D&D General Unearthed Arcana presents another three villainous subclasses

The last Unearthed Arcana gave us some villainous options, including subclasses and feat chains which enabled your character to turn into a death knight or a lich. This week, a new Unearthed Arcana over on D&D Beyond presents us with three new villainous subclasses, following on from the subclasses and feat-chains in the previous playtest document. These subclasses are designed to let players "embrace their inner antiheroes or engage with sinister powers". In this one, we get the Path of Lament (barbarian), Warrior of Venom (monk), and Primordial Patron (warlock).

The barbarian's Path of Lament harnesses sorrow and anguish, leaning into a Banshee's Wail feature which allows the barbarian to cause psychic damage with their voice. The monk's Warrior of Venom enables the character to exude bodily toxins, including hallucinogens and truth serums. This monk also makes use of the Bloodied condition allowing the character's blood to splash onto their attacker when they receive a melee strike, Xenomorph-style. Finally, the warlock's primordial patron is an alliance with a destructive force of nature, such as the Elemental Evils.

You can check out the new Unearthed Arcana playtest here.

 

[Misanthrope Prime]

I've played around with the primordial warlock a bit. I'm not sure if it's intended to be a melee oriented subclass or I'm simply playing it on a melee warlock and wishing it had a bit more synergy for melee. It's fun and evocative, but could be better.

Number one, a magic action to create the elemental node and then a bonus action to move it is a bit of a pain point. I'm assuming this is patterned on flaming sphere, but that's a high level spell that can be upcast. This does a relatively piddly scaling d6 damage, and prima facie you may not think it has a high resource cost, but the action and bonus action are a bit much.

This is especially painful for a melee warlock who is presumably moving around the battlefield. Kill an enemy, walk 20 feet to the next enemy, and you need the bonus action to move your node onto you.

What I'd say is either just have the node be a pure bonus action to cast and move, and basically have it be an AOE replacement for the warlock's hex, or give the warlock the ability to "center" or "lock" the node onto themselves so that they can move and have it stay with them; this is especially important once the node starts granting armor class.

 

[Maxperson]

I would rather see update to Kensei than get a monk that is forced to use weapons without access to Fighting Styles and Weapon Mastery. I'll be honest, a Monk that has to use weapons and doesn't have option to gain one these features just feels like a roundabound way to make fun of a Monk - trained all life in martial arts, has less sense of tactics and skill in combat with weapons than Rogue or Barbarian.

The kensai isn't enough. It offers up one way to do a weapon monk, but it's far from the only way. More weapon focused monk subclasses is a good thing.

 

[Maxperson]

I've played around with the primordial warlock a bit. I'm not sure if it's intended to be a melee oriented subclass or I'm simply playing it on a melee warlock and wishing it had a bit more synergy for melee. It's fun and evocative, but could be better.

Number one, a magic action to create the elemental node and then a bonus action to move it is a bit of a pain point. I'm assuming this is patterned on flaming sphere, but that's a high level spell that can be upcast. This does a relatively piddly scaling d6 damage, and prima facie you may not think it has a high resource cost, but the action and bonus action are a bit much.

This is especially painful for a melee warlock who is presumably moving around the battlefield. Kill an enemy, walk 20 feet to the next enemy, and you need the bonus action to move your node onto you.

What I'd say is either just have the node be a pure bonus action to cast and move, and basically have it be an AOE replacement for the warlock's hex, or give the warlock the ability to "center" or "lock" the node onto themselves so that they can move and have it stay with them; this is especially important once the node starts granting armor class.

A few things.

First, a 2nd level spell is a high level spell? Flaming Sphere is 2nd level.

Second, it's not 1d6 scaling to 2d6 vs. 2d6 and an additional 1d6 per spell level upcast. It's 1d6 scaling to 3d6 + additional AC equal to your charisma modifier, plus the ability to teleport into the node or next to it charisma modifier times per day + being a 10 foot sphere + the ability to pull a creature towards the node + a duration of an hour without concentration + the ability to cast planar ally once per 2d4 long rests for free vs. 2d6 + 1d6 per spell slot higher than 2nd as a 5' sphere that needs concentration and only lasts 1 minute.

The warlock sphere is clearly much better. If you can upcast Flaming Sphere to high levels, you have all of those other abilities on the warlock sphere as well.

 

[Jefe Bergenstein]

I have no problem with that stereotype, I just would prefer if the subclasses doesn't encourage it and to me it makes no sense to base it on Constitution. I think it should be Wisdom or Charisma.

I say this somewhat tongue in cheek, but aren't like half of your builds 13 dex rangers who primarily attack with their casting stat through cantrips?

Barbarians already need Str, Dex and Con. They don't have room for a fourth ability to make them even more MAD.

I'm just stunned that WOTC made a damage ability not absolute crap. Meanwhile the clown who made the primordial thinks we need to throw a saving throw on a d6 damage elemental node or that dealing d4 damage when hit the round after casting an elemental spell is worth remembering or wasting an invocation slot on.

WOTC needs to stop scaling damage like its white box D&D with a level cap of 3 and ogres have 14 HP.

 

[Misanthrope Prime]

A few things.

First, a 2nd level spell is a high level spell? Flaming Sphere is 2nd level.

Second, it's not 1d6 scaling to 2d6 vs. 2d6 and an additional 1d6 per spell level upcast. It's 1d6 scaling to 3d6 + additional AC equal to your charisma modifier, plus the ability to teleport into the node or next to it charisma modifier times per day + being a 10 foot sphere + the ability to pull a creature towards the node + a duration of an hour without concentration + the ability to cast planar ally once per 2d4 long rests for free vs. 2d6 + 1d6 per spell slot higher than 2nd as a 5' sphere that needs concentration and only lasts 1 minute.

The warlock sphere is clearly much better. If you can upcast Flaming Sphere to high levels, you have all of those other abilities on the warlock sphere as well.

You have to remember that warlocks don't get to choose what spells to upcast. While they do get one free casting of the node, it's otherwise competing with their few pact magic spells, which are always upcast.

 

[Maxperson]

You have to remember that warlocks don't get to choose what spells to upcast. While they do get one free casting of the node, it's otherwise competing with their few pact magic spells, which are always upcast.

Sure. I was just going with the Flaming Sphere comparison. An upcast Flaming Sphere isn't going to offer as much as a comparable node, except at a few odd levels like 5th where you see the sphere upcast, but the node hasn't reached its 6th level increase.

Whether the node is comparable to some of the better spells is perhaps a different story. However, as you say, you still get one free node per short rest and it will last long enough for a fight, so you aren't likely to need more than one free node per short rest.

 

[Misanthrope Prime]

Sure. I was just going with the Flaming Sphere comparison. An upcast Flaming Sphere isn't going to offer as much as a comparable node, except at a few odd levels like 5th where you see the sphere upcast, but the node hasn't reached its 6th level increase.

Whether the node is comparable to some of the better spells is perhaps a different story. However, as you say, you still get one free node per short rest and it will last long enough for a fight, so you aren't likely to need more than one free node per short rest.

I wasn't comparing the node only on damage; I was comparing it based on action economy as well. It's not just a pact magic slot, it's your action during the first round of combat (which, remember, only lasts 3 rounds on average) and your bonus action pretty much every round subsequently, which ices out hex and many other useful bonus actions you could be doing.

Allowing the node to move with you solves most of these problems. Magic action to sheath yourself in a 5/10' radius of energy, bonus action to "cast" or "project" it to distant enemies, and then you can choose to teleport into it after you've "cast" it.

 

[Not a Decepticon]

The kensai isn't enough. It offers up one way to do a weapon monk, but it's far from the only way. More weapon focused monk subclasses is a good thing.

As I've said, only after we get one with Fighting Style and Weapon Mastery, otherwise what's the point?

 

[TheWriterFantastic™]

Seeing an alternative use of the primordial warlock for Dark Sun, as their Elemental Priests, given that their powers are granted through pacts with elementals instead of worshipping divine beings - the way the primordial patron benefits are laid out, in terms of spells and other features would really support that type of character, especially since Athas's elemental clerics in 2E had major access to their Elemental Sphere of spells, and only minor access to the Cosmos Sphere that included healing magic, and seem to be categorized as clerics/priests similar to Templars due to priests being the closest analogy to what each concept represented according to AD&D 2nd Edition rules. I could see the rumored Dark Sun campaign book leaning heavily into Warlocks for both Templars and Elemental Priests, given the harshness of the setting, with any healing ability easily explained via background/origin feat combinations granting cure wounds or healing word via Magic Initiate (cleric or druid spells).

 

[maceochaid]

I wonder if they are going to be releasing the genie patron in the future? It seems like the primordial patron and the genie patron would be competing for the same design space. With the pacts being individual invocations, they do have more space to bring back a reworked talisman pact, which would allow for a genie style warlock to combine a primordial patron, and a reworked talisman pact. I know that they aren’t going to revive Al-Qadim anytime soon, but primordial patron definitely makes a great Sha’ir