D&D 5E Unearthed Arcana: Gothic Lineages & New Race/Culture Distinction

The latest Unearthed Arcana contains the Dhampir, Reborn, and Hexblood races. The Dhampir is a half-vampire; the Hexblood is a character which has made a pact with a hag; and the Reborn is somebody brought back to life.

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Perhaps the bigger news is this declaration on how race is to be handled in future D&D books as it joins other games by stating that:

"...the race options in this article and in future D&D books lack the Ability Score Increase trait, the Language trait, the Alignment trait, and any other trait that is purely cultural. Racial traits henceforth reflect only the physical or magical realities of being a player character who’s a member of a particular lineage. Such traits include things like darkvision, a breath weapon (as in the dragonborn), or innate magical ability (as in the forest gnome). Such traits don’t include cultural characteristics, like language or training with a weapon or a tool, and the traits also don’t include an alignment suggestion, since alignment is a choice for each individual, not a characteristic shared by a lineage."

 

[Kobold Avenger]

Spoiler: This powergamer (me) found a broken combo with this UA.

I've just read the current UA's writing on the Bite.

Divine Smite adds to the damage that the bite does. This means, whenever you Divine Smite with your Bite, you can either regain HP equal to 1d4 + your Constitution modifier + Divine Smite dice, or add this total to the next ability check or attack roll you make.

Assuming you're a level 10 paladin or lower with a 14 CON, you're going to be able to either regain an average of 13.5 hit points or add an average of 13.5 to the next attack roll or ability check, just using a 1st-level divine smite.

To absolutely abuse this to the max, you're going to want to be at least a Level 13 Paladin (any subclass works) and at least level 1 Hexblade as a level 17+ character. Using Spirit Shroud, Hexblade's Curse, Improved Divine Smite, and a 5d8 Divine Smite, you're going to deal 1d4 + CON mod. + 6 piercing damage + 6d8 radiant damage + 1d8 necrotic/radiant/cold damage.

(Assuming a CON of 20) That's an average of 51 damage, which you get to either regain in HP or add to your next Ability Check or Attack Roll. +51 to hit the Tarrasque? Yes, please!

At most with a normal hit, that's going to be 71 damage. If it's a critical hit, that's an average of 79 damage. If it's a critical hit with maximum damage, that's going to be 131 damage.

There are other ways to increase this damage, too. An ally Grave Cleric could use their Channel Divinity to double this damage to 262. You could replace Spirit Shroud with a smite spell to crank up the one attack's damage even more.

RAW, this is crazy broken. They need to fix this. I'm going to give this feedback once the survey is out.

Before people pounce on me, I do this with every UA in order to alert WotC of the combo. If they feel that it needs to change (this definitely does), they will change it. I did the same for the Class Feature Variants' Favored Foe being combo'd with Hex. They decided they didn't want that to be allowed, so they changed it.

For the healing part use the half total hit points as the max allowed to heal up to. For the bonus to the next attack either apply a limit to the bonus, or just make it plain old advantage...

 

[Levistus's_Leviathan]

The fangs count as a simple melee melee weapon, you can't make unarmed strikes with them.

Probably to try and stop monks increasing the damage die, and hence the bonus. You can get round it by designating your fangs as your Dedicated Weapon though.

Slight correction:

Martial Arts​

At 1st level, your practice of martial arts gives you mastery of combat styles that use unarmed strikes and monk weapons, which are shortswords and any simple melee weapons that don’t have the two-handed or heavy property.

• You can roll a d4 in place of the normal damage of your unarmed strike or monk weapon. This die changes as you gain monk levels, as shown in the Martial Arts column of the Monk table.

This makes Dhampir's Vampiric Bite already be a monk weapon. They don't need to use Dedicated Weapon.

 

[Levistus's_Leviathan]

For the healing part use the half total hit points as the max allowed to heal up to. For the bonus to the next attack either apply a limit to the bonus, or just make it plain old advantage...

They could easily fix it by saying "equal to the piercing damage dealt by this bite". That would stop any dogpiling of Divine Smite, Hex, or Spirit Shroud. It would still allow for you to get more HP/bonus to hit if you used Hunter's Mark or Hexblade's Curse, but that's not going to break the bite, IMO.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

I guess they will have to give it the 2H property to stop monks gaining better regen from it then.

 

[Levistus's_Leviathan]

I guess they will have to give it the 2H property to stop monks gaining better regen from it then.

Why would they do that? They already gave monks two ways to regen in Tasha's (Mercy Monk, Quickened Healing), both of which are much more easy to grant HP than this feature. It's not going to be broken to let the bite scale with the Martial Arts die.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

Why would they do that? They already gave monks two ways to regen in Tasha's (Mercy Monk, Quickened Healing), both of which are much more easy to grant HP than this feature. It's not going to be broken to let the bite scale with the Martial Arts die.

Maybe they are more worried about this bit:

gain a bonus to the next ability check or attack roll you make; the bonus equals the damage dealt by the bite

+1d10 (+best out of con or dex bonus) on an ability check or attack roll is not insignificant.

 

[CasvalRemDeikun]

Much like the option for the PHB Human, I wish they would make an optional set of rules that DOES give each race/lineage the ability score adjustments, languages, etc. Put it in a separate area of the rulebook if they don't want to unsully their current direction, but still put it in there for those of us that like those types of options.

 

[Levistus's_Leviathan]

Maybe they are more worried about this bit:

+1d10 (+best out of con or dex bonus) on an ability check or attack roll is not insignificant.

Yeah, but it's only PB uses each long rest. It's not insignificant, but it's not going to break a level 17+ campaign.

 

[Faolyn]

+2,+1 is the common stat boosting spread. Of note:

“These increases can’t raise a score above 20.”

That's a really strange call out. Not even a way of future proofing yourself, there is currently no way to raise a stat beyond 20 at level 1, even if you roll for stats and give a bonus feat, the existing rules for stats preemptively nip that problem in the bud.

Since it says that you can become one of these things later on (and some people start games at higher levels), it's not a particularly strange callout.

Creature Type

Now for something that does stack. Another feature that needs to be retroactively appended to past material.

Honestly, there've been very few creatures that need to have double monster types. For PC races, only centaurs, minotaurs, and satyrs really need it, and maybe eladrin if you want to make them extra fey.

Vampiric Bite. Ok now it's time to pull the rug out from all of this work.
Here is an attack, which uses constitution, on a linage that ostensibly lets you pick your own ability score boosts. Do you see the problem with this? It's time to implement some new tech. Something like “Pick one of the ability scores you increased with your Ability Score Increase Racial Trait, use that modifier for this.”

Well, every class needs Con, at at most you'd be increasing your bonus by 1. It's not a huge deal. Plus, not everyone who wants to play, as you put it, the result of vampire/human fanfic, wants to be a biting attack monster. Some people just want to brood in peace.

Reborn.
What can change the nature of a man? Planescape being confirmed.

I wish. Man I want Planescape. Although this would be a good race for a petitioner.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

And I hope to never get another again. One crossover is more than enough. I'd like D&D to be D&D and its legacies.

That genie is all the way out of the bottle. Theros sold way too well to expect otherwise.