Unearthed Arcana 8/1/18 - Three Subclasses
Unearthed Arcana is the official Dungeons & Dragons playtest material written by Mike Mearls and Jeremy Crawford. Successful materials make their way into new products after playtesting and revision, we saw this with the wonderful Xanathar's Guide to Everything. The only thing to note is that Unearthed Arcana isn't Adventurers League legal. Let's see what we can sink our teeth into.
We have three new subclasses: The Druid Circle of Spores, The Brute Fighter Archetype and the School of Invention Arcane Tradition.
The Circle of Spores explores the link between life and death and how life comes from death. It is design space that needed exploring and is treated with a logical and non-judgemental flavour. Necromancers get looked down upon but the Circle of Spores see themselves as true recyclers and are similar to the Golgari in Magic the Gathering.
Mechanically they gain new spells that are from the school of necromancy but are considered Druid spells to them. The Circle Features feel fresh and innovative with Halo of Spores dealing poison damage to a creature near you. At sixth level you gain the ability to reanimate a humanoid corpse as a 1HP zombie which is fun and tenth sees you gain an area attack spore. At fourteenth level you get a ridiculous ability that means you can't be blinded, deafened, frightened, poisoned or take extra damage from criticals against you! To me the most interesting ability is Symbiotic Energy, it allows you to trade a Wild Shape for temporary hit points, doubling of your Halo damage and a d6 extra poison damage to melee attacks.
I really like this subclass and I hope it gets published.
Next up is The Brute. It feels like The Fighter Archetype trying to steal some of the Barbarian's design space. It's a more damage, more rolling subclass.
Mechanically you are a damage machine, adding an additional dice to your damage rolls which scales with your level. At seventh level you become harder to kill as you can add a d6 to saving throws including Death Saves. At eighteenth level you regain HP at the beginning of each of your turns up to half your HP maximum... you're a poor man's Wolverine.
The Brute is a damage sponge and a damage dealer but it just feels bland. Maybe it's my bias but it doesn't excite me and could get a little complicated with additional dice rolls and more complicated criticals.
Finally we have The School of Invention. It looks about as much fun as you can have with your clothes on!
This school is at the bleeding edge of magic, learning it's secrets and pushing the boundaries. Others in the magic world think you're insane as you've left their safe little box and doing the real work.
You gain two tool proficiencies which is fine. What drew me in was the armour, wizards are squishy and this piqued my interest. What kept me was the mechanics.
At second level you get Reckless Casting which you roll on a random spell table with the possibility for a two for one or a fizzle. If you couldn't choose the spells you cast and could only cast randomly I'd say that this was bad but you either go on or off book. At sixth level you can change the element of damage your spell does by expending a first level spell slot, this means you get around resistances and the like. You can beef up a spell to do 2d10 force damage by expending a second level slot too. At tenth level you get to change a prepared spell in the heat of battle as a bonus action... brilliant. Finally at fourteenth level if you expend a spell slot you can roll on the table above the slot you used.
The school of Invention is nutterbutters, there's lots of options and I love it.
Have a play around with these and let Wizards (and me) know how you get on.
May you roll well!
