D&D 5E What Unearthed Arcana Subclasses Would You Allow in a Campaign?

[Hexmage-EN]

I'm planning to run a new campaign eventually and thought it might be fun to let people use certain Unearthed Arcana options (this could also hypothetically include other sources, like the Domains from Plane Shift: Amonkhet).

Which ones are generally considered the best and most balanced? I've personally only ever played a Way of Tranquility Monk.

 

[Weiley31]

looks at the title

EVERY FLIPPING ONE!

 

[Ruin Explorer]

Pretty much all of them.

I can take them out if they're OP in practice, but that's what testing is for. I don't think any still-valid ones are actually problematic.

 

[Charlaquin]

I allow any options in the player’s handbook by default, and will specifically mention any exceptions or additions to that for a specific campaign. If a player wants something outside of that, I ask them to talk to me about it specifically. I’m usually fine with allowing UA options, but not before discussing it and how it will fit into the campaign.

 

[Marandahir]

Current in-testing Unearthed Arcana options are allowed by my books.

I also tentatively allow certain options from DMs Guild, En5ider, and D&D Beyond, but those are really on a review basis. Even beyond balance concerns, I don't like the idea of overlapping subclass themes within the same class. If it's an archetype of the class, it should be able to stand out from the crowd and be its own thing. Death & Grave (and also Twilight & Trickery) Domains are already too close for comfort before allowing things like Entropy Domain from Ruins of Mezro & Xanathar's Lost Notes to Everything Else, especially now that we also have UA options for swapping out Divine Strike for Potent Cantrips in the Variant Class Features playtest.

Some classes I'm more courteous with because they just don't have enough options in RAW+UA - say Artificer or Ranger (but again, a lot of those options published are working off of bad versions of those base classes, like the PHB Ranger or the 2018 Artificer). I'll allow PHB Ranger, mind you, but I strongly urge folks to use the Variant Class Features Ranger instead.

 

[dave2008]

All of them. If something didn't play well we would just modify it as needed.

 

[Sir Brennen]

Pretty open to allowing them, though I am kind of regretting letting a known min-maxer make a Mystic.

 

[Seramus]

EVERY FLIPPING ONE!

This. They need to be playtested somehow.
If you don't playtest them, how are you supposed to vote on them in the survey?
Granted, the surveys are usually not around long enough to do proper playtesting.

 

[Marandahir]

This. They need to be playtested somehow.
If you don't playtest them, how are you supposed to vote on them in the survey?
Granted, the surveys are usually not around long enough to do proper playtesting.

Usually not enough time to playtest effectively before the survey turns around (unless you play weekly, maybe), so I gather most of us give feedback based on theorycrafting. Early on in 5e, they specifically requested that we only give feedback on classes we've sat down with at a table and tried in practice. They don't make that request anymore, because they know the turn-around time is too quick, it's too hard to control (can't check if someone is telling the truth or not), and they get so much feedback, positive and negative regardless, that the public UA playtests (outside of the long DMsGuild periods for Artificer and Mystic) are really more for the purposes of seeing what sticks or not with a plurality of players. Would we play as this if it was in a book?

That's more important that the exact lessons we learn from playing with it right now. If we have the time to do so and then give feedback, that's even better. But they get a lot of feedback, and we can learn a lot from thinking about these rules and discussing them with each other here on the forums whenever a new one is posted (we, of course, are also a minority of feedback-issuers, but there are a lot of people theorycrafting elsewhere, too).

 

[Retreater]

None. They aren't in Roll20, and we're playing exclusively on that platform.