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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[Undrave]

Thinking about it, that's not a bad house rule. No movement when casting or making a ranged attack. That would go a LONG ways towards scaling back the ranged/dex mastery in the game and would make casters a lot more vulnerable. Hrm.... I kinda like that idea.

I just don't see any benefit to that, except making things more boring because no one will want to move.

Not to say I particularly like the Aim ability for cunning action, but I at least see value in the ability for some concepts.

You ever played the Tactical RPG 'Rondo of Swords' for the DS? It has a very unique battle mechanic where you direct you set the path a unit and have them pass through the spaces of enemies and allies. When moving through an enemy the unit will attack, and when passing through an ally they'll receive a boost. Enemies can also do this so don't clump together.

Spellcasters in that game were terrible. Your unit's turn ends immediately after a move, because it's a move and an action. So, in order to be able to use Spells, you needed to use the spell AT THE START of your turn. Meaning you had to anticipate where enemies would be, maneuver your spell caster there, and then hope that once the next turn swung by you were still in position to blast anything.

Needless to say, I never used my Spellcaster in battle. Which ended up biting me in the ass because there's a mission later where everybody BUT the Spellcasters deserts you and you need to survive this rough battle with your underleveled spell casters that you have ZERO practice using...

Anyway, Spellcasters (and archers) who can't move is a terrible idea.

 

[Parmandur]

Aim doesn't bother me at all because it's just a less odious version of hide abuse.

Crawford said as much: he said the design assumption of the game is that the Rogue is engineering Advantage every round for Sneak Attack. This just means Sam Riegel will go through less silliness to get his Sneak Attack in every week.

 

[Benjamin Olson]

Aim doesn't bother me at all because it's just a less odious version of hide abuse.

And one that saves sitting through debates between Rogues and DMs.

 

[Sacrosanct]

The problem with melee clerics isn't so much about horning in on Paladins, but, rather that their attack cantrips are too good.

I mean, by 8th level, Sacred flame is doing 2d8 damage. That's easily equal to whatever melee attack the cleric is doing. Why bother having decent weapon proficiencies and good armor prof's if your ranged cantrips are flat out better? Never minding something like Toll the Dead which is dealing even more damage.

Having just played a Forge Priest out to 12th level, I quickly realized that even though I was a good tank, there was virtually no point in having magic weapons. My cantrips could do for free as much or more damage as my melee attacks. And, since Sacred Flame is a Dex Save, my odds of success were at least as good as flat out attacking.

I honestly think it would not hurt to give clerics a second attack at, say, 7th level, just to allow for the "melee combat" cleric archetype. Otherwise, you might as well be standing beside the wizard.

Do that, and the the uproar about how fighters are weak will become even more pronounced. I mean, right now, as is, people are very upset about how the fighter isn't even the best at fighting (true or not, that's the argument). So if you put the cleric on par with melee damage along with everything else the cleric gets, you make it an OP class.

If you want to have a class that's a tank and dishes out a bunch of melee damage as well, play a fighter/barbarian/paladin. That's not the cleric's role. I played a tempest cleric up to level 15 in Tyranny of Dragons a while back, and I was one of the best tanks in the party (which included a dragonborn barbarian and a warlock/fighter greatsword PC). My melee attacks weren't great, but that wasn't my role. Between my melee attacks along with spirit guardians I had up, I was doing as much if not more damage per round than everyone else. Giving me an extra attack would make me OP.

 

[Yaarel]

Wow. I have a friend who always plays a Ranger. She looks like this in reallife. With these clothes, this is exactly how I imagine her character looks like!

Heh, in reallife, her lip has a less noticeable scar from having been bitten by wolf as a young kid. And she knows how to swordfight.

 

[Yaarel]

For the sake of appropriate FLAVOR.

Maybe rename ‘Spell Versatility’ as ‘Magical Instinct’.

This way, it is because these classes are inherently magical (whether born inherently magical, or evolved to be). They have an instinct for magic. And with proper rest and meditation, they can temporarily gain insight, to cast a spell that they normally would not inherently know.

 

[Bacon Bits]

Crawford said as much: he said the design assumption of the game is that the Rogue is engineering Advantage every round for Sneak Attack. This just means Sam Riegel will go through less silliness to get his Sneak Attack in every week.

Yup. I think this makes it explicitly clear that they really do intend for the Rogue to be able to use Sneak Attack essentially every round that they want to. I'm perfectly happy with that, then.

 

[Benjamin Olson]

For the sake of appropriate FLAVOR.

Maybe rename ‘Spell Versatility’ as ‘Magical Instinct’.

This way, it is because these classes are inherently magical (whether born inherently magical, or evolved to be). They have an instinct for magic. And with proper rest and meditation, they can temporarily gain insight, to cast a spell that they normally would not inherently know.

I do feel like the sorcerer needs something (at least for low levels), and playing on their basic lore as the born inherently magical people would be best.

 

[Salthorae]

Barbarian: I like the extra skills that come with Survival Instincts, but I'm lukewarm on anything that doubles a proficiency bonus. Instinctive Pounce was fine until I got to the "doesn't provoke opportunity attacks" part; I'd prefer to leave that part out

What about that line hits you the wrong way so to speak? Just curious? So many mobility options have that as part of their standard boilerplate in 5e that I never thought to question its inclusion here.

Cleric: I like all of these options except Blessed Strikes...too much paladin overlap, IMO.

Blessed Strikes is just (basically, I know it's slightly different) a combination of the two different 8th level ability that all domains have. 7/12 domains already add 1d8 of some damage type at 8th level to their melee attacks and the other 5/12 add their Wis modifier to cantrips. This gives the flexibility as an example to play a more martial focused Trickery Cleric or a more caster focused War Cleric

Monk: Monk Weapons seems unnecessarily fiddly, but it will work I guess (I would have preferred something like "choose 5 weapons from the following list...") The Ki Features look fine, but I don't foresee my wife picking them for her monk.

Ki features are always/free you get all these things, so she wouldn't have to pick them. Just like all monks get Flurry of Blows, Patient Defense, & Step of the Wind at 2nd level. These would just be MORE things they get at 2nd level to go with the core 3.

Ranger: Ugh. I like Deft Explorer, but very little else. Favored Foe is unnecessarily clunky (why not just make it once per short rest?) and as for everything else: why not just play a druid?

Favored Foe likely won't look like that in print when it gets there, but I get that it's clunky.

I get what you're saying about some of the other features, it definitely brings a lot of that feel/concept in, but I think there's space for both Rangers as more Druidic just as Moon Druids step on Rangers toes in a lot of ways related to combat. It's the nature version of Fighter (Eldritch Knight) and Wizard (Bladesinger) to a degree.

Plus I really like what they've done with the Beast Master companion options.

Sorcerer: I like the expanded spell list, but Spell Versatility feels out of place for a sorcerer (What do they do, replace their blood every long rest?) but it doesn't really break anything. Font of Magic options all look fine, nothing sticks out. The new Metamagic options are fine, but I'd probably drop Seeking Spell.

Re: spell Versatility - Welcome to the club, prepare to be pelted. So you're ok with it on Bards/Warlocks, but not Sorcerer?

Warlock: This is my favorite part of the entire 13-page document. I love the expanded spell list, Pact of the Talisman feature, the new invocations, the whole thing.

Talisman seems very... underwhelming to me as a PC option, though I could see it as a Mentor/NPC choice kind of thing.

Fighting Styles: Versatility is a good idea, and I like the new styles (but I predict a lot of pedantic arguments between my players about the differences between "being hidden" and "unable to be seen").

Agreed... those debates are coming...

Granting a second attack to clerics at, about , say, 7th level would go a LONG way towards allowing Fighty clerics to shine.

I could see "enhancing" or "replacing" a Cleric of the War domain's 8th level Domain Ability to either add or be Extra Attack. At 8th level, it's certainly not breaking the game, and it's not going to be a "dip"

 

[CleverNickName]

Crawford said as much: he said the design assumption of the game is that the Rogue is engineering Advantage every round for Sneak Attack.

This right here? It drives me crazy. In my opinion it shouldn't be easy (or even possible, let alone the friggin' default assumption) for anyone to get Advantage every. single. round. Rogues are the chief offenders here, but crit-fishers, Luck-munchers, and GWM tanks have their issues too. "Getting advantage" causes more arguments and delays at my table than anything else, and I'd love to make it go away somehow. But like Crawford said, it's a @#&%# design assumption in the game.

I don't have a solution for this problem, only outrage.