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.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

Seting books like Ebberon have a ton of new races (like the Dragonmrks), so if they're aren't any new of those, there's plenty of room for these.

Races take up a lot less space in a book than subclasses. And, in addition to the 20-odd subclasses, the new book is likely to contain: reprints of the Artificer (with archivist), sidekicks, ships and vehicles, new spells and alternative character options. And possibly some kind of mass combat rules. There are already overviews of all the planes in the DMG, so that won't be reprinted.

If the new book is planar it will be so in the same way that MTOF is planar. This will be a splat book, not a setting book.

 

[maceochaid]

I don't think any others mention a specific plane by name, but many seem to be thematically linked to some planes.

Barbarian: Path of the Wild Soul: Feywild
Monk: Way of the Astral Self: Astral Plane
Sorcerer: Aberrant Mind: Far Realm
Sorcerer: Clockwork Soul: Mechanus
Warlock: Lurker in the Deep: Plane of Water
Bard: College of Eloquence: Mount Celestia
Bard: College of Creation: ?
Paladin: Oath of Heroism: Beastlands
Cleric: Twilight Domain: Shadowfel
Cleric: Unity Domain: Any Lawful Plane
Druid: Circle of Wildfire: Plane of Fire
Wizard: Onomancy: ?

I saw something similar, planes seem very key to all these concepts. Weirdly though, this one made me think of factions. I’m not saying that’s where they are going just “huh, that feels familiar.” but Bard of Creation seems a lot like the Godsmen, whose Factol was a bard. The Domain of Unity also reminds me of factiony type musings on the nature of the universe. I also think Oath of Heroism is Arborea (Greek Heroes), Twilight Domain is the Beastlands (there was a whole layer of twilight),and you missed:

Fighter: Rune Knight: Ysgard
Ranger: Swarmkeeper: Fey/Beastlands
Rogue: The Revived: Shadowfell

 

[Gammadoodler]

It's a strange thing to find your personal limits to suspension of disbelief in D&D. Apparently, animated musical notes is where I go, "oh that's just silly".

 

[DEFCON 1]

It maybe that Xanathar's Guide 2 has I title relating to the planes and a bit of a linking theme, but that doesn't make is a setting book. There are far too many subclasses (and other rule-extensions) in the new book for this to be a setting book, which typically have around 3 subclasses.

Yep... there's no reason to expect everything under a theme to all appear in a single book. I mean they released Mordenkainen's Tome of Foes which had all kinds of stuff about the Blood War between the devils and demons in 2018 (including character options for tieflings especially), and then Descent into Avernus (where a lot of that stuff got incorporated and used) didn't come out until more than a year later.

So it's easily believable that they could release a character-option book around the planar theme in 2020 but not release an actual Planescape setting book (and/or adventure path) until the main autumn slot of 2021.

 

[DEFCON 1]

Stupid duplicate.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

Yep... there's no reason to expect everything under a theme to all appear in a single book. I mean they released Mordenkainen's Tome of Foes which had all kinds of stuff about the Blood War between the devils and demons in 2018 (including character options for tieflings especially), and then Descent into Avernus (where a lot of that stuff got incorporated and used) didn't come out until more than a year later.

So it's easily believable that they could release a character-option book around the planar theme in 2020 but not release an actual Planescape setting book (and/or adventure path) until the main autumn slot of 2021.

My feeling is it make more sense to detail Sigil in an adventure path rather than to do a "Planescape" campaign setting book. Planescape is already the default setting for everything.

 

[Eltab]

I imagine three seconds of this sound plays whenever a Clockwork Soul sorcerer is casting...

At lower levels:
(1) -cue music-
-tick ... tock ... tick-
TIME!!!Time!!time!
-end music-
(the lyrics of this song begin "Time has come today" but I forget the title)
(2) Pink Floyd's "One hundred clocks striking the hour" sound effect at the beginning of "Time" (Dark Side of the Moon)

 

[Azzy]

At lower levels:
(1) -cue music-
-tick ... tock ... tick-
TIME!!!Time!!time!
-end music-
(the lyrics of this song begin "Time has come today" but I forget the title)

YouTube links for audio reference...

Time Has Come Today by The Chamber Brothers

(I almost linked the Ramones version)

(2) Pink Floyd's "One hundred clocks striking the hour" sound effect at the beginning of "Time" (Dark Side of the Moon)

Time by Pink Floyd

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

So it's easily believable that they could release a character-option book around the planar theme in 2020 but not release an actual Planescape setting book (and/or adventure path) until the main autumn slot of 2021.

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.

We'll see, I suppose.

 

[Gradine]

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.

We'll see, I suppose.

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.