Unearthed Arcana The Unearthed Arcana Is Back With Cleric's Unity Domain!

This week's Unearthed Arcana has reappeared, with a renamed cleric domain and a replaced cleric ability! "Unearthed Arcana presents three new subclasses for you to playtest: the College of Creation for the bard, the Unity Domain for the cleric, and the Clockwork Soul for the sorcerer."

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The Love Domain is now the Unity Domain:

"A sense of oneness shines at the heart of healthy communities, whether bound together by friendship, blood, faith, or some other uniting force. The gods of unity deepen such bonds and delight in their strength.

Clerics of these gods preside over marriages and other familial bonding customs, but they also nurture the emotional bonds of friendship and camaraderie. Their divine blessings bolster and protect allies in battle through these deep bonds and turn aside malign influences."

The Impulsive Infatuation power has been replaced with Shared Burden which allows you to distribute an ally's damage taken amongst other willing creatures.

 

[Hussar]

If I had to guess, it is to represent this item is more of a golem than an animated item? Because that is a classic Golem ability.

It might also prevent flammable items from being just burnt and destroyed by firebolts, since they would be vulnerable due to "an item not being worn or carried" might apply.




I see what people are saying about the Bard of Creation being a bit all over the place. Their level 3 ability really has nothing to do with the rest of their abilities at all. I would also say the 14th level ability is just... crap. 14*20 is 280 gold. By 14th level, if there is something I wanted or needed that cost 280 gold, I would have just bought it already, and we are far past the point where things like "did you bring a ladder/battering ram/ect" are legitimate obstacles to the party.

/snip

As someone who played a Forge cleric for quite a while, I can point to some interesting uses - pets/allies. You animated undead? Cool, now they have armor. That was one place where I found the power very useful. Situational, but, it can come in pretty handy.

 

[Hussar]

A thought occurs - The Unity Cleric combined with anyone who grants Temp HP is very, very powerful. Even with the Inspiring Leader feat, your group would be ignoring the first 40 (ish) points of damage every short rest. But, bigger than that, an Artificer that makes that Temp HP turret for about 10 HP/PC/round. Yikes. You'd basically make your group invulnerable.

 

[Eltab]

You'd basically make your group invulnerable.

Silt Runners (4e Dark Sun Creature Catalog) do 2 damage to an adjacent enemy on the start of its turn; no save, no attack roll, no nothing just the damage. Get me a 5e conversion thereof, equip a war party of such with Reach weapons, and focus this group's attention tightly on mobbing one PC at a time.

And hope the Sorcerer does not know Fireball or Careful Casting.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

On the most recent Dragontalk podcast, it was mentioned that there would be a physical product coming in the next year that would be like the Yawning Portal but "portals on portals." So, maybe a Saltmarsh/Yawning Portal book updating previous planar adventures.

The only problem is that, outside of Queen of the Demonweb Pits, which seems unlikely, the only popular planar adventures are Planescape ones, which are huge in comparison and very tied to the Planescape metaplot.

You could do the Rod of Seven Parts, which is what a lot of people were speculating would be part of the Yawning Portal metaplot until it became clear there wouldn't be one.

Radical thought: completely new stories.


Take GoS as the model:

Chapter 1: description of Saltmarsh and the surrounding area, including prominent NPCs, factions, etc.
Chapters 2-8: individual adventures, using the Chapter 1 setting as a hub.
Appendices (about 20% of the book): setting specific rules.

Your Planescape book would look like this:

Chapter 1: description of Sigil, including prominent NPCs, factions, etc.
Chapters 2-8: individual adventures, each showcasing a different plane, using Sigil as a hub.
Appendices (about 20% of the book): setting specific rules.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

Radical thought: completely new stories.

Take GoS as the model:

Chapter 1: description of Saltmarsh and the surrounding area, including prominent NPCs, factions, etc.
Chapters 2-8: individual adventures, using the Chapter 1 setting as a hub.
Appendices (about 20% of the book): setting specific rules.

Your Planescape book would look like this:

Chapter 1: description of Sigil, including prominent NPCs, factions, etc.
Chapters 2-8: individual adventures, each showcasing a different plane, using Sigil as a hub.
Appendices (about 20% of the book): setting specific rules.

All-new adventures would be great, but WotC has clearly decided that new-to-you is just as good, where older TSR materials and stuff from Dungeon can be updated for far cheaper and potentially bring some folks in for nostalgia reasons. (Hey, it works on me.)

I would guess a planar primer, with a deeper dive on Sigil and maybe the Feywild and Shadowfell, as the two most gamable locations, and then republished adventures and "new" monsters.

 

[Eltab]

It just occurred to me that the supplement book covering the Elemental Planes of Air and Water will need 3-D combat rules (including movement) in order for PCs to be able to get around properly.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

It just occurred to me that the supplement book covering the Elemental Planes of Air and Water will need 3-D combat rules (including movement) in order for PCs to be able to get around properly.

5e already has plenty of 3d movement, with easily available flying and underwater stuff. It's a bit fiddly to manage but I don't think it actually needs additional rules.