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.

 

[abazaba]

For what it's worth (which admittedly may not be much), but: the only thing I commented on was the Titan Druid being really (green) cool conceptually (and likely game mechanics wise too), with an emphasis on the 'I want to play Godzilla' aspect. And the fact that I was not really sure on the part that this potential Godzilla/Mothra was labelled as 'villainous', as I clearly see that as a 'hero' instead. Also: it literally was the first UA for which I ever provided feedback.

 

[Not a Decepticon]

Way to completely miss the point.

As already pointed out, death knight is a role playing choice . It has nothing to do with mechanics, it’s the story that is important. It’s the story of a character who falls (and is possibly redeemed) from a code of chivalry. Ergo, it’s the fluff of the class that matters, not the mechanics. Most paladins and some fighters are fluffed as knights. Monks are usually fluffed as mystics, holy men and pugilists. They have a different sort of code (and a different path that suited them better could be made). Conan the Barbarian does not became a death knight despite raping, murdering and plundering his way across the land, because he has no chivalrous code to break and get angsty about.

The blandness comes from removing the narrative themes that go with the class choice and reducing it to a set of mechanics.

Blandness comes from demanding that every class has an option that is functionally identical and narratively serves the same function, but has ribbons tied to it and barrying other classes from picking it. Waste of space and creativity for meaningless minutia. If the fluff of the class matters, then ANY feat can represent the story, making the arbitrary barriers from several classes meaningless.

Different code, different tropes. You could have a dark path suitable for a monk, but it needs to be different from the death knight, with its focus on knightly tropes like wrathfully smiting enemies with a big sword and galloping around on a fiendish horse.

Death Knight is an example of a dark path, its not the only one the game will ever have.

Monk - I would go for someone who whilst meditating sent their spirit wandering too far into the astral plane and came into contact with a GOO. Because that’s a monk type dark path story that would have monk type abilities attached. Which would key off wisdom.

Nothing about your example says Monk to me and it would be abhorrent and insulting to me as fan of the class if its' dark path was so pidgeonholed to an ability that was, rightfully, deleted from the class..

For me a Dark Monk is someone like this:
And yes, he is a Monk by D&D standards.

There is optional, and there is optional. You need to pick one, and Find Steed is by far the best, especially if you don’t have spell slots.

It all depends on what I actually want to do with the character, for someone who talks about how it is a role-playing option, you sure defaults to optimization at first opportunnity.

The Death Knight used to be a subclass, it was called Oathbreaker. The issue was, in order to tell a story of a character falling from grace you needed to use an obscure DM-facing optional rule for changing subclasses. Using feats is pretty much the same as a subclass, but can be tacked on to a character using familiar player-facing rules.

Oathbreaker and Death Knight are not the same thing.

It's a Death KNIGHT, not a Death Tracker or Death Sneaky Guy. It's geared towards fighters and paladins, mainly paladins as @Paul Farquhar pointed out. As for the spells, Death Knights have always had spell like abilities and the path feats are designed emulate that.

And this is why the path works much better for Bard, Sorcerer or Warlock than it does for Fighter and in fact, Eldritch Knight, the one Fighter that would be THE most thematically fitting to become Death Knight, is locked out of it due to how MAD it makes them. Wait.

I voted everything grass green. Hopefully that's enough to offset someone's vote so we don't get yet another great idea sacrificed to the altar of cranky DMs who then complain how WotC takes no chances.

The yellow options tells them the thing needs tweaking and improvements, you do not need to vote red to be critical.

 

[Remathilis]

The yellow options tells them the thing needs tweaking and improvements, you do not need to vote red to be critical.

Green allows me to say "idea is good, just needs some balance adjusting" without saying the idea needs work

 

[Not a Decepticon]

Green allows me to say "idea is good, just needs some balance adjusting" without saying the idea needs work

But these ideas need serious work, not just slight adjustments.

 

[Remathilis]

But these ideas need serious work, not just slight adjustments.

Not in my opinion.

 

[Not a Decepticon]

Not in my opinion.

But you presented it as if you were saying voting anything but green will have the entire idea scrapped entierly and never be seen again.

 

[Remathilis]

But you presented it as if you were saying voting anything but green will have the entire idea scrapped entierly and never be seen again.

Nah, I was saying I voted green to counter any red "teh evilz" votes. I'd rather they got feedback on a green than think "oh, there is no appetite for evil PCs" stuff

 

[JPL]

Well now I wanna play a gold elf undying patron warlock who uses those lich rules to become a baelnorn. Seems to be a lot of soul-eating involved, however. Not sure how well that works with the concept of a good/neutral pseudo-lich.

 

[Maxperson]

Well now I wanna play a gold elf undying patron warlock who uses those lich rules to become a baelnorn. Seems to be a lot of soul-eating involved, however. Not sure how well that works with the concept of a good/neutral pseudo-lich.

Just talk to your DM. The soul eating is just fluff, really. It would be easy to re-fluff it so that your baelnorn gets his lichly power some other way.