Unearthed Arcana Unearthed Arcana: Spirits Bard and Undeath Warlock

We have a new UA release with two subclasses. The College of Spirits Bard is a fortune teller or spirit medium type character with a big random effect table. Meanwhile the Undeath Pact Warlock is a a do-over of the Undying Pact Warlock.

 

[Parmandur]

Listened to the first half or so now, Crawford said the main impetus for the Bard of Spirits was to provide a Gothic Horror option to the Bard Class, and distinguishes between the Undead and Undying Patrons story-wise by pointing out that the Undying Patron can be any immortal being and is not exclusively undead themed like this new option is:

 

[Charlaquin]

Okay, here's this breakdown to illustrate how OP the Undead Warlock is now:

Okay, be level 20. Either get the Illusionist's Bracers (from GGtR) or multiclass into sorcerer for Quickened Spell. Then, have your Form of Dread and Hex up already, and cast Eldritch Blast as a bonus action and action. This ends up being:

8d10+8d6+20 necrotic damage with Hex, Agonizing Blast and a 20 in Charisma. With a bonus action as well, that's 16d10+16d6+40 damage. On average, 184 damage. At most, with no critical hits, 296 necrotic damage. With critical hits on all, average damage is 328 necrotic damage. With critical hits on all, maximum damage is 552 necrotic damage.

Insanely broken. You can also combine this with other magic items for an even higher damage total (imbued focuses from E:RftLW, staff of the ivory claw from EGtW).

Eh, 20th level characters being OP is nothing to write home about. I think the more pertinent question is how does it stack up to other builds at each tier of play. I haven’t crunched the numbers, but to me it seems strong-but-fair, unless you try to abuse multiclassing with Sorcerer, and Sorclocks being broken is also not news.

 

[Levistus's_Leviathan]

Listened to the first half or so now, Crawford said the main impetus for the Bard of Spirits was to provide a Gothic Horror option to the Bard Class, and distinguishes between the Undead and Undying Patrons story-wise by pointing out that the Undying Patron can be any immortal being and is not exclusively undead themed like this new option is:

Yeah. I noticed that the Undying doesn't have to be Undead (EGtW recommended Desirat, a phoenix, as an Undying Warlock patron), I wish it just didn't suck so much.

The subclass (Undying) even recommends Fistandatilus as a patron.

 

[OblivionDrive]

Have you ever heard of the rapper Eminem? I was referencing a song he performed. If you've never heard the song, the joke won't be funny. And there'[s no amount of explanation that will make it funny.

I really don't feel the need to defend the idea that I failed to make a funny joke, unless someone is going to argue the point (the joke was, in fact, funny), but they would have just clicked the laugh emoji.

FWIW, I got the reference. I was just trying to make it to the end of the thread before throwing my two coppers in but I worried (mostly correctly it seems) that it would fail to land heh... Points for trying though!

 

[Levistus's_Leviathan]

Eh, 20th level characters being OP is nothing to write home about. I think the more pertinent question is how does it stack up to other builds at each tier of play. I haven’t crunched the numbers, but to me it seems strong-but-fair, unless you try to abuse multiclassing with Sorcerer, and Sorclocks being broken is also not news.

It's already better than almost all other EB-spammers at the thing they specialize at, without Multiclassing. It's not just at level 20 that it's broken, its broken as soon as you get this feature.

 

[Undrave]

That's fine. I think most people agree the ability is broken without me having to do the math for everything, right? An extra damage dice on every necrotic attack you do. That's an extra dice for each blast from Eldritch Blast, and extra one for Hex, and if you have anything else that adds damage dice to a hit, it's getting doubled or quadrupled on a Critical Hit.

It kinda is yeah... but I feel like it's only broken with Eldritch Blast? It'd be fine with a melee attack because of the extra risk and the fact you don't get as many weapon attack as a Pact Blade Warlock compard to Eldritch Blast rays... Might be a big bump at sixth level but on the whole it'll flatten out.

It's called Circle of the Forged, fyi, and you don't need to be Warforged to do it.

So you could also be say, a Tabaxi and transform into a robot tiger. Now call yourself Cheetor and you're good.


BEAST WARS / BEAST MACHINES HELL YEAH

But can you play the BEST Tranformer of all? Angry Cheese - Transformers Wiki

 

[Parmandur]

Yeah. I noticed that the Undying doesn't have to be Undead (EGtW recommended Desirat, a phoenix, as an Undying Warlock patron), I wish it just didn't suck so much.

The subclass (Undying) even recommends Fistandatilus as a patron.

I haven't been terribly inspired by the Undying, but I don't remember it being mechanically disadvantaged or broken either.

 

[OblivionDrive]

Okay, having caught up to the end of the thread now, my super condensed opinions on the UA classes are as follows.

Yeah, I was not a huge fan of Undying, but Undead is clearly and obviously a different niche thematically and otherwise. Room for both, even if most overlook the distinction.

Speaking of missing distinction, I can't fathom how people can look at Spirit Bard and see "shaman" in that. It is totally late 1800s parlor guest Victorian Spiritualism/Gothic Horror. Spirits and contact with them are not the exclusive domain of shamanism. If you wanna refluff it as a shaman, that's totally up to you, but that's its own separate thing and definitely not baked into the class. Honestly, if I wanted a shaman, this isn't the way I would do it in the first place. But it's your table, not mine.

Anyway, I think College of Spirits is a neat and unfilled conceptual space that has a lot of flavor, but I feel like it might be a little clunky at the table for the average game. In the hands of the right player, however, it could be amazing.

Undead Warlock I actually dig a lot and would work very well for the villain of a one-shot I'm trying to write up currently. I could definitely see playing one myself.

 

[Benjamin Olson]

Undead, Undying... neither of them have Animate Dead on their spell list so I still can't make a damned Warlock necromancer which is all I ever wanted to do with a Warlock.

 

[ad_hoc]

Romantic Era spiritualism, including occult secret societies and Romani reputations, sounds accurate enough.

Still.

In principle, stereotyping a Brit is just as problematic as stereotyping a Romani. I feel the class avoids being outright offensive. But it seems to be sticking its toes in to test the temperature of the water.

This is good example for: how does one be ethnically historically accurate while simultaneously avoiding reductionist stereotypes, or oppositely how does one borrow vivid flavor while simultaneously avoiding cultural appropriation?

One can see, why they want to playtest it.

That isn't how it works. The British are the oppressors, the colonizers.

For the record it is also not possible to be racist towards white people.