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:

 

[SkidAce]

“Real integrity is doing the right thing, knowing that nobody's going to know whether you did it or not.”

 

[Levistus's_Leviathan]

“Real integrity is doing the right thing, knowing that nobody's going to know whether you did it or not.”

???

Did you post this in the right thread?

 

[Maxperson]

And a setting about dinosaurs that turn into giant robots is doable. Or one where the player characters are all ponies. It's just that there is nothing in the current UA that suggests it is actually being done!

UAs aren't supposed to give you details. They give you the crunch and a bit of fluff that is generic and you decide if you like the crunch. If yes, you say so in the poll. If no, you say so in the poll. They then put it into something that only they know about and we go through several months of time and 256164 different speculation threads.

But we are also seeing the suggestion that a setting "in the past" would have dinosaurs. But that's trying to apply real-worldisnms. In D&D there is no evolution or extinction. The worlds are simply patterned after the First World (if you accept that creation myth). So, whilst the First World would have dinosaurs, because every D&D world has dinosaurs, it would also have antimatter rifles. It's not a prehistoric land of the dinosaurs. It's a GenericFantasyLand with the Generic dialled up to 11.

So I disagree with you. First, there's nothing that says that evolution and/or extinction don't happen in D&D worlds. Second, having an ancient past where dinosaurs ruled the world doesn't have to have anything to do with either evolution or extinction. When the First World went poof, a small number of dinosaurs could have gone to each new world, such that they no longer rule the world.

The Circle of the Primeval druids can tie into that ancient past just fine without applying a single real-worldism.

 

[Maxperson]

D&D Beyond stats are 48% rill, and about a quarter each use the Array or Point buy. That's barely a technical majority, but is also a plurality for rolling between the three methods.

I don't think D&D Beyond should be used as a metric for how people use stat generation methods in the real world, though. I think a disproportionate amount of D&D Beyond characters are made for online play where rolling is much harder to monitor and so will skew more heavily towards point buy and array.

 

[Maxperson]

AKSHUALLY, there are dinosaurs that fly. They're called birds.

The Archaeopteryx was a sort of winged dinosaur. It was transitional between dinosaurs and birds.

 

[Levistus's_Leviathan]

The Archaeopteryx was a sort of winged dinosaur. It was transitional between dinosaurs and birds.

That we know of. There could have been a winged dinosaur before the Archaeopteryx that we just don't have any fossils of.

But, yes, as far as we know, you are correct.

 

[Mecheon]

The Archaeopteryx was a sort of winged dinosaur. It was transitional between dinosaurs and birds.

Technically speaking, Archaeopteryx is nothing special, just in that muddy area between. If you were in the Cretaceous, you could not tell the difference between the 'birds' and the 'dinosaurs'. We have ones that pre-date it. Birds are just a line of dinosaurs, so there's no cut-off point for what makes one the other, and any cut-off is completely arbitery

Which lets us play our favourite game, BIRD OR NON-AVIAN DINOSAUR (Spoilered to save your screen size)

Bird, or dinosaur?

Bird, or dinosaur?

Bird, or dinosaur?
Guess all three, win a prize*!

*(the prize is knowledge)

 

[SkidAce]

???

Did you post this in the right thread?

Yes.

People were talking about rolling and cheating.

 

[Parmandur]

I don't think D&D Beyond should be used as a metric for how people use stat generation methods in the real world, though. I think a disproportionate amount of D&D Beyond characters are made for online play where rolling is much harder to monitor and so will skew more heavily towards point buy and array.

I agree, actually, but that just goes to the point: the only solid bit of data we have encountered is fifty-fifty, but I think that probavly underreported rolling. I don't think it is true that a ast majority of people use point buy or the array.

 

[Parmandur]

The Archaeopteryx was a sort of winged dinosaur. It was transitional between dinosaurs and birds.

The current scientific consensus actually that modern birds are straight up dinosaurs, or alternatively dinosaurs are extinct birds depending on how you want to look at it.

Having little kids who lust for animal knowledge is weird and fun.