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.

 

[Not a Decepticon]

That is an issue, it feels like Primodial is supposed to be stealth replacement for Genie because Genie was too powerful or something.

 

[Davy Greenwind]

That is an issue, it feels like Primodial is supposed to be stealth replacement for Genie because Genie was too powerful or something.

They sort of hinted at this in the designer insight article. I think Genie is cooler and more flavorful, and I would rather it get updated than replaced with something more generic. Because of that, I think I will vote red for this subclass (which will only be the second time I have voted red for UA).

 

[Not a Decepticon]

They sort of hinted at this in the designer insight article. I think Genie is cooler and more flavorful, and I would rather it get updated than replaced with something more generic. Because of that, I think I will vote red for this subclass (which will only be the second time I have voted red for UA).

Same. And survey should be opening today, yes?

 

[Davy Greenwind]

Same. And survey should be opening today, yes?

Yeah, I just did the survey. Green for the Barb, yellow for the Monk, and Red for the Warlock

 

[Not a Decepticon]

Submitted, gave Warrior of Venom Green and primodial Warlock Red

 

[Leatherhead]

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.

What do you mean? Constitution is directly representative of your life force, unless you are undead, when it represents your "death force". It's the most logical stat for it really.

 

[rabirin]

As usual, another round of uninspiring concepts with wild imbalance and highly-exploitable features.

The Lament Barbarian is another in the line of "we can't think of martial concepts so let's copy an existing monster's abilities to give to a martial". The mechanic of "spend Rages to get more uses of a feature" returns here, highlighting why it's such a terrible concept: the Lament Barbarian is encouraged to spam their wail constantly, then demand long rests to get all their Rages back, all while Barbarians who lack this mechanic have no uses for their extra Rages and everyone who operates on short-rest resources suffers.

Venom Monk again begs the question of why WotC keeps pushing poison-themed options when they're completely unwilling to make actual poison viable. More to the point, it again highlights how 2024 Monk design has no middle-ground between "weak and underwhelming" and "cheap and broken as heck". Right from level 3, you get a feature that lets you cripple an enemy's action economy and movement with no action cost, no saving throw—all you have to do is land one hit. And elsewhere we get "frighten one enemy" at level 17. But it's telling that for all the "strict mechanics" design of 2024, they design a feature around the idea of drinking poison when there is no mechanical avenue for a character to consciously consume poison.

Primordial Warlock is terrible. The Elemental Node mechanic is boring and incredibly weak, with the sole exception of being able to add Charisma to your AC (which is primarily busted for Warlocks who multiclass for better armor access, i.e. any 2024 Bladelock). Elemental Transmutation would be insta-banned at any table I ran (if I ran 2024); it's another design choice of purposefully removing every balancing factor of magic that exists in the game.

Lament Barbarian and Primordial Warlock both highlight a recurring and disappointing design route in 2024, where subclass design keeps being a matter of "you get This One Thing, and 95% of your subclass revolves entirely around This One Thing". Instead of the Primordial Warlock getting any sort of interesting features that engage with any other abilities or give them new options, the Primordial Warlock just gets stuff they do with their Elemental Node. The Lament Barbarian just screams. It's just lazy and boring.