D&D 5E Unearthed Arcana: Travelers of the Multiverse

New free content from WotC - the latest 4-page Unearthed Arcana introduces six new races: astral elf, autognome, giff, hadozee, plasmoid, and thri-kreen.

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dnd.wizards.com

Looks like Spelljammer and/or Planescape is back on the menu!

 

[Micah Sweet]

I don’t think there’s really a controversy. They landed on a version of psionics that was popular. Maybe not popular here, but it passed the satisfaction threshold and made it to print. I think anyone who is expecting “one more psionics UA to sort it out” before Dark Sun is fooling themselves. It’s been sorted out, even if you (using the term generally) don’t like what they settled on.

This is why I dont depend solely on WotC for my 5e content. Plenty of 3rd party publishers out there making basically anything you want. Demanding official content just leads to disappointment when they inevitably make design decisions you dont like.

 

[Bolares]

I actually disagree, this implies to me they're not going to combine the settings. I think we're gonna see a single book with short descriptions of those two, plus a section on planeswalking, and maybe some other stuff.

I think a UA is a really bad "evidence" either way. WotC usually combines stuff that goes in multiple books in one UA...

 

[Ruin Explorer]

I actually disagree, this implies to me they're not going to combine the settings. I think we're gonna see a single book with short descriptions of those two, plus a section on planeswalking, and maybe some other stuff.

That's also entirely possible - but I suspect it'll be more mix-and-match than that if so, rather than cleanly separating stuff out.

They landed on a version of psionics that was popular.

I don't think there's any evidence to support the idea that it is particularly popular, or even that it passed any "satisfaction threshold", because they haven't actually introduced a "version of psionics", just spotty little bits of Psionics here and there. You're wrong to suggest there's no controversy, and that's easily shown in any discussion of psionics on any D&D forum or Discord or the like. I know you'd like to say "Oh it's just us grogs being difficult", but that's demonstrably false.

As for whether we'll see another version, I agree that it's unlikely unless DS is delayed to after D&D2024. I do think it's possible we'll see a Psionicist/Psion class with DS though. I'm sure it'll piss off 66% of "people with opinions" (of whatever kind) however they design it of course. I think the basic approach to psionics in 5E, assuming we get DS, is going to be "a bunch of different mechanics called psionics", which is at least better than the "some Arcane spells which we're saying are Psionics" which seemed to be the plan a while back.

 

[Argyle King]

Which racial features would a Plasmoid Druid retain while in Wildshape?

 

[Maxperson]

Lol. I spent a little while earlier in the thread trying to remember what people might not have liked about the 4E monk. (And wondering why it was an issue in a thread about a 5E UA). Then I realized that they were talking about the 5E 4E monk and not the 4E monk at all. Makes more sense to me now, if that makes any sense.

Yeah. I was scanning through and saw @Chaosmancer talking about 4E monks and was like, "Why is he talking about 4E monks? Well, I don't know anything about them, so I'll just keep going." Then a few posts later he or someone else said 4 elements monk and it clicked. Then I saw a lot more 4E and made the post.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

Then you have players who are happy to use suboptimal choices. Which is nice, but doesn't fix the problem.

There will always be a best thing, and optimizers will always find at and then spam it. Treating that as a problem isn’t worth making the game less fun for non-optimizers.

 

[Demetrios1453]

. Thri-Kreen is pretty random but maybe they've just to got them in here to get started on them for DS book. Though they would work pretty well for an updated Spelljammer or Planesjammer setting.

They worked pretty well in the original Spelljammer setting, where they were important players.

 

[Parmandur]

Can you name another subclass where the intent is to lose access to base class features to cast spells?

No, and as I said this is a design flaw from a user needs point of view. But it works

 

[Parmandur]

But how is that functionally different from a Paladin with platemail and a two magical shortswords?

I love monks having these abilities, but let's not put stock into them that doesn't exist. Martial Arts is mostly a very long-winded way of giving them the dual-wielding fighting style and letting them finesse staves. Unarmored Defense is roughly equivalent to wearing armor. Having magical hands is only because they are the least likely to get magical weapons, which most martial characters will have by 6th level in most games.

This is something kind of frustrating about Monks, is that the class fantasy includes no armor and no weapons, and so a decent chunk of their power budget was spent making them equivalent to people wearing armor and using weapons... but that confers no real advantages in the majority of situations. Most PCs aren't hindered by the fact that they wear armor or use weapons, it is the default assumption.

5he Monk can never lose their magical weapons and don't need to put their armor on, a notable advantage in my experience of playing a Paladin dealing with a camp ambush being debilitating.

 

[Parmandur]

Oh yeah, it was hecka obvious the Xixchill were Kreen, but they kind had them as their own 'ooo maybe they're something else!' thing for a bit

Which was probably going to be "Yeah they're just Kreen" in later Dark Sun stuff, but, well.

I feel this is very likely a "two for one" test.