Unearthed Arcana June Unearthed Arcana: Druid Shepherd, Fighter Cavalier, and Paladin of Conquest

The latest Unearthed Arcana from Mearls and Crawford revisits four subclasses from earlier UA articles. "Part of the fun of playtesting is seeing how feedback and play can push a design in new directions. In this month’s Unearthed Arcana, we revisit class material that appeared in previous installments: four subclasses for various classes, along with Eldritch Invocations for the warlock. This material was all popular, and the revisions to it were driven by feedback that thousands of you provided in surveys. The updated subclasses are the druid’s Circle of the Shepherd, the fighter’s Cavalier, the paladin’s Oath of Conquest, and the warlock’s Celestial (formerly known as the Undying Light). One of the main pieces of feedback we got about the Eldritch Invocations is that most players didn’t want them exclusive to particular Otherworldly Patron options, so we’ve opened them up to more warlocks, tweaked them, and cut the least popular ones."

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[gyor]

Y'know, if they keep going for just the 'most popular,' they're going to end up with the least-offensive, least-interesting, lowest-common-denominator. :sigh: To really deliver on the promise of supporting more styles than all past editions (including those of all past editions), they've got to tackle stuff with narrower, but genuine, appeal, as well (even where there's equally narrow, intense, dislike). Because, well: options - things some may like and others not.

I simply don't agree.

The idea that popular = bland or popular = crap is an elitist one.

And it doesn't fit.

Say 80% of people like the Favoured Soul's last incarnation, but the last 20% of people all gave it a very dissatisfied in surveys, because they wanted it more like the first incarnation.

Well that very contraversial, but its also very popular, so its almost certainly going in.

 

[Corwin]

I simply don't agree.

If you take the paragraph you quoted, in the way I think it was really intended, you'll see the gist of it was really just a delivery system for yet another "very subtle" dig at 5e and its developers.