Unearthed Arcana Light, Dark, Underdark - November's Unearthed Arcana

Interesting stuff.

 

[TwoSix]

Close Quarters Shooter feels like power creep. It's the obvious choice for anyone with a ranged weapon because most combat happens within 30 feet. It would be a solid beginning of an ability, but it's too similar to existing feats.

It just doesn't feel that obvious to me. If I'm making an archery focused character, I'm already strongly thinking about Sharpshooter. And if I'm taking sharpshooter, why wouldn't I just take Archery FS and get a +2 to hit instead of +1?

 

[Zephyros]

I believe that Close Quarter Shooter and Tunnel Fighter should be Feats. Like the others pointed up, they are to powerful compared to the others Fighting Styles.

But... oh boy, my Avenger Paladin would be so nice with Tunnel Fighter + Sentinel + Polearm Feat.

The Tunnel Fighter would let me "teleport" (Avenger Paladin's mechanic) in each Opportunity Attack. Would be a really nice battle control. But I as a GM would put a limit in the AoO generated by the Tunnel Fighter defensive stance.

 

[CapnZapp]

Close-quarters shooter looks sooooo much better than the standard archery fighting style. You get a +1 to hit instead of just a +2 but can ignore cover and avoid disadvantage. That's pretty huge.

Well, not if your build includes Sharpshooter and Crossbow Expert: then the standard archery fighting style avoids duplication and nets you a +2 instead of just a +1.

But sure, if you can do without the +10 to damage and extra attack on your bonus action, this style is a much cheaper option.

 

[CapnZapp]

While I really like that Style, it seems a bit to strong at the moment (except if you plan to take those feats)

You said it first

 

[Voort]

They make it REALLY confusing publishing two different Warlock archetypes with extremely similar names (Undying vs. Undying Light).

 

[Trance]

Very nice.. these options seem very fitting for the new adventure path.. I'm excited for the updated Mystic soon.

 

[Al2O3]

It just doesn't feel that obvious to me. If I'm making an archery focused character, I'm already strongly thinking about Sharpshooter. And if I'm taking sharpshooter, why wouldn't I just take Archery FS and get a +2 to hit instead of +1?

To me the fighting style would be very obvious. If I'm making an archery focused character, I'm also strongly thinking about Sharpshooter. Then I see this FS, and suddenly I find the feat pointless unless I really expect a lot of combat at long range. Instead I take a +2 Dex at level 4, get the same bonus to hit with archery weapons, better AC, better damage and a better chance to hit with melee weapons.

I could really find it fun with a Paladin 2+/Lightlock 2 having the CQS fighting style and agonizing blast.

Tunnel Fighter seems situational given that it needs a choke point and also using its bonus action, but I would surely consider using it instead of taking the full Sentinel feat.

The Deep Stalker Magic feature suddenly makes Humans a viable race for me to play as Rangers, and it is about as good for other races as well. However, I'm not sure how happy I am about further pushing rangers into hit-and-run tactics or turning them into loners. Still much closer to a ranger that I want to play than the last attempt in UA.

Shadow Sorcerer: As long as they keep Eyes of the Dark (with or without the spell), the quirks and Shadow Walk I would be interested in playing one I think. Maybe I would prefer swapping Strength of the Grave for the warlock Armor of Shadows invocation or some other shadow-themed version of Draconic Resilience.

The Undying Light Warlock seems like a great class for a 1 or 2 level dip for a paladin who wants cantrips and maybe an invocation. Could also work great as a Chosen of a god with the Light domain or similar character. However, I do agree with some previous poster that more options among the expanded spells would be nice.

 

[Z. H. Darkstar]

If anything, it feels like CQS was made for gishes and switch-hitters. I could see Warlocks snagging it via Fighter dip to optimize their EB potential. To them, it's the most important part of Crossbow Expert with a free +1 Wand of the War Mage. Eldritch Spammers just got 5% more accurate.

One thing to note is that CQS provides a viable means of getting those abilities in games without feats.

The FS that I'm more concerned with is Tunnel Fighter. That has potential for nastiness when mixed with War Caster. GFB/BB handed out left and right... I hope that a final version would be limited to one free OA per turn.

 

[TwoSix]

To me the fighting style would be very obvious. If I'm making an archery focused character, I'm also strongly thinking about Sharpshooter. Then I see this FS, and suddenly I find the feat pointless unless I really expect a lot of combat at long range. Instead I take a +2 Dex at level 4, get the same bonus to hit with archery weapons, better AC, better damage and a better chance to hit with melee weapons.

Well, that's kind of the rub, isn't it? There's two issues (and one campaign style issue)that will make or break your choice to go either CQS and +2 Dex or Archery/Sharpshooter.

1) Do you expect the majority of encounters to be at less than 30' or more than 30'?
2) What value do you place on the -5/+10 aspect of sharpshooter?

The fact that in an outdoor campaign I'd favor Archery, but for a dungeon crawl I'd favor CQS tells me that they did a pretty good job on the balance. Remove any one of the three bonuses from CQS (the +1, ignore cover, ignore disadvantage) would be enough to push me to Archery in pretty much every situation.

The campaign style issue is that there are games that don't use feats, which may affect the overall value proposition of the choice. Personally, I think it's helpful to have more than one way to gain certain abilities, so I'm happy to see a non-feat method of gaining the "ignore cover" and "ignore disadvantage" abilities of Sharpshooter and Crossbow Expert.

 

[DEFCON 1]

They've kinda thrown all that aside with the Undying Light warlock, so yeah, I'll definitely come up with an actual Named Outsider associated with positive energy (or maybe a celestial?) if I have someone play one of these in my campaign. All I can say for sure is that whoever wrote this totally failed to "get" the central theme of the warlock class. Mechanically, it's interesting. From an RP standpoint, it's a failure.

Or the person totally got that this was merely for playtesting the mechanics of a potential "positive" warlock theme and thus it didn't matter what the fluff was. The actual patron and story for the warlock's central theme will come later if/when the class is actually published, and it's nothing they need our opinion on.