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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[Tony Vargas]

I thought we were talking about 1e Rangers?

Pretty sure it had shifted to 3e-5e, maybe specifically 5e, at that point. Though yeah, I tend to be all over the timeline, edition-wise. Sorry 'bout that.

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 like Crawford said, it's a @#&%# design assumption in the game.

If the Rogue can't finagle CA virtually every round, it can't claim fully-contributing in combat.

Infinite hide tricks strains hide beyond the breaking point of credibility. The problem with hide is that players keep doing it in the same spot over and over again and getting the same benefit. That's absurd....
just allowing the class to gain advantage from range as a feature is a great mechanical solution.

I don't see how one is more credible or less absurd than the other.

 

[Benjamin Olson]

I think it would make more sense for Aim to just let you use your Sneak Attack, the same way the Swashbuckler feature and the 'If an ally is within 5 feet" thing do, rather than outright Advantage. Just for the sake of less crit fishing.



There's a difference between 'getting your Sneak Attack" and "Getting advantage". A Rogue already gets Sneak Attack if their buddy is involved in melee with the target, but they don't get Advantage on said attack. Like I mention above, I could see Aim doing the same thing instead of a blanket advantage.

Why is Advantage causing delays? You either have it, or you don't, and the times you get it are all fairly simple. Of course, if you have munchkins who go "Oh my enemy is facing the sun so he should be partially blinded by it and I should get advantage on that attack" and use other excuses to finagle a bonus every single time, then that's not on the mechanic...

The great advantage delays often come from debating hiding. An easier route to it for rogues should minimize this. I think this is probably why they went with advantage rather than just another way to generate sneak attack. I think I do prefer it simply being sneak attack, though it does less to stop these arguments. I'm sympathetic to the Rogue who wants to stand up for getting to use their core class feature rather than just be a second rate ranged fighter with mobility; I'm much happier to see a Rogue shut down who just wants advantage for advantage's sake.

 

[tglassy]

According to the interview posted before, the reason for this was yes, so the Rogue could get a Sneak Attack when normally they couldn't, but also so they could lie prone with a loaded crossbow, aim carefully, and not have disadvantage on their attack from being prone. It makes sense to me to let them do it, and it should cut down on all the:

"I attack, then hide as a bonus action."
"We're in the middle of a field, where do you hide?"
"Tall grass."
"He knows you're there."
"I still hide. Do I get advantage?"
"No!"

 

[Hussar]

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.

It's not about being on par with the fighters. You're never going to be on par with the fighter types. Simply because the fighter types will have things like flaming weapons, bonus damage dice, rage, better attack stats, etc.

It's about making your melee attacks at least equal to your cantrips. If my cantrips are better than my melee attacks, then there is zero point in using melee attacks. Why would I? If it takes me three magic items and a class ability to just equal my cantrip, then, well, that's ridiculous.

Granting a second attack to a cleric at 7th level would hardly make the cleric out shine the fighter types.

 

[Hussar]

According to the interview posted before, the reason for this was yes, so the Rogue could get a Sneak Attack when normally they couldn't, but also so they could lie prone with a loaded crossbow, aim carefully, and not have disadvantage on their attack from being prone. It makes sense to me to let them do it, and it should cut down on all the:

"I attack, then hide as a bonus action."
"We're in the middle of a field, where do you hide?"
"Tall grass."
"He knows you're there."
"I still hide. Do I get advantage?"
"No!"

OTOH, if you're being sticky about granting advantage, that takes away a LOT of a rogue's contribution to combat. If I'm not getting sneak attack, I'm basically doing about 10 points of damage in a round. Great at 2nd level, not so much at 12th.

Never understood the issue here. Rogue hides. Good enough for me.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

I'm fine with Sneak Attack every round via Aim, but don't like giving advantage with it. Let advantage be for when you successfully hide.

If it lost advantage, I’d want to get rid of the drawback.

 

[OB1]

If it lost advantage, I’d want to get rid of the drawback.

Or maybe scale it back to only allowing 1/2 your movement in the turn?

 

[Leatherhead]

I'm fine with Sneak Attack every round via Aim, but don't like giving advantage with it. Let advantage be for when you successfully hide.

The Advantage part is to make it comparable to Two Weapon Fighting. Two chances to land a sneak attack is better than one chance to do so. And even then it's still worse than just Hiding, because Hiding makes you immune to being directly targeted by the enemy (in addition to granting advantage)

 

[Hussar]

Oh, and the notion about casters not being allowed to cast and move and healing. I'd point out that Healing Word is a ranged spell. It's not like clerics HAVE to move in order to heal.

But, even then, making combat a smidgeon more deadly isn't a bad thing IMO.

 

[Swarmkeeper]

Overpowered or not, a feature that gives them advantage without a DM ruling should decrease arguments.

And if your going to complain about every-turn advantage, owl familiars with flyby help actions are the most ridiculous offender to my mind (albeit the easiest problem to solve provided that at least one enemy has a ranged attack). It's advantage at the cost of a completely negligible resource and cheesy to boot.

Additional part of the owl flyby "solution": enforce the Find Familiar material component.

10 gp worth of charcoal, incense, and herbs that must be consumed by fire in a brass brazier

The key being the brass brazier. Who's carrying that around?

Alternatively, just don't worry about PCs getting advantage. They are the heroes of the story, after all. In our games, I hope the PCs succeed more often than not. That said, the DM needn't roll over either: sometimes design challenging encounters that negate advantage through environmental or magical means - or encounters that give monsters advantage - or... etc.