Unearthed Arcana Unearthed Arcana: Barbarian and Monk

Unearthed Arcana makes an unexpected return (the last one was back in May) with a three-page PDF containing two subclasses -- Path of the Wild Soul for the barbarian, and Way of the Astral Self for the monk.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

Someone brought up the idea that it's not for Eberron because they name check "the Feywild". While Thelanis is not the Feywild, it fills a lot of the same design space, and more importantly, they lie in Unearthed Arcana. The fluff we see here may very well not be what we see in a print product. If they came out and said "this is for eberron, you're infused with Thelanis magic", they'd have people whining all day if they end up not including it in the print book. THis way, if they decide to drop it, that's the end of it.

Well, some people might find it more interesting to work within roles and archetypes, because true creativity blossoms in that environment.

But hey, I will never stop you from playing tennis without a net.

"True creativity" lol come on man, even if you're being intentionally silly that's a leap.

"True creativity" blossoms anywhere humans are allowed to pursue the path toward creativity that works best fro them.

 

[Parmandur]

Someone brought up the idea that it's not for Eberron because they name check "the Feywild". While Thelanis is not the Feywild, it fills a lot of the same design space, and more importantly, they lie in Unearthed Arcana. The fluff we see here may very well not be what we see in a print product. If they came out and said "this is for eberron, you're infused with Thelanis magic", they'd have people whining all day if they end up not including it in the print book. THis way, if they decide to drop it, that's the end of it.



"True creativity" lol come on man, even if you're being intentionally silly that's a leap.

"True creativity" blossoms anywhere humans are allowed to pursue the path toward creativity that works best fro them.

I'd say they obfuscate, or withhold irrelevant details, rather than "lie." But the fluff is not final, for sure.

 

[lowkey13]

*Deleted by user*

 

[lowkey13]

*Deleted by user*

 

[Parmandur]

I don't lie, but I do have an orthogonal relationship with veracity.

How Jesuitical of you.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

And many RPGs go in that direction if that's what you want. Class/level is a tradition (read as: sacred cow) with D&D, and I'm glad that there are different expressions and rules so people can play the game that's right for their table by picking a game that supports it.

Classes are also just more enjoyable for a lot of people, because they don't have to read through a ton of options at every level to pick what they want to take, they can just read through a class and subclass once, and go, and know that at every level they'll get something that contributes to that concept.

"gonzo high magic setting" This is all sorts of wrong

Yeah, like...wildly wrong.

I've read Baker argue it is a broad magic rather than high magic setting, but that's splitting hairs. And it has covers with robots on flying machines. Gonzo.

There are no robots in Eberron. There are sentient golems, but no robots. And there's nothing gonzo about it. It can be fairly pulp, but it can also be, and quite often is, very gritty and noir.

And the difference between broad and high magic is very, very, significant. Eberron is a world where 5th level spells are rare, and where it's possible that no one has cast a 9th level spell in a thousand years. The fact you can pay a guy to send a magical telegram for you doesn't make it high magic.

The context is also important. Eberron is not a world where wild soul barbarians can fit in as a common thing. Ravnica is gonzo high magic. It's a world where you could have a whole organization of wild soul barbarians, and no one would question it.

 

[Parmandur]

There are no robots in Eberron. There are sentient golems, but no robots. And there's nothing gonzo about it. It can be fairly pulp, but it can also be, and quite often is, very gritty and noir.

And the difference between broad and high magic is very, very, significant. Eberron is a world where 5th level spells are rare, and where it's possible that no one has cast a 9th level spell in a thousand years. The fact you can pay a guy to send a magical telegram for you doesn't make it high magic.

The context is also important. Eberron is not a world where wild soul barbarians can fit in as a common thing. Ravnica is gonzo high magic. It's a world where you could have a whole organization of wild soul barbarians, and no one would question it.

"sentient golems" = "Gonzo high magic robots" sorry, not that there is anything wrong with that, but that's what those are.

A Gnoll or Orcish Wild Soul Barbarian would seem very appropriate for sections of Eberron.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

Did you see what I was responding to?

I thought it was nicer than saying, "LOL ... your imagination requires WoTC to spoonfeed you wild and crazy classes for my LULZ, right?"

But that would have been mean.

It also woulda been a wildly nonsensical misrepresentation of what they were saying, but sure, yeah, it'd've been mean, too.

Seriously, though, enjoying new twists in classes is tangential to how creative one is. Most of us aren't going to spend the time to make our own new subclasses, and enjoying other people's creativity, and then using it to further fuel our own, is also very fun. <big shrug>

I don't know about you, but I can certainly do both.

 

[Parmandur]

(I'll lay odds that a playable Gnoll might show up in the Eberron book, incidentally: it was one of the more common asks previously in their survey data, and this is probably the natural place for that given non-Eberron Gnolls narrative positioning now).

 

[Mistwell]

I'm not a hater on this, I like the flavor of the Wild Soul subclass. My only issue with the 6th level mechanic is that its limit is based on the Barbarian's hit points rather than something more limited, like # of rages per day.

So a Wild Soul barbarian can top off one or more caster pals, take a short rest/spend HD to heal up + the Bard's Song of Rest d8...

It's not the end of the world, but it would/does limit the DM's ability to design encounters and days around rests with a Barbarian like this in the mix. It just skews the encounters per rest dynamics.

A DM with this Barbarian in the party would need to keep any and all Rings of Regeneration away from the PC's at the top tier or they'll have near unlimited 1-6th level slots!

Yes from a mechanically balanced standpoint that makes sense to me. From a thematic standpoint, I'd probably give them a level of exhaustion after the first use each day. So one without exhaustion but beyond that a level of exhaustion for each use until you take a long rest.