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:

 

[cbwjm]

So do people assume the First World will be some sort of prehistoric setting? Meaning no metal, no writing etc? Whilst that would be cool, I kinda doubt they would do it, as it would require quite a bit of changing the stuff from the base game to make it work.

With it being a world of dragons, I'd expect epic architecture and kingdoms of dragonborn, kobolds, and other scalykind led by dragons, though I might just be thinking of my setting which has a similar theme of dragons vs giants vs elementals.

 

[Parmandur]

It's only a couple of feats. If it was 3 or 4 then maybe that would be bad, but a single feat needing one other feat isn't much of a feat chain.

Yeah, and it feels like the Level 1 available Feats are supposed to go with Backgrounds they didn't share because they might tip their hand too much.

 

[Micah Sweet]

It isn't totally amazing, no, that's my point.

It's mediocre. It's not particularly special or clever to have a size M Brontothere or whatever (which is literally all a Primeval Druid can summon at lower levels - size M things). Yeah you too can have a slightly undersized saber-toothed tiger or a correctly scaled (i.e. smaller than the movie) velociraptor! Maybe you could have an oversized Eohippus? Woooo the excitement!

And a Huge Kobold being exciting to people is one of those things that makes me worry about D&D players a bit.

"Ohhhh a character is a different size from expected! Wow!!! MIND = BLOWN". I think I rolled my eyes so hard I just hurt myself. It was I admit funny like, the first time I saw that, in the early 1990s. It's 2022 people.


That does actually seem quite likely and would be a lot more interesting than a giant-centric book. Presumably one of the rumoured two new settings. If done well it could be extremely exciting but given its WotC, I suspect conceptual conservatism and avoidance of anything too clever may win out. Then again, they did publish Eberron, which doesn't fit that at all, so maybe I'm being too damn cynical.

Yeah given you can throw people into spaces that don't have floor or anything, it does seem like that is RAW/RAI for that. It's not crazy damage but the prone is nice and the bonus action isn't conditional unlike Shield Bash (unless I'm forgetting something). It'll probably get nerfed though.

They published Eberron decades ago, back when they a few shreds of creativity left (at least enough to recognize Keith Baker had a salable idea). No way would something like that pass muster today.

 

[Parmandur]

With it being a world of dragons, I'd expect epic architecture and kingdoms of dragonborn, kobolds, and other scalykind led by dragons, though I might just be thinking of my setting which has a similar theme of dragons vs giants vs elementals.

That's actually a pretty good reason to suspect that this is not "The First World," since they would want to either reprint all of Fizbans material or create mutlibook dependency...

 

[Urriak Uruk]

So do people assume the First World will be some sort of prehistoric setting? Meaning no metal, no writing etc? Whilst that would be cool, I kinda doubt they would do it, as it would require quite a bit of changing the stuff from the base game to make it work.

I'm not going to assume too much, but I do feel that it will try to capture at least some of the feeling of prehistoric. You know, like Tarzan, Ka-Zar, even a little Conan or Xena.

 

[Micah Sweet]

I mean on the upside they're stressing the Multiverse so it seems very unlikely this will indeed "rewrite the origins of all previous settings". It's more likely it'll be "one possible history, if you want it to be".

I don't think they mean multiverse like Doctor Strange, but rather like D&D always meant it: all the planes and campaign settings. Only now, they reconfigured it so it can all be considered one big Dungeons & Dragons(TM) brand.

A more conventional multiverse, as depicted in most speculative fiction, would be amazing, but far beyond WotC's abilities from what I've seen.

 

[Urriak Uruk]

With it being a world of dragons, I'd expect epic architecture and kingdoms of dragonborn, kobolds, and other scalykind led by dragons, though I might just be thinking of my setting which has a similar theme of dragons vs giants vs elementals.

I interpreted it much as a "Dragons rule the earth," like how we say "Dinosaurs rule the earth." As in, their the apex predator but don't have civilizations. Everything is their prey and it is difficult for entities to mobilize against them.

Though I do think in a First World we would see some Giant civilizations. Much like this;

 

[Micah Sweet]

You're using percentages differently from the person I replied to. They were suggesting that wotc wasn't operating at even 75%, as if they were being lazy or uncreative. Percentage of the player base that like a thing is an entirely separate discussion of percentages.

And considering how popular many new ideas have been in 5e, your "the majority will never want to innovate" line is flatly false.

Citation needed.

Sure, if some of those runes are in the PHB as part of the core system. If they're instead in Tasslehoff's Pockets of Everything, and you release a subclass that uses them in The Gatewatch Guide To The Planes, you've no made the second book require the first, rather than only requiring the PHB.

Bonus feats tied to backgrounds are already a thing. If a group wants to use runes but not feats, they don't need to allow feats in general to allow bonus level 1 feats tied to a story element.

See above.

The only way this ideas works is if they are treated entirely as magic items, or are somehow new proficiencies that aren't more powerful than existing tool proficiencies. So, adding to an existing system.

Maybe as part of an "implement proficiencies" expansion that runs alongside weapon proficiencies, giving access to a "spell attack" themed to a given implement, but that would be a huge departure from how the game currently works, and would probably, again, need to be self contained in one book.


But why would you? That's a hyper-limited "setting". I think they're more likely to seed First World stuff in the spelljammer book than set a whole book there.

Perhaps you haven't gotten around to reading "Small Gods"? I was replying directly to your comment about the gods.

What new ideas? Streamlining and removing/altering content to conform to shifting social mores is not innovation. The only thing even close is the feat/background combo they've been experimenting with in UA, and that's nothing new to 5e, just to WotC.

 

[NaturalZero]

I have a sneaking suspicion that one of the 'major' changes to the 2024 rule book will be presenting Feats as the standard and ASIs as the optional rule, with multiclassing remaining optional. Going one step further, the 'class-dip' feats could be presented as the 'preferred' way to multi-class.

The class feats in Tasha's are probably the best indicator of this and I'd welcome the change. ASIs are boring, multiclassing is weird due to how much needs to be packed into 1st level, and feats don't slow class progression. All good things imo.

It's funny that the longer the edition goes, the more the devs realize that 4e had it right the whole time.

 

[Minigiant]

So do people assume the First World will be some sort of prehistoric setting? Meaning no metal, no writing etc? Whilst that would be cool, I kinda doubt they would do it, as it would require quite a bit of changing the stuff from the base game to make it work.

The WOTC design team is very anti-variant. It will likely just be "Standard Ren-Medieval D&D Setting" with Dinosaurs and more Giants