New D&D Unearthed Arcana Reveals Two New Subclasses for Monk and Sorcerer, Plus Revamps For Seven More

Wizards of the Coast has a new Unearthed Arcana playtest for Dungeons & Dragons, featuring revamps of seven existing Arcane-themed subclasses, plus two new subclasses. Today, Wizards of the Coast unveiled a new Arcane Subclass Unearthed Arcana, featuring the following subclasses:

• Arcana Domain Cleric
• Arcane Archer Fighter
• Hexblade Patron Warlock
• Conjurer Wizard
• Enchanter Wizard
• Necromancer Wizard
• Transmuter Wizard
• Tattooed Warrior Monk
• Ancestral Sorcery Sorcerer

Notably, the Hexblade Patron and Necromancer Wizard were both relatively high on the wishlist of many D&D players.

That Tattooed Warrior grants the Monk access to several magic tattoos with specific effects that enhance various monk abilities. The Ancestral Sorcery plays off the idea of having a powerful magical ancestor that grants them guidance and direction from beyond. Notably, the ancestral spirit has an spectral haze form and can even Frighten those around the sorcerer at higher levels.

Some of the notable changes in the UA include a revised Arcane Shot ability that comes with an Arcane Shot die used to deal extra damage that ramps up in size, the Conjurer Wizard's benign transposition starts at an earlier level as does Durable Summons, the Enchanter Wizard has some more versatile low-level options that replace Hypnotic Gaze, and the Necromancer has been wholly redesigned with an emphasis on generating temporary hit points for the wizard, their party members, and undead thralls.

 

[Nikosandros]

The link does not appear to be currently working.

If others have trouble with the standard link, I found on DDB forums a direct link to the PDF.

 

[mearls]

What would you say screams for a new class fist?

Any of these here? Would any of these be better served by being a new class?

It's a particularly acute problem for casters. So much of their power is locked away in spell slots. Teasing it out to build a subclass with oomph is tricky.

Taking a summoner as an example. This is bad design, so please just take it as an illustration:

Summoning via spells forces me to fit a summoned creature into a spell slot's value. Instead, I could make a new power economy that translates better into bringing creatures into play. This system might give me X points to summon creatures per day, with each creature given a point value.

If I made bespoke creatures for the class to summon, I could also balance them so that summoning multiple creatures works. That feature might be a key trait for the class, to make it distinct from a caster using slot-based summoning.

You can try to do that with a spell slot-based character, but your path is much narrower.

 

[Chaltab]

Rather than saying "you tattoo a rabbit on your body that lets you cast the jump spell", why not just say "You tattoo magical designs on your skin that constitute a spell", in the same way writing letters in a spellbook gives wizards spells. Like, ok, maybe your image of the tattooed monk is like a guy in a full body yakuza style tattoo... but it kind of sucks as a player if, theoretically, the optimal tattoo to put on my character's chest is like "a butterfly on top of a volcano during an eclipse" is kind of ridiculous and a weird example of flavor dictating gameplay instead of the other way around. Let the players pick the spells and then describe what their tattoos look like after the fact.

Hard agree there. There are several things I don't like about it... the fact that the tattoos just appear for one thing. They're not really tattoos if they're not something someone inked onto your skin.

Plus one of them grants Find Traps (at the cost of two ki points!) which remains the most useless spell in the game.

 

[Chaltab]

The link does not appear to be currently working.

Yeah I had to find it through the Youtube video.
Here.

 

[SkidAce]

On the other hand, I like the concept of people encountering famous Tattooed Monks, and seeing a tattoo they know of and going "oh no! Run!"

I plan on developing other tattoos, specifically probably dragon related.

 

[Parmandur]

The October book just can’t be for any of these UAs. It’s too close to release. Even the Horror Subclass one was on the razors edge of print schedules. It’s far more likely the October book is either delayed or something that doesn’t require UA, like an adventure anthology or something.

The Horror one is in the sweet spot for it: we'll see. I just don't see an Everything before 2027.

 

[Minigiant]

.

Plus one of them grants Find Traps (at the cost of two ki points!) which remains the most useless spell in the game.

Welp you cant say the design philosophy changed.

Rather than saying "you tattoo a rabbit on your body that lets you cast the jump spell", why not just say "You tattoo magical designs on your skin that constitute a spell", in the same way writing letters in a spellbook gives wizards spells. Like, ok, maybe your image of the tattooed monk is like a guy in a full body yakuza style tattoo... but it kind of sucks as a player if, theoretically, the optimal tattoo to put on my character's chest is like "a butterfly on top of a volcano during an eclipse" is kind of ridiculous and a weird example of flavor dictating gameplay instead of the other way around. Let the players pick the spells and then describe what their tattoos look like after the fact.

They could have made a list and made the choices permanent*

*Unless you pay 100-500gp gold for ink removal and new ink

 

[Nightfly]

The new Hexblade isn't much better then the last one. The subclass still revolves around another type of Hex, which is redundant, boring, and fussy. They tried to fix this by making the one type of curse simultaneously castable with the other, which is a nice start, but doesn't really touch the underlying problem. As before, the only reason I might take it is access to Shield.

 

[Misanthrope Prime]

Welp you cant say the design philosophy changed.


They could have made a list and made the choices permanent*

*Unless you pay 100-500gp gold for ink removal and new ink

Yeah, the optimal way to do it is just say "Here is the Tattooed Monk spell list. Pick a number of spells equal to your proficiency bonus. The spells appear on your body in the form of evocative tattoos; the fireball spell may take the form of a red dragon, or alter self may be a werewolf mid-shift"

 

[TravDoc42]

The first two Arcane Archer and Arcane Domain are awesome, rock solid, although I'd man Arcane shot profiency times instead of Intelligence, awesome either way. Love both of them.

Monks Nature Tatoos feel too situational.

Hexblade still feels pointless with the fixed Blade.

Ancestral Sorcerer is great for folks that want a more generic wizard like Sorcerer, not my jam, but it does what it needs to I think.

The 4 wizard subclasses, only the transmute is well don't, although enchanter and Necromancer are passible.

Conjure has the wrong focus. It's most iconic attribute is Summoning creatures not bampfing across the battlefield, we have subclasses that already focus on teleportation, it's NOT the most iconic element of Conjuration Wizards, Summoning is.

Conjurers should be able to cast any summon x conjugation spell without concentration and reduce it's duration to a minute. Or if that well has been hit too often, they should summon 2 creatures when they call a Summon X spell.

Illusionists should not be better conjurers then the Conjurer.

Agree wholeheartedly about the Conjurer. Looks like a major miss to me.