D&D 5E New Unearthed Arcana: Wonders of the Multiverse

WotC has posted a new Unearthed Arcana featuring the Glitchling race, the Fate domain, and a handful of backgrounds, feats and spells.

In today’s Unearthed Arcana, we explore D&D character options from across the multiverse. This playtest document presents the glitchling race; the Fate Domain cleric subclass; and the gate warden, giant foundling, planar philosopher, and rune carver backgrounds. Additionally, a collection of new feats provide links to giants and other primordial forces of the planes, while a selection of new spells highlight the power of fate and chance.

Wonders of the Multiverse | Unearthed Arcana | Dungeons & Dragons

Explore character options related to the Wonders of the Multiverse! This playtest document presents a new race and subclass and a collection of new backgrounds, feats and spells, all for use in Dungeons & Dragons.

dnd.wizards.com

 

[Frozen_Heart]

I see new elemental themed feats, I'm happy!

Definitely going to try out the scion of elemental earth, strike of giants (hill giant), and vigour of the hill giant with my earth genasi.

 

[Hexmage-EN]

But the Deck of Many Things stuff suggests something very different, perhaps a splat book? Outside chance of it relating to a setting, but what setting would focus on the Deck of Many Things so much?

The first thing that jumps to my mind is the 4E boxed adventure Madness at Gardmore Abbey, which revolved around collecting the cards of the Deck of Many Things and using individual cards to activate special abilities.

 

[Bitbrain]

Reply to OP.

Meh. None of this is interesting to me in the slightest.

 

[Shardstone]

This is so, so, so boring to me. I don't even know if it's anyone's fault; they are clearly out of "design space" in 5e. Some of the descriptions are flavorful, but when you get to the mechanics, it's translated into some combination of doing extra damage, imposing advantage/disadvantage within range, or getting a cantrip or low level spell that's on half the party's list anyway. For example, Planar Philosopher, in which having a specific philosophical grounding is translated into resistance to psychic, necrotic, or radiant damage plus a cantrip. Bleh.

I don't think they are out of design space, but they are playing this very conservative. The flavor is great to me, but the actual mechanics are usually dry. I like the Planes Walker one though.

 

[Njall]

I am beginning to really FREAKING hate the plethora of little PROF times per day features. They all need to be tracked separately instead of a common currency like Superiority Dice, and so many little bonuses that "use now or not" bogs things down and leads to choice paralysis.

This is a bad design direction in my opinion. Having, reasonably powerful feature PROF times per day works well. Having half a dozen minor ones is clutter.

I detest this new direction as well (but, I suspect, for entirely different reasons).
To my recollection, encounter/per short rest abilities were first introduced to reduce the 15 minutes workday, which was generally loathed in 3e.
Now, suddenly, we're back to per day abilities, except for everyone instead of just spellcasters. I... really don't like how game designers seem to go back on stuff they'd originally put in the game for a reason.

Sigh, I'm no fan of 5e, but I was holding hope that I might like 5.5, or whatever it's going to be called. Guess I'll be giving a pass to the next iteration of D&D as well.

 

[Parmandur]

So, having watched the video now, the design of the Giant and Outer Planes Background Feats has been tailored to set up the 4th Level Feats on a story level, to place the Feats in a character context for narrative purposes, so they cannot be stacked in top of each other.

 

[Kurotowa]

Exactly. A Racial trait is no different than a Class feature is no different than a Feat--

--they are all just a small, individual piece of game mechanic.

The only real differences between then are the various power levels they each have, so you have to be a bit more careful substituting one for another. But there is absolutely no reason you can't give something like the Halfling's 'Lucky' trait

Well, not entirely. Aside from power and theme there's a real issue with heading off redundancy or stacking.

Redundancy is bad because you're nixing potential combinations because there's wasted overlap. That's an issue we've already run into, where the MotM goblin can Disengage as a Bonus Action and people complain that makes them a poor choice as Rogues. Stacking is the opposite problem, where two abilities do enough of the same thing that they combine synergistically. The devs have tried very hard to contain the power escalation of those sort of multiplicative combinations.

So there's solid game mechanics reasons to keep the three differentiated to a degree.

 

[Weiley31]

Interesting update on the Modron as a PC race.
Planescape confirmed?

Sigil IS mentioned in one of the feats.

 

[UngeheuerLich]

So in the words of Krusk the barbarian:

HALF FEAT, GOOD!!
FULL FEAT, BAD!!

Or rather:
level 1 feats = bad,
level 4 feats = good and ability score upgrade.

Seems like a new direction. A compromise between gaining a feat at first level for free. And for higher levels it seems to be a feat and half an ability score upgrade as the default. I think I do like the general direction, although I would not mind first level feats to be a bit more powerful.

 

[Weiley31]

So basically, the Glitchlings are the 5E versions of playable Modrons. Okay, I like it.