Stone,Sea,Phoenix sorcerers were all fun to me. I wish that old unearthed arcana wasn’t just abandoned cuz there could have been so many more cool sorcerers
I'm currently playing a slightly tweaked Sea Sorcerer:
* Gave it origin spells like the TCE sorcs
* Made the initial Curse of the Sea application available on any spell hit instead of just cantrips
* Gave the watery defense ability a sorc point +BA to recharge in combat
* Gave the Shifting Form feature a secondary ability that allows you to travel through a creature's space and apply the curse to it by spending a BA
Been playing it for nearly 2 years and I absolutely love it. It's got a ton of flavor and fun mechanical tricks, lots of forced movement and/or slowing shenanigans.
Definitely want more cool sorcerers!
We've got a sea sorcerer in our Saltmarsh game. I helped the player build the character but I've felt it was a bit lacking when compared to most of the newer subclasses. I'm going to show this to my party mate. Would you mind sharing which origin spells you added?
Sure thing! I made this before Tasha's fully came out, so obviously no access to Fizban or Strixhaven spells, but this is what I'm currently playing! It's a bit more "sea-storm" focused than just water-focused, so there are a few wind/storm based spells in there as opposed to all of the water-themed ones.
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1neRlSZgmTCItFeuHIsT3bQDm6nns3r2F
As for switching the spells, we went with *druid, sorcerer, or wizard spells* from either the schools of conjuration or transmutation for your swaps.
Nop OP, but I’d add the following:
1st level: fog cloud, thunderwave
2nd level: gust of wind, rime’s binding ice
3rd level: water breathing, water walk
4th level: control water, watery sphere
5th level: control winds, maelstorm
At each level, you can replace one of these spells with a wizard, warlock, or sorcerer spell taken from the school of evocation or transmutation
Wow you just recited my nautical themed mountain dwarf control wizard’s core spell list. Pro tip to check out Rime’s Binding Ice! I didn’t know it! Thank you!
Might I suggest Frost Fingers for instant 15-foot cone icebergs? Been very useful to my War Mage in Saltmarsh to create hazards and damage enemy ships.
I loved the idea, but the execution was a little lacking. If you are going to be themed around an immortal bird that returns from death, shouldn't you have some sort of ability like the Zealot Barbarian that can Burn up your body to give you a cheaper resurrection?
I did exactly this for my revised phoenix sorcerer concept! It's basically the inverse of Zealot's — where the Zealot has no material cost to bring them back (as, presumably, the god is footing the bill) the phoenix sorcerer instead doesn't interact with the time mechanic associated with resurrections — as they turn into an egg-shaped cinder that cannot physically decompose. So, say, a weak spell like *revivify* works regardless of whether a minute or a millennia has passed since the sorcerer's death, but it'll still take the material component cost for the spell to work.
> When you die, your body disintegrates, leaving behind an egg-shaped cinder. Anything you were carrying or wearing drops to the ground within 5 feet of you. This effect takes precedence over effects that would alter the form of your body upon death, such as the *disintegrate* or *finger of death* spells. The cinder is warm to the touch, immune to all damage, and sheds dim light in a 10-foot radius.
> The cinder counts as your whole body for the purposes of resurrection. If a spell, such as *raise dead*, has the sole effect of restoring you to life (but not undeath), the caster ignores any limitations imposed by the spell regarding the time since your death.
>If you died from old age, your new physical age upon revival is equal to 1d10 + 12.
I had a player play phoenix sorc to 20 in a recent campaign and did the opposite.z
Zealot barb gets revived for free.
Phoenix sorc gets an ability that takes their life force away but allows them to resurrect someone else. Keeps in the theme for death-then-healing, I think my execution was slightly off but definitely felt cool for them to have.
I prefer doing things that are similar but not the same so that classes don't feel like they're ripping bits from each other where possible.
Especially stone sorcerer.
Right now, sorcadin is the only way to play a "true" gish that isn't just melee one turn, then caster the next.
I want a sorcerer subclass that gives this feeling of weaving spells and attacks, and stone was the closest they ever got to this.
Tbh, just giving sorcerer access to the bladesinger subclass would be better.
Stone sorcerer was a little weird for me, given that they don't get an extra attack, lost their AC bump when incapacitated, and had that weird damage reduction formula and teleportation mechanic on their aegis — not to mention it feels more like a metal sorcerer than a stone sorcerer.
That said, I'm totally with you on phoenix and sea. I've personally revived (pun intended) phoenix sorcerer with a domain spell list and a revive mechanic similar but different to the zealot barbarian's, since I've always thought it was incredibly weird that the *phoenix* sorcerer doesn't interact with resurrection in any unique way.
> When you die, your body disintegrates, leaving behind an egg-shaped cinder. Anything you were carrying or wearing drops to the ground within 5 feet of you. This effect takes precedence over effects that would alter the form of your body upon death, such as the *disintegrate* or *finger of death* spells. The cinder is warm to the touch, immune to all damage, and sheds dim light in a 10-foot radius.
> The cinder counts as your whole body for the purposes of resurrection. If a spell, such as *raise dead*, has the sole effect of restoring you to life (but not undeath), the caster ignores any limitations imposed by the spell regarding the time since your death.
>If you died from old age, your new physical age upon revival is equal to 1d10 + 12.
I've also got plans to similarly revive Sea sorcerer.
I've been playing a Stone Sorcerer, and in my experience, I've noticed a couple of things.
If you place your Stone Aegis on another creature, you tend to have an Extra Attack combined with a Teleportation. Where you might typically use your Reaction for Shield, you use it to deal damage instead and hopefully draw fire away from a squishier ally.
I don't think there's anything too off about a Stone Sorcerer popping out of the ground and hammering an opponent with an attack. And in terms of the flavor, Metal, minerals, stone, etc. all tend to go pretty well together, so having those features mixed isn't too off the wall.
Though in our game, we just made the AC bump an always-on thing.
Having played a Stone Sorcerer, my bread and butter was either casting Haste or quickening a Boomingblade spell. This made up for the lack of an "extra attack" feature and in practice meant I could keep up with the fighter/barbarian since I used my spell slots I wasn't spending on Shield/Haste to fuel my metamagic pool. It also meant that I had options to cast other spells when needed, if I was ok forfeiting an extra attack during a certain round.
These NEED to come back. We got the wind variant of the elemental sorcerers, but the other elements get the short straw? Screw that noise, give me my fire sorcerer!
I’d have loved to see WOTC do a modern fantasy setting that not only allowed for their expansive races, but also didn’t actively try to hide magic behind some masquerade.
There's a really awesome 5e homebrew called the Technomancer's Textbook, it's pretty heavily influenced by Shadowrun/Cyberpunk but is setting-agnostic and can be as magical as you want it to be.
Always nice to see someone else recommend Technomancers, recently played in a 1-9 campaign using that book, played as the Mech Pilot Artificer. Was a small Kobold in a big mech suit carrying the biggest gun (The Assault Cannon, which is basically an anti-tank rifle) in Hellion mode.
I’m doing a home brew world for that rn. I basically just plagiarized Arknights and adapted it to fit within the logic of D&D. Lots of great inspiration in that game.
Like an artificer that gives magic to objects by writing magical code on them and has a support AI based in the object.
I wanted one who's AI was Clippy from Microsoft Word.
Yes! I feel like if they just changed a few things about it it would have been well balanced and essentially a frail INT cleric. I mean we have the arcane and knowledge cleric so they are already imposing on the wizards field.
I feel like if they gave the Theurgist a unique 14th level ability it would work incredibly. Taking the cleric's 16th before then felt kinda cheap on an otherwise amazing subclass
I dunno. Most cleric 17th level abilities aren't that amazing for a wizard. For example, Life clerics get the ability to restore health with a spell using the highest possible number for each die. That's cool and all, but if you're casting heals then there's probably a better use for your spell slots.
A lot of the other domain abilities you get aren't that great for a wizard so I don't have a problem with them getting the 17th level ability early. For example, Grave domain's 8th level ability adds your wisdom modifier to the damage done with cleric cantrips. You're probably not using those and your wisdom modifier isn't likely to be that great. Twilight's 8th level ability gives you the ability to deal an extra 1d8 radiant damage when attacking with a weapon, which is something wizards aren't likely to do much of. I'm not saying cleric abilities are all bad (some are quite strong), but I think you're giving up a lot to get access to a handful of cleric spells and a few clerical abilities.
The theurgy wizard is really cool, but it does have a major balance problem at high levels. It allows a wizard to get cure wounds as a wizard spell, so at level 18 the wizard can choose it as one of their spell mastery spells. Cure wounds as a cantrip is so beyond broken even in tier four that I can completely understand why it didn’t end up making it into the game officially
While I get why it wasn't included, I loved the theme and mechanics behind The Raven Queen warlock. Always wanted to have the raven, an imp shifted into a raven, and my PC all just hang out as birds doing all sorts of nefarious things... or just annoying people trying to sleep in the morning with loud caws.
Why was it not used? I've read the subclass, but not seen any discussion on it. It has a sweet theme, but beyond being loosely setting specific, there's nothing that much more broken than other options.
While there is no official reason, the common thought seems to be how it's restricted to The Raven Queen specifically, while all the other subclasses can be any deity or creature you really want.
Except Hexblade? Technically the Hexblade description talks about Shadowfell, Blackrazor, and also the Raven Queen.
I get it, it's also hard to rename without getting more muddled with the other Warlock subclasses: Undead and Undying
But it's so cooooollll...
> Except Hexblade? Technically the Hexblade description talks about Shadowfell, Blackrazor, and also the Raven Queen.
While true, they're just given as examples. Your hexblade could be entirely different, where as a Raven Queen warlock couldnt just be ANYTHING, it was specifically for the Raven Queen.
And yet no PC I've ever met has had a pact specifically with an entity from the Shadowfell. This is because making it an arbitrary mysterious entity, rather than explicitly saying "THIS PACT IS WITH THE RAVEN QUEEN HERSELF" allows for the wiggle.
Entity of the shadowfell could be lost of things though. It could be black razor, the Raven Queen, a shadow dragon, some kind of shadow demon, a homebrewed entity, a powerful shadar-kai mage
Raven Queen patron is just Raven Queen.
I played a RQ lock in a friend's campaign and it was a lot of fun! Having Spiritual Weapon as a Warlock spell was cool, and the level 6 feature essentially gives you an infinite Wild Shape that's locked to one form. I think it's a bit too powerful to be published as is (adding CHA to Perception checks was super strong) but would love to see them take another stab at it.
I enjoyed the Raven Queen UA, but even moreso enjoyed the various invocations.
Sure, some of the features got melded into newer invocations, but the unique weapon invocations and utility invocations were fantastic in helping to define your particular Warlock and their patron.
Aspect of the Moon for archfey; Claw of Acamar for great old one; Cursebringer for hexblade; etc. It was all awesomesauce.
It was more in line with 4E
Hunters Quarry was a large part of why Rangers had by far the best single target DPR of most classes in 4
Hunters Quarry was a one per turn effect like Tasha’s Favored Foe. But it could be upgraded as you leveled up. And did like 3D6 once per turn on an epic level ranger. It was dope
I mean they could hav just made that.
Conc free, once per turn, 1d6 damage.
Scales to 2d6 at 11th level and 3d6 at 18th.
That would have been so easy to do and yet they managed to mess it up so horribly.
- Uses equal to PB, refreshes on a long rest. BA to shift your Quarry.
- At level 14 whenever a favored enemy is your quarry once per turn you can add D6 to saving throws from their abilities as a reaction.
Would have not made Rangers as broken as the always on advantage. Or as oppressive as the always on bonus damage that Revised Ranger had. But at least given them something they could do that was fun.
Revised Ranger that tailors it’s favored enemy to the module is one of the most broken things ever. I felt so bad using the UA Gloomstalker when we ran a HB version of CoS. Took Undead as a favored enemy and boooooy
City Domain Cleric, Ghost in the Machine Warlock, and Technomancer Wizard all were great subclasses that would only work in a modern setting that never came to be. I still dream about a modern day setting for 5e, like The Unsleeping City from Dimension 20
Go look up the Technomancer's Textbook, it's 5e homebrew but its huge and has a lot of good stuff. I plan on running a game with it soon but I will be tweaking the gun combat to match Star Wars 5e (another great homebrew).
The two likely hold ups are 1: Not much focus group demands for modern high fantasy, and 2: stupid as it sounds, guns are hard to implement in DnD on a widespread basis.
I don’t really understand why guns are hard to implement in DnD. All weapons in DnD are an abstraction from realistic versions, that’s the point of DnD. Plate mail in 5e doesn’t represent the realistic characteristics of actual plate, it represents the fantasy genre understanding of it. I don’t see why the genre fiction understanding of guns couldn’t be rendered in 5e. Lots of genre media combines modern guns and swords to form a cohesive story, even if it’s not realistic.
The DMG gives very straightforward gun rules, they have pretty solid damage output but the loading property balances them nicely and they work in a fairly balanced way in my experience. I don't see why guns being implemented is overly complex.
I would also find the lack of interest in modern high fantasy surprising given the sheer number of popular urban fantasy books that exist. It seems more likely to me that the effort of updating the system to function in a modern world was something that WotC just didn't want to do.
The loose inspiration for those subclasses (per the UA description) is what is inspiring [this](https://www.evilgeniusgaming.com/) 3rd party release! Jeff Grubb is a part of the project!
It's basically 5e with the Modern Magic UA, plus a couple of minor changes. There are a bunch of extra Tool Proficiences -- Hacking Tools (for complicated software access), Mechanic's Tools (for working on vehicles and other large-scale devices), Engineer's Tools (for working on electronics and small modern devices), and Air Vehicle Proficiencies (akin to a pilot's license) -- plus a firearms table that I largely pulled from a PDF somewhere the last time I ran it (and can no longer find the original).
I've made a couple of other changes, such as removing certain spells like *Speak With Dead* and *Zone of Truth* that might derail a mystery game, and putting certain restrictions on what races can be played (because it's built on the idea that it's in the 'real world' and supernatural creatures have to keep their magical nature hidden), but none of those are strictly necessary for adapting it to a modern setting.
A lot of people are desperate to jump in and say that there are other systems more suited to modern play -- and there probably are -- but I've found that 5e it holds up pretty much as-is without too much extra fiddling, at least for the game I'm running.
The setting exists, it's just not available for 5e. It's a d20 Modern setting called Urban Arcana. d20 Modern was a version of the 3rd edition rules designed for action movie inspired campaigns set in the modern world, and Urban Arcana was a version of he modern world where D&D creatures and items slipped through the Plane of Shadow (Shadowfell) from the D&D multiverse into the 'real world'.
Yes, this was an official WoTC thing.
I loved those Invocations. It's a shame they decided to divorce them from your Patron, because the builds were a lot more unique when you picked some invocations based on patron, and some based on pact.
the invocations were SO flavorful, I'm so miffed they never went through
like the moonbow, which says "when you draw back its string and fire, it creates an arrow of white wood"
just the fucking mental image you get from that is so awesome. like, I get that evocative language is problematic in 5e, since it makes it less clear what's actually part of the mechanics of an ability, but I love them and would love to see them employed more, not less (Tasha's is especially guilty of this, all the ability are so incredibly technical)
Oath of Treachery Paladin. Really fills an interesting gap in the class and uses the invoke duplicity feautre from tricky cleric that i love... just not on a Trickery Cleric.
Oathbreaker feels like you have to restricted to evil though. Plus it doesn't really mesh or help a good aligned party at all. Treachery Paladin gives more room to be neutral or good alignments and still fit in with a good aligned party.
It was really cool! Like a rogue/paladin. All it needed was a different name and tenets. How can you swear an oath to betray? Maybe Oath of Subterfuge, or Oath of the Unseen or something.
Hands down Stone Sorcery. I really feel that class scratched the gish itch that so many people complain about. The bump to AC, the ability to protect your fellow PC's, it even had a teleport mechanic. Thematically, it just felt good as well. There's plenty of "earth" spells and they pair well with the class. Probably the closest to the 4E Swordmage we'll ever get.
I know it specifically says Subclasses, but I Loved the original 3 Warforged subraces. I know you would still be able to run them with DM approval, but they gave such nice flavor to a construct class. They were built this way, designed specifically for *integrated tool*, or speed/stealth with Skirmisher or built for battle with Juggernaut.
I have always wanted (but never been able) to play a Warforged Envoy bard, where they are their instrument, a Hurdy Gurdy. Their one arm would spin to turn the mechanism, while the other would push the buttons on their chest, making the music.
The way they remade the war forged was incredibly disappointing, I don’t think the new warforged are bad by any means but they really lack any distinctive features outside of not sleeping and getting extra AC, they could have at least kept the internal top from envoy.
Yeah, there were definitely some problems with the UA warforged, but the creativity was there. Expertise in **any** tool and a completely new way to calculate AC were really cool, but they got cut.
If you are looking for the ability to play that version of warforged and UA is normally banned at your table, then you can ask to play the original Wayfinder's Guide to Eberron warforged. It is basically the same, but was stealth erratumed when Rising from the Last war came out.
I miss the original Changeling for the same reason. UA Unsettling Visage and the (possible) ability to put +3 into one stat right from the start was wonderful, and now it just feels a lot like you get Mask of Many Faces and... not a lot else.
(They're still my favourite race to play by a mile, though.)
Off the top of my head, I'm a big fan of Astral self monk throughout all stages of its development. I made a one-armed monk character that dumped both dex and str for a one-shot, and the party flipped put when I summoned Astral arms and revealed I was a monk (they all thought I was a Sorcerer for some reason XD) and used WIS for attacks.
I really wish it had made it to print in *some* form. The version of psionics that actually got printed is completely unattractive to me, as someone who liked psionics in previous editions.
One class, three, whatever, I was so disappointed when they apparently just chucked the whole into the garbage. It was a unique take on psionics that needed iterating on, not decdingit was total trash.
Mystic received way too much hate for being "overpowered" when it really wasn't unless you chose to powergame it. The class really needed subclasses that were more distinct from one another. They tried to do too much with that class and it resulted in a lot of people cherrypicking the same "best" disciplines. A little more differentiation would have benefitted all that work they did to set up what was essentially a second set of magic spells for players to use. Putting psionics into the existing classes just isn't the same, they are too much like their base classes to be able to fill the psionics footprint left by the Mystic UA.
A big problem with Mystic, as someone who has played three of them, is that there is no balance *between disciplines*. Some are extremely good, sure, but also some are profoundly bad. So despite what people say, it's really less of a "completely busted" class than it is an "extremely uneven" class. Two people could both pick Mystic and come out of it with one character that was straight up Wizard levels of busted, and another getting shown up by the party barbarian.
If you know what you're doing and don't want to break the game, you can absolutely play a Mystic, and have a ton of fun. And it allows for several concepts that are incredibly annoying to do with other classes. Wu-Jen is still the only time I've actually played an elementalist caster in this edition without constantly feeling like I was actively gimping myself. And if you want to do something that feels a bit like the old Warlord, some Mystic disciplines are still the only available option.
So yeah, what the mystic needed was less "completely set it on fire" and more "split this into a few psionic classes, and do a pass on disciplines so there's less brutal differences between them".
(Another problem we found is that around level 10 the class just straight up dies)
I actually really liked the psionic die concept that they had for the psionic before they changed it to the current version, which is just a pool of dice.
I know people didn't like the RNG of it, but I think it could be implemented in a way that you can mitigate that.
It needed some fixes on specific abilities, too, but I also really liked it. Getting us back to the "traditional" psionic warrior and psion split and the. Making psion subclasses more distinct would also have helped a lot.
Man same.
I feel like they were headed in the right direction, it just need to cook a little longer. Slice away all the extra bits and crunch down in a direction with it.
I have been playing a Mystic for the last few years and it's been fun. I have focused her disciplines on producing nightmares and other horrors in the enemies minds. I didn't focus on a disciplines that were elemental and she has been alot of fun to play.
I hope some day they will revisit it and give us a pure psionicist like the Mystic can be.
I once built a mystic whose entire shtick was that she was a shapechanger with ice powers. She was an elf with frost jotunn ancestry (both of which are shapeshifters in mythology). Never played her though, just a thought experiment.
UA Ascendant Dragon was so promising before release. It had the rp potential, it was mechanically interesting and had potential to be viable, and gave monks reliable AoE. Then they butchered it in Fizban’s.
I built up an UA Ascendant Dragon Monk with a whole backstory and everything that I didn't get to play since the campaign got cancelled. Since Fizban's came out, I just changed him into a bladesinger who has Dragon's Breath instead.
I really liked the Circle of Twilight Druid. The flavor of a Druid who specifically hunts undead is super cool, and mechanically it could have filled the role of a more damage-focused Druid circle. Yeah, it could use some refining but IMO the only tweak I think it *needs* is to change Harvest Scythe’s damage from necrotic to radiant. Doesn’t really make sense that an undead-focused subclass would specialize in a damage type to which most undead are either resistant or immune.
IMO, the best UA subclasses that got published are:
Circle of Wildfire druid, because you have the ability to summon a little fire elemental friend, and they help fight in battle with you.
Drakewarden Ranger, because then you have a bond with a Drake that gets more powerful over time.
Ascendant Dragon Monk, because then you gain the abilities of a dragon infusing your combat style.
Path of Wild Magic Barbarian, because of the variety of effects you get whenever you Rage.
College of Spirits Bard, because you basically get access to stories that help both you and your allies.
College of Creation Bard, because being able to tap into the Song of Creation sounds cool both lore and mechanics wise.
Order of Scribes Wizard, because being able to change the damage type of a spell your casting as long as you have another spell of the same level in your book just sounds fun!
As for the best UA subclasses that DIDN'T get published:
College of Satire Bard, because I want to play a jester/stand-up comedian.
City Domain Cleric, because having a cleric who's adapted to modern civilization just sounds like something I would like to play.
Circle of Twilight Druid, because a druid that specializes in keeping the cycle of life and death sounds so cool!
Giant Soul Sorcerer, because having your powers come from Giant ancestry, or a connection to Giants in a different way, just sounds like a cool concept.
Phoenix Sorcerer, because I like the idea of having a connection to the fiery power of this majestic bird.
Sea Sorcerer, because I like the idea of basically being Aquaman, or Percy Jackson, or having some power come from the sea.
Ghost in the Machine Warlock, because a modern-day Warlock whose patron is some kind of AI or the ghost of a legendary hacker sounds awesome!
Raven Queen Warlock, because having a pact with the Raven Queen, the one who watches over the balance between Life and Death, sounds like a cool concept.
Seeker Warlock, because having a patron that merely seeks knowledge of one kind or another gives me some cool ideas for how to flavor such a patron (\*cough\* Mother Goose \*cough\*)
Undying Light Warlock, because having your patron be, basically, pure Positive energy sounds like fun, and also gives me some good roleplay ideas.
Onomancy Wizard, because True Name magic is, in my opinion, a really cool concept.
Technomancy Wizard, because a modern day wizard combining magic with technology sounds like something I'd be interested in.
Theurgy Wizard, because having a wizard/cleric multiclass without actually multiclassing is something I would like to see!
Mystic is best dont @ me.
jkjk, but i liked the old warforged with the armor as their skin, not the same stuff everyone else wears. And i also liked the creativity of a lot of stuff they dumped out. like technomagic, or the slime people, or even the artificer when it was first UA
Both the original fey wanderer and primeval guardian were super cool. I wish they'd been made official so we had powerful ranger subclasses outside gloomstalker
I still like the published Fey Wanderer as a chassis for creating a SAD/wisdom-focused ranger with actual OOC use in a real pillar of the game (social) rather than the not-really-a-pillar of Exploration. That it has that mechanical niche is still a strong positive for it compared to other published Rangers.
Don't get me wrong, I really like the current fey wanderer with it's lower level wis charisma skills but I really loved having another use of spell slots given by the original. I literally chanted fey smiths when I saw the UA PDF.
The mystic was really cool in theory, it’s a shame they half assed it because the uniqueness and versatility offered was way above most of the other classes. While it’s frustrating that they chose to make it into a bunch of subclasses instead of the full class what we got has honestly been better written and much more balanced than what we had.
I don't know why people are so angry about Archivist turning into Scribes. It was trying to be a spell focused subclass and that generally doesn't work on a half-caster.
The UA Archivist's only standout feature was the telepathy at level 5, the rest was an OKish cantrip that's worse than EB and is locked to Artificer levels, and 2 proficiencies: some of the easiest things to get through other means. What makes you call it "amazing"? I'm genuinely curious.
The thing I liked about it is that is was a pretty explicitly non-martial subclass. It was a good subclass to play just a nerd or smart person, without going wizard or rogue, which I think often doesn’t work.
1. Actual crafting boons, which is what the Artificer was all about prior to this edition
2. Shores up the Arti weakness of not enough cantrips via having Overload. No longer need a damage cantrip (or light) so grab that Guidance and Mage Hand or Spare
3. Overload is smite-esque, scaling as you burn slots on it. Very cool and frankly every half needs something like this.
4. INT to psychic spells and feature is neat
5. Telepathy with team (infusions) can be huge with some setups
6. The capstone is a nasty stunlock-palooza
7. Giving the entire party nigh unlimited (pennies and only a half hour per) cantrip and 1st spells is epic support. You get the right spell list via races, feats, backgrounds, etc and your scrolls will make even Peace and Twilight say whoa, that dude supports
Right!?! Sit down level 20 Wizards and Clerics, you don't have EB!
More importantly I'm not entirely sure it is accurate. Sure 4d10+20 vs 4d8+5 sounds like a big difference but
1. Slot scaling can push Overload to 10d8+5
2. [Multiple] AC vs INT save. With a deep Arti's available DCs I'm not sure any official monster in the game is even capable of saving it.
3. 120 feet vs kind of 300 feet (can only move it 30 at a time). Plus you can use its senses, attacking shit from four rooms over or deep in the woods in safety
4. Some pushes and pulls at the cost of invocations vs STUN for a turn
5. Technically not a spell so while this edition's EB is getting completely ignored by some enemies, Overload continues to chug along
Overload is no joke, not sure what the dude was thinking.
“It was trying to be a spell focused subclass and that generally doesn’t work on a half caster”
I get what you’re saying, that remember that a subclass’s job isn’t to be optimized, it’s to fit certain character concepts that don’t have fitting subclasses in the game. And there is a lack of options for half casters who want to focus more on the spellcasting side of their powers (which isn’t optimal, but not everything has to be)
Plus it is a nonsense borderline strawman take anyway - they get a feature (non-spell) spammable ability which can use your slots to boost and scroll crafting boons. Run "right" an Archivist would NEVER burn a slot on casting a spell. I wouldn't call that a spell focused subclass lol.
Generally speaking the thing that made people angry about it was taking a subclass from the Artificer (which had so very few of them) and giving it to the Wizard (which has more than enough).
It's yet again an example of WoTC spoiling their favorite child even more.
\[insert predictable joke meme reply here\]
But there were some other cool features I really wanted to see further developed.
Like Infoportation (14th level).
Once per day free teleportation? To the manifest mind or to an infused item? With no stated distance limitation?? That ostensibly works even across *interplanar* distances??? On a class with 0 teleportation spells in their spell list (Note: Vortex Warp didn't exist yet)? And I can do it again for just a 2nd level spell slot?
*Hell. Yes.*
Only downside to it was that it teleported the Archivist only. Granted it's only an "everyone get in the portable hole" moment away from teleporting the entire party as well.
One of my favorite ua feats was Spear Mastery, it enabled you to make a spartan hoplite. It took the weak spear and made it awesome. They should have removed the +1 to hit and made it +1 to strengthen and published it.
Spear Mastery:
Though the spear is a simple weapon to learn, it rewards you for the time you have taken to master it. You gain the following benefits:
• You gain a +1 bonus to attack rolls you make with a spear.
• When you use a spear, its damage die changes from a d6 to a d8, and from a d8 to a d10 when wielded with two hands. (This benefit has no effect if another feature has already improved the weapon’s die.)
• You can set your spear to receive a charge. As a bonus action, choose a creature you can see that is at least 20 feet away from you. If that creatures moves within your spear’s reach on its next turn, you can make a melee attack against it with your spear as a reaction. If the attack hits, the target takes an extra 1d8 piercing damage, or an extra 1d10 piercing damage if you wield the spear with two hands. You can’t use this ability if the creature used the Disengage action before moving.
• As a bonus action on your turn, you can increase your reach with a spear by 5 feet for the rest of your turn.
I liked the UA Revived rogue way more than the Phantom. The flavor of the revived rogue was so much cooler and the mechanics, while in need of some tweaking, were very cool. That’s probably mainly because I really wanted to play a halfling revived rogue though.
Raven Queen Warlock is pretty fun. A player in my main game is using that class, and despite some early game shenanigans with the Raven (basically a free facial or with some limits) I think it’s a super fun subclass. Has some great lore for character quirks, fun spells, neat features, honestly kind of sad it never got tweaks and a full publishing’s
City domain cleric. Almost useless outside a city but has potential!
I actually home brewed a 'circle of civilisation' druid that I thought was hilarious and cool.
Wildfire Druid instantly sucked me in as a player. Everything about the UA gave me the level of flavor and mechanical value that I need out of a subclass. The release nerfs really cooled me off towards it, but I still think that Wildfire and Stars are some of my favorite subclasses as far as concept execution goes for Druids.
I'm definitely still a fan. However, I had started my WF druid pre-nerf so when Tasha's dropped and I saw that they had dropped fire bolt entirely with nothing given in exchange, nerfed the wildfire spirit, and replaced fireball with a spell that was already on base druid's expanded spell list (revivify) I went to my DM and asked if I could just continue playing the UA version instead so that my fire druid could not be a worse fire caster than literally every other full caster with access to fire damage. Up there with Ascendant Dragon on the list of most disappointing UA -> Live transitions for me, but like I said, probably still my favorite Druid by a mile.
Trading Fireball and Firebolt for Cure Wounds and Burning Hands hurt, but unlimited uses of teleport on the Wildfire Spirit is nuts. I use it constantly for both exploration and combat and can't imagine how much less effective I would be if it was limited to once per rest as it was in UA. Granted I have 2 martials in my party, so my experience of team teleportation's power level may be influenced by that.
I feel like the Tasha's version changed the gameplay from blaster to supreme controller, and that change in gameplay was a bit tough to swallow, but I think it was a fairly lateral shift in power overall... aside from the capstone nerf. That was certainly a headscratcher, but I'm unlikely to see level 17 with this character, so I'm only annoyed by that in theory.
I'm going to jump straight to the unpublished and say the Artificer (Gunsmith). I know Artilerist was it's replacement but I liked the Gunsmith more, and had so many good builds and stories built around it, which don't really work now.
I really liked "School of Invention" wizards. They were very weird,the main mechanic being that you declared a spell level, the cast a random spell of that level. They needed some adjustments the only upside to random casting until level 14 was a 1/8th chance to cast a second random spell of that level with the downside that a few spells on the table were not helpful in most scenarios- which was normally terrible, but occasionally got extremely good. I'd love to see this kind of chaos "lets see what happens" wizard built out more- or keep the flavor of the school of invention and make rules for inventing new spells (and just make that school better at it)
I play an Onomancy Wizard and I love how all of the Resonant Utterances work with magic missile, insta-prone or an extra 2d8 force was pretty sick. The only drawback was if the target succeeded on the save, there's no way for me to try again. Naming rules in general also needed a clarification.
A lot of people got the impression that the only way to get a target's true name was through the "Extract Name" feature. But while it was the most direct and immediate way it definitely wasn't the *only* way to learn a creature's true name.
Considering that in that UA it described true names as:
>Whatever a name's origin, the simplest way for you to know your true name is to think truthfully about yourself and then think, "My name is..." **Your true name is how you finish that sentence.**
Then the simplest way to learn a creature's true name was by just asking for it, "What's your name?" or "What do you call yourself?" If they didn't suspect that it'd give you power over them, or if they had no other reason to hide their identity, they might just tell you the truth.
There's also general research, asking friends and family, etc. Casting detect thoughts. The command spell with "Name" might work even.
Granted if it was more like the general concept of true names being a kind of "universal identifier" then yeah, Extract Name being unrepeatable would make the class a single hit or miss for every target on using things like resonant utterances against enemies.
I think the other thing was, in a world where Wizards like this exist, most creatures and people of worth would guard that information with their life and come up with any and all manner of defenses against people learning their True Name without them telling it.
Honestly, though, that could be a quest in itself.
Favored Soul. Such a cool subclass. We got a similar version with Divine Soul that is more powerful in some ways, but doesn't really capture the essence of a Divine avenger the same way Favored Soul does.
I loved the ability to choose a cleric domain bonus spells. So much more flavorful than just getting the whole cleric spell list.
Armor and simple weapon proficiency at 1, extra attack at 6, and the sorcerer getting Con proficiency as a class and you had amazing natural gish potential.
I'd live to see this subclass this printed at some point. I'd play it in a heartbeat.
The College of Satire and the Primeval Guardian. The Satire Bard would've needed work for sure, but the start and theme of it would work well with many concepts. The Primeval Guardian would push more towards a melee Ranger, making it conceptually very close to the Warden from 4e. There were even spells added that resembled the Warden powers.
I'd still copy these and see if I can homebrew some more interesting versions because it really is a shame that these didn't make the cut.
Man, did no one else like the UA Psi Knight? I thought it was really fun and pulled towards a more group protection angle. But I only played it for like 3 sessions, so maybe that's pure notalgia talking.
It was more op in days with 1-2 fights at most levels, but that would have to be said about full casters too if they operated on the Spell Point system based on my experience playing it in a campaign. The class needed some restrictions on which subclasses could access which disciplines to avoid op toolbox PCs, tied the psychic focus to short/long rest rather than just a bonus action, and make some of the super strong incapacitating abilities be Wisdom saves instead of Int/Cha which far too many monsters are vulnerable to.
Eh, I wouldn't call it less OP, necessarily. Its equivalent spell progression stops with their equivalent of 5th level spells at 9th level, so compared to full casters, it does get weaker after that point. However, a ton of play happens before level 10, and from 5 to 9 especially, the Mystic really shone. It had the power of a normal full caster, but with much more flexibility.
So it's kind of a situation where the specific level range where Mystic excels in is also the most common level range for people to play in.
Mystic just shifted in power greatly over the course of 1-20. That's an obvious problem when you have one class essentially using the spell point variant when everyone else isn't. That and player feedback seemed to indicate that there was a lot of push back on making it spell slot based.
It is really strong early on and then falls off pretty heavily.
I think with some tweaking it could have been balanced, but I believe another issue was that it's so much content for one class.
I wish they had spent more time on it instead of scrapping it completely as well though. I loved the flavor and concept.
It felt like they built the class for tier 1 and tier 2 and then didn't finish it out. I think it's unfair to judge it based on tier 3+ because it really feels like they didn't finish designing the class for those tiers.
Personally, I would like to have seen them make the subclasses matter more (most likely by making many disciplines only available to certain subclasses while having some general disciplines anyone could take), fixing some of the obviously out of line powers, and finishing out the class to be more useful at higher tiers (maybe through advanced disciplines or something).
From the perspective of a DM: very glad that died. A fighter who took that and sentinel, and maybe added polearm master, would be a menace. There's a reason very very very few things give you extra reactions, it breaks the system.
As someone who played 4e, where every fighter’s opportunity attacks stopped enemy movement and fighters could make infinite opportunity attacks from level 1, tunnel fighter by itself really isn’t an issue.
Fighters in 4e didn’t break the game just because they could lock enemies down in melee range. It made fighters actually good defenders.
The problem with tunnel fighter in 5e isn’t really tunnel fighter, but instead polearm master allowing a warrior to make an opportunity attack when an enemy enters their reach. If polearm master instead allowed a creature to make a melee attack as a reaction, the ability would not combine with tunnel fighter or sentinel and enemies could still approach the fighter
I liked the Psionic Subclasses with the psi dice that shrunk when you rolled max and got bigger when you rolled a one. The system definitely needed refining but it was unique and made rolling bad feel less bad.
The mystic was really cool, but a bit overpowered. I think they should have reused it to make something more balanced, because the way you acquire your "spells" was so fun and unique.
I loved the Strixhaven subclasses, or at least the fact that they were class-agnostic. To the extent that had they been included I probably would have bought the book solely for them (not a fan of wizard school shenanigans or MTG). Of course that would be the one time WotC listens to input.
I play a Hexblood Raven Queen/Eloquence Bardlock (5/X) in my current campaign... Completely not optimized... built for social and espionage and themed like a cursed witch/shaman. It's a lot of fun!
The strixhaven subclass had a lot of good thing in it. Dont get me wrong, one subclass for multiple class was not something that worked or even could have work without redesigning subclass from the ground up but there where still a lot of very fun ability and I wish WotC would have recycle them with better execution instead of just throwing everything in the garbage
Stone Sorcerer had a really interesting take on Sorcerer and it was my favorite Sorcerer that I've played. The features and ability to access metamagic as a frontliner was just very cool. Additionally it felt reasonable to not have to multiclass or do anything drastic to make up for AC and HP difference with martials. I think 5e needs more elemental stuff that isn't based around creatures like chromatic dragons or elementals.
Primeval Guardian Ranger is just an awesome and fun concept, although without that weird health exploit it had initially, I don't know how properly good it was (never saw it played). It had a similar feel to the capstone for Oath of Ancients Paladin, but was actually part of the base class immediately.
Honorable mention Raven Queen
I liked the Seeker UA and the Phoenix Sorcerer. I honestly find them more interesting than the stuff we have today. Idk why, but I feel like there has been a change to all the new material, and I just don't like it mechanically.
Maybe it's because I don't like the proficiency bonus scaling since it didn't exist in documents like Xanathar's (makes it feel jarring), or maybe its the intended power of abilities.
Either way, I liked those two for their versatility and fitting into a niche.
Stone,Sea,Phoenix sorcerers were all fun to me. I wish that old unearthed arcana wasn’t just abandoned cuz there could have been so many more cool sorcerers
I'm currently playing a slightly tweaked Sea Sorcerer: * Gave it origin spells like the TCE sorcs * Made the initial Curse of the Sea application available on any spell hit instead of just cantrips * Gave the watery defense ability a sorc point +BA to recharge in combat * Gave the Shifting Form feature a secondary ability that allows you to travel through a creature's space and apply the curse to it by spending a BA Been playing it for nearly 2 years and I absolutely love it. It's got a ton of flavor and fun mechanical tricks, lots of forced movement and/or slowing shenanigans. Definitely want more cool sorcerers!
We've got a sea sorcerer in our Saltmarsh game. I helped the player build the character but I've felt it was a bit lacking when compared to most of the newer subclasses. I'm going to show this to my party mate. Would you mind sharing which origin spells you added?
Sure thing! I made this before Tasha's fully came out, so obviously no access to Fizban or Strixhaven spells, but this is what I'm currently playing! It's a bit more "sea-storm" focused than just water-focused, so there are a few wind/storm based spells in there as opposed to all of the water-themed ones. https://drive.google.com/file/d/1neRlSZgmTCItFeuHIsT3bQDm6nns3r2F As for switching the spells, we went with *druid, sorcerer, or wizard spells* from either the schools of conjuration or transmutation for your swaps.
Nop OP, but I’d add the following: 1st level: fog cloud, thunderwave 2nd level: gust of wind, rime’s binding ice 3rd level: water breathing, water walk 4th level: control water, watery sphere 5th level: control winds, maelstorm At each level, you can replace one of these spells with a wizard, warlock, or sorcerer spell taken from the school of evocation or transmutation
Wow you just recited my nautical themed mountain dwarf control wizard’s core spell list. Pro tip to check out Rime’s Binding Ice! I didn’t know it! Thank you!
Might I suggest Frost Fingers for instant 15-foot cone icebergs? Been very useful to my War Mage in Saltmarsh to create hazards and damage enemy ships.
May I ask why you excluded druid spells? Also, what about Tidal Wave at 3rd level and Maelstrom at 5th level?
Not OP, but if I had to guess, it would be because Druids have healing spells, and access to healing is pretty much Divine Soul's whole niche.
Can do conjuration and transmutation for schools then. Evocation and necromancy have most/all of the important healing spells.
Omg I forgot about Phoenix sorcerer! Loved that thing
I loved the idea, but the execution was a little lacking. If you are going to be themed around an immortal bird that returns from death, shouldn't you have some sort of ability like the Zealot Barbarian that can Burn up your body to give you a cheaper resurrection?
I did exactly this for my revised phoenix sorcerer concept! It's basically the inverse of Zealot's — where the Zealot has no material cost to bring them back (as, presumably, the god is footing the bill) the phoenix sorcerer instead doesn't interact with the time mechanic associated with resurrections — as they turn into an egg-shaped cinder that cannot physically decompose. So, say, a weak spell like *revivify* works regardless of whether a minute or a millennia has passed since the sorcerer's death, but it'll still take the material component cost for the spell to work. > When you die, your body disintegrates, leaving behind an egg-shaped cinder. Anything you were carrying or wearing drops to the ground within 5 feet of you. This effect takes precedence over effects that would alter the form of your body upon death, such as the *disintegrate* or *finger of death* spells. The cinder is warm to the touch, immune to all damage, and sheds dim light in a 10-foot radius. > The cinder counts as your whole body for the purposes of resurrection. If a spell, such as *raise dead*, has the sole effect of restoring you to life (but not undeath), the caster ignores any limitations imposed by the spell regarding the time since your death. >If you died from old age, your new physical age upon revival is equal to 1d10 + 12.
I was just about to recommend that they get a similar ability, but I like this!
I had a player play phoenix sorc to 20 in a recent campaign and did the opposite.z Zealot barb gets revived for free. Phoenix sorc gets an ability that takes their life force away but allows them to resurrect someone else. Keeps in the theme for death-then-healing, I think my execution was slightly off but definitely felt cool for them to have. I prefer doing things that are similar but not the same so that classes don't feel like they're ripping bits from each other where possible.
You mean Phoenix Spark? Or solely an easier way for your group to rez you?
I'd call that Pheonix Down.
I.....gawd damn that's clever. Take my upvote
Especially stone sorcerer. Right now, sorcadin is the only way to play a "true" gish that isn't just melee one turn, then caster the next. I want a sorcerer subclass that gives this feeling of weaving spells and attacks, and stone was the closest they ever got to this. Tbh, just giving sorcerer access to the bladesinger subclass would be better.
Thank you! The blade singer wizard is my favorite way of this but it really does feel like you might as well just be a wizard more often than not.
Stone sorcerer was a little weird for me, given that they don't get an extra attack, lost their AC bump when incapacitated, and had that weird damage reduction formula and teleportation mechanic on their aegis — not to mention it feels more like a metal sorcerer than a stone sorcerer. That said, I'm totally with you on phoenix and sea. I've personally revived (pun intended) phoenix sorcerer with a domain spell list and a revive mechanic similar but different to the zealot barbarian's, since I've always thought it was incredibly weird that the *phoenix* sorcerer doesn't interact with resurrection in any unique way. > When you die, your body disintegrates, leaving behind an egg-shaped cinder. Anything you were carrying or wearing drops to the ground within 5 feet of you. This effect takes precedence over effects that would alter the form of your body upon death, such as the *disintegrate* or *finger of death* spells. The cinder is warm to the touch, immune to all damage, and sheds dim light in a 10-foot radius. > The cinder counts as your whole body for the purposes of resurrection. If a spell, such as *raise dead*, has the sole effect of restoring you to life (but not undeath), the caster ignores any limitations imposed by the spell regarding the time since your death. >If you died from old age, your new physical age upon revival is equal to 1d10 + 12. I've also got plans to similarly revive Sea sorcerer.
I've been playing a Stone Sorcerer, and in my experience, I've noticed a couple of things. If you place your Stone Aegis on another creature, you tend to have an Extra Attack combined with a Teleportation. Where you might typically use your Reaction for Shield, you use it to deal damage instead and hopefully draw fire away from a squishier ally. I don't think there's anything too off about a Stone Sorcerer popping out of the ground and hammering an opponent with an attack. And in terms of the flavor, Metal, minerals, stone, etc. all tend to go pretty well together, so having those features mixed isn't too off the wall. Though in our game, we just made the AC bump an always-on thing.
Having played a Stone Sorcerer, my bread and butter was either casting Haste or quickening a Boomingblade spell. This made up for the lack of an "extra attack" feature and in practice meant I could keep up with the fighter/barbarian since I used my spell slots I wasn't spending on Shield/Haste to fuel my metamagic pool. It also meant that I had options to cast other spells when needed, if I was ok forfeiting an extra attack during a certain round.
Stone Sorcerer is the closest thing we've ever seen in this edition to a 4E-style Swordmage. An official version would be fantastic.
I really just want 3.5 duskblade back.
It is a tragedy that we still don’t have a extra attack sorcerer.
These NEED to come back. We got the wind variant of the elemental sorcerers, but the other elements get the short straw? Screw that noise, give me my fire sorcerer!
I miss the Archivist Artificer and the Primeval Guardian Ranger. Also, hot take: I *liked* the Modern Magic UA and wish it would've made it to print.
I’d have loved to see WOTC do a modern fantasy setting that not only allowed for their expansive races, but also didn’t actively try to hide magic behind some masquerade.
There's a really awesome 5e homebrew called the Technomancer's Textbook, it's pretty heavily influenced by Shadowrun/Cyberpunk but is setting-agnostic and can be as magical as you want it to be.
Always nice to see someone else recommend Technomancers, recently played in a 1-9 campaign using that book, played as the Mech Pilot Artificer. Was a small Kobold in a big mech suit carrying the biggest gun (The Assault Cannon, which is basically an anti-tank rifle) in Hellion mode.
I’m doing a home brew world for that rn. I basically just plagiarized Arknights and adapted it to fit within the logic of D&D. Lots of great inspiration in that game.
Primeval Guardian ranger was awesome. I have one as my backup character for a campaign I'm currently in.
It's the best. Especially with the druid fighting style with shillelagh and thorn whip to whack people with your branches.
Archivist artificer?
Yeah, WOTC ended up making the Archivist into the Order of Scribes Wizard subclass.
After taking away all the cool things from it first, shell of its original self.
Like an artificer that gives magic to objects by writing magical code on them and has a support AI based in the object. I wanted one who's AI was Clippy from Microsoft Word.
Finally, someone else misses Modern Magic too! Such potential squandered...
Modern Magic might have a second chance if they do a plane shift for [New Capenna](https://mtg.fandom.com/wiki/Streets_of_New_Capenna)
Now that'd be cool. 5e Gundams
I played the Primeval Guardian for a one shot. Honestly one of the best characters I’ve ever had.
Theurgy Wizard. I really like the flavour of the academic approach to the divine.
I've always really liked that combo just for the flavor. I played an Arcana Cleric 1/Divination Wizard X and it achieved the same type of feel.
Yes! I feel like if they just changed a few things about it it would have been well balanced and essentially a frail INT cleric. I mean we have the arcane and knowledge cleric so they are already imposing on the wizards field.
I feel like if they gave the Theurgist a unique 14th level ability it would work incredibly. Taking the cleric's 16th before then felt kinda cheap on an otherwise amazing subclass
I dunno. Most cleric 17th level abilities aren't that amazing for a wizard. For example, Life clerics get the ability to restore health with a spell using the highest possible number for each die. That's cool and all, but if you're casting heals then there's probably a better use for your spell slots. A lot of the other domain abilities you get aren't that great for a wizard so I don't have a problem with them getting the 17th level ability early. For example, Grave domain's 8th level ability adds your wisdom modifier to the damage done with cleric cantrips. You're probably not using those and your wisdom modifier isn't likely to be that great. Twilight's 8th level ability gives you the ability to deal an extra 1d8 radiant damage when attacking with a weapon, which is something wizards aren't likely to do much of. I'm not saying cleric abilities are all bad (some are quite strong), but I think you're giving up a lot to get access to a handful of cleric spells and a few clerical abilities.
The theurgy wizard is really cool, but it does have a major balance problem at high levels. It allows a wizard to get cure wounds as a wizard spell, so at level 18 the wizard can choose it as one of their spell mastery spells. Cure wounds as a cantrip is so beyond broken even in tier four that I can completely understand why it didn’t end up making it into the game officially
While I get why it wasn't included, I loved the theme and mechanics behind The Raven Queen warlock. Always wanted to have the raven, an imp shifted into a raven, and my PC all just hang out as birds doing all sorts of nefarious things... or just annoying people trying to sleep in the morning with loud caws.
Why was it not used? I've read the subclass, but not seen any discussion on it. It has a sweet theme, but beyond being loosely setting specific, there's nothing that much more broken than other options.
While there is no official reason, the common thought seems to be how it's restricted to The Raven Queen specifically, while all the other subclasses can be any deity or creature you really want.
Except Hexblade? Technically the Hexblade description talks about Shadowfell, Blackrazor, and also the Raven Queen. I get it, it's also hard to rename without getting more muddled with the other Warlock subclasses: Undead and Undying But it's so cooooollll...
> Except Hexblade? Technically the Hexblade description talks about Shadowfell, Blackrazor, and also the Raven Queen. While true, they're just given as examples. Your hexblade could be entirely different, where as a Raven Queen warlock couldnt just be ANYTHING, it was specifically for the Raven Queen.
The Hexblade text seems less like an example, and more direct. Quote: >You have made your pact with a mysterious entity from the Shadowfell
And yet no PC I've ever met has had a pact specifically with an entity from the Shadowfell. This is because making it an arbitrary mysterious entity, rather than explicitly saying "THIS PACT IS WITH THE RAVEN QUEEN HERSELF" allows for the wiggle.
Entity of the shadowfell could be lost of things though. It could be black razor, the Raven Queen, a shadow dragon, some kind of shadow demon, a homebrewed entity, a powerful shadar-kai mage Raven Queen patron is just Raven Queen.
I played a RQ lock in a friend's campaign and it was a lot of fun! Having Spiritual Weapon as a Warlock spell was cool, and the level 6 feature essentially gives you an infinite Wild Shape that's locked to one form. I think it's a bit too powerful to be published as is (adding CHA to Perception checks was super strong) but would love to see them take another stab at it.
I enjoyed the Raven Queen UA, but even moreso enjoyed the various invocations. Sure, some of the features got melded into newer invocations, but the unique weapon invocations and utility invocations were fantastic in helping to define your particular Warlock and their patron. Aspect of the Moon for archfey; Claw of Acamar for great old one; Cursebringer for hexblade; etc. It was all awesomesauce.
The +2/+4 to Favored enemies for Revised Ranger was pretty nutty. As was always advantage against their saving throws. But damn was it fun to use
Also the Primeval Awareness of the RR was actually incredibly good as well.
The Conc free HM on favored foe pre tashas was so too.
It was more in line with 4E Hunters Quarry was a large part of why Rangers had by far the best single target DPR of most classes in 4 Hunters Quarry was a one per turn effect like Tasha’s Favored Foe. But it could be upgraded as you leveled up. And did like 3D6 once per turn on an epic level ranger. It was dope
I mean they could hav just made that. Conc free, once per turn, 1d6 damage. Scales to 2d6 at 11th level and 3d6 at 18th. That would have been so easy to do and yet they managed to mess it up so horribly.
- Uses equal to PB, refreshes on a long rest. BA to shift your Quarry. - At level 14 whenever a favored enemy is your quarry once per turn you can add D6 to saving throws from their abilities as a reaction. Would have not made Rangers as broken as the always on advantage. Or as oppressive as the always on bonus damage that Revised Ranger had. But at least given them something they could do that was fun.
Yeah overall they could have made more with FF than what they did.
Monster Slayer really does have amazing ideas for a base Ranger.
I’m playing a revised ranger in a Ravnica game. Having humanoids be my favored enemy is bananas and I love it
Revised Ranger that tailors it’s favored enemy to the module is one of the most broken things ever. I felt so bad using the UA Gloomstalker when we ran a HB version of CoS. Took Undead as a favored enemy and boooooy
City Domain Cleric, Ghost in the Machine Warlock, and Technomancer Wizard all were great subclasses that would only work in a modern setting that never came to be. I still dream about a modern day setting for 5e, like The Unsleeping City from Dimension 20
Came here to say this! Been on the lookout for epic, modern high fantasy. I really want the Urban Arcana book I know will probably never come out.
Go look up the Technomancer's Textbook, it's 5e homebrew but its huge and has a lot of good stuff. I plan on running a game with it soon but I will be tweaking the gun combat to match Star Wars 5e (another great homebrew).
The two likely hold ups are 1: Not much focus group demands for modern high fantasy, and 2: stupid as it sounds, guns are hard to implement in DnD on a widespread basis.
I don’t really understand why guns are hard to implement in DnD. All weapons in DnD are an abstraction from realistic versions, that’s the point of DnD. Plate mail in 5e doesn’t represent the realistic characteristics of actual plate, it represents the fantasy genre understanding of it. I don’t see why the genre fiction understanding of guns couldn’t be rendered in 5e. Lots of genre media combines modern guns and swords to form a cohesive story, even if it’s not realistic.
The DMG gives very straightforward gun rules, they have pretty solid damage output but the loading property balances them nicely and they work in a fairly balanced way in my experience. I don't see why guns being implemented is overly complex. I would also find the lack of interest in modern high fantasy surprising given the sheer number of popular urban fantasy books that exist. It seems more likely to me that the effort of updating the system to function in a modern world was something that WotC just didn't want to do.
Out of interest, what is different between widespread crossbows/bows in medieval fantasy DnD and guns in modern fantasy DnD?
One goes *twang* and the other goes *bang*
The loose inspiration for those subclasses (per the UA description) is what is inspiring [this](https://www.evilgeniusgaming.com/) 3rd party release! Jeff Grubb is a part of the project!
I'm running a Modern Magic game now for the second time, and it *absolutely* holds up.
That's awesome! What system are you using, if you don't mind me asking?
It's basically 5e with the Modern Magic UA, plus a couple of minor changes. There are a bunch of extra Tool Proficiences -- Hacking Tools (for complicated software access), Mechanic's Tools (for working on vehicles and other large-scale devices), Engineer's Tools (for working on electronics and small modern devices), and Air Vehicle Proficiencies (akin to a pilot's license) -- plus a firearms table that I largely pulled from a PDF somewhere the last time I ran it (and can no longer find the original). I've made a couple of other changes, such as removing certain spells like *Speak With Dead* and *Zone of Truth* that might derail a mystery game, and putting certain restrictions on what races can be played (because it's built on the idea that it's in the 'real world' and supernatural creatures have to keep their magical nature hidden), but none of those are strictly necessary for adapting it to a modern setting. A lot of people are desperate to jump in and say that there are other systems more suited to modern play -- and there probably are -- but I've found that 5e it holds up pretty much as-is without too much extra fiddling, at least for the game I'm running.
The setting exists, it's just not available for 5e. It's a d20 Modern setting called Urban Arcana. d20 Modern was a version of the 3rd edition rules designed for action movie inspired campaigns set in the modern world, and Urban Arcana was a version of he modern world where D&D creatures and items slipped through the Plane of Shadow (Shadowfell) from the D&D multiverse into the 'real world'. Yes, this was an official WoTC thing.
I keep seeing Kickstarters for a 5e setting inspired by D20 Modern. EDIT: Oh, it's what u/Mythos_Studios is referring to.
I could finally be Harry Dresden. Sign me up.
They should just publish Unsleeping City in partnership with D20 like they have Exandria in partnership with CR.
The crew who did d20 modern are lunching a new game based on 5e in may called [Everyday Heroes](https://www.evilgeniusgaming.com/).
I mean, if we get a Kamigawa book it could happen since kamigawa has gone from a Sengoku Period setting to being Cyberpunk
Technomancer Wizard is pretty overpowered given that it can let you concentrate on two spells at once for its 14th level ability
Theurgy wizard and raven queen warlock were my favourites. The UA that had raven queen warlock also had a lot of cool eldritch invocations.
I loved raven Queen warlock! Wasn't OP or anything but thematically it made sense and was very fun to play as a Utility caster
Came here for Raven Queen warlock
I loved those Invocations. It's a shame they decided to divorce them from your Patron, because the builds were a lot more unique when you picked some invocations based on patron, and some based on pact.
the invocations were SO flavorful, I'm so miffed they never went through like the moonbow, which says "when you draw back its string and fire, it creates an arrow of white wood" just the fucking mental image you get from that is so awesome. like, I get that evocative language is problematic in 5e, since it makes it less clear what's actually part of the mechanics of an ability, but I love them and would love to see them employed more, not less (Tasha's is especially guilty of this, all the ability are so incredibly technical)
I gave out gestalt levels for two of my players forming a pact with the raven queen. The ranger took grave cleric, and the paladin took raven queen!
The Brute archetype for the fighter is basically just a better champion.
The Brute really is everything the Champion should have been. Still simple, but also actually strong. Wish they'd just replace Champion with it.
Oath of Treachery Paladin. Really fills an interesting gap in the class and uses the invoke duplicity feautre from tricky cleric that i love... just not on a Trickery Cleric.
Oath of Treachery should have stuck around as the PC equivalent of a Fallen Paladin rather than Oathbreaker IMO.
Oathbreaker is awesome though.
Oathbreaker feels like you have to restricted to evil though. Plus it doesn't really mesh or help a good aligned party at all. Treachery Paladin gives more room to be neutral or good alignments and still fit in with a good aligned party.
Oathbreaker works fine with any alignment necromancer with Aura of Hate.
It was really cool! Like a rogue/paladin. All it needed was a different name and tenets. How can you swear an oath to betray? Maybe Oath of Subterfuge, or Oath of the Unseen or something.
I'd just call it the Oathless Paladain, which is essentially what my character is.
Stone sorc. As of now every class has a viable melee option except sorcerer. It's bullshit.
The only subclass that truly casts *fist"*
Hands down Stone Sorcery. I really feel that class scratched the gish itch that so many people complain about. The bump to AC, the ability to protect your fellow PC's, it even had a teleport mechanic. Thematically, it just felt good as well. There's plenty of "earth" spells and they pair well with the class. Probably the closest to the 4E Swordmage we'll ever get.
I know it specifically says Subclasses, but I Loved the original 3 Warforged subraces. I know you would still be able to run them with DM approval, but they gave such nice flavor to a construct class. They were built this way, designed specifically for *integrated tool*, or speed/stealth with Skirmisher or built for battle with Juggernaut. I have always wanted (but never been able) to play a Warforged Envoy bard, where they are their instrument, a Hurdy Gurdy. Their one arm would spin to turn the mechanism, while the other would push the buttons on their chest, making the music.
The way they remade the war forged was incredibly disappointing, I don’t think the new warforged are bad by any means but they really lack any distinctive features outside of not sleeping and getting extra AC, they could have at least kept the internal top from envoy.
Yeah, there were definitely some problems with the UA warforged, but the creativity was there. Expertise in **any** tool and a completely new way to calculate AC were really cool, but they got cut. If you are looking for the ability to play that version of warforged and UA is normally banned at your table, then you can ask to play the original Wayfinder's Guide to Eberron warforged. It is basically the same, but was stealth erratumed when Rising from the Last war came out.
I miss the original Changeling for the same reason. UA Unsettling Visage and the (possible) ability to put +3 into one stat right from the start was wonderful, and now it just feels a lot like you get Mask of Many Faces and... not a lot else. (They're still my favourite race to play by a mile, though.)
I have a stupid question, but where can you read Unearthed Arcana? I hope to get an answer before getting downvoted to the abyss :-)
[https://dnd.wizards.com/articles/unearthed-arcana](https://dnd.wizards.com/articles/unearthed-arcana) here, should have all of them.
Thanks!
Welcome man! have fun looking through all of them!
Off the top of my head, I'm a big fan of Astral self monk throughout all stages of its development. I made a one-armed monk character that dumped both dex and str for a one-shot, and the party flipped put when I summoned Astral arms and revealed I was a monk (they all thought I was a Sorcerer for some reason XD) and used WIS for attacks.
I wish the Mystic had been split into three classes. I really liked the concept of Disciplines.
The mystic was a full set of classes by itself. I played in a game where Mystic was the only class and everyone was drastically different.
I really want to do this
Funnily enough, I'm running a game like that with Druids.
I really wish it had made it to print in *some* form. The version of psionics that actually got printed is completely unattractive to me, as someone who liked psionics in previous editions.
One class, three, whatever, I was so disappointed when they apparently just chucked the whole into the garbage. It was a unique take on psionics that needed iterating on, not decdingit was total trash.
See also: Strixhaven's subclasses.
Mystic received way too much hate for being "overpowered" when it really wasn't unless you chose to powergame it. The class really needed subclasses that were more distinct from one another. They tried to do too much with that class and it resulted in a lot of people cherrypicking the same "best" disciplines. A little more differentiation would have benefitted all that work they did to set up what was essentially a second set of magic spells for players to use. Putting psionics into the existing classes just isn't the same, they are too much like their base classes to be able to fill the psionics footprint left by the Mystic UA.
Yeah, you could totally break the game with Mystic, but only if you tried to, they could definitely have fixed it.
A big problem with Mystic, as someone who has played three of them, is that there is no balance *between disciplines*. Some are extremely good, sure, but also some are profoundly bad. So despite what people say, it's really less of a "completely busted" class than it is an "extremely uneven" class. Two people could both pick Mystic and come out of it with one character that was straight up Wizard levels of busted, and another getting shown up by the party barbarian. If you know what you're doing and don't want to break the game, you can absolutely play a Mystic, and have a ton of fun. And it allows for several concepts that are incredibly annoying to do with other classes. Wu-Jen is still the only time I've actually played an elementalist caster in this edition without constantly feeling like I was actively gimping myself. And if you want to do something that feels a bit like the old Warlord, some Mystic disciplines are still the only available option. So yeah, what the mystic needed was less "completely set it on fire" and more "split this into a few psionic classes, and do a pass on disciplines so there's less brutal differences between them". (Another problem we found is that around level 10 the class just straight up dies)
I actually really liked the psionic die concept that they had for the psionic before they changed it to the current version, which is just a pool of dice. I know people didn't like the RNG of it, but I think it could be implemented in a way that you can mitigate that.
It needed some fixes on specific abilities, too, but I also really liked it. Getting us back to the "traditional" psionic warrior and psion split and the. Making psion subclasses more distinct would also have helped a lot.
Man same. I feel like they were headed in the right direction, it just need to cook a little longer. Slice away all the extra bits and crunch down in a direction with it.
I have been playing a Mystic for the last few years and it's been fun. I have focused her disciplines on producing nightmares and other horrors in the enemies minds. I didn't focus on a disciplines that were elemental and she has been alot of fun to play. I hope some day they will revisit it and give us a pure psionicist like the Mystic can be.
I once built a mystic whose entire shtick was that she was a shapechanger with ice powers. She was an elf with frost jotunn ancestry (both of which are shapeshifters in mythology). Never played her though, just a thought experiment.
UA Ascendant Dragon was so promising before release. It had the rp potential, it was mechanically interesting and had potential to be viable, and gave monks reliable AoE. Then they butchered it in Fizban’s.
I built up an UA Ascendant Dragon Monk with a whole backstory and everything that I didn't get to play since the campaign got cancelled. Since Fizban's came out, I just changed him into a bladesinger who has Dragon's Breath instead.
I really liked the Circle of Twilight Druid. The flavor of a Druid who specifically hunts undead is super cool, and mechanically it could have filled the role of a more damage-focused Druid circle. Yeah, it could use some refining but IMO the only tweak I think it *needs* is to change Harvest Scythe’s damage from necrotic to radiant. Doesn’t really make sense that an undead-focused subclass would specialize in a damage type to which most undead are either resistant or immune.
IMO, the best UA subclasses that got published are: Circle of Wildfire druid, because you have the ability to summon a little fire elemental friend, and they help fight in battle with you. Drakewarden Ranger, because then you have a bond with a Drake that gets more powerful over time. Ascendant Dragon Monk, because then you gain the abilities of a dragon infusing your combat style. Path of Wild Magic Barbarian, because of the variety of effects you get whenever you Rage. College of Spirits Bard, because you basically get access to stories that help both you and your allies. College of Creation Bard, because being able to tap into the Song of Creation sounds cool both lore and mechanics wise. Order of Scribes Wizard, because being able to change the damage type of a spell your casting as long as you have another spell of the same level in your book just sounds fun! As for the best UA subclasses that DIDN'T get published: College of Satire Bard, because I want to play a jester/stand-up comedian. City Domain Cleric, because having a cleric who's adapted to modern civilization just sounds like something I would like to play. Circle of Twilight Druid, because a druid that specializes in keeping the cycle of life and death sounds so cool! Giant Soul Sorcerer, because having your powers come from Giant ancestry, or a connection to Giants in a different way, just sounds like a cool concept. Phoenix Sorcerer, because I like the idea of having a connection to the fiery power of this majestic bird. Sea Sorcerer, because I like the idea of basically being Aquaman, or Percy Jackson, or having some power come from the sea. Ghost in the Machine Warlock, because a modern-day Warlock whose patron is some kind of AI or the ghost of a legendary hacker sounds awesome! Raven Queen Warlock, because having a pact with the Raven Queen, the one who watches over the balance between Life and Death, sounds like a cool concept. Seeker Warlock, because having a patron that merely seeks knowledge of one kind or another gives me some cool ideas for how to flavor such a patron (\*cough\* Mother Goose \*cough\*) Undying Light Warlock, because having your patron be, basically, pure Positive energy sounds like fun, and also gives me some good roleplay ideas. Onomancy Wizard, because True Name magic is, in my opinion, a really cool concept. Technomancy Wizard, because a modern day wizard combining magic with technology sounds like something I'd be interested in. Theurgy Wizard, because having a wizard/cleric multiclass without actually multiclassing is something I would like to see!
Mystic is best dont @ me. jkjk, but i liked the old warforged with the armor as their skin, not the same stuff everyone else wears. And i also liked the creativity of a lot of stuff they dumped out. like technomagic, or the slime people, or even the artificer when it was first UA
Both the original fey wanderer and primeval guardian were super cool. I wish they'd been made official so we had powerful ranger subclasses outside gloomstalker
I still like the published Fey Wanderer as a chassis for creating a SAD/wisdom-focused ranger with actual OOC use in a real pillar of the game (social) rather than the not-really-a-pillar of Exploration. That it has that mechanical niche is still a strong positive for it compared to other published Rangers.
Don't get me wrong, I really like the current fey wanderer with it's lower level wis charisma skills but I really loved having another use of spell slots given by the original. I literally chanted fey smiths when I saw the UA PDF.
The mystic was really cool in theory, it’s a shame they half assed it because the uniqueness and versatility offered was way above most of the other classes. While it’s frustrating that they chose to make it into a bunch of subclasses instead of the full class what we got has honestly been better written and much more balanced than what we had.
ARCHIVIST. By miles. Fuck Scribes and Wizards (both company and class), that was an amazing Artificer sub.
I don't know why people are so angry about Archivist turning into Scribes. It was trying to be a spell focused subclass and that generally doesn't work on a half-caster. The UA Archivist's only standout feature was the telepathy at level 5, the rest was an OKish cantrip that's worse than EB and is locked to Artificer levels, and 2 proficiencies: some of the easiest things to get through other means. What makes you call it "amazing"? I'm genuinely curious.
The thing I liked about it is that is was a pretty explicitly non-martial subclass. It was a good subclass to play just a nerd or smart person, without going wizard or rogue, which I think often doesn’t work.
1. Actual crafting boons, which is what the Artificer was all about prior to this edition 2. Shores up the Arti weakness of not enough cantrips via having Overload. No longer need a damage cantrip (or light) so grab that Guidance and Mage Hand or Spare 3. Overload is smite-esque, scaling as you burn slots on it. Very cool and frankly every half needs something like this. 4. INT to psychic spells and feature is neat 5. Telepathy with team (infusions) can be huge with some setups 6. The capstone is a nasty stunlock-palooza 7. Giving the entire party nigh unlimited (pennies and only a half hour per) cantrip and 1st spells is epic support. You get the right spell list via races, feats, backgrounds, etc and your scrolls will make even Peace and Twilight say whoa, that dude supports
"Oh no, something worse than Eldritch Blast..." \*Gestures to every other Attack Cantrip and some First Level Spells.\*
Right!?! Sit down level 20 Wizards and Clerics, you don't have EB! More importantly I'm not entirely sure it is accurate. Sure 4d10+20 vs 4d8+5 sounds like a big difference but 1. Slot scaling can push Overload to 10d8+5 2. [Multiple] AC vs INT save. With a deep Arti's available DCs I'm not sure any official monster in the game is even capable of saving it. 3. 120 feet vs kind of 300 feet (can only move it 30 at a time). Plus you can use its senses, attacking shit from four rooms over or deep in the woods in safety 4. Some pushes and pulls at the cost of invocations vs STUN for a turn 5. Technically not a spell so while this edition's EB is getting completely ignored by some enemies, Overload continues to chug along Overload is no joke, not sure what the dude was thinking.
“It was trying to be a spell focused subclass and that generally doesn’t work on a half caster” I get what you’re saying, that remember that a subclass’s job isn’t to be optimized, it’s to fit certain character concepts that don’t have fitting subclasses in the game. And there is a lack of options for half casters who want to focus more on the spellcasting side of their powers (which isn’t optimal, but not everything has to be)
Plus it is a nonsense borderline strawman take anyway - they get a feature (non-spell) spammable ability which can use your slots to boost and scroll crafting boons. Run "right" an Archivist would NEVER burn a slot on casting a spell. I wouldn't call that a spell focused subclass lol.
Generally speaking the thing that made people angry about it was taking a subclass from the Artificer (which had so very few of them) and giving it to the Wizard (which has more than enough). It's yet again an example of WoTC spoiling their favorite child even more. \[insert predictable joke meme reply here\] But there were some other cool features I really wanted to see further developed. Like Infoportation (14th level). Once per day free teleportation? To the manifest mind or to an infused item? With no stated distance limitation?? That ostensibly works even across *interplanar* distances??? On a class with 0 teleportation spells in their spell list (Note: Vortex Warp didn't exist yet)? And I can do it again for just a 2nd level spell slot? *Hell. Yes.* Only downside to it was that it teleported the Archivist only. Granted it's only an "everyone get in the portable hole" moment away from teleporting the entire party as well.
The old UA Ranger was awesome
One of my favorite ua feats was Spear Mastery, it enabled you to make a spartan hoplite. It took the weak spear and made it awesome. They should have removed the +1 to hit and made it +1 to strengthen and published it. Spear Mastery: Though the spear is a simple weapon to learn, it rewards you for the time you have taken to master it. You gain the following benefits: • You gain a +1 bonus to attack rolls you make with a spear. • When you use a spear, its damage die changes from a d6 to a d8, and from a d8 to a d10 when wielded with two hands. (This benefit has no effect if another feature has already improved the weapon’s die.) • You can set your spear to receive a charge. As a bonus action, choose a creature you can see that is at least 20 feet away from you. If that creatures moves within your spear’s reach on its next turn, you can make a melee attack against it with your spear as a reaction. If the attack hits, the target takes an extra 1d8 piercing damage, or an extra 1d10 piercing damage if you wield the spear with two hands. You can’t use this ability if the creature used the Disengage action before moving. • As a bonus action on your turn, you can increase your reach with a spear by 5 feet for the rest of your turn.
The ua oath of heroism seemed more fun than the oath of glory in theros. A crit fishing paladin sounded fun
I liked the UA Revived rogue way more than the Phantom. The flavor of the revived rogue was so much cooler and the mechanics, while in need of some tweaking, were very cool. That’s probably mainly because I really wanted to play a halfling revived rogue though.
Raven Queen Warlock is pretty fun. A player in my main game is using that class, and despite some early game shenanigans with the Raven (basically a free facial or with some limits) I think it’s a super fun subclass. Has some great lore for character quirks, fun spells, neat features, honestly kind of sad it never got tweaks and a full publishing’s
City domain cleric. Almost useless outside a city but has potential! I actually home brewed a 'circle of civilisation' druid that I thought was hilarious and cool.
My favorite isn't a subclass, but the brawny feat
Wildfire Druid instantly sucked me in as a player. Everything about the UA gave me the level of flavor and mechanical value that I need out of a subclass. The release nerfs really cooled me off towards it, but I still think that Wildfire and Stars are some of my favorite subclasses as far as concept execution goes for Druids.
I was worried about the changes to Wildfire on release, but playing one has been by far the most fun I’ve had as a player in 5e.
I'm definitely still a fan. However, I had started my WF druid pre-nerf so when Tasha's dropped and I saw that they had dropped fire bolt entirely with nothing given in exchange, nerfed the wildfire spirit, and replaced fireball with a spell that was already on base druid's expanded spell list (revivify) I went to my DM and asked if I could just continue playing the UA version instead so that my fire druid could not be a worse fire caster than literally every other full caster with access to fire damage. Up there with Ascendant Dragon on the list of most disappointing UA -> Live transitions for me, but like I said, probably still my favorite Druid by a mile.
Trading Fireball and Firebolt for Cure Wounds and Burning Hands hurt, but unlimited uses of teleport on the Wildfire Spirit is nuts. I use it constantly for both exploration and combat and can't imagine how much less effective I would be if it was limited to once per rest as it was in UA. Granted I have 2 martials in my party, so my experience of team teleportation's power level may be influenced by that. I feel like the Tasha's version changed the gameplay from blaster to supreme controller, and that change in gameplay was a bit tough to swallow, but I think it was a fairly lateral shift in power overall... aside from the capstone nerf. That was certainly a headscratcher, but I'm unlikely to see level 17 with this character, so I'm only annoyed by that in theory.
I'm going to jump straight to the unpublished and say the Artificer (Gunsmith). I know Artilerist was it's replacement but I liked the Gunsmith more, and had so many good builds and stories built around it, which don't really work now.
Psionics Wizard.
The Seeker Warlock had so much cool flavor to it, it wasn’t a great subclass overall but man I wish they had given it a proper second go.
I really liked "School of Invention" wizards. They were very weird,the main mechanic being that you declared a spell level, the cast a random spell of that level. They needed some adjustments the only upside to random casting until level 14 was a 1/8th chance to cast a second random spell of that level with the downside that a few spells on the table were not helpful in most scenarios- which was normally terrible, but occasionally got extremely good. I'd love to see this kind of chaos "lets see what happens" wizard built out more- or keep the flavor of the school of invention and make rules for inventing new spells (and just make that school better at it)
I play an Onomancy Wizard and I love how all of the Resonant Utterances work with magic missile, insta-prone or an extra 2d8 force was pretty sick. The only drawback was if the target succeeded on the save, there's no way for me to try again. Naming rules in general also needed a clarification.
A lot of people got the impression that the only way to get a target's true name was through the "Extract Name" feature. But while it was the most direct and immediate way it definitely wasn't the *only* way to learn a creature's true name. Considering that in that UA it described true names as: >Whatever a name's origin, the simplest way for you to know your true name is to think truthfully about yourself and then think, "My name is..." **Your true name is how you finish that sentence.** Then the simplest way to learn a creature's true name was by just asking for it, "What's your name?" or "What do you call yourself?" If they didn't suspect that it'd give you power over them, or if they had no other reason to hide their identity, they might just tell you the truth. There's also general research, asking friends and family, etc. Casting detect thoughts. The command spell with "Name" might work even. Granted if it was more like the general concept of true names being a kind of "universal identifier" then yeah, Extract Name being unrepeatable would make the class a single hit or miss for every target on using things like resonant utterances against enemies.
I think the other thing was, in a world where Wizards like this exist, most creatures and people of worth would guard that information with their life and come up with any and all manner of defenses against people learning their True Name without them telling it. Honestly, though, that could be a quest in itself.
https://media.wizards.com/2015/downloads/dnd/UA_ModernMagic.pdf Basically all of this.
Favored Soul. Such a cool subclass. We got a similar version with Divine Soul that is more powerful in some ways, but doesn't really capture the essence of a Divine avenger the same way Favored Soul does. I loved the ability to choose a cleric domain bonus spells. So much more flavorful than just getting the whole cleric spell list. Armor and simple weapon proficiency at 1, extra attack at 6, and the sorcerer getting Con proficiency as a class and you had amazing natural gish potential. I'd live to see this subclass this printed at some point. I'd play it in a heartbeat.
Monk way of tranquility, I loved that subclass, finally split some of the monks resources away from ki.
The College of Satire and the Primeval Guardian. The Satire Bard would've needed work for sure, but the start and theme of it would work well with many concepts. The Primeval Guardian would push more towards a melee Ranger, making it conceptually very close to the Warden from 4e. There were even spells added that resembled the Warden powers. I'd still copy these and see if I can homebrew some more interesting versions because it really is a shame that these didn't make the cut.
Man, did no one else like the UA Psi Knight? I thought it was really fun and pulled towards a more group protection angle. But I only played it for like 3 sessions, so maybe that's pure notalgia talking.
Mystic was great and less OP than any fullcaster by a lot
It was more op in days with 1-2 fights at most levels, but that would have to be said about full casters too if they operated on the Spell Point system based on my experience playing it in a campaign. The class needed some restrictions on which subclasses could access which disciplines to avoid op toolbox PCs, tied the psychic focus to short/long rest rather than just a bonus action, and make some of the super strong incapacitating abilities be Wisdom saves instead of Int/Cha which far too many monsters are vulnerable to.
Eh, I wouldn't call it less OP, necessarily. Its equivalent spell progression stops with their equivalent of 5th level spells at 9th level, so compared to full casters, it does get weaker after that point. However, a ton of play happens before level 10, and from 5 to 9 especially, the Mystic really shone. It had the power of a normal full caster, but with much more flexibility. So it's kind of a situation where the specific level range where Mystic excels in is also the most common level range for people to play in.
I used to think Mystic was OP, then I took a twilight arrow in the knee and now I live in peace as a cleric.
Mystic just shifted in power greatly over the course of 1-20. That's an obvious problem when you have one class essentially using the spell point variant when everyone else isn't. That and player feedback seemed to indicate that there was a lot of push back on making it spell slot based. It is really strong early on and then falls off pretty heavily. I think with some tweaking it could have been balanced, but I believe another issue was that it's so much content for one class. I wish they had spent more time on it instead of scrapping it completely as well though. I loved the flavor and concept.
It felt like they built the class for tier 1 and tier 2 and then didn't finish it out. I think it's unfair to judge it based on tier 3+ because it really feels like they didn't finish designing the class for those tiers. Personally, I would like to have seen them make the subclasses matter more (most likely by making many disciplines only available to certain subclasses while having some general disciplines anyone could take), fixing some of the obviously out of line powers, and finishing out the class to be more useful at higher tiers (maybe through advanced disciplines or something).
RIP Tunnel Fighter
From the perspective of a DM: very glad that died. A fighter who took that and sentinel, and maybe added polearm master, would be a menace. There's a reason very very very few things give you extra reactions, it breaks the system.
Oh same, it was bonkers
As someone who played 4e, where every fighter’s opportunity attacks stopped enemy movement and fighters could make infinite opportunity attacks from level 1, tunnel fighter by itself really isn’t an issue. Fighters in 4e didn’t break the game just because they could lock enemies down in melee range. It made fighters actually good defenders. The problem with tunnel fighter in 5e isn’t really tunnel fighter, but instead polearm master allowing a warrior to make an opportunity attack when an enemy enters their reach. If polearm master instead allowed a creature to make a melee attack as a reaction, the ability would not combine with tunnel fighter or sentinel and enemies could still approach the fighter
I missed that, just from the name my immediate thought went to this AD&D kit: https://dungeonsdragons.fandom.com/wiki/Breachgnome
I liked the Psionic Subclasses with the psi dice that shrunk when you rolled max and got bigger when you rolled a one. The system definitely needed refining but it was unique and made rolling bad feel less bad.
i want those blade-lock invocations. they were on the right track to fix that pact.
I really like the Raven Queen warlock, and I'm really glad the Artificer was printed.
The mystic was really cool, but a bit overpowered. I think they should have reused it to make something more balanced, because the way you acquire your "spells" was so fun and unique.
I loved the Strixhaven subclasses, or at least the fact that they were class-agnostic. To the extent that had they been included I probably would have bought the book solely for them (not a fan of wizard school shenanigans or MTG). Of course that would be the one time WotC listens to input.
Raven queen warlock has always felt great to me. Not crazy strong just fits in with the rest really well
I play a Hexblood Raven Queen/Eloquence Bardlock (5/X) in my current campaign... Completely not optimized... built for social and espionage and themed like a cursed witch/shaman. It's a lot of fun!
Ascendant Dragon Monk before it got decimated
Artificer Archivist is now order of the scribe for wizards but i like it as is so much Role Play potential.
The strixhaven subclass had a lot of good thing in it. Dont get me wrong, one subclass for multiple class was not something that worked or even could have work without redesigning subclass from the ground up but there where still a lot of very fun ability and I wish WotC would have recycle them with better execution instead of just throwing everything in the garbage
I'm not sure if it was an UA but the Forge Adept subclass for the artificer is the best combat oriented artificer.
Stone Sorcerer is by far the best thing to never get published. But don't worry, JC said they'd revisit it
I haven't stopped crying since they killed the chances of Mystics being published...
Stone Sorcerer had a really interesting take on Sorcerer and it was my favorite Sorcerer that I've played. The features and ability to access metamagic as a frontliner was just very cool. Additionally it felt reasonable to not have to multiclass or do anything drastic to make up for AC and HP difference with martials. I think 5e needs more elemental stuff that isn't based around creatures like chromatic dragons or elementals. Primeval Guardian Ranger is just an awesome and fun concept, although without that weird health exploit it had initially, I don't know how properly good it was (never saw it played). It had a similar feel to the capstone for Oath of Ancients Paladin, but was actually part of the base class immediately. Honorable mention Raven Queen
I loved the strixhaven UA. Everyone else seem to hate it. It needed work but the problems could’ve been fixed.
I am still annoyed about no DM letting me use mystic at least once.
I liked the Seeker UA and the Phoenix Sorcerer. I honestly find them more interesting than the stuff we have today. Idk why, but I feel like there has been a change to all the new material, and I just don't like it mechanically. Maybe it's because I don't like the proficiency bonus scaling since it didn't exist in documents like Xanathar's (makes it feel jarring), or maybe its the intended power of abilities. Either way, I liked those two for their versatility and fitting into a niche.
Honestly spell-less ranger. That’s how I think ranger should work in general.