D&D 5E What do you think of Fizban's races, subclasses feats and spells?

[ECMO3]

6th level Lore Bard with Ashardalon's Stride and Find Steed. Certainly not gamebreaking compared to other spells you can pick up with magical secrets, but could be a fun build.

RAW You would damage your steed every time you moved.

 

[ECMO3]

The new Dragonborn are an improvement that make the Dragonborn more attractive.

Binding Ice and Psychic Lance are both very interesting spells with key use cases- but neither is really on the level of a fireball, hypontoic pattern, banishment or polymorph.

I am not a fan of HP. It sounds cool but in play it has turned out to be a pretty weak spell overall and almost always disappoints. Unless everyone fails their save it usually results in a few lost actions and that is it. Good but not as good as other spells. In general, Fear is a MUCH better 3rd level control spell I think.

The good thing about psychic lance is being incapacitated and being able to hit invisible creatures. There are almost no spells that let you target individual creatures that work when they are invisible.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

I'm curious to hear more on why you see these races as equivalent to other PHB races. To me the dragon breath changes feel substantially more powerful. One of my players wants to adopt these changes and I'm leaning toward saying no, so I'm looking for another perspective.

The fact that the breath does 3 things bothers me:
1. It scales damage with level. Most racial combat abilities do this, no issue here.
2. It scales uses with level by tying it to proficiency. I don't think any other racial does this (though I love the idea, it just needs to be applied to all racials).
3. It allows you to do elemental damage in place of a single attack (not using a whole action like other racial abilities).

If you remove even 1 of those I think it's probably fine, but I'm not sure how any other racial ability can compare to the power of that breath weapon.

p.s. If this is a new direction for racials, I love it. If all the racials were this dynamic and powerful I'd be fine with it. But I don't want my other players feeling left behind when my pally Red-Dragonborn is melting everything in sight, every combat...

I mean...the current PHB Dragonborn kinda suck compared to most other races.

They made improvements to these things specifically because of that. Yes, these things are better. They're better because the current dragonborn has two things: a badly-scaled breath weapon, and a resistance. That's it. Compare that to (say) half-elf with its two skill proficiencies, extra +1 stat, darkvision, bonus language, and charm resistance. Or the high elf, which gets Perception prof, darkvision, charm resistance, a bonus Wizard cantrip, needing less sleep, four weapon proficiencies, and an extra language. Or Mountain Dwarf, the only race that gets +2/+2, and has darkvision, poison resistance, four weapon proficiencies, free armor training, full speed in heavy armor, and a niche form of auto-expertise (Stonecunning).

Dragonborn legit suck, just a little bit, in the PHB. Yet they've also been consistently in the top like 6 races in D&D Beyond, and IIRC finally climbed to top 4 (after human, v human, and half-elf) in the most recent statistics report.

 

[Tonguez]

The Dragonborn of Fizban's are waaaay better than the PHB version.

Yeah, waay too powerful, so much so that they shifted my tolerance of Dragonborn to outright hate - theyre even more edge mary sue than Teifling which earns them an auto-ban!!!

 

[Ogre Mage]

I quite like the summon draconic spirit spell.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

Yeah, waay too powerful, so much so that they shifted my tolerance of Dragonborn to outright hate - their even more edge mary sue than Teifling which earns them an auto-ban!!!

Man, now I kinda want to make a 5e version of the upcoming Reaper job for FFXIV, so that you can have an ultimate Edgelord McTryhard DragonBorne.

 

[Nadan]

Binding Ice and Psychic Lance are both very interesting spells with key use cases- but neither is really on the level of a fireball, hypontoic pattern, banishment or polymorph.

Those two spells are control spells that don't require concentration, so you can pop a concentration spell first then use them to control those who didn't fail to the first spell.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

but I don't think most would say magic initiate or fighting initiate are overpowered top tier feats.

And you overestimate how much they each contribute, I just thought it would be annoyingly pedantic to take you through each one in turn and mansplain why.

Of course, if you have long encounter days always on powers are better, but I don't know anyone who plays that way.

but I don't think I have ever cast it 3 times in a day

Another way of looking at it, is Absorb Elements is too situational to be worth preparing, and PB uses per day of a situational ability is pretty close to "always on".

I think playing RAW you will generally get more damage per casting of HM or Hex.

My experience tells me either tables forget to roll consecration checks for minor damage, or they last about two rounds on average. And that's assuming you don't have some other spell you need to concentrate on. No concentration required is a huge boost, as is simply being not-a-spell. Which is not to say it is better than Hunters Mark - if you have spell slots (but are not a full caster) adding it to what you can cast is probably better, but if you don't have spell slots and do have the extra attack feature GCD is better. For example I could see a barbarian (not bear totem) picking it up to fill out resistances, and, as it's not a spell, you can activate the elemental damage whist raging. You could even use the ability on someone else's weapon - you can't do that with Hunters Mark!

I think it is rare that someone has cure wounds specifically prepared.

Generally, if they don't prepare it, it's because the don't want to be pushed into the designated healer role. Clerics and druids have plenty of spells they can prepare. But if you have it it sucks up your spell slots like nobody's business. "I lost 10 hp in that fight, can you top me up please?" Show me a wizard with Cure Wounds and I will show you a wizard who never gets to cast Fireball.

better healing spells are available

Then there is this. A sorcerer can metamagic Cure Wounds into Healing Word, but if it's on your class list then Healing Word is a flat better spell.

Then there is casting Cure Wounds with slots is completely useless for any character without spell slots.

GMD is a pretty good choice for a sorcerer (especially if it matches the theme), and worth considering for an EK/AT, but it's a pretty poor choice for anyone else.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

I quite like the summon draconic spirit spell.

The main attraction is sorcerers don't get any other summoning spells (some subclasses excepted).

 

[UngeheuerLich]

Hunters mark and hex are nice, but since they use concentration they are often not remotely the best choice.