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:

 

[LuisCarlos17f]

Humans don't have flyby attack or blindsight.

In the real life the echolocation by humans is possible, and even there is a special training for blind people.

Human echolocation - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

 

[Parmandur]

This is not correct.

DNDBeyond is only able to distinguish between three methods of character creation.

1) Fixed Array.

2) 27-point Point Buy. (unless they changed this recently - it was much-requested, but they usually ignore requests.)

3) Manual Input.

So there's no possibility that you have figures showing 48% of people rolled their characters. I assume I don't have to explain why, but correct me if I do. I'm presuming what you have is figures showing 48% used Manual Input of stats?

Equally, there is no possibility that 100% of the 48% rolled. It's trivially obvious that that percentage is lower. For example, in our Odyssey of the Dragonlords group on Beyond, the DM had us use a slightly higher point-buy (I forget what, 32 maybe?), after much weeping and crying from one player (not me!). So we had to calculate stats outside the app and then use Manual Input. In our Eberron game, we used Fixed Array but two players, me being one of them, got permission to use a different array of about the same total value. Again we had to use Manual Input (though maybe we could have used Point Buy? We didn't think to do that though). That's just two out of the four groups I play with/run.

I feel safe that the vast majority of that 48% are rolling. And I suspect that rolling is underrepresented on Beyond compared to the general user base, but WotC probably knows what the score is better than either of us. I see no reason to believe that rolling is "vastly" outnumbered by the variant methods.

 

[Maxperson]

This is not correct.

DNDBeyond is only able to distinguish between three methods of character creation.

1) Fixed Array.

2) 27-point Point Buy. (unless they changed this recently - it was much-requested, but they usually ignore requests.)

3) Manual Input.

So there's no possibility that you have figures showing 48% of people rolled their characters. I assume I don't have to explain why, but correct me if I do. I'm presuming what you have is figures showing 48% used Manual Input of stats?

Equally, there is no possibility that 100% of the 48% rolled. It's trivially obvious that that percentage is lower. For example, in our Odyssey of the Dragonlords group on Beyond, the DM had us use a slightly higher point-buy (I forget what, 32 maybe?), after much weeping and crying from one player (not me!). So we had to calculate stats outside the app and then use Manual Input. In our Eberron game, we used Fixed Array but two players, me being one of them, got permission to use a different array of about the same total value. Again we had to use Manual Input (though maybe we could have used Point Buy? We didn't think to do that though). That's just two out of the four groups I play with/run.

Okay, but so what. D&D Beyond seriously skews the results in favor of point buy and array simply by virtue of being used for a lot of online play. None of those percentages matter outside of D&D Beyond.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

Okay, but so what. D&D Beyond seriously skews the results in favor of point buy and array simply by virtue of being used for a lot of online play. None of those percentages matter outside of D&D Beyond.

LOL!

All the other evidence we have, which is sites like this, and the subreddits, particularly /r/dndnext supports are far more extreme divide against rolling.

So if you're dismissing DNDBeyond, you're dismissing literally the only evidence supporting the idea that more than about 15-30% of people roll, tops. I guess you want to lose that argument? Fair enough.

I feel safe that the vast majority of that 48% are rolling.

A "vast majority" is typically regarded (and used by me) to mean 70% or so, and yes, I'd agree about 70% of the 48% are probably rolling. Which would mean about 33% of Beyond users were rolling overall, which seems reasonable to me.

 

[Maxperson]

LOL!

All the other evidence we have, which is sites like this, and the subreddits, particularly /r/dndnext supports are far more extreme divide against rolling.

So if you're dismissing DNDBeyond, you're dismissing literally the only evidence supporting the idea that more than about 15-30% of people roll, tops. I guess you want to lose that argument? Fair enough.

D&D 5E - Point buy vs roll

Check again. Rolling if this site is to be believed, it the most popular method. Now, this site is even less reliable than D&D Beyond, but hey!

If you have any solid evidence that isn't skewed in favor of point buy/array OR an unreliable site like here or Reddit, I'd love to see it. Until then I'm going to go with personal experience which has every table I've been to rolling for stats, with the exception of one that did an array, but the 5 players and the DM all rolled one stat and we used those rolled stats as the array, so it was still really rolling.

 

[Parmandur]

LOL!

All the other evidence we have, which is sites like this, and the subreddits, particularly /r/dndnext supports are far more extreme divide against rolling.

So if you're dismissing DNDBeyond, you're dismissing literally the only evidence supporting the idea that more than about 15-30% of people roll, tops. I guess you want to lose that argument? Fair enough.

A "vast majority" is typically regarded (and used by me) to mean 70% or so, and yes, I'd agree about 70% of the 48% are probably rolling. Which would mean about 33% of Beyond users were rolling overall, which seems reasonable to me.

All sources thst I would expect to skew towards the fiddley non-random methods. And again, even Beyond doesn't suggest a dominant point buy method!

 

[Ruin Explorer]

D&D 5E - Point buy vs roll

Check again. Rolling if this site is to be believed, it the most popular method. Now, this site is even less reliable than D&D Beyond, but hey!

If you have any solid evidence that isn't skewed in favor of point buy/array OR an unreliable site like here or Reddit, I'd love to see it. Until then I'm going to go with personal experience which has every table I've been to rolling for stats, with the exception of one that did an array, but the 5 players and the DM all rolled one stat and we used those rolled stats as the array, so it was still really rolling.

What?!

It shows 39.5% of people picking Point Buy, and 26.1% as Rolling? That's putting Point Buy alone, not even Stat Array, way ahead of Rolling!

What the heck are you looking at? Seriously it's like you didn't read your own source. Do I need to screenshot it for you? I ask because I feel like I'm being gaslighted here.

Also this is the funniest thing I've reading a while:

If you have any solid evidence that isn't skewed in favor of point buy/array

I mean what the hell? What do you think that means? Because to me it looks like "If you have any evidence that supports your argument, it's biased, so don't show it to me!". You're into "Love is Hate" territory yourself when claiming 39.5% is lower than 26.1% lol. Really not helping your argument there.

All sources thst I would expect to skew towards the fiddley non-random methods. And again, even Beyond doesn't suggest a dominant point buy method!

That means it's pointless to discuss it, because you're dismissing literally everyone on the internet with that spurious logic.

Also, calling Stat Array "fiddly" is just laughable and demolishes your own argument. It's literally more straightforward than rolling.

 

[Maxperson]

What?!

It shows 39.5% of people picking Point Buy, and 26.1% as Rolling? That's putting Point Buy alone, not even Stat Array, way ahead of Rolling!

You looked wrong. 17.8% use both, so rolling gets 43.9% plus whatever percentage of the 16.7 other vote(and I'm not digging through the thread to figure that out) also use some form of rolling.

 

[Vaalingrade]

Either D&D Beyond is a viable source of data both when it supports and does not support one's position, or it isn't.

But anyway, Here's hoping rolling isn't mentioned at all in D&D 2024. Or Point Buy.

Array 4 Life.

 

[Maxperson]

What do you think that means? Because to me it looks like "If you have any evidence that supports your argument, it's biased, so don't show it to me!".

I missed this.

You can twist and turn all you want, but you have no evidence that isn't ruined by bias. None. At least none that you've shown here.