season of Champions. I would expect either a full veto of this material or adoption close to as is, not much back and forth.

 

[Merlecory]

Perhaps I don't remember reading these, or I'm in the wrong thread:

The Death Knight path being aimed at martials (per WotC's description) feels very off to me. First, it boosts STR, CON, and CHA. While STR is good for Fighters, Paladins, and Barbarians, Monks, Rangers, and Rogues are all left out. Second, all but one of the feats gives you spells (the last is a magic action). This "a", makes Barbarians like them a lot less, and "b" is fairly lame. The "martial" path doesn't really have any "martial" abilities, just magic.

I am far from the first person to complain about WotC only making spells, not features, but I none the less feel like they don't really put that much effort into martials.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

The Death Knight path being aimed at martials

It’s clearly aimed at paladins. As you would expect, since that’s how most death knights start out. Ideally, you want to be a martial character with spell slots and charisma as your casting stat. So you could use it with a bladelock or martial-focused bard as a paladin-alternative.

If you are not min-maxing, then a non-caster (non-barbarian) martial (e.g. champion fighter) with a decent charisma is okay. Find Steed is not a spell that you need to cast frequently.

 

[DeviousQuail]

I misread the Titan stat blocks on my first read. It gives only 2x druid level THP compared to the Moon Druids 3x. I understand having less AC as you approach broad side of a barn proportions, but they should have at least as much THP as their Moon brethren. I wouldn't have been surprised if the Titan got 4x as a tradeoff, but I'm still used to the 5e rules where Moon Druids get bags of extra HP to go with their atrocious AC. Can anyone that's played a 5.5e Moon Druid give me their two coppers on how 3x feels in play?

 

[Not a Decepticon]

Some observations

I do not like Death Knight focuses on Charisma, which is best out of 3 soft stats already, once survey is on I will suggest changing it to INT, WIS or CHA just to open more options. They pretty much soft-locked Monks and Rangers out of using this one, while ironically either can benefit from the Lich (Monk with one level of multiclassing in Cleric likely)

With some modifiers I could see Lich feats being used to represent any of homebrewed (or does he count at Third Party now?) Pointy Hat Liches for every class.

Titan Druid feels like an awesome but impractical concept that loses to Moon Druid, which is sad.

I wonder if these new Path feats could be used to represent Dragon Ascension, giving even more credibility to possible Dark Sun book coming.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

I do not like Death Knight focuses on Charisma

It's supposed to be an anti-paladin, why would it not use charisma as it's casting stat?

 

[Not a Decepticon]

It's supposed to be an anti-paladin, why would it not use charisma as it's casting stat?

It feels strangely limited when a lot of soft-ability specific options in 5.5 were expanded to allow player to assign them to a soft stat of its choice.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

It feels strangely limited when a lot of soft-ability specific options in 5.5 were expanded to allow player to assign them to a soft stat of its choice.

Lore (which has been around since 2nd edition at least) says Death Knights start out as paladins, or occasionally fighters or solomanic knights. Not rangers, barbarians or monks. These guys love their full plate.

And if they were wise or smart they wouldn't be seduced by the dark side anyway.

 

[Not a Decepticon]

Lore (which has been around since 2nd edition at least) says Death Knights start out as paladins, or occasionally fighters or solomanic knights. Not rangers, barbarians or monks. These guys love their full plate.

And if they were wise or smart they wouldn't be seduced by the dark side anyway.

Lore also says only Wizards become Liches, but pretty much anyone with a single-level dip in any spellcasting class for martials, can become a Lich with new feats.