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:

 

[Minigiant]

For people who understand just how trivial increased bonuses are, the feats are almost always better. For those stuck in the rut of past editions where they did matter, they waste their ASIs on stat bonuses.

For warriors, a ASI to your Primary Score is almost always better power-wise as it stacks 2 places when attacking and that check is frequently done. Utility-wise, feats are better. However the impact of utility is directly related to DM allowance.

For casters, ASI vs Feats are even as long as you have average score for a PC.

 

[Maxperson]

For warriors, a ASI to your Primary Score is almost always better power-wise as it stacks 2 places when attacking and that check is frequently done. Utility-wise, feats are better. However the impact of utility is directly related to DM allowance.

For casters, ASI vs Feats are even as long as you have average score for a PC.

Not even for warriors. I'm only going to say this once, since there are two other recent threads where I've discussed this at length.

A +1 for a level 1-4 Fighter results in hitting one additional time every 5 combats, assuming a 4 round average combat length which seems about right. Once you get that second attack, you are hitting one additional time every 2.5 combats. You are also doing a very trivial amount of extra damage during the few hits you get during each individual combat. On a d20 there is only 1 number out of 20 where that +1 will make a difference. If you roll 2 less than the AC of the creature, you miss despite the +1, and if your end roll is more than 1 under the AC of the creature without that +1, you would have hit anyway.

Given the die variance on the d20 and damage die, you aren't going to notice that one extra hit or the piddly few points of extra damage during a combat, and it's very unlikely for either the hit or the minor damage increase to make a difference in any particular fight.

People like to say, "But, but! It's a 30% increase!!" Sure, but it's still like 2 more points of damage that fight. 30% sound big and impressive, but it's not. They also like to say, "But over an entire campaign it's 2 bajillion points of additional damage!" Sure, but you aren't fighting that campaign all at once. You are fighting a bunch of individual fights where the trivial damage increase is very rarely going to matter. For that 2 bajillion points of extra damage to matter, you'd have to be able to save it up and release it at the same time and just kill a dragon or something.

A feat is going to be much more useful and will actually be noticeable.

 

[Minigiant]

Not even for warriors. I'm only going to say this once, since there are two other recent threads where I've discussed this at length.

A +1 for a level 1-4 Fighter results in hitting one additional time every 5 combats, assuming a 4 round average combat length which seems about right. Once you get that second attack, you are hitting one additional time every 2.5 combats. You are also doing a very trivial amount of extra damage during the few hits you get during each individual combat. On a d20 there is only 1 number out of 20 where that +1 will make a difference. If you roll 2 less than the AC of the creature, you miss despite the +1, and if your end roll is more than 1 under the AC of the creature without that +1, you would have hit anyway.

Given the die variance on the d20 and damage die, you aren't going to notice that one extra hit or the piddly few points of extra damage during a combat, and it's very unlikely for either the hit or the minor damage increase to make a difference in any particular fight.

People like to say, "But, but! It's a 30% increase!!" Sure, but it's still like 2 more points of damage that fight. 30% sound big and impressive, but it's not. They also like to say, "But over an entire campaign it's 2 bajillion points of additional damage!" Sure, but you aren't fighting that campaign all at once. You are fighting a bunch of individual fights where the trivial damage increase is very rarely going to matter. For that 2 bajillion points of extra damage to matter, you'd have to be able to save it up and release it at the same time and just kill a dragon or something.

A feat is going to be much more useful and will actually be noticeable.

My point is that the small bonus of a prime ASI is better than the trivial bonus of most feat.

Oversized Might gives you a single skill proficiency, advantage to a save to something you good at and have no control over happening, and a Massive increase to something many tables don't care about.


That's my point. The 5e designers designed ASI to be one of the main reliable source of power progression. Feats were designed to increase utility, to shore up weaknesses, or to allow PC to continue to focus after hitting 20 in their prime. This is why you can't get feats before level 1*, they use the same spot as ASI, and you only get a few.

The issue is that the 5e designers didn't think that a large percentage of the fanbase to think that the base rules are too simple and/or restrictive. So the designers are shifting Feats from an optional utility mechanic to a core power mechanic.

And this is why people are being wary. Because that model is 2 steps down than the disastrous 3e feat model.

*Unless you are variant human or custom lineage.

 

[bedir than]

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.

Coffee was in SE Europe during the medieval period. Within the Ottoman Empire coffeehouses of the era were legitimate "third places" where crossculture/crossclass/crosssect communications happened. There were beat poets, philosophers, writers, musicians who performed, usually solo, in what is modern Serbia, Bulgaria, Austria, etc.

I nearly wrote a thesis paper on how Starbucks is an outgrowth of the Ottoman coffee culture. Did a lot of the research, but then real work got in the way.

It's part of why I developed Coffee Gear.

 

[Maxperson]

My point is that the small bonus of a prime ASI is better than the trivial bonus of most feat.

Oversized Might gives you a single skill proficiency, advantage to a save to something you good at and have no control over happening, and a Massive increase to something many tables don't care about.


That's my point. The 5e designers designed ASI to be one of the main reliable source of power progression. Feats were designed to increase utility, to shore up weaknesses, or to allow PC to continue to focus after hitting 20 in their prime. This is why you can't get feats before level 1*, they use the same spot as ASI, and you only get a few.

The issue is that the 5e designers didn't think that a large percentage of the fanbase to think that the base rules are too simple and/or restrictive. So the designers are shifting Feats from an optional utility mechanic to a core power mechanic.

And this is why people are being wary. Because that model is 2 steps down than the disastrous 3e feat model.

*Unless you are variant human or custom lineage.

So pick from the many useful feats.

Alert gives a huge bonus to initiative and you cannot be surprised, nor do invisible creatures get advantage against you. That's MUCH better than an unnoticeable damage increase.

Athlete gives you a small stat bonus, but standing up from prone takes less movement and you climb quickly. That's better than an unnoticeable damage increase.

Actor allows you to infiltrate and deceive better, which is better than an unnoticeable damage increase.

Dungeon Delver gives you advantage to find secret doors and avoid or resist traps, plus fast travel doesn't hurt perception. Again, this is MUCH better than an unnoticeable damage increase.

Elemental Adept ignores resistance which IS a noticeable damage increase. Obviously MUCH better than an unnoticeable damage increase.

Great Weapon Master is again a noticeable damage increase.

Heavy Armor Master is a noticeable reduction in damage taken, MUCH better than an unnoticeable damage increase.

Keen Mind allows accurate recall of information, which is huge.

Lucky is, well lucky. MUCH better than an unnoticeable damage increase.

And so on. There's no reason that I would ever take an ASI unless part of my concept was being the strongest, smartest, etc. and I was doing it for character concept and not mechanics.

 

[Stoutstien]

As always ASI vs feat will depend on multiple factors like additional class/subclass features drawing off modifiers or specific feat/feature interactions like alert and bugbear

 

[Faolyn]

I did laugh at the coffee point - an awful lot of fantasy settings have coffee in it nowadays, as people just can't face the idea of living without it (he said, having walked into the room with a cappuccino he made...). The FR has kaeth, for example. Aha TVTropes has a page:

Uncoffee - TV Tropes

Every single Speculative Fiction setting comes with a hot, mildly stimulant beverage that can take the place of coffee, and more often than not has a name that sounds very much like "coffee". Apparently coffee itself is too mundane to talk about …

tvtropes.org

Darnit, I did not need a zillion tabs open today.

 

[Parmandur]

How long is the loser required to have the avatar chosen by the winner?

If it's a Prehistoric campaign setting (whether it's actually the First World or not), I win. If it's a Giant or Giant/Elemental-centric Monster book, you win. If it's neither, we both lose and no one chooses the avatar. We on?

Well, I have a longterm Avatar bet going about the Setting next year, so between the announcement of whatever this is, and that next big Classic Setting.

The conditions sound good to me!

 

[Parmandur]

Nope. This is extremely wrong. Every Feat in 5E is competing directly against ASIs. Ignoring that part of the equation just making a pointless and untrue statement. The competition via ASIs means the level 4 and level 8 Feats are almost always spent on ASIs, especially by players who don't want mechanically ineffective PCs.

If you're using rolled stats things change a bit.

Never seen anything other than rolled stats in play, but also never seen anyone take a Feat.

 

[glass]

Also, is it just me or is Vigor of The Hill Giant's Hearty Health pretty much how healing used to work in 4E originally? You got healed and you healing surged or something?

"Healing surge" was a noun in 4e not a verb, and it was a semi-hard limit on total healing for the day (as well as making healing proportional to total hp). Very unlikely to be something added by a subclass.

Maybe is WotC had picked a less terrible name for HSs, we would not still have to be dealing with misinformation about them 15 years later!

The bestiary would need over 50 more giant-themed monsters in order to just match how many dragon-themed ones are in Fizban's Treasury of Dragons. Is that really possible given the history of D&D?

Trivially, as @Maxperson and others have ably demonstrated (and they did not list the various kinds of titans AFAICS). Of course "possible" and "a good idea" are not synonyms.

In my opinion all dinosaurs and megafaun from ice age as D&D monsters should be in the SRD because they aren't original ideas.

WotC are not required to release an SRD at all, let alone include any particular thing in it.

Just to understand, you feel like the designers should be the ones to enforce theme, across all settings including homebrew, by locking off choice by rules, as opposed to the people playing at the table having the freedom to pick what is right for their character?

That seems to be literally the opposite of what @dave2008 was saying.

---

Regarding the First World - I was under the impression that the First World is a world from which most or all of the main settings (Toril, Oerth, Krynn, Eberron) were descended - acting as an explanation of why so many settings have elves, and dwarves, and dragons, and orcs, and..., and..., etc.

Did I misunderstand?

Assuming I did not misunderstand, that does not imply that the FIrst World is necessarily a primeval setting. OTOH, a primeval setting would imply the FIrst World (or a separate setting, or a regression), since the similarities between the extant setting imply a divergance point later than that.

_
glass.