D&D 5E New Unearthed Arcana Today: Giant Themed Class Options and Feats

A new Unearthed Arcana dropped today, focusing on giant-themed player options. "In today’s Unearthed Arcana, we explore character options related to the magic and majesty of giants. This playtest document presents the Path of the Giant barbarian subclass, the Circle of the Primeval druid subclass, the Runecrafter wizard subclass, and a collection of new feats, all for use in Dungeons & Dragons."

Giant Options | Unearthed Arcana | Dungeons & Dragons

Explore character options related to the magic and majesty of giants! This playtest document presents new subclasses for the barbarian, druid, and wizard, and a collection of new feats, all for use in Dungeons & Dragons.

dnd.wizards.com

New Class options:

• Barbarian: Path of the Giant
• Druid: Circle of the Primeval
• Wizard: Runecrafter Tradition

New Feats:

• Elemental Touched
• Ember of the Fire Giant
• Fury of the Frost Giant
• Guile of the Cloud Giant
• Keeness of the Stone Giant
• Outsized Might
• Rune Carver Apprentice
• Rune Carvwr Adept
• Soul of the Storm Giant
• Vigor of the Hill Giant

WotC's Jeremy Crawford talks Barbarian Path of the Giant here:

 

[Levistus's_Leviathan]

Yes, thst is one possibility.

Interested in making an Avatar bet?

Sure. How does that work?

 

[Faolyn]

Again, how? There is literally no connection in D&D 5e. And, from what I've seen, the only connection in previous editions is that dinosaurs/mammoths are "natural" and thus are connected to the defunct "Primal" power source of Druids/Barbarians/Rangers, which used to have some connection to Primordials. That really is not a logical connection. That's a bigger leap to conclusions than the speculation that the Prehistoric Druid (which literally calls one of its features "prehistoric") is connected to a Prehistoric D&D setting.

In prehistoric times, the world was "wilder," if you will. When you (generic you) picture those times, you imagine erupting volcanoes and crashing meteors and violent earthquakes and tsunamis, because the world itself is new. That neatly neatly with lots of elementals roaming around. After all, if you're going to have powerful natural disasters in a fantasy world, wouldn't you expect the elementals to accompany them?

And what lived in those times? Well, technically, the most volcanically-active period was like the precambrion, but ignoring that, you think dinosaurs, or neanderthals or neolithic humans cowering in terror from the angry storm or volcanoes. Or sometimes both, in a fantasy world, where you can have dino-riding humans who hunt mammoths or giant apes.

This is the connection. It may not be tied in with any particular mechanic, but it's cinematically appropriate.

 

[Parmandur]

Sure. How does that work?

When we find out which way this goes, Setting or Supplement, the winner chooses the Avatar for the other poster.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

But we won't have a very Primeval Primeval druid tho.

Your average druid wears animal skins, caries a wooden club and worships animistic nature spirits. Primeval is part of the core class. As with all 5e, you can fluff it differently if you like.

Not really. Druids don't have the proficiency now class features for full weapons combat. And buff spells are restricted by concentration.

It would make no sense for a primeval character to be proficient in technologically advanced weapons, or to be better at concentrating on spells than the most advanced wizard.

5e doesn't add new rules system to shift the main game heavily towards a theme to play the way the theme works rather than the base game's preferences.

Rules aren't meant to provide the theme, they are meant to cover many different themes. The DM provides the theme.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

It's notable, again, thst all Orc statblocks were cut in the transition: Orcs are a core enough aspect of D&D Heroic Fantasy that I would expect theybwill wqnt to reinvent then somewhere, sometime.

This. Goblinoids have had a lot of attention, but orcs have been largely ignored by 5e apart from having their always evil hats removed. They could do with a more distinct identity.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

he point is tha Ravnica was still Ren-Medieval Fantasy. It's just ONLY the Urban parts. It's still fighters in plate wielding greatswords, clerics in plate wielding maces, bards in poofy clothing, fireballing mages, and leather demon culties.

So, almost exactly unlike the actual medieval period, which had exactly none of those things?

Really, I do wish people would stop trying to describe D&D as medieval, all it does is tick of anyone who knows anything about real world history. It's like claiming Space 1999 is an accurate depiction of life in 1999.

Meanwhile, Ravnica has all of those things. Along with police, posh restaurants, swanky nightclubs, industrialisation, office workers and megacorps.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

It has coffee

Point of order: coffee was drunk during the medieval period. Just not in Europe.

 

[LuisCarlos17f]

The potential of the giants as interesting antagonists (or monster allies) haven't been explored enoughly, among other reasons because dragons always have been the most popular monsters.

We should rebember the potential menace of the werebeasts. If weapons with silver aren't easy to be found or crafted, then the PCs should can use other way, for example natural weapons of magic beasts. And even the werebeasts could be as ecoterrorists attacking all tries of advenced technology or no-primal magic. In a certain way they may be right because defilers from Athas arrived here, causing a different effect or arcane-magic pollution. The flora isn't killed but tainted, creating an effect as a rain of snow-ashes. Some animals became mutants, something like living shadows. The ecological disaster could be stopped, at least until now, but arcane spellcasters aren't wellcome.

What if the divine magic was a monopoly by giants? But some shamans found other way, the cult of the ancestor spirits, or the egregor, a "collective mind", but later the "egregor's spokepeople" become evil as an allegory of the populism and demagoge.

I like the idea of PCs using mechas as "contructs monster mounts" to fights against giants and kaijus, or using special "magic armours" to become giantouched champions as Hulk, Devil Dinosaur or Ultraman.

 

[Parmandur]

Point of order: coffee was drunk during the medieval period. Just not in Europe.

Yeah, but nobody was drinking it in skyscrapers owned by global corporations, as in Ravnica.

 

[Levistus's_Leviathan]

Point of order: coffee was drunk during the medieval period. Just not in Europe.

Ah, I meant to say "cafes". I'm pretty sure that in Medieval times they didn't have coffee shops where customers were served coffee by magic cyborgs in a skyscraper. That was my point.