Psychic Warrior (Darth Vader?) explained by Jeremy Crawford – Unearthed Arcana

November 25, 2019Zoltar Leave a comment

Do you want to feel a little like Darth Vader in your D&D game? Then the Psychic Warrior might be for you! @ToddKenreck asks @JeremyECrawford all about the latest fighter UA subclass just released! https://t.co/jO6Tj018jq

— D&D Beyond (@DnDBeyond) November 25, 2019

Interested in some of our thoughts behind the material in today's Unearthed Arcana? Lead #dnd Rules Designer @JeremyECrawford sits down with @ToddKenreck to talk about the Psychic Warrior and our approach to psionic powers in 5e. https://t.co/ZEASyvRnlk pic.twitter.com/zTRHLOKsIa

— Dan Dillon 👥 (@Dan_Dillon_1) November 25, 2019

Player’s Handbook Variants explained by Jeremy – Unearthed Arcana

November 15, 2019Zoltar Leave a comment

THIS IS A AN AUTOMATIC CAPTION TEXT from YouTube, so it’s not “perfect”. My advice is to use it just to help people like me that are not english speaking, to understand the Video/Podcast all right hello welcome to another dragon plus a live stream I am your host as always Bart carolyn with me as he is every other week thankfully is jeremy crawford lead designer of the players handbook and lead rules designer of Dungeons & Dragons hello everyone I almost waved too soon that was a wait he’s still introducing me yes I am cause we are going to be covering the most recent unearthed Arcana for the class feature variance which has a wealth a trove of material to talk through so we’re gonna dive right into it really quickly I will just say at 2 p.m. look forward to beyond heroes and for everyone participate in an extra life we’re an hour event at Seattle Children’s Hospital on Saturday from 12:00 to 3:00 so if you tuned in or participated or spread the word thank you sooo so much thank you so yes if you do have questions for a class feature variance please do put them in chat preface them in question you might want to if you haven’t already printed out your own copy of unearthed Arcana it’s also available on the DMV website download it now and you might want to follow along as we’ve got a lot to cover so we have if I am correct in my number a ssin 12 classes would you like to discuss them in order chat choice or roll a d20 a so I I think we should let this died to side but we’ll roll it will tell us which class to go to first yeah before we go to that class I’d love to talk really quickly about the one feature that’s here for every class okay and I’ll talk a little bit about the the article as a whole sort of what what’s the thought process behind it alright let’s see 9 9 that is the rogue the rogue whoo the road is a juicy place to start so this honor Arkana is unlike the ones we’ve done recently and in fact the son Arthur Kahn is unlike any on earth or Cana we’ve ever done in that it provides class feature variants for every class in The Player’s Handbook this is actually an approach I told the community we were going to explore and I think probably two years ago or more I mentioned that we were exploring the possibility of alternative class futures and here they are now I remember that so yes promise fulfilled yes yes we sometimes we sometimes work in what I think of as a battleship time and what I mean by that is battleships sometimes take a long time to turn but we get there particularly because we’re often working on multiple books at once yes also doing a game mechanic experiments like what you see here in this on earth Arcana so finally it’s day has come and what we wanted to do is let people experience classes that they already like in new ways say you love playing a cleric you love playing a rogue or you know whatever class it is that your favorite you’ve played a bunch of them over the last five years and you’d love to return to the class but with with at week maybe two two weeks maybe three depending on the class since each class gets a sort of variable number of variants in this article so really it’s a new way for you to engage with your class all of that said an important thing to clarify is first off like all in Earth Arcana this is play test material yes it’s not an official part of the game if it does become an official part of the game as we say in the article it’s up to each dungeon master how much if any of this they would like to make available at their table my recommendation for this kind of thing is DMS talk with your players see what they want and if they’re all like yeah let’s do it then you know let them go wild with this material you might have some players who really don’t want to be bothered with considering something outside players handbook or maybe one other book like Zenith ours guide to everything and the thing is that’s okay you don’t actually need everyone at a table to adopt these options because remember this is a co-op game it’s okay if people are sort of pulling from different pools of options for this game because ultimately the characters are all there to support each other I because someone might have anxiety that oh my gosh my character took one of these new versatility options but Jane she didn’t want those options for her character is my character unbalanced relative to hers it’s a co-op game your characters aren’t in competition with each other if Jane doesn’t want the option Jane’s character is balanced in that Jane is getting the experience she wants that’s that’s the important thing to remember with options like this it it we have designed them so that they can be basically turned on altogether or just maybe one or two of them get turned on by the diem and maybe for some of the players but then other players might say no thanks flexibility is really the name of the game here okay so speaking of flexibility yes we have a feature that we included for every class in the game if you want to turn it on it’s called proficiency versatility and versatility is a word that’s going to come up a lot in our talk today because again a big thrust of this is let’s give people options proficiency versatility is for any of you out there who’s made you’ve made a character you get up to fourth level eighth level some later level and you realized I have never used this history skill or I thought my character was going to be an investigator but I took my character in another direction and have not really leaned on my investigation skill or the campaign has gone slightly different or you could even have somebody who maybe you had their backstory they were a circus performer and so you gave them proficiency in acrobatics but in play you might have decided your care has become bookish maybe a little bit of a couch potato and you don’t have any use for acrobatics people change we we change I am not as slim as I used to be and so to represent those sorts of transformations you can if you turn on this option let one of your skill proficiencies go away and then adopt a new one in its place this as we say in the description represents you letting one of your skills atrophy as you pick a new skill proficiency now we have tied this to when you get the ability score improvement feature partly because skill proficiency represents often an investment of training of practice and so it felt narrative ly a little odd if we say let you do this every time you leveled up okay so we decided let’s instead tie this to your ability score improvements which are already representing a possible sort of more holistic improvement of your character seemed like a perfect time in your characters narrative arc and also in your game mechanical arc to make these sorts of adjustments I also wanted us to tie it to ability score improvement for another very purposeful reason and that is classes that get more ability score improvements get more options to swap things out which we want we want classes like the fighter to have a bit more flexibility here than say a class that gets fewer ability score improvements because versatility is an element that we highlight a bit more in some classes over others all right shall we jump to the road let’s jump to the road so yes again we’re looking at the on earth or can a class feature variants you can download this now from the DMV website so proficiency versatility available for all the classes we rolled our D 12 we came up with the rogue and what what new variants are available for the road the rogue gets one new variant and it is as I like to say it is a juicy one the rogue’s variant is the option again if it gets turned on in your game to be able to use your cunning action to take a new sort of special kind of action that we call aim for those of you who’ve played a rogue you know that cunning action lets you hide disengage – and then some of our subclasses add additional options for your cunning action this is adding the ability to aim to the suite of options and really aim is is a way for a rogue who might be locked in melee combat with somebody or who is ensconced in a sniper position to give themselves advantage on their next attack role there’s a cost though the cost is you can’t have moved before you aim and once you aim your speed is dropped to zero for the rest of your turn so you’ve got to be committed to staying put to line up your shot right this has several effects one it’s a pretty straightforward way for a road to set up their sneak attack sneak attack requires you either to have advantage on your attack role or for you to be attacking somebody who is adjacent to one of your friends because you have those two ways of setting up your sneak attack most rogues are able to sneak attack almost every time they attack and that’s by design we we expect rogues to be able to sneak attack almost all the time yes and we also expect rogues to you know when they need to to hide and whatnot but sometimes a rogue has no place to hide they have nobody’s helping them set up their shot and so the rogue here gets to set it up themselves but it’s dangerous rogues can be a little squishy and so if you decide to stay but that might mean that ogre is running you down so you know this is it gives a nice choice the other twist I love with this is it also gives you the ability to essentially scrub disadvantage off you because also one of the rules of sneak attack is let’s say you don’t have advantage and you’re attacking somebody who’s next to one of your buddies you can sneak attack them unless you have disadvantage on your attack role by aiming you can get rid of disadvantage because for everyone who who doesn’t remember if you have both advantage and disadvantage as my quest they cancel each other out so then you have neither some people sometimes people get confused and they think you have both at the same time in it it’s impossible I’m going to roll three dies so yeah in in the rules there’s no such thing as having both disadvantage and advantage if you have any number of instances of advantage versus any number of instances of disadvantage they cancel each other out one instance of disadvantage would cancel out a million instances of advantage and vice versa so again one option for the rogue but it’s juicy how about you roll notice all right class we do next let’s move them go on to another d12 role really quickly while we are rolling I did want to mention as we spoke quickly off-air ever on rising from the last war releases very very soon so will most likely talk about that in our next dragon plus I look forward to it yes oh and we’ve got to raffles we’ll be doing today one for a copy of dungeon mayhem and because it is also releasing shortly one for a copy of Dungeons & Dragons at force versus Rick and Morty fantasy role-playing adventure I think I’m a Googler II required this it’s an ID you’ve got to re-roll Motorola yes it’s gonna be nines all the way down 11 so that is the my class the Warlock whoo the Warlock okay the Warlock gets a number of fun new options to play with in on earth Arcana starting off with a feature called spell versatility remember I said you’re gonna hear that word versatility a lot yes very thematic to the variants today yeah so what this feature is gonna let the warlock do is whenever they finish a long rest they get to replace one spell that they learn from their pack magic feature with another spell from the warlock spell list the new spell must be the same level as the spell they replace so here’s the context for this warlocks are what people sometimes refer to as a spells known class this is as opposed to the classes that prepare their spells each day those classes the sort of the main representatives of that family of spell casters being the cleric the druid and the wizard paladins can also prepare their spells but then then you have classes like the Warlock and the ranger who really have a in the sorcerer who have a list of spells they know that they go back to over and over again and they can only swap out one of those spells when they level up and then when they do that swap out it can be for any spell from their list that they’re capable of casting so this gives a new option it is when you finish a long rest you also get to swap out one but it has to be the same level as the spell your swapping out so not quite as much flexibility as when you level up but it gives you at least a little bit of flexibility and the reason why we’re introducing this to see what people think is we know that many people will make basically a spell selection and then have buyer’s remorse yes and and and take it as a warlock yes oh you have experienced this buyer’s remorse well it and I think that it gets to the heart of why is the versatility is there are a great many of fun fun options in the game and locking into any one of them that’s your character and being able to move the parts along the way try out a new thing along the way that is just great that it just gives you more this has nothing to do with my analogy but there’s more crayons in your boxes I like that analogy it was for Emma’s adventure here but so I am I wouldn’t say completely flakey where if I get bored with a character I’ll want to have it die so I can make it a new one but I have been known to have that thought process where like okay well I’ve now played with all the tricks that this character can do maybe I want a completely but no no if my character now has added options that gives them a longevity of interest to me and that that’s exactly what we’re shooting for because and here’s another dimension to this one of the reasons why I would love to see this get embraced and make it into the game officialy is as we’ve seen over the last five years people loving fifth edition playing you know countless campaigns of it one thing that’s very clear is every group levels up at a different rate meaning in some groups you might gain new levels rapidly and if you’re playing a spell’s known class like the warlock you might get to swap out your spell’s pretty often like the wait in a particular campaign might not be very long right but we know there are other groups where the satisfaction in their campaign is usually centred on narrative goals character development some groups actually don’t like getting up to the high levels and they really slow down advancement so they’re they get to stay in sort of their sweet spot yes I don’t want those groups to be punished because the flexibility mechanic that we put into their class relies on them leveling up this provides another way for a group that might not level up very often to give spells known characters a little more flexibility so that they’re not waiting you know potentially three to five months of real time before they finally get to get that spell that they regret taking off their spell list and a lot of it is while we were and campaign against frost giants but now we’ve moved on to fire giants so you know at what point do the if I can modify what my character can bring to the adventure accordingly at a much greater rate my character becomes more useful to me and I’ve got a bit more of a loving feeling towards it yeah yeah well and one other thing and I’m spending a little time on spell versatility because we’ll actually come across it in several of the other classes yes it’s not just a warlock option I’ve noticed some concern online and it’s even a concern we discussed on the design team of questioning does this step on the toes of classes like the cleric the druid and the wizards sure the the spells prepared classes paladin as well part of their stick is every day they get to prepare their list of spells yes here’s the thing they get to change their entire list of spells every day right so letting another class swap out one spell really is not undermining the feel of those classes or their flexibility they still have a flexibility that is you know above and beyond this this again I see a sort of a mercy particularly for a group where leveling up does not happen very often well I support an endorsed of this spell versatility well because maybe this will cause you to stop throwing your warlocks off cliffs and seeking some quick end so you can make Mike Merle’s about that I had a back channel of conversations like just which by the way I we’ve talked about on this show before I fully support people retiring characters when they want when they want to stay in the current campaign but maybe try something else all right that spell versatility for the war like what else can we talk about for the Warlock okay so the Warlock also gets something that you’ll see in several of the other spell casting classes as well and that is a list of additional spells to add to that they’re their class spell list so again some additional flexibility in some cases these are spells that we we sort of think of as like huh we probably should have had them there a first place and then other others are just sort of fun experiments to see well what would happen if a class suddenly got access to these spells what I wanted to jump ahead to is the warlock also gets something people have been asking for for the warlock for a while and that is a new pact boon option warlocks in The Player’s Handbook have the pact of the chain they have the pact of the blade and then they also have the pact of the tome those three are joined here by the pact of the talisman this pact along with the eldritch invocations the new ones in this document that support it is all about defensive options and also helping your companions this was a sort of a realm ice play style that we wanted to explore in the warlock because we already in the warlock do a good job of offensive abilities trixie abilities beguiling abilities whereas we have not provided many options for the warlock players who would like to be a more sort of support character may you know making their group more resilient increasing the group’s survivability that kind of thing so if you look at the various talisman options you’ll see that together they they create this network of aid to a group my favorite being that if you take one of these invocations your talisman warlock can literally save your companions life because if they have signed their name on the magic on this oh I’m sorry that’s pact of the tome no the talisman ones again lots of protection miles so we also have some info locations for the pact of the tome my favorite one there is the one where they signed their names and and literally are prevented from dying because we also wanted to explore some of these support options in the pact of the tome so pact of the tome gets some new invocations pacted the chain gets one which makes your familiar a little more combat ready by allowing you to have it attack with its bonus action that’s my pack yeah so there you go pacted the tome is going to be much better now at also making a concentration saving throws so you were referencing gifted the protectors yes the pact for the impact of the tongue together so this one is the ability as you were talking about to literally save a companions yes if their name is signed in your book of shadows and they drop to 0 hit points the book will cause it so that they drop to one hit point instead but this can happen only once per day so watch out if you have if you have a member of your group who likes to like your warlock oral themself off a cliff and waste and waste the life-saving power of your book of shadows I kind of like the the flavor of it where you can magically erase a name from your book as well so you can be on the naughty list or the nice list that’s right yes actually in fact you can imagine this you could play Santa Claus the warlock whose Book Of Shadows is the naughty and nice list yes I I fully endorsed this character concept is someone make Santa the warlock with the out of the tome yes I would love to see any variety of Santa as various figures how those would play out yes I can go a number of ways yeah more like certainly one of them yeah yeah so the Warlock I could honestly talk about every single one of these invocations excitedly because I’m excited about every single one of them but we’re already 30 minutes and we have only 10 more to go so please though people send us your they don’t have any questions or comments about particular invocations also we will on our website have a survey soon please let us know what you think your feedback is vital as we decide where to go next with these variants hmm all right should we roll the die here for our next class 3 3 is the cleric all right our friend the cleric at least you hope you hope the cleric is your friend it’s so that they might help keep you alive yes and I see another versatility coming up that’s right here is that word again versatility but instead of having spell versatility that feature which clerics don’t need because I already mentioned they prepared their spells every day they have one now called cantrip versatility so far in fifth edition if you pick a cantrip you are stuck with it now many DMS will allow players to change elements on their character sheet yes but we wanted to explore having an official way to do it yes and so clerics now whenever they gain a level in their class can swap out one of their cleric can turrets for another cleric can trip again gives a little bit of flexibility you might have your character concept might have been I was a wagon you know a wagon mender and I had my mending cantrip but I’ve never used it yes I would really love to have light instead it’s time to clean out the closet I never wear this that’s right this is this is so you can sort of invite Marie Kondo into your character sheet um think the thing that might have brought to you some fun and say goodbye to it as you invite something else onto your character sheet and there is something to what you said at the beginning there it you always want a friendly cooperative relationship with the dungeon master and the players but it is nice where certain changes like that aren’t dependent on DM Fiat it’s it’s baked in where oh okay I officially am sanctioned to be able to mix and match a bit along the way exactly and we also though you’ll notice we don’t say change all your cameras this one right I’m you level up the reason for that is we want to provide some additional versatility while at the same time acknowledging some stability in your character is important just for the sake of your characters identity yes so that there is a sense of this is the still the same person right but again with a little release valve so you can change something because part of the reality is part of us being authentic people in our world is we all change yes we have we have abilities that atrophy I used to be able to play the piano I used to be able to read music anytime now I look at and look at music I’m like wow I I have completely like yeah I were a D&D character I have lost my proficiency with reading music and playing the piano it came up in the Goonies she had to remember her piano Alice yes from way back when yes I had trombone lessons from junior high there’s no way that would work out anymore yeah Marie Kondo she doesn’t say throw it all away and start from scratch no keep those things that give you joy yes and then say goodbye to the things that and thank them right to the things that might have brought you joy I don’t anymore this can’t rip will now go to a new spellcaster that’s right joy yes because I can guarantee you there is a player out there who is loving the mending can trip so mending is not its feelings will not be hurt say goodbye to it I bet especially in the next week with the release of a Barone rising from the last war there will be many artificers happy to give that mending cantrip new life all right so the cleric gets also a new spell options including a few smite sand auras from the Paladin spell list the reason for this is some cleric players like to conceive of their cleric as sort of a holy warrior where’s their other cleric players who who think of their cleric more of as sort of a priest who might even walk around in a robe rather than in full armor we we we have heard loud and clear from the commune that cleric players like to be able to have both archetype supported within the cleric class so this is just a part of us providing that dual support they get a new channel divinity option mm-hmm which is the ability to basically burn a use of your channel divinity to get back a first-level spell slot this is here because there are times when your turn undead has no use and and even the channel divinity from your subclass might have no use in a particular session and sometimes even in an entire adventure this is for that cleric who’s like like I have this resource I would love to be able to use it yes this gives you an ability to do so and it I mean and again it can be quite nice giving that Clerk just that little extra versatility of all right I’ve got another slot which I can now use on any of my first level spells I have prepared today it’s very rewarding to feel useful yeah that’s that’s a nice I feel good the the final one blessed strikes in the cleric is a potential replacement if a person would like to have it for two different features in the cleric class every subclass in the cleric at eighth level gets either the divine strike feature or the potent spell casting feature divine strikes boosts your weapon attacks wears potent spell casting boosts your your can trip damage blessed strikes if you’re willing to forego potent spell casting or divine strike instead just gives you a d8 of extra radiant damage that you can apply to a weapon strike or a spell and the reason why we wanted to offer this up as an option is many clerics are versatile in that many clerics will go back and forth between fighting with a weapon and using their spells and so we wanted to give clerics the ability to sort of walk that versatile road and take blessed strikes as an alternative okay now they’re the limitation with blessed strikes is that it affects only one of your damaged roles on a term so it is it’s a little constrained but more flexible in its application shall we roll for the next sure really quickly I’m just gonna mention again we’re going through the classic feature variance from unearthed Arcana I know we’ve got one if not our second raffle is underway at the moment we’ve been going through class by class I’ve got one question here it’s a bit broad from the beginning you mentioned a lot of these features tend to hit when they get to their ability score increase so only one of the features I’m sorry if people choose to take a feat instead of their ability score increase could they still swap out one skill proficiency yes the intention is yes okay yeah because even if you use the feet optional rule you are still hitting ability score improvement on your class table and so really the intent here is when you hit that even if you take a feat instead on true you would still get to swap out one of your skill proficiencies okay and that that is definitely the example of something that we could make clearer in a final version of this so I love that question so we have rolled a six we are on the monk mad monk alright the monk the monk gets three feature options yeah and one of which has two sub options so the first one again hitting on this note of flexibility gives monks who might have some extra weapon proficiencies because of their race or some other source say they’re multi classing gives them the ability to customize their list of monk weapons bunks normally for their monk weapons and get all simple melee weapons and short swords mm-hmm you do have some characters who enter the monk class take elves for instance many elves have bonus weapon proficiencies dwarves also often have bonus weapon weapon proficiencies we would love fur for those monks to be able to use those weapon proficiencies as monk weapons and so we decided to give them this customisable list with the limitations that we have built-in this also is going to work for a monk who might decide they want darts to be a monk weapon they want a sling to be a monk weapon and those are proficiencies all monks start with but the current monk weapon rule in the players handbook does not allow those ranged weapons or any of the characters other weapon proficiencies to apply narrative Lee that does make sense in a way as an elf I’ve been training with these particular weapons as all elves do but as a monk as an elven monk I would still be training with these weapons as all elves do so how would those plans so this is it seems like a narrative Lee logical means to do so with certain restrictions can’t be heavy can’t be two-handed so it’s it’s not breaking the mechanics of a monk weapon but still keeping it in the flavor of the character you’re trying to play exactly now if any of you out there if you’re playing a monk and you’re thinking well I’m not playing a race that gives me weapon proficiencies I’m not Multi classing then I would say stick with the monk weapons in the players handbook because there you just it you know you just get all your simple melee weapons and move right along this is really meant for the character who has these extra goodies and this is a way for the monk to really incorporate those goodies into their monk play the second level monk feature key fueled strike it says if you spend one key or more as part of your action on your turn you can then immediately make unarmed strike as a bonus action monks already have a number of built-in features that use the bonus action so it’s important for me to remind everyone here you can only ever take one bonus action on your term so what this is not doing is giving you an extra bonus act here’s what it is doing and it’s rather subtle and this is why I love having conversations like this with you and with with all of you listening so we can get into sometimes the subtleties of game options like this mm-hmm many monks will have no use for this but for the monks this is designed for this will be a godsend if you’re playing a way of shadow monk or a way of the four elements monk or any other monk who has a special action that essentially gobbles up to your action on your turn does not include any of the regular triggers for your sort of martial arts bonus attack or your flurry of blows this now gives you a new way to use your subclasses key burning abilities and still get in your unarmed strike so for instance if you’re playing a way of the four elements monk and you spend a key point to unleash one of your elemental spells you can also go Kabam with your fists or your your foot or whatever it is you’re using to make your own arm strike in addition to your spell casting so this is going to be a boon for monks or members of certain subclasses and still keeps the monkish under arm striking flavor exceptionally strong across Oh a bit more across the board they in that the intent exactly and we also purposefully designed this to be subclass agnostic because they I mentioned two subclasses but features like this appear here and there in monk subclasses and could potentially in the future so in a way we’re future proofing that you know if this is embraced and becomes part of the game it means you know monks henceforth if they have abilities like that they’re still going to get to enjoy there they’re unarmed strikes finally monks have two new ways to spend key one is to improve the range attacks and another is actually for a monk to heal themself this is is very on target in terms of the monks flavor a lot of the monks abilities are about the health of their bodies the resilience the physical resilience this is a way for the monk who is on the verge of death to tap tap into their internal key and save themselves until maybe somebody with a little more powerful healing can give them even more of their hip points back so in many ways this is a an oh crap key option of I’d you know I have all this key I haven’t spent in but by golly I’m about to die well buddy burned that key and right and and live to fight another day this yes this very flavorful energy that I’m imbued with it can it can I turn it back on myself in case of dire straits yeah exactly you want to roll for our next one all right what should we roll or should we go to chat because we’ve got a tell you what if if it’s a new number we’ll go to the new number if it’s a repeat number I’ll ask chat which class we should cover next and it is it is a new class the sorcerer alright the sorcerer ah I think that was the end and bren-bren 77 were stuck in service the sorcerer as well alright so oh the sorcerer is casting a spell oh no there it is for a moment I thought the sorcerer had had vanished vanished from my from my print out okay so the sorcerer gets some new spells again added to their list they have spell versatility which we’ve we have already talked about a way for them to to maybe deal with some buyer’s remorse also to have some some character development and a bit more versatility pardon me with the sorcerer in particular by the way we have often gotten the feedback that people would like a bit more choice when it comes to the spells they know so spell versatility is especially a boon for sorcerer players who have asked for that we also have some new font of magic options font of magic is the name of the feature of the sorcerer that gives them their sorcery points that wonderful resource that allows the sorcerer to manipulate their own magic which again is a wonderful part of their story as people who have magic in their very blood it makes sense the day of all people should be able to manipulate their own magic so we allow sorcerers now with this option to make a temporary magic item by transferring some of their innate magic into that item which is specifically must be a weapon okay so if you’ve ever found yourself in a situation where it’s like oh my goodness Janet’s barbarian can’t hit that creature because of their resistance to non magical weapons the sorcerer if no one has the magic weapon spell prepared the sorcerer can just channel some raw magic into that weapon to get the job done also the sorcerer can in a pinch if they really desperately need advantage on an ability check they can give that to themselves and they also have some resilience they can give themselves like the monk but rather than true healing they’re able to give themselves temporary hit points by channeling some of their internal magical reserve for those of you who don’t know temporary hit points are almost like ablative armor or sort of a almost like you can imagine it like a force field that gets sort of punched through and then it goes away and then you’re real hit points start taking the damage we play a lot of Pokemon go and there’s always you throw up the defensive shields yes and then it’s gone and so you can imagine where the monk is is literally healing themselves the sorcerer is instead using their magic to shield themself to give themself this arcane fortitude then we give the sorcerer some new meta magic options meta magic is one of the main a sorcerer spends their sorcery points and I think the meta magic option that we’ve provided that many people will especially love is elemental spell which allows the sorcerer to cast a spell that deals one type of damage and then change that damage type to another like if you’ve if you’ve ever wanted to be able to cast Thunder ball instead of fireball well elemental spell is how you can do it James Bond would approve yes yes we also have given meta magic options for ignoring half cover and three-quarters cover and then in that case we’re like oh my gosh you really really really want your spell to hit but you missed an erring spell is a meta magic option that allows the sorcerer to re-roll the nice thing about this meta magic option is it can be paired with other meta magic options normally you can apply only one to a spell but let’s say you’ve already spent sorcery points on a spell and then it misses this is in a way you can spend some more sorcery points to try to get your investment through it’s a bitter the fallacy of sunk costs god bless it I cast this thing is going to work but it’s nice to always hit like then again narrative Lee it’s like you’re in a pivotal moment it’s a key scene you just want your cool thing to go off and it fizzles like just a second chance and of course as you rightly imply the dark reality is your reroll could also yes right yes well right so fair fair’s fair like you’re spending points to try it again but it doesn’t mean that it’s going to succeed this time go get you get another rerolls just one more poll on the slot machines lever we’ve got a couple of questions one from the monk one from the sorcerer you’re gonna field those before yeah we’re talking about the sorcerer so how would a wild magic source or utilize of versatile spells with the new feature when the subclass has no clasp oh so spell versatility applies to your sorcerer spells over all okay not subclass spells okay so spell versatility allows you to replace one of the sorcerer spells you know with another one and this is for sorcerers no matter what their subclasses I always feel like this this is trying to stump Jeremy and it never works that’s a that’s a good thing looking back at the monk quickly we had a question does the new bonus action attack option open up for flurry of blows or just a single bonus action attack so again as I mentioned you only ever get one bonus action attack so if you’ve already flurry a blode bonus actioned wow that was a tortured set yes verb is perfect yes you cannot do it again okay yeah it’s one bonus action on your turn you’ve got to choose I like that you modified both flurry and blow flick flurry your flurries of blows yes attorneys-general yes which one gets the I love I love internal plurals I knew yes there’s the passersby I have never passersby that a surprise yeah how many people get that incorrect I imagine I’m probably many but guaranteed yes it yeah internal plurals it’s just like one of the one of the true signs of person is a word nerd we’re we’re getting goose bumps s inside the word so are we wrapped up with the sorcerer yes okay yep again we’re getting who about ten till the top of the hour so we’ve been going I think we can do one more class I’ll do one more chat about Chat Chat give us a class that we haven’t hit yet that you would like us to cover we have covered the cleric the monk the rogue the sorcerer and the ranger cover the Ranger alright the Ranger let’s do it the Ranger I’m really quick I’ll interject you’re quite coming in we are collecting them if we don’t get through them this time because we’ve got a lot of the initial material to to introduce and talk through we will talk through your questions as best we can in a future episode so the Ranger the Ranger has two and a half pages yes so in this in this article okay so I’ll I’ll skim over the simple ones Ranger gets spell versatility we’ve already talked about it Rangers in particular are very constrained in the number of spells they know in the number of spell slots they have so I really really hope the audience embraces spell versatility if for no one else then the Ranger because I think this will be a godsend for many Ranger players the Ranger also has an expanded spell list we were when expanding the Ranger list particularly mindful of beefing up the Rangers ability to support their party also we were looking at the theme of survivability because we want the Ranger to be sort of the ultimate wilderness of Survivor you know and also the person who you know is most likely if they’re trapped on their own somewhere they’re gonna make it yeah or if you’re or you know if you’re trapped with one other person and then there the Ranger the Ranger is gonna get the two of you through and also some of these spells pair wonderfully if you happen to be a beast master Ranger because a number of these spells have amazing interactions with the beast companion if you don’t know what I’m talking about there’s not time for me to go into it but read some of these spells carefully think about your beast masters companion and oh boy you’re gonna have some fun so the Ranger has more replacement options than any of the other classes in this article we’ve heard your feedback over the years loud and clear on the Ranger and as I said a couple of years ago for the Ranger in particular we wanted to explore some alternatives so here they are starting with deft Explorer this is a new take on the natural Explorer feature allowing the Ranger to have a set of survival skill that are not dependent on particular types of terrain even though many of us who’ve played D&D for decades love the flavor of Rangers having a connection to particular terrain type yes or having a familiarity with particular foes the fact is is honestly in addition after addition that great narrative often has gameplay difficulty because where you’re adventuring and what you’re fighting can so often really just be up to chance ending on what the DM selects yes now this is often easy for a DM to address in a home game because the DM knows okay I’ve got this Ranger at my table the Ranger has these particular terrain types they’re associated with these favorite enemies and the DM can customize the adventure to really bring as much joy to that Ranger player as possible but if you’re in a convention game or somebody is running a published adventure by the book it can be difficult for some Ranger players to feel like they’re maximizing the potential of these very flavorful abilities and so we created some alternatives that essentially are going to deliver no matter what the terrain is and then when we get to the the favorite enemy alternative no matter what it is you’re fighting deft Explorer gives you three different sub options you get to pick you know one of them when you get the feature then you pick another one at six level and yet another one at tenth it gives you some expertise and skills and makes you extremely mobile and also one of the the most exciting things lurking in here is in the tireless feature where in addition to the Ranger being able to give themselves temporary hit points they can also at the end of a short rest shrug off a level of exhaustion this by the way we know is really good in certain circumstances particularly if you multi class and you happen to be a berserker barbarian we’re well aware of that as as I as I’ve often mentioned before when we do on our Turkana when we do class options they almost never reflect the balance we later do for multi classing which is one of the reasons why often low-level things when they end up in their final form are changed and often frankly less powerful because we then have to account for if someone’s dipping in from another class or what’s the effect but here you get to see this in it’s sort of single class glory yes okay yes enjoy it in your play test because I can guarantee you if this makes it into a book it will not be in this form but the theme of it is likely to make it and that in an Arctic on is often what we’re testing we really want to see do people groove on the themes that we’re presenting and then we get into the fine tuning favored foe as I mentioned is an alternative to favored enemy we were careful to state in favored foe that the creature that you target with this new feature is still technically your favorite enemy we had to do that to make sure that this feature still works with the Rangers twentieth level feature because that feature refers to your favorite enemy so anyone if you’re wondering does favorite foe work with your 20th level feature indeed it does and it does so intentionally that’s why you see the word favorite enemy right there in the feature so what does it do it gives the ranger a free hunter’s mark spell it it’s added to their list of spells known and does not take up a spot on that list and a certain number of times a day you get to cast the spell without using spell slots and even without concentration hmm that last part I hate to break it to you all this is also another case of that is unlikely to survive final game development because lifting concentration we wanted to test it just to make sure that it was going to be widely implemented and used initially it was a concept we were just enchanted by yes but any time we fool around with this concept we almost always have to pull back from it guys especially at low level this becomes a blinking and two people to dip in okay from other classes to get a hunter’s mark that they can cast without spell slots and without concentration meaning it would then pair with every concentration spell in the game but that said everything else about this feature is I think is a really fantastic way for a ranger to in the moment say you were my favorite enemy and and to use their their primal magic to make that designation a reality so there so again sort of narrative Lee it’s not just well my favorite enemy like my backstory is orcs attacked the village or whatever and my campaign we never encounter orcs however that takes away one of the Rangers tricks from the bag of tricks this one lets them keep that sort of I’m going to block on to an enemy and concentrate on them flavor of it exactly okay exactly I am deciding in the moment you are my favorite enemy right now and ten minutes from now someone else might be my favorite enough and because honestly is again as riches that that classic flavor can be and if people love it there’s free to continue to use that flavor in the favor of enemy feature in the players handbook for some campaigns it just does not pan out we then get to a new fighting style option the Ranger the Paladin and the fighter all get new fighting style options in this article some of the options are shared by all three of the classes and then each of the classes gets an option that is unique to that class the option unique to the Ranger is the ability basically to forego taking any of the traditional fighting styles and instead learn to can drips from the druid spell list we wanted to put this out there because some Rangers really love to lean into the nature magic side of the class yes and this allows them to lean even further how are we doing on time can I go further than the Ranger two minutes here oh my gosh there is so much anything alright well I’m gonna have to speed talk Rangers also now get the option to use druidic focus as a spell-casting focus they get a bunch of new spell options in primal awareness this is a potential replacement for primeval awareness in the players handbook they get a more supernatural fadeaway ability that replaces hide in plain sight and then Beastmasters we decided in this article to give Beastmasters two new beasts options so we actually did not touch the Beastmasters features in the players handbook okay instead we provided two new stat blocks of beasts a beasts master could befriend and then in those stat blocks address many of the concerns people have had about the beasts master now we designed these to work seamlessly with the Beastmasters features so if you’re a beast master Ranger and you’re wondering does the scaling up functions inside your Rangers companion feature apply to these beasts the answer is yes everything in your subclass works with these beasts and then they give you some a little something extra one of the things I also love about these beasts is it allows Rangers to customize the beasts appearances hmm you decide if you pick the Beast of the air what sort of airborne Beast it is if you choose the Beast of the earth similarly you decide what sort of terrestrial Beast this is the other great thing here is is the flexibility that we’re offering in that if there is an animal type that you want because it has a burrowing speed or constricts people or it poisons people this takes none of those options away you can still pick any of those beasts from the Monster Manual or another book these really just add some more beasts to your menu of options and that will be especially appealing for anybody who has wanted their beasts to maybe more often because these beasts have a bonus action attack these beasts also have some amped up hit points they have saving throw proficiencies they can understand your speech they if they die you can bring them back by burning a spell slot there is a lot of really juicy material packed into these to stab locks all right did I do it do I get up a 201 – oh is that what we started I think at 101 so we’re at 60 Minutes events yeah we’ll call it dead on alright so we’ve been talking through the class feature variance from the unearthed of Arcana please do take a look at the material that’s up on the D&D website as we speak a survey will follow in the coming days as well so we hope you try out the material around your table and please give us your thoughts about them as well we’re gonna switch over here in a minute to beyond heroes over on the DND Beyond Channel just again a couple reminders we’ve got ever on rising from the last war is coming out very very shortly later this month as well as Dungeons & Dragons vs. Rick and Morty we’ll talk about ever on in a future Dragon Plus live stream here congratulations to our raffle winners thanks as always to our followers or subscribers our viewers for spending an hour out of your time today thank you as always to our moderators and finally for extra life we’ve got a couple of adventure material pieces upon the DMS guild now as we speak we’ve got infernal machine rebuild an adventure 4 levels 5 to 10 it is a beefy 111 pages and then we’ve got adventure with muck it’s so cute I know this one we’re going to go into this one a bit more next week this one created by Emmet on G with additional material by Adam Lee and Chris Lindsay it is a glorious grab bag of activities coloring map drawing monster creation for kids of all ages so we’ll we’ll dive into that a bit more as well that’s also up on the dams guild I believe for $5 so hopefully uh worth consideration all proceeds do benefits extra life and the Children’s Miracle Network Hospitals so in any case thank you for spending an hour out of your day with us we got through many but not all of the classes we’ll talk through some more in future livestream as well as many of your questions as well so until then thanks everyone that takes everyone

PHB Variants: Where does that leave the ranger capstone ability Foe Slayer if you no longer have favored enemies?

November 14, 2019Zoltar Leave a comment

Where does that leave the ranger capstone ability Foe Slayer if you no longer have favored enemies?Favored Foe specifies the targets of your hunters Mark are your favored enemies.

— Dan Dillon 👥 (@Dan_Dillon_1) November 7, 2019

Unearthed Arcana is back with one or more class feature variants for every class in the D&D Player's Handbook! Explore the new options here: https://t.co/vHtdqycjCj #DnD pic.twitter.com/luoBKfZM5w

— Jeremy Crawford (@JeremyECrawford) November 4, 2019

PHB Variants: Sorcerers don’t get True Polymorph it Shapechange

November 13, 2019Zoltar Leave a comment

Something egregious has been brought to my attention, regarding the new expanded spell lists of the most recent UA:

Sorcerers don’t get True Polymorph it Shapechange.

The ones with literal dragon blood in their veins can’t turn into dragons…? No every sorcerer has dragon blood. 🤷‍♂️

Survey comments!

— Dan Dillon 👥 (@Dan_Dillon_1) November 6, 2019

In all sincerity, thank you for taking the time to interact with me on stuff like this.

You clarifying various things to me, especially in regards to UA has been absolutely excellent.

Thank you. I'm glad I can help. Keep in mind that if there are questions on how things wholly specific to how UA features work, there's very little I can say without polluting feedback. If questions go unanswered, that's probably why.

Questions that are more general, that's different.

— Dan Dillon 👥 (@Dan_Dillon_1) November 6, 2019

Regarding surveys, I have to ask, what percentage of feedback is along the lines of, “BROKEN LOL do better”?

As opposed to feedback which actually details concerns and possible issues? The majority of comments are genuine and useful. Some aren't worth the electrons they wasted for sure.

Hint: If you (general) bring up issues not DIRECTLY related to the survey's subject, I don't have time for it. I know you want your favorite setting to get a 5e book, but…

— Dan Dillon 👥 (@Dan_Dillon_1) November 6, 2019

Rune Knight: Connecting the runes to the properties of giant subraces makes no sense to me. Is that based on some old module or something?

November 12, 2019Zoltar Leave a comment

I got curious about the inspiration for the runes of the fighter subclass.
Connecting the runes to the properties of giant subraces makes no sense to me. Is that based on some old module or something?
It would make more sense to me if they were things the giants would use. In D&D giants have strong connection to runic magic (see the rune magic items in Storm King’s Thunder).

Sort of how in Warhammer fantasy runes = dwarf? In D&D that connection is to giants and their lost civilization.

— Dan Dillon 👥 (@Dan_Dillon_1) November 10, 2019

There’s also discussion of the giant rune carvers in Volo’s Guide to Monsters, and their affinity to rune magic.

Likewise the effects of the Rune Knight’s runes are inspired by the expanded discussion of giant tribes in Volo’s (frost giants being masters of beasts, for ex.).

— Dan Dillon 👥 (@Dan_Dillon_1) November 10, 2019

That part I understood. My question was more about why there was no rune of health, life, death or other such concept, and why giant magic would just reinforce the giantness.

Why would a Jotun use the magic runes in the UA? Why is the ice rune about strength? I really like that the runes are connected to the giants. What I don't get is why each rune is connected to a specific giant type.

— Viktor Bengtsson (@ViktorEGB) November 10, 2019

Giants use the runes in different ways. The Rune Knight represents humanoids using the power of giant runes to tap into the giants’ essence.

— Dan Dillon 👥 (@Dan_Dillon_1) November 10, 2019

Thanks!

That makes some sense to me. I guess I expected the story to be more similar to how artificers enchant items by putting magic patterns on them. The easy solution for that is probably too have me play an artificer… Yep. If you want to be about infusing actual magic items, especially to hand them off, Artificer has what you need for sure!

— Dan Dillon 👥 (@Dan_Dillon_1) November 10, 2019

And if you like the rune flavor, that's an easy re-skin.

— Dan Dillon 👥 (@Dan_Dillon_1) November 10, 2019

PHB Variants: So, how does Monk Weapons work since Monks are only proficient with Shortsword and Simple weapons?

November 11, 2019Zoltar Leave a comment

2/2
So, how does that work since Monks are only proficient with Shortsword and Simple weapons? How can they choose a Martial weapon when they aren't proficient in it? After all, one of the stipulations to making it a monk weapon is they must already be proficient in it.

— Jeremy S (@Nikushimi_ZERO) November 6, 2019

You can gain weapon proficiency in ways other than a single class. 🙂

— Dan Dillon 👥 (@Dan_Dillon_1) November 6, 2019

Yes, but it’s a 1st level ability which to me says that you choose it at lvl1. Not hold onto 5+Wis slots for weapons later on when you gain access to martial weapons. That forces you to either take Weapon Master Feat or go into a Martial class with those options. That seems– Racial weapon proficiencies.

— Dan Dillon 👥 (@Dan_Dillon_1) November 6, 2019

UA So Pact of the Talisman replaces Tome, Chain or Blade?

November 11, 2019Zoltar Leave a comment

So Pact of the Talisman replaces Tome, Chain or Blade? Or it enhances it? seems kind of meek if it replaces them considering it seems to only augment skills. Still the document seems unclear It is a new option for your Pact Boon. You choose one. Blade, Chain, and Tome are the existing ones, and the Talisman is a new option.

— Dan Dillon 👥 (@Dan_Dillon_1) November 5, 2019

Then it seems like it really falls short of the others, unless i missed something about it I look forward to reading your feedback when the survey goes live!

— Dan Dillon 👥 (@Dan_Dillon_1) November 5, 2019

I’ve filled out all of them, but I also realize that mine is just one opinion of thousands That's why it's important to get your opinion down where the data is actually collected. 🙂 We might see comments here or via other social media, but that's a crapshoot at best and is likely to get lost in noise.

I don't want your opinion to be lost.

— Dan Dillon 👥 (@Dan_Dillon_1) November 5, 2019

PHB Variants: disappointed that so many of the added sorcerer spells are fire based

November 11, 2019Zoltar Leave a comment

Immediately disappointed that so many of the added sorcerer spells are fire based. Draconic sorcerers who pick anything except fire are brutally punished by the spell list.

— Polished Cryptid (@PolishedCryptid) November 5, 2019

1st Level
Grease
Protection from evil and good
2nd Level
Flame blade
Flaming sphere
3rd Level
Vampiric touch
4th Level
Fire shield
6th Level
Flesh to stone
8th Level
Demiplane
9th Level
Foresight About 50% are fire related (counting grease for this one) and 50 aren't

— Polished Cryptid (@PolishedCryptid) November 6, 2019

RAW grease doesn't burn, but I know that's a common house rule so I can swing with it.

Fire shield can also deal cold damage

— Dan Dillon 👥 (@Dan_Dillon_1) November 6, 2019

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Psychic Warrior (Darth Vader?) explained by Jeremy Crawford – Unearthed Arcana

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PHB Variants: Where does that leave the ranger capstone ability Foe Slayer if you no longer have favored enemies?

PHB Variants: Sorcerers don’t get True Polymorph it Shapechange

Rune Knight: Connecting the runes to the properties of giant subraces makes no sense to me. Is that based on some old module or something?

PHB Variants: So, how does Monk Weapons work since Monks are only proficient with Shortsword and Simple weapons?

UA So Pact of the Talisman replaces Tome, Chain or Blade?

PHB Variants: disappointed that so many of the added sorcerer spells are fire based

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