Unearthed Arcana New UA: 43 D&D Class Feature Variants

The latest Unearthed Arcana is a big 13-page document! “Every character class in D&D has features, and every class gets one or more class feature variants in today’s Unearthed Arcana! These variants replace or enhance a class’s normal features, giving you new ways to enjoy your character’s class.”

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I guess I'll weigh in along with everybody else. Overall I like the idea and design very much for this round. It allows a lot of versatility and smooths over some rough patches. Some of my concerns are that 1 level dips are very tempting for a lot of these features, particularly among the martials, but that is often the case for UA offerings.

Spell casting: I, for the most part, like the expanded spell lists; is there anyone that doesn't get enhance ability now? Though I have concerns that this tends to homogenize spell casters even more, though 5e does not emphasize this particular flavor of niche protection as much as past editions. I'm not sure the Bard, and to a lesser extent the Sorcerer and Warlock need to be quite that flexible in swapping out their spells on a daily basis. Things like Magical secrets for the Bard were already more than enough here, though I can see why they did it on the Sorcerer, and perhaps the Warlock. I would rather they had more thematic and class specific options, like an extra metamagic or Invocation pick. Even Wizards rarely feel the need to change their entire load out from day to day, IME, so being able to swap just one out every day seems like a huge versatility boost. I guess time will tell.
 

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Lots of responses, sorry if any of these mimic what others already said. It's just my first blush notes so I can remember when the survey comes out:
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Power creep on all the casters getting to change spells, need to give the non-casters something.

Cleric
Blessed Strike: Thank you, thank you. Gives the option to play your character either way. Once per turn avoids the "melee attack cantrip boost" of just giving both. Though no 2d8 at 14th? Is that an oversight, or is it intentionally to make weaker if playign against how the designed decide you must weapon or cantrip?

Fighter
Fighting Style: Superior Technique. If you later take Battle Master, does the die size increase?

Battlemaster Maneuvers to skills should work like the rest - add after the roll is seen.

Monk
Quickened Healing is weird. Using an action makes this primarily out-of-combat, but it costs Ki and Ki comes back with a short rest where you normally heal. So it's a "blow your ki, short rest, hope it isn't interrupted" which is just an odd mental place for a power, with occasional usage elsewhere.

Ranger
Tireless' second ability is too cherry-pickable by any Frenzy barbarian. Would not have it at 1st, but since that's where the opening is I might also limit that to Wisdom modifier times per day.

Favored Foe does not say what level the Hunter's Mark spell is cast as. I assume 1st, but it would be kinda cool if that went up with level.

Ranger Companion
Yes, but be clear it keeps the scaling part.

Fighting Styles
Like them. Especially Interception, Thrown Weapon Fighting, and Unarmed Fighting
 

Alternate Class features... were front and center in 4e.... hmmmm

They were in Unearthed Arcana and the Complete XXXX books in 3.5e as well. You can still see the open content from Unearthed Arcana on most SRD sites.

There were also 2e kits in that edition's Complete Book of YYYY that offered alternative class abilities.

Alternate class abilities are a very old idea.
 

Lots of responses, sorry if any of these mimic what others already said. It's just my first blush notes so I can remember when the survey comes out:
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Power creep on all the casters getting to change spells, need to give the non-casters something.

I mean, there are non-spellcasters listed in the document, too. Swapping spells overnight is powerful, but it's not that powerful. It's primary purpose is not punishing bad choices, with some benefit given to extremely narrow purpose-specific spells. Now you can pick up water breathing when you find out you need to go underwater in the next dungeon, for example. You're also limited to spells of the same level, which is a more significant limitation than it first appears.

I'm not even sure it makes that much of a difference to limit it to 0th-5th level spells.

Cleric
Blessed Strike: Thank you, thank you. Gives the option to play your character either way. Once per turn avoids the "melee attack cantrip boost" of just giving both. Though no 2d8 at 14th? Is that an oversight, or is it intentionally to make weaker if playign against how the designed decide you must weapon or cantrip?

It applies to anything. You cast flame strike and one target takes 1d8 radiant damage. Potent Spellcasting also didn't scale because cantrips do.

I'm not particularly concerned with nerfing high level melee Clerics. In my experience, melee clerics don't exist past level 4. The lack of Extra Attack is too significant.

Fighter
Fighting Style: Superior Technique. If you later take Battle Master, does the die size increase?

It's playtest material. Adjust your expectations accordingly. That is to say, it should probably work exactly like Martial Adept.

Battlemaster Maneuvers to skills should work like the rest - add after the roll is seen.

Probably, yes. It would mirror how Bard's Inspiration Dice work.

Monk
Quickened Healing is weird. Using an action makes this primarily out-of-combat, but it costs Ki and Ki comes back with a short rest where you normally heal. So it's a "blow your ki, short rest, hope it isn't interrupted" which is just an odd mental place for a power, with occasional usage elsewhere.

It means that extra Ki points are almost never wasted, and most healing requires an action. Even a Paladin's Lay on Hands requires an action.

Ranger
Tireless' second ability is too cherry-pickable by any Frenzy barbarian. Would not have it at 1st, but since that's where the opening is I might also limit that to Wisdom modifier times per day.

Frenzy is a poorly designed ability. It should just be a 1/day ability that you can use to transform a rage into a frenzy. I'm also not willing to hold back concepts like exhaustion recovery because some people use multiclassing.

Favored Foe does not say what level the Hunter's Mark spell is cast as. I assume 1st, but it would be kinda cool if that went up with level.

It's still on the Ranger's spell list.

Fighting Styles
Like them. Especially Interception, Thrown Weapon Fighting, and Unarmed Fighting

I hate Thrown Weapon Fighting. Allowing thrown weapons to work with Extra Attack is simply how the game should already work. I don't know any table that didn't already allow thrown weapons to work like the first paragraph does -- thrown weapons are terrible anyways so it's not a useful limitation for balance. So it's just +1 damage which is terrible. It's taking a limited benefit that only applies to a secondary weapon. It would be acceptable if it said, "When you deal damage with a weapon that has the Thrown property, you deal +1 damage," but as written it's so narrow that it's useless. I hate fixes to core game rules from supplemental content like this because it looks like they're trying to say that you can only get the benefit of how the rules should have worked by selecting this special class feature.
 

I hate Thrown Weapon Fighting. Allowing thrown weapons to work with Extra Attack is simply how the game should already work. I don't know any table that didn't already allow thrown weapons to work like the first paragraph does -- thrown weapons are terrible anyways so it's not a useful limitation for balance. So it's just +1 damage which is terrible. It's taking a limited benefit that only applies to a secondary weapon. It would be acceptable if it said, "When you deal damage with a weapon that has the Thrown property, you deal +1 damage," but as written it's so narrow that it's useless. I hate fixes to core game rules from supplemental content like this because it looks like they're trying to say that you can only get the benefit of how the rules should have worked by selecting this special class feature.

Well, but it isn't how the rules work now. It genuinely adds something to how the rules are written and intended. YMMV.
 

But 15 feet of Pounce isnt worth it. If the opponent ENDED its move within 15 feet of you, it is nothing to simply walk up to it on your turn normally.
It allows movement on a Reaction, so off-turn, as opposed to regular movement which occurs on-turn. That's not worthless, depending on the build and party composition. It could be extremely valuable for a blocker type, for example, whose goal is getting in the way of reinforcements coming behind. For instance, it'd be great for blocking a door after the first guy ended his turn in the room.

I'm not sure I'd take it and maybe the numbers need to be boosted, but I could see some players liking it.

You can, of course, choose not to take it as "replacement" here means "choice between", at least it seems that way. The wording is not tight and I think they'd have been better to choose a word like "swap" than "replacement" and much more clearly indicate this is an option, not a mandate.
 
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Blindfighting! I always thought that playing a blind swordsman would be an interesting roleplaying challenge.
A friend of mine played a character for quite a while loosely based on Zatoichi, although he was in a Western setting. He had awesome Blindfighting (this was in 2E; I forget how it was implemented exactly). He was OK in melee, but blindness was a real detriment often (as it should be). However, there were a few times when the party got hit by things like Glitterdust, dust storms, or other blinding attacks and he didn't care!
 

I hate Thrown Weapon Fighting. Allowing thrown weapons to work with Extra Attack is simply how the game should already work. I don't know any table that didn't already allow thrown weapons to work like the first paragraph does --

Well you can put a 1 in that column because my table didn't already allow thrown weapons to work that way outside of Two Weapon fighting where you could throw two weapons in a round.

thrown weapons are terrible anyways

Thrown weapons were terrible because you couldn't use them with extra attack and their damage is usually only a d6. Now that fighters can freely attack with thrown weapons and also two weapon fight and get that +1 to damage which brings the damage up to roughly equivalent to d8 it seems like just as viable a build as any other option.

Especially for Champions who can get Thrown weapons and two-weapon fighting. Dual wielder and you're attacking 2-3 times a round with +1 AC and +1 damage on the attacks. Seems like a fun character build to me.
 


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