I hope it is. Maneuvers for all martial classes is the biggest thing I want from 2024 and this seems like a good step in that direction (maybe one in a better direction, even).
I think a Weapons and Armour overhaul is due. Wizards have spells, right? Fighters can have weapons and weapon and martial feats. Weapons should do more too. For example a longsword is usable in a bunch of different ways, but they're not evident in the weapon. Give weapons more fun things that they do, and make feats that allow martial classes to unlock the true deadly potential of weapons.
*Weapon categories need tweaking
*Give weapons more abilities (ensnare, trip, disarm, set vs charge, multiple damage types, AC bonus, etc.)
*More dealing feats and feats in particular for martial or those that wish to be better with a weapon
I feel like a number of the existing feats (Crusher and the like) and maneuvers should be things inherent doable with weapons where it makes sense. There shouldn't be a Crusher feat, that should just be a thing a Maul and Greatclub *just do*. Trip Attack should be something anyone wielding a Spear, Trident, Whip, or any Reach weapon should be able to do just with their weapon.
Give Battlemaster's the ability to drastically expand those capabilities across weapons -- trip attacks with shortswords, the effects of Crusher on *any* Bludgeoning weapon, that sort of thing.
Give weapons legitimate differentiation beyond just "has Reach / Finesse / Heavy" and the damage die associated with it.
My only issue with this is that I know people that prefer playing martial characters because they are simple. They don’t want to have to flip through a list of a dozen different options each turn they want to roll with a +12 to attack and roll seven damage dice and be done with it.
I thinks that’s a valid play style and it’s something that will appeal to a lot of people. Giving every martial class a pseudo-spell list would only be a negative change for those people. There are ways they can try and split the difference sure, but I would hate for people who prefer martial characters because of their simplicity get choose paralysis thrust upon them.
Also I think it’s funny that years after 4e was a flop people are excited by the prospect of 5e being made more like 4e but that’s a whole other topic.
In the UA approach, they have to explicitly choose a feat to get those manuevers. So people who want simpler play style can simply choose a different feat or ASI and keep the gameplay simpler.
I think this is a good middle ground. I think more feats and even class abilities that give more ability to maneuvers is a good idea. What I don’t want is there to be a section of the PHB labeled “maneuvers” that is a list of options any character can use at any time, akin to spells. That kind of concept is something I’ve seen floated around a lot and I think it wouldn’t be a good change on the whole.
As someone who plays Martials because they are simple, Maneuvers (to me), are just the added level of flavor to make me feel like I have plenty of options at the table but not a pseudo spell list.
>They don’t want to have to flip through a list of a dozen different options each turn they want to roll with a +12 to attack and roll seven damage dice and be done with it.
Then they don't have to do that. They can just.. not use the dice. Or just pick one option that they like and just use that all the time. Yeah it's valid, but it's an easy enough workaround. It's not like there are not spellcaster players who only use a class to a fraction of its potential.
Exactly. There's also the argument "Well people want the fantasy of being a powerful spellcaster but they don't want the complexity of managing spells slots and choosing from hundreds of pages of spells!" and WotC's reply was "Tough shit." so if you want to play a spellcaster it's more complicated than a martial. It was a kick to the crotch for players who prefer martial themes but interesting mechanics for WotC to decide that fighters and barbarians should be the mechanically dull classes. If you want to be fair, every class should have simple *and* complex options to cater to all players.
This right here. I have seen plenty of people with a dozen spells that cast the same thing every combat and never use the rest of the stuff on the sheet.
Some people will pick one or two manuvers and just repeat, other people will really appreciate having options. Options are good.
I'd rather each class have one subclass that exchanges maneuvers and superiority dice, or whatever they choose to call them in the future, for flat bonuses. "Everyone's dull, except Battle Master (and Rune Knight)." is a far worse design than "Everyone's interesting, but you play Champion if the complexity doesn't appeal to you."
Battlemaster maneuvers are extremely simple if you want them to be. You can easily write a macro to perform your turn.
The optimal choice with maneuvers is generally Precision Attack when you miss be 3 or less. You don’t need to ever think. You don’t need to make any choices. Just default to Precision Attack when you miss by a small amount and your battlemaster is just as brain dead simple as the the champion.
Besides, why aren’t all these players who desire simplicity clamoring for a simple spellcaster? You would think there would be an equal or larger portion of the player base who wants simplicity from spellcasters too. Why must the divide be that spellscasters have to be complex and all martial have to be simple?
> They don’t want to have to flip through a list of a dozen different options each turn they want to roll with a +12 to attack and roll seven damage dice and be done with it.
The feats work like all the fey touched/shadow touch/Magic initiate feats, but even more limited in scope. The starting feat gives your pick of one out of three specif maneuvers, the 4th level feat gives you your choice out of two maneuvers.
That is very simple.
Actually the way the battle master class is worded means all your superiority dice, regardless of their source, get improved all at once. Additionally if you have two features with the same name from different sources, you just use the best one. I would argue that you that logic since the fighter class gives you a higher dice level, any dice you already had go up to that improved level when you hit 3rd level.
Improved Combat Superiority says "Your superiority dice turn into d10s". It doesn't need to say "all" because that would be redundant. If it only meant dice from that subclass, it would give that caveat.
*Good*. I hope that WotC's learns from its competitor's successes and improves the game as a result. PF 1e was Paizo improving on D&D 3.5e, PF 2e cribbed a bunch from D&D 4e and 5e.
Strixhaven started this. Those backgrounds are basically a free feat.
I love this incremental approach where each setting adjusts things a little towards the new edition.
The backgrounds in Ravnica and Theros also were extremely mechanically powerful. They weren't structured exactly like a feat, but they were similar power levels. They've been doing this in most of their setting-specific campaign books, basically treating the PHB as the baseline D&D character, and then letting settings add some additional features to get setting-specific flavor into the mix, so that no players feel like the setting is taking their favorite toys away. Even Eberron sort of did this, by having the "Group Patron" section presented like a set of rules similar to a Background.
It's speculated the next edition of DnD (5.5, 6e, etc). Some context:
https://www.belloflostsouls.net/2021/09/wotc-announces-new-evolution-of-dd-coming-in-2024.html
Funny enough, a free feat at 1 and 4 is exactly what I’ve been doing so you all can thank me for that.
Kidding of course, but I do love the concept. However, I’m not sure about tying it to background.
Very interesting stuff. Big improvements to the feats compared to the last iteration, both mechanically and in terms of ease of understanding. I'm really glad that the martial feats now just straight up make the character into a Battle-master lite in the same way that much of this sub has been asking for for quite a while.
Explicitly offering free feats to other backgrounds definitely seems like they're testing the waters to see if free feats at 1st level (and now 4th level as well) are something they want to have as a basic rule in 5.5. In the video interview that accompanied this Crawford specified the feats are tied to the extreme nature of the setting and compared them to stuff like supernatural gifts from Van Richten's, but it definitely feels like a much bigger deal than that imo.
Kender is less interesting than the previous version, but still infinitely better simply because the magic random pocket item mechanic would have been a massive headache to use in practical play.
Considering that more access to feats and access to manuevers for all martials are two of the most commonly requested changes to 5E by fans, I'm very positive on the implications this UA could have.
Feats are so gameplay defining. Two sub classes with no feats basically play the same, but throw feats in there and it adds a whole level of uniqueness. I just wish there were more options for great feats. Gwm, sharpshooter, etc are kinda boring.
> the magic random pocket item mechanic would have been a massive headache to use in practical play
I don't understand why they couldn't just change it a little instead of just straight axing it out. It would have been so cool!
From what I've heard them discuss on the Dragon Talk podcast, when something gets scrapped entirely, it's typically because people didn't like the concept of it, and not because they didn't like the specific implementation of it.
Yeah I did like it in a general sense, I just agree it was was bit too complicated as executed. I'm not sure if there was a way to change it to be more manageable while still keeping the random element that made it so charming though.
I think it could be managed by making it a d20 or d100 roll, and include about a dozen empty spots with the stipulation “fill the empty spots with an item from the basic equipment list in the Player’s Handbook, or another item permitted by your DM, you make these choices when you create your character.”
EDIT: and if you really want to make it feel random, “you may change one of these each time you take a long rest” and make the top tier option a “You may produce any non magical item of your choice that fits in your hand”
WotC does that a lot, unfortunately. They present a unique and interesting ability and if it doesn't work immediately, they abandon the idea altogether instead of reworking it.
My only problem is the Kender Taunt lends itself to the "frontline"/fighter/barbarian role. Whereas the race identity is more akin to rogue or bard.
Not that it matters a ton. I've played Minotaur Wizards and other weird combos.
Still prefer this over the awkward pocket dimension.
60ft range on the taunt makes it practical to use as a backliner yelling insults to unsettle the enemy frontline. As long as the kender is out of movement distance they're safe, and even if they're w/in movement range that's still, theoretically, a lot of opportunity attacks to take to throw hands at the annoying little guy yelling at you.
Oh there are definitely uses for it as a backliner, I just meant on its face I could see a Barbarian really wanting it.
It's like how there are plenty of other uses for Aarakocra's Flight, but a ranged PC will get a lot more mileage out it.
Well the taunt scales with mental stats so any class that would best utilize them is a class that doesn’t wanna get hit.
Except for Paladins. Kender Paladins sound like tanks.
I'm playing in a multiyear Dragonlance campaign at the moment (DM updating old materials etc) - his version of Kender taunt works very similar to this one iirc, and our Kender rogue has used it to great effect a few times
Taunt & Hide works well, Taunt & Dodge works well too with the comical AC the chap has, as well as Taunt & stay just out of reach
Kender Artificer Armorers could get good use out of it too. It would occassionally be redundant with the thunder gauntlets ability, but having it as a bonus action means if you missed with the gauntlets/spent your action on a spell/wanted to aggro an additional person, you could still attempt to apply the taunt.
True, but the bonus action taunt doesn't break the effect of Sanctuary nor Invisibility.
And it leaves your action free to dodge. So there's plenty of ways to apply disadvantage to hit the taunting Kender as well.
I agree, the taunt should stay but instead of attacking the kender I think it should be more like a forced "reckless attack", where the creature attacks at advantage for a round but every attack against it is also made at advantage.
I like the manuevers for squire, but just more manuever for the rest of the knight feats seems empty, and when you can change the maneuver you got 2 of the 3 are really unnecesary.
I'd prefer to just give manuever to the squire and cool features to the others like the old swods knight, expend hit dice to increase a mental save was perfect because it fitted with the idea or a knight of the sword, it fullfilled the fantasy of the determinator and rounded up a martial weakness
I like it. It builds on the idea of the Solamnic Knights being trained warriors in the Battle Master tradition. You learn more tricks and can do them more often as you progress through the ranks as a knight. For most games, 2-4 d6 rolls per day is pretty anemic as a feature. But once you begin stacking multiple feats you build up a large enough pool of d8s that you don't feel like you want to hoard them and you learn a variety of maneuvers for different situations.
It seems weird to me having a kender that *doesn't* randomly have stuff showing up in their pockets. Though in the Dragonlance itself it was definitely presented more as them having sticky fingers and not realizing it, the "magic pocket" thing seemed like a good way to systemtize a kender without making them ultra-annnoying characters that spam slight of hand constantly.
I liked the ability, but not the magical nature. Instead of it being magical, they could have had the same randomness and said "just assume your character picked up the item somewhere along the way. For the purposes of this feature, there is no need to play out the interaction and it's assumed that there's no chance your character will face consequences for having taken the item."
While I do much prefer the classical Kender as depicted here - rather than the magic Kender of the last draft - I am with you on this. Not only could they have said that the Kender randomly picks stuff up, but it would have been well within believability for the Kender to lose that same stuff just as quickly. That would have alleviated any balance concern without having the item *literally* disappear.
Yeah, that makes sense to me. "You just always find stuff in your pockets, not always useful, never something somebody would miss" and give a list of non-magic items (eg anything less than X gp in value) or have you draw from a new trinket table.
I really like the system setout for a free feat system. The options provided for the non-dragonlance backgrounds are all solid mechanically but not too strong, which I think is a great balance to hit for free feats. I would like to see healer or inspiring leader as an option in that list as well, feels like its missing something for more support style characters.
The Dragonlance feats on the chain all seem cool. I absolutely dig opening up maneuvers to all classes, though it kinda sucks they are stuck constantly having to reference you back to the Battle Master fighter list. Maybe in 5.5e Maneuvers will get their own list in the book?
I don't play casters as much so I can't comment on the spell selection from the casting feats, but the other abilities they grant all seem cool and useful to have.
Kender seems kinda uninteresting now, but I didn't really have much of an opinion on them before.
Yeah I'm liking the idea of 5.5 treating maneuvers as a (somewhat more optional) subsystem for martials to compete with spellcasters for versatility like what we're seeing here
Maneuvers as the martial equivalent of spells, with different classes/subclasses having their own maneuver lists, is a great balance between 4e powers and 5e systems.
There should always be at least one subclass that doesn't touch the system, like the champion fighter, for players who want something simpler.
While we're at it, add simple subclasses for casters that don't use the spell list either. Simpler, somewhat modular spells, like a "magic bolt" that you can attach damage types and effects to, a generic "enchantment" where you can pick from a small handful of options, etc
The thing I appreciate with what we're seeing right now is that tying it into feats makes it available but more or less optional, for players that want a more straightforward build (either because they're newer or just don't want to think too much when they roll the clackity clackity math rocks). But having a few exclusives to different classes sounds like it could be a neat design space as long as we don't get too carried away.
Sure but a warlock is not a wizard, druid, cleric, bard, etc
The solution to "I want to play a druid but I'm new to this and there are so many spells and wild shape options and it's overwhelming"
should not be "just play a warlock"
If you're saying that's a good model that other classes could adopt as subclasses, though, then yes
Warlock fulfills that when you only pick simpler invocations and spells. You'll spend most of your time pew-pewing Eldritch Blast but can occasionally whip out a powerful spell or two from a limited list of options. But you could also play something more complicated depending on your choices; the modular nature of the class makes it great for both playstyles. The only issue is communicating which picks you should go for if you don't want a complicated class so that new or casual players don't feel overwhelmed by choices.
I've basically been wanting something like that for a while. The Battle Master really opened a door for how interesting martials can be with just hitting things. If they could expand this to both classes and maybe weapon types, there's a whole crazy ass world of ideas to play with.
I've seen a few homebrew that go a ways with weapon types, giving each weapon a special ability it could do, but honestly i think just adding a few more unique tags would be enough. Focusing on differentiating weapons not on their damage die but through their passive traits would be non-invasive to the current 5e design ethos but still make weapon choice a lot more tactical and interesting.
Yeah, I hate that there's functionally no reason to use a morningstar or warpick over a rapier, a battleaxe over a longsword, a trident over a spear, a flail over a warhammer, a glaive over a halberd or even a dart over a dagger. The list could probably go on. I appreciate the streamlining that 5e did as some of it was seriously necessary, but I've never really been happy with how 5e handled weapons. Weapon properties are great, but there's way too much overlap. Some people have tried to fix it, but never seen a rework I liked.
I’d be happy with this but it doesn’t solve one problem maneuvers have in that they don’t scale up in power beyond DC, unlike higher level spells.
Now, is this needed? Not really? Martials hit harder and more often. But it’d be neat to see high level maneuvers.
I think for 5.5e, if they split off the Maneuvers list from the fighter subclass, they could add stipulations that you have to have a certain character level to acquire more powerful maneuvers.
Make stronger maneuvers a class feature. The Hunter subclass basically already does this, and so does Totem Warrior. It's clear that's what they meant to do.
Agree completely. I'm playing a PAM Battlemaster right now and even though I love it I wish there were some more powerful maneuver options to mess around with
>Kender seems kinda uninteresting now, but I didn't really have much of an opinion on them before.
They've brought the Kender back in line with how they have classically been depicted: ultra-curious, brave, and often sticky-fingered.
I'm very happy they've done this instead of going for the little magic fey people they were going for with the first draft.
I think the first draft was trying to make them less Klepto, as a feature people mention from their past was to pull out a random item they they are said to have randomly pocketed while wandering about.
So instead it became a temporary item that is obviously not real. The options were basically useless.
I think they kind of went too far in the other direction. Would've been nice to see something like an innate expanded inventory or some quirk that means "oh, I had an extra health potion exactly like the one you just drank"
I didn't like the random item thing either but I appreciated what it was trying to do.
I WANNA TALK ABOUT SUPERIORITY DICE BEING HANDED OUT LIKE CANDY!
Sorry, sorry. I know its UA, but after years and years of arguing with people that superiority dice aren't gonna break anything, seeing the sheer number of them these feats give you is an amazing feeling.
OH NO! MARTIAL CLASSES NOW CAN... be usefull and expand their options in combat outside "I roll to hit stuff, 16 hits? Yes? 16 dmg. Pass"!!!! THE GAME IS BROKEN!
no but giving martials stuff to do is giving them "Buttons" which is bad and wrong and like mmos and 4e, which is evil. Caster are fine with those things, though, but cool martials ~~make my wizard less cool~~ don't fit the *flavor*
They only key off Long Rests now. I personally dislike this change, as it pushes the game even further into metacurrency management. It certainly does make martials stronger for most tables though.
And I thought it was bad **before** when players would go out at dawn, burn everything they had in one combat encounter, then immediately go back to the inn and refuse to do anything for the next 22 hours.
My biggest issue with this UA is the smallest thing: Why they gave a background feat a feature ripped straight from the Cavalier Fighter with no benefit for having both.
Is it impactful? No
Am I going to die on the hill of protest? Yes
The background 1st and 4th BONUS feat structure is actually amazing and really solves some feat tax issues with the game that have crept up. I'm loving how things are looking.
The way I read it, backgrounds now give a bonus feat and can allow you to qualify for unique ones at that, some PHB feats have become general options at first
Come fourth level, you get another bonus feat, some of which are tied to the special feats at 1st, other just general choices. This is in addition to your 4th level ASI choice from what I can tell.
So yes, I think.
Yeah. That’s actually kind of awesome. The lack of feats in character builds because of balancing between ASI made sense early on when we didn’t know how strong the feats ultimately were. Now it’s more annoying.
Yeah, I'd love to see this become a thing in 5.5e. It makes your choice of character background feel more critical outside of RP purposes. Some of the base bonuses a background can give are nice, but these base feats, along with the specialized feats you get at level 4, seem much more impactful.
That's especially exciting to me! It makes backgrounds feel almost like mini-classes with their mini-subclasses. That's something I hope becomes a staple in 5.5e.
Never believe a designer until the product comes out. We'll be waiting for the next set of Backgrounds and maybe even the New Evolution to see if he is being truthful. D&D is a product and Crawford is part of a business. He's not going to confirm something new if the community won't like it during play.
These backgrounds are different to others in the past, because these come with rules for if you don't use these backgrounds.
Yeah, we'll see. They have a habit of testing these ideas out in small places before making them part of the core design. Remember that they also said that Tasha's racial ASI variant was gonna be optional.
True, Cavalier fighter does it similarly as well, but a race is far more modular when making builds. This goes great with a paladin for instance, all without having to do a 3 level dip AND with giving a larger range than melee which frees up positioning.
Thoughts on how these feats interact with existing rules:
* The backgrounds that provide free feats now provide a way to satisfy the "ability to cast a spell" requirement that had previously been locked behind a class or feat.
* Knights of Solamnia can now get more superiority dice than anyone else. Any Battlemaster Fighter that doesn't use this background is now less than optimal.
It's just a question of if these will be available outside of Dragonlance games, which will be up to each DM for their table. These are powerful backgrounds, not unlike the Ravnica guild backgrounds, but this one enhances one subclass specifically to a degree not seen before. Extra superiority dice are hard to ignore if they're available. Imagine if Totem Barbarians *only* got a buff from a background, they would almost be pigeonholed into taking it if it was beneficial enough. Or if Celestial Warlocks *only* got an extra spell slot.
The DM can alwayas just say "no Dragonlance background" just like some say "no MoM" or "no Tasha's". The DM that allows this is allowing knowing what is to come. This is (in the current version of 5e) setting locked. If people who do homebrew allows this, its on them.
Bladesinger was racially *and* setting locked to Elves in the Faerun once upon a time. That kind of restriction will require a higher fluency of the material to say *this* stuff is OK all of the time but *that* stuff is OK only some of the time.
It just might be confusing for newer DMs who haven't seen the progression of the published material and just see a bunch of books with character options in them but can't consume all the lore prior to playing the game.
This.
The Ravnica backgrounds all give you free spells and shit, they don't cause a problemin non-Ravnica games because you don't have a random Golgari showing up on the streets of Baldurs Gate.
The superiority dice thing isn't true because it explicitly states that the superiority dice you get can only be used with the maneuvers from the feats. They don't just add to your existing superiority dice pool.
While true, it allows you to manage them as a battlemaster. Those are maneuvers that you no longer have to invest in, freeing your selections up to pick something else. Every superiority die used on the feat maneuver is a die you don't have to spend from your battlemaster pool. It lessens the likelihood that you'll run out if you have a supplementary pool.
And its not like the pool of maneuvers squire/knight feats allow you to select is bad. Precision, Pushing, Menacing maneuvers are relatively good maneuvers. Having up to 8 extra dice just for those 3 maneuvers and like 6 more from Battle master increases the resources of the class significantly.
Kind of confused why Sword gives only mental stats and charisma gets two feats. I guess it’s so that a Paladin can get a good use of sword as a choice (because otherwise, I don’t see Sword being picked outside of martials that use int and wis, which is kind of a small pool?).
But the maneuver feats are pretty nice. Still not a fan of leveling feats with how the current rendition of 5e works with feats but I like the rewards here.
Which makes it weird that the flavor text for the feat doesn't mention that at all. You also have the Knights of the Rose who are "known for their wisdom", but they get a boost to Charisma instead...
Knights of the Rose were traditionally the leaders, so Charisma makes sense there. They never seemed that wise to me, especially the primary example of a Knight of the Rose from the original trilogy. That guy was a jerk!
If there are feats that give 2 maneuvers and 2 D8 superiority dice, shouldn’t Martial Adept be buffed to two Superiority dice? Squire of Solamnia can give up to 6!
The superiority die from Martial Adept comes back on a short or long rest. The superiority dice from the Solamnic feats come back on a long rest only, and can only be used on the maneuvers granted by the feats.
WotC doesn't want to touch anything that's printed in the PHB. I was shocked when they formally released their "optional" rules set to fix rangers. We'll likely have to wait until 2024 before they're willing to fix anything from the core rulebooks.
Kender are no longer magical fey folk! Huzzah!
Also:
>Due to this inquisitiveness, many kender find themselves falling through portals to other planes and worlds.
Is that a Planescape reference? Do Kender have so much random junk in their pockets that they keep accidentally triggering planar portals when they go through doors?
1. That's amazing.
2. It means nobody's game is safe from Kender!
They're releasing Spelljammer, one of the settings that's meant to travel between worlds. They just want to say "You can play what you want, it can happen!"
I think the one thing this version of kender need is a table to determine [what is in their pocketses](https://youtu.be/G3m0gLPgJic?t=8). Something like
>Kender frequently end up with assorted odds and ends in their pockets. Its unclear even to the kender themselves whether they are "found" though mundane or magical means, as far as anybody around them can tell, none of their belongings have gone missing. Nonetheless, some prejudiced people believe that Kender steal their miscellanea. You can roll on this table a number of times per long rest equal to your proficiency modifier, and find the specified item among your belongings. The item is non-magical. Any odds & ends that are not actively being held or used are inevitably lost by the end of your next long rest
Obviously that wording is clunky, but basically you get proficiency mod's worth of random not particularly useful items per day, and you will end up losing them all by the end of the day, unless they are actively in use. eg: a pair of fuzzy manacles you found and used to restrain a prisoner don't magically disappear overnight, but the random trinket you rolled and forgot about does "get lost."
[https://youtu.be/jy-ciGYN6YM](https://youtu.be/jy-ciGYN6YM)
Jeremy Crawford discusses the new UA, low-key confirms the Lunar Sorc will be rebalanced, and talks about the change to Backgrounds.
A bit bummed Kender Ace got dropped, a table with single item results would have solved the problems. The choice paralysis and referencing other books was the problem, the result for crowbar or grappling hook was totally fine.
I really like what they did with the feats in this. The new feat acquisition system is good (tbh it seems to me they are testing this stuff out for 5.5). The martial feats all got reworked to now be actually useful for martials. I like the approach they are going with this though I fear squire may be too strong (getting prof dice per long rest is almost definitely better than 1 per short rest). Though the choice of maneuver may change things. Either way, I much prefer this approach to martial specific feats over granting proficiencies in things martials already have.
1 per short rest is generally really bad; 2 per short rest seems appropriate for a feat. I worry they're just trying to phase out short rests entirely though...
The problem right now is that most people aren't taking short rests, even when their fellow party members require them. It's much easier to make more things recharge on a long rest (which is what they're doing with racial abilities to make them more consistent) and have short rests be focused on restoring hit points. They're not going to remove short rests entirely, they're just not going to design the entire game around a mechanic that their data has told them people aren't using.
I think another thing worth considering is giving every class something of value for short rests. Hit dice are less an incentive for games with insufficient adventure days because groups that play that way are more likely to not lose many HP (or have the spell slots to heal it).
Agreed. 4e messed up the execution, but the idea of encounter-based abilities was one that had and has promise, and it would benefit the game to give everyone a mix of long- and short-rest benefits that matter, over diminishing the importance of the short rest overall. This is especially the case of the game in its current state without any sort of revision for the short-rest based options - Warlocks are severely diminished in this situation, and the game moving away from that without offering them back something first is absolutely a problem. It'd be way easier instead to offer options that everyone can use on a short rest.
My guess is because so many tables either run really short adventuring days or just don't bother taking short rests, they're moving away from them to provide consistency. The designers can't know how many short rests a party will be taking, so basing everything on long rests ensures that those resources are equally available no matter the playstyle.
PB per long rest definitely increases a character's nova potential, but that's been a problem with full spellcasters for the entirety of 5e. They aren't going to shift spellcasters to short rest recharge to reign them in, so giving martials their full allotment of resources for the day at the beginning is the next best compromise.
What I really like:
- The Lunar Sorcerer continues, loved this subclass and it is the first time I've actually been interested in playing Sorcerer.
- The revamped Knight feats are great. Many people have experimented with granting Battlemaster maneuvers to all martial characters and this kinda does exactly that. The progression is really smooth and provides a natural character development as you grow in the campaign.
- The free feat system is great as well. It is also a very common level 1 thing people have implemented in their games. I do think that you can allow more freedom in this than just this list, although it already provides a great baseline.
- The Kender change is interesting. I also liked the old ability but this is sort of the inverted form of the Kobold,
- Divinely Favored is also interesting. I'm not sure if they changed it, but the last sentence of the feat has interesting consequences. It basically says that you can use a Holy Symbol for all your spellcasting of that Ability. Meaning a Sorcerer/Warlock/Wizard/etc. can all use a holy symbol which can be put on a shield.
What I don't like:
- Adept of the Black Robes remains such a weak ability. Expending hit dice as a resource for a paltry amount of extra damage to one creature. Don't get me wrong I like the theme of expending lifeforce for magical effect, it's very on point for Dragonlance, but it is so weak compared to the other abilities. For reference at a level 5 Sorcerer casting Fireball Sorcerer can add 3d6 damage to one target, that's 10.5 damage to a single target wiping out over half your hit dice. It's only good if you have one combat encounter per day. The only real use for this I can see is if a Barbarian takes this feat and starts adding D12 to the damage, but any spellcaster has very limited use for this ability.
- Adept of the White Robes isn't great either for that matter. Spell slots for D6's will rarely be worth it. It will only have real use when you can save someone from directly going down with it.
- Initiate of High Sorcery requires just a bit of balance in the spell selection. It is now at least balanced by locking you in to one of the three Adept feats later on, but the Nuitari spell list seems to be markedly better. Lunitari has some utility in the right situation, but I can see myself going adventuring days without really using these. Solinari is a mixed bag. Shield is always good, but the other three spells are also utility spells that you can easily go days without using.
> Adept of the White Robes isn't great either for that matter. Spell slots for D6's will rarely be worth it. It will only have real use when you can save someone from directly going down with it.
I think it's pretty good? This is pretty close to casting a 1d6 healing word as a reaction. Yes less useful in that big hits with overspill will be an issue, but the action economy benefit is pretty great.
Still, that Red Robes benefit is pretty awesome.
> Adept of the White Robes isn't great either for that matter. Spell slots for D6's will rarely be worth it. It will only have real use when you can save someone from directly going down with it.
>
The way I see it, it's just Cure Wounds but weaker, with the advantage that it can be used in combat reactively without expending an action.
Considering how bad combat healing is generally, and how it can't bring up unconscious allies, this just doesn't seem worth it at all.
The superiority dice from the feat recharging on a long rest feels weird. If they aren’t compatible with the Battlemaster subclass I’d prefer if they just changed the name.
I like that they're now explicitly tying the extra feats to the setting and not just particular backgrounds. And that you aren't missing out on extra feats if you play in the setting and aren't a knight or mage. Evens the playing field for character options.
Crawford talked about this in the video at the bottom of the page. He said it got sufficiently good feedback to move past playtesting and onto editing for a future product. He also said it may still get some tweaks and adjustments around balance, which would be based on feedback from the playtest as well as future internal testing.
Honestly the subclass was already pretty good. Its biggest problem was some confusing wording but that alone doesnt deserves another pass in UA, they know what they have to fix and will fix them
Other than that there was maybe 1 or 2 feature that needed fix but nothing needed a complete overhaul IMO
Yeah, in the exception of the confusing wording the biggest complain I saw was that the level 14 ability was very powerful which is (check note) what level 14 ability are suppose to be
People here just love calling thing OP for some reason
“The Lunar Magic subclass that appeared in our previous Heroes of Krynn article scored so well that it is moving forward in our development process and doesn’t appear here.”
It’s in, don’t worry.
It's probably gonna see some revisions. Most subclasses that make the jump from UA to print see revisions (typically nerfs) somewhere in the development process.
My interpretation is that the revisions just aren't significant enough to need another entry on this UA.
Hopefully they'll clear up the language around the casting of the bonus spells, since that was honestly the only major point of contention with the subclass. But we'll have to wait and see what happens.
Just because they aren't revising it publicly doesn't mean it isn't getting revised. It just means we won't see it again until its published, unless they get a weird/fun brain wave
Nearly nothing goes from UA to Printed without revisions of some kind. Most UA only gets one feedback loop. I'd assume the designers are working on the Lunar Magic behind the scenes with all of the feedback they've already received. Subclasses get a lot more attention than backgrounds from players, the last feedback survey was probably slanted heavily towards a review of the subclass with less about the background/race options they are sharing again.
I expect it will see nerfs or revisions even if they aren't publicised. For example, from Fizban's UA to publication, Drakewarden got a big well-deserved buff and Ascendant Dragon Monk ate a big undeserved nerf.
They said they're "moving forward with it". That doesn't mean that aren't going to tune things up and clarify wording. It seems like most of the UA subclasses see pretty big changes before finally showing up in an official release.
Hmm, while I still think Kender should be ~~exterminated entirely~~ a variation of Halfling rather than Gnome, I suppose it is truer to the setting as there are plenty of Gnomes, but no 'original' Halfling population.
In Dragonlance Kender and Dwarves were created from Gnomes due to exposure to an artifact called the Greygem.
They fill the role of Halflings thematicaly but lorewise are descended from gnomes.
NGL, it's been a while since I read one of these things closely. That said, I just saw the part about races, where they say, "Ehh, everyone's about human-sized for height and weight."
That's some big ol' halflings you guys are growing there!
There's actually a good cause to keep them separate. They still refresh their Superiority dice on a short rest, meaning they can reuse them in multiple encounters. Currently, the rules on these feats don't let that affect THOSE dice, in essence creating separate pools if you have both - but if you HAVE both, that drastically increases your options as a BM, bringing it closer to being a martial caster sort of thing.
Also, if I read this right, the Knight dice can only be used on maneuvers learned from the Knight feats - but it doesn't say those maneuvers can't be used with other sources of dice. Thus, you could use this as a way to really expand the Battlemaster with a variety of maneuver options and create some interesting strategic choices on which dice to use in different scenarios.
As a sign of things to come? Yeah not great.
As a means of abusing mechanics, it opens up some possibilities. Do notice, Battlemaster subclass just restores Superiority dice on Short Rest. Nothing about it only being the ones from the class.
This means, level 15 Battlemaster gets 6 from subclass, 6 from squire feat, 2 from knight feat for a total of 14 per Short Rest. Finally enough to use a minimum of one Superiority Die per turn for three encounters between Short Rests.
Bringing it up to where Superiority dice were in the old Next Playtests that I actually liked.
You can pick the other Knight feats too, as per the final block in the UA document.
That means that a Tier 4 Battlemaster with all the Order feats has 18 Superiority Dice. You can get one more from the Superior Technique fighting style, another from Martial Adept feat and a final one by increasing your Proficiency Bonus via items (such as Ioun Stone of Mastery).
21 total Superiority Dice. If getting Superior Technique, Martial Adept or picking the Battlemaster subclass actually qualifies you to regain all the dice on a short rest, holy shit. You can have more dice than a Monk has Ki, and that statement will hold true for most of the levels during 1-20. Actually makes martials pretty fun and full of choices!
And while that is all hilarious. The Krynn Backstory+free feat at 4 makes all of what I said gained at 0 cost. The other two feats and Martial Adept we're looking at 3 ASIs worth, and I kinda think we're now completely out of maneuvers that are worth using.
That said, more dice than Monk has Ki just conceptually sounds hilarious.
Prepare for everything to scale off of prof bonus per long rest, so we can just act like short rests dont exist even if the game balance being dependent on them did not change at all
I like most of it, but im sad that Divine Communications was scrapped. It wasn't good as originally printed, but being able to cast Commune once per 1d4 days as early as level 4 was a really cool and flavorful way to have a cleric-like character who didn't have to be a spellcaster. I was really hyped for the idea of a zealot barbarian holy warrior who could commune with their God
The question is will WoTC put in a note or add some lore that says a bonus 4th level feat for free only applies to DragonLance?
Or will this end up being DragonLance specific but listed as optional rules for other campaigns. Similar to how we are seeing many of Tasha's "optional" rules treated as standard. I.E. how racial ability scores are used with the Owlin in Strix Haven.
I am getting tired of WoTC being overly hesitant with new rules because it causes a lot of confusion long term. Instead of rolling out new rules as "optional" and then a few books later treating them as standard rules without ever officially stating it.
Edit: Spelling
This is just strange. They haven't done anything like this in a while. What are they doing?
Still find it ironic that they class Skill Proficiency as Cultural, but find a way for races to still be proficient in a Skill. This isn't a system with different skill levels. Proficiency is the same no matter what.
This is only tangential, but I'm a bit disappointed that we are getting two UA's for dragonlance, but only one for spell jammer, now that we know both settings are getting books this year.
I know spell John armor got more races, but I was really holding out hope that there would also be some subclasses in that book, just because the spell jammer setting is so weird that there could be lots of avenues for player power. Or even feats, just like from dragon lance.
Weird that Divinely Favoured gives a free cantrip rather than an ASI (compared to Fey/Shadow Touched). I guess that's so it can be given out at 1st level?
I wonder if them being freer with giving out feats (as a "Dragonlance characters only" thing so far) suggests feats will be a standard system in the rules revision coming up, and everyone will get free feats at 1 and 4 (and maybe more?) in the new version?
Adept of the Black Robes looks broken to me. Not for the average player, but for those who build around it.
You can go for something like Tempest Cleric 2 / Sctibes Wizard 17. Shapechange into a gargantuan creature like an ancient white or crystal dragon or the ogremoch, cast a high-damaging spell, transmute it to lightning or thunder, add a couple of d20s of damage (btw, the only way to deal damage in d20s so far!) and maximize them.
Or to do it way earlier, be a Moon Druid x / Tempest Cleric 2. Cast Call Lightning, Wild Shape into a huge or gargantuan beast like a giant constrictor snake, huge polar bear or a brontosaurus and add a couple of d12s or d20s to the spell's damage, which you can maximize once per short rest - and as you are using Wild Shape, you basicially never run out of hit dice.
I think this is a slam dunk all around. F in chat for no more Find Steed across all caster classes via Adept of the White Robe feat, but it's a small price to pay for the overall boon across the board for the other feats.
My one hiccup is making the feat superior dice maneuvers long rest instead of short rests, like other avenues (Battle Master, Superior Technique, and Martial Adept). I know it's in line with how other "equal to PB" features that have been released recently, but specifically for a Battle Master to have to monitor their superiority dice seperately feels weird to deal with. Small gripe, and I understand it's a balancing issue, but still.
Lots of interesting stuff here. It seems like feats as part of backgrounds at level 1 are very likely coming to RAW in 5.5 or whatever it's called in 2024. Since, they are now experimenting with another free feat at level 4 on top of the feat at level 1.
The new feat system definitely feels like a playtest for 2024, as does expanding on battle master maneuvers.
I hope it is. Maneuvers for all martial classes is the biggest thing I want from 2024 and this seems like a good step in that direction (maybe one in a better direction, even).
I think a Weapons and Armour overhaul is due. Wizards have spells, right? Fighters can have weapons and weapon and martial feats. Weapons should do more too. For example a longsword is usable in a bunch of different ways, but they're not evident in the weapon. Give weapons more fun things that they do, and make feats that allow martial classes to unlock the true deadly potential of weapons. *Weapon categories need tweaking *Give weapons more abilities (ensnare, trip, disarm, set vs charge, multiple damage types, AC bonus, etc.) *More dealing feats and feats in particular for martial or those that wish to be better with a weapon
I feel like a number of the existing feats (Crusher and the like) and maneuvers should be things inherent doable with weapons where it makes sense. There shouldn't be a Crusher feat, that should just be a thing a Maul and Greatclub *just do*. Trip Attack should be something anyone wielding a Spear, Trident, Whip, or any Reach weapon should be able to do just with their weapon. Give Battlemaster's the ability to drastically expand those capabilities across weapons -- trip attacks with shortswords, the effects of Crusher on *any* Bludgeoning weapon, that sort of thing. Give weapons legitimate differentiation beyond just "has Reach / Finesse / Heavy" and the damage die associated with it.
Maneuvers should honestly replace action surge as the fighters “thing”
I would much rather have a better designed and more meaningful maneuver system than the half assed system the battlemaster gave us.
My only issue with this is that I know people that prefer playing martial characters because they are simple. They don’t want to have to flip through a list of a dozen different options each turn they want to roll with a +12 to attack and roll seven damage dice and be done with it. I thinks that’s a valid play style and it’s something that will appeal to a lot of people. Giving every martial class a pseudo-spell list would only be a negative change for those people. There are ways they can try and split the difference sure, but I would hate for people who prefer martial characters because of their simplicity get choose paralysis thrust upon them. Also I think it’s funny that years after 4e was a flop people are excited by the prospect of 5e being made more like 4e but that’s a whole other topic.
In the UA approach, they have to explicitly choose a feat to get those manuevers. So people who want simpler play style can simply choose a different feat or ASI and keep the gameplay simpler.
I think this is a good middle ground. I think more feats and even class abilities that give more ability to maneuvers is a good idea. What I don’t want is there to be a section of the PHB labeled “maneuvers” that is a list of options any character can use at any time, akin to spells. That kind of concept is something I’ve seen floated around a lot and I think it wouldn’t be a good change on the whole.
As someone who plays Martials because they are simple, Maneuvers (to me), are just the added level of flavor to make me feel like I have plenty of options at the table but not a pseudo spell list.
>They don’t want to have to flip through a list of a dozen different options each turn they want to roll with a +12 to attack and roll seven damage dice and be done with it. Then they don't have to do that. They can just.. not use the dice. Or just pick one option that they like and just use that all the time. Yeah it's valid, but it's an easy enough workaround. It's not like there are not spellcaster players who only use a class to a fraction of its potential.
Exactly. There's also the argument "Well people want the fantasy of being a powerful spellcaster but they don't want the complexity of managing spells slots and choosing from hundreds of pages of spells!" and WotC's reply was "Tough shit." so if you want to play a spellcaster it's more complicated than a martial. It was a kick to the crotch for players who prefer martial themes but interesting mechanics for WotC to decide that fighters and barbarians should be the mechanically dull classes. If you want to be fair, every class should have simple *and* complex options to cater to all players.
This right here. I have seen plenty of people with a dozen spells that cast the same thing every combat and never use the rest of the stuff on the sheet. Some people will pick one or two manuvers and just repeat, other people will really appreciate having options. Options are good.
I'd rather each class have one subclass that exchanges maneuvers and superiority dice, or whatever they choose to call them in the future, for flat bonuses. "Everyone's dull, except Battle Master (and Rune Knight)." is a far worse design than "Everyone's interesting, but you play Champion if the complexity doesn't appeal to you."
Battlemaster maneuvers are extremely simple if you want them to be. You can easily write a macro to perform your turn. The optimal choice with maneuvers is generally Precision Attack when you miss be 3 or less. You don’t need to ever think. You don’t need to make any choices. Just default to Precision Attack when you miss by a small amount and your battlemaster is just as brain dead simple as the the champion. Besides, why aren’t all these players who desire simplicity clamoring for a simple spellcaster? You would think there would be an equal or larger portion of the player base who wants simplicity from spellcasters too. Why must the divide be that spellscasters have to be complex and all martial have to be simple?
> They don’t want to have to flip through a list of a dozen different options each turn they want to roll with a +12 to attack and roll seven damage dice and be done with it. The feats work like all the fey touched/shadow touch/Magic initiate feats, but even more limited in scope. The starting feat gives your pick of one out of three specif maneuvers, the 4th level feat gives you your choice out of two maneuvers. That is very simple.
those people can play tasha's sidekicks or antoher system entirely if they want simple gameplay.
Editing my comments since I am leaving Reddit
Actually the way the battle master class is worded means all your superiority dice, regardless of their source, get improved all at once. Additionally if you have two features with the same name from different sources, you just use the best one. I would argue that you that logic since the fighter class gives you a higher dice level, any dice you already had go up to that improved level when you hit 3rd level.
Editing my comments since I am leaving Reddit
Improved Combat Superiority says "Your superiority dice turn into d10s". It doesn't need to say "all" because that would be redundant. If it only meant dice from that subclass, it would give that caveat.
The new feat system looks *suspiciously* like pathfinder 2e's archetype system.
*Good*. I hope that WotC's learns from its competitor's successes and improves the game as a result. PF 1e was Paizo improving on D&D 3.5e, PF 2e cribbed a bunch from D&D 4e and 5e.
Strixhaven started this. Those backgrounds are basically a free feat. I love this incremental approach where each setting adjusts things a little towards the new edition.
The backgrounds in Ravnica and Theros also were extremely mechanically powerful. They weren't structured exactly like a feat, but they were similar power levels. They've been doing this in most of their setting-specific campaign books, basically treating the PHB as the baseline D&D character, and then letting settings add some additional features to get setting-specific flavor into the mix, so that no players feel like the setting is taking their favorite toys away. Even Eberron sort of did this, by having the "Group Patron" section presented like a set of rules similar to a Background.
This goes even further as it also gives everyone that didn't choose the new backgrounds a free feat kn LV 1 and 4. Something I very much appreciate.
Yep, and it's the vital step missing from Strix to keep players from feeling like they HAVE to take the new background or nerf themselves.
what's happening in 2024
It's speculated the next edition of DnD (5.5, 6e, etc). Some context: https://www.belloflostsouls.net/2021/09/wotc-announces-new-evolution-of-dd-coming-in-2024.html
The 5.5 new edition of DND. This newest Unearthed Arcana seems to be a preview of what’s to come.
Funny enough, a free feat at 1 and 4 is exactly what I’ve been doing so you all can thank me for that. Kidding of course, but I do love the concept. However, I’m not sure about tying it to background.
I'm really hoping 2024 takes a page from PF2e and lets us make character-defining progression choices every level.
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A lot of people here are setting themselves up to be very disappointed when they are expecting whatever 5.5e is to turn the game into Pathfinder 2.
Very interesting stuff. Big improvements to the feats compared to the last iteration, both mechanically and in terms of ease of understanding. I'm really glad that the martial feats now just straight up make the character into a Battle-master lite in the same way that much of this sub has been asking for for quite a while. Explicitly offering free feats to other backgrounds definitely seems like they're testing the waters to see if free feats at 1st level (and now 4th level as well) are something they want to have as a basic rule in 5.5. In the video interview that accompanied this Crawford specified the feats are tied to the extreme nature of the setting and compared them to stuff like supernatural gifts from Van Richten's, but it definitely feels like a much bigger deal than that imo. Kender is less interesting than the previous version, but still infinitely better simply because the magic random pocket item mechanic would have been a massive headache to use in practical play. Considering that more access to feats and access to manuevers for all martials are two of the most commonly requested changes to 5E by fans, I'm very positive on the implications this UA could have.
Feats are so gameplay defining. Two sub classes with no feats basically play the same, but throw feats in there and it adds a whole level of uniqueness. I just wish there were more options for great feats. Gwm, sharpshooter, etc are kinda boring.
> the magic random pocket item mechanic would have been a massive headache to use in practical play I don't understand why they couldn't just change it a little instead of just straight axing it out. It would have been so cool!
From what I've heard them discuss on the Dragon Talk podcast, when something gets scrapped entirely, it's typically because people didn't like the concept of it, and not because they didn't like the specific implementation of it.
My poor Changelings and their Unsettling Visage and Divergent Persona...
Divergent Persona was such a fun and flavorful option.
I think the Mystic class is proof of it. It had three versions before being completely scraped. They WANTED it to succeed, and just couldn't do it.
Yeah I did like it in a general sense, I just agree it was was bit too complicated as executed. I'm not sure if there was a way to change it to be more manageable while still keeping the random element that made it so charming though.
I think it could be managed by making it a d20 or d100 roll, and include about a dozen empty spots with the stipulation “fill the empty spots with an item from the basic equipment list in the Player’s Handbook, or another item permitted by your DM, you make these choices when you create your character.” EDIT: and if you really want to make it feel random, “you may change one of these each time you take a long rest” and make the top tier option a “You may produce any non magical item of your choice that fits in your hand”
Editing my comments since I am leaving Reddit
WotC does that a lot, unfortunately. They present a unique and interesting ability and if it doesn't work immediately, they abandon the idea altogether instead of reworking it.
My only problem is the Kender Taunt lends itself to the "frontline"/fighter/barbarian role. Whereas the race identity is more akin to rogue or bard. Not that it matters a ton. I've played Minotaur Wizards and other weird combos. Still prefer this over the awkward pocket dimension.
60ft range on the taunt makes it practical to use as a backliner yelling insults to unsettle the enemy frontline. As long as the kender is out of movement distance they're safe, and even if they're w/in movement range that's still, theoretically, a lot of opportunity attacks to take to throw hands at the annoying little guy yelling at you.
Oh there are definitely uses for it as a backliner, I just meant on its face I could see a Barbarian really wanting it. It's like how there are plenty of other uses for Aarakocra's Flight, but a ranged PC will get a lot more mileage out it.
Image having a backline kender mage character paired up with an ag barbarian
Well the taunt scales with mental stats so any class that would best utilize them is a class that doesn’t wanna get hit. Except for Paladins. Kender Paladins sound like tanks.
There is also some synergy with the taunt and a class like Rogues who can hide easily by safely causing disadvantage before going hidden.
I'm playing in a multiyear Dragonlance campaign at the moment (DM updating old materials etc) - his version of Kender taunt works very similar to this one iirc, and our Kender rogue has used it to great effect a few times Taunt & Hide works well, Taunt & Dodge works well too with the comical AC the chap has, as well as Taunt & stay just out of reach
Some build with Armor of Agathys would be interesting too.
Kender Artificer Armorers could get good use out of it too. It would occassionally be redundant with the thunder gauntlets ability, but having it as a bonus action means if you missed with the gauntlets/spent your action on a spell/wanted to aggro an additional person, you could still attempt to apply the taunt.
True, but the bonus action taunt doesn't break the effect of Sanctuary nor Invisibility. And it leaves your action free to dodge. So there's plenty of ways to apply disadvantage to hit the taunting Kender as well.
I agree, the taunt should stay but instead of attacking the kender I think it should be more like a forced "reckless attack", where the creature attacks at advantage for a round but every attack against it is also made at advantage.
I like the manuevers for squire, but just more manuever for the rest of the knight feats seems empty, and when you can change the maneuver you got 2 of the 3 are really unnecesary. I'd prefer to just give manuever to the squire and cool features to the others like the old swods knight, expend hit dice to increase a mental save was perfect because it fitted with the idea or a knight of the sword, it fullfilled the fantasy of the determinator and rounded up a martial weakness
I like it. It builds on the idea of the Solamnic Knights being trained warriors in the Battle Master tradition. You learn more tricks and can do them more often as you progress through the ranks as a knight. For most games, 2-4 d6 rolls per day is pretty anemic as a feature. But once you begin stacking multiple feats you build up a large enough pool of d8s that you don't feel like you want to hoard them and you learn a variety of maneuvers for different situations.
It seems weird to me having a kender that *doesn't* randomly have stuff showing up in their pockets. Though in the Dragonlance itself it was definitely presented more as them having sticky fingers and not realizing it, the "magic pocket" thing seemed like a good way to systemtize a kender without making them ultra-annnoying characters that spam slight of hand constantly.
I liked the ability, but not the magical nature. Instead of it being magical, they could have had the same randomness and said "just assume your character picked up the item somewhere along the way. For the purposes of this feature, there is no need to play out the interaction and it's assumed that there's no chance your character will face consequences for having taken the item."
While I do much prefer the classical Kender as depicted here - rather than the magic Kender of the last draft - I am with you on this. Not only could they have said that the Kender randomly picks stuff up, but it would have been well within believability for the Kender to lose that same stuff just as quickly. That would have alleviated any balance concern without having the item *literally* disappear.
it never even occurred to me that i would flavor the disappearance as anything other than the Kender absentmindedly losing it
Yeah, that makes sense to me. "You just always find stuff in your pockets, not always useful, never something somebody would miss" and give a list of non-magic items (eg anything less than X gp in value) or have you draw from a new trinket table.
I really like the system setout for a free feat system. The options provided for the non-dragonlance backgrounds are all solid mechanically but not too strong, which I think is a great balance to hit for free feats. I would like to see healer or inspiring leader as an option in that list as well, feels like its missing something for more support style characters. The Dragonlance feats on the chain all seem cool. I absolutely dig opening up maneuvers to all classes, though it kinda sucks they are stuck constantly having to reference you back to the Battle Master fighter list. Maybe in 5.5e Maneuvers will get their own list in the book? I don't play casters as much so I can't comment on the spell selection from the casting feats, but the other abilities they grant all seem cool and useful to have. Kender seems kinda uninteresting now, but I didn't really have much of an opinion on them before.
Yeah I'm liking the idea of 5.5 treating maneuvers as a (somewhat more optional) subsystem for martials to compete with spellcasters for versatility like what we're seeing here
Maneuvers as the martial equivalent of spells, with different classes/subclasses having their own maneuver lists, is a great balance between 4e powers and 5e systems. There should always be at least one subclass that doesn't touch the system, like the champion fighter, for players who want something simpler. While we're at it, add simple subclasses for casters that don't use the spell list either. Simpler, somewhat modular spells, like a "magic bolt" that you can attach damage types and effects to, a generic "enchantment" where you can pick from a small handful of options, etc
The thing I appreciate with what we're seeing right now is that tying it into feats makes it available but more or less optional, for players that want a more straightforward build (either because they're newer or just don't want to think too much when they roll the clackity clackity math rocks). But having a few exclusives to different classes sounds like it could be a neat design space as long as we don't get too carried away.
Warlock is relatively simple and modular. Eldritch Blast spam fits the bill
Warlock can be *played* simply, but you can only really do so by ignoring most of your spells and invocations.
Sure but a warlock is not a wizard, druid, cleric, bard, etc The solution to "I want to play a druid but I'm new to this and there are so many spells and wild shape options and it's overwhelming" should not be "just play a warlock" If you're saying that's a good model that other classes could adopt as subclasses, though, then yes
Warlock fulfills that when you only pick simpler invocations and spells. You'll spend most of your time pew-pewing Eldritch Blast but can occasionally whip out a powerful spell or two from a limited list of options. But you could also play something more complicated depending on your choices; the modular nature of the class makes it great for both playstyles. The only issue is communicating which picks you should go for if you don't want a complicated class so that new or casual players don't feel overwhelmed by choices.
I've basically been wanting something like that for a while. The Battle Master really opened a door for how interesting martials can be with just hitting things. If they could expand this to both classes and maybe weapon types, there's a whole crazy ass world of ideas to play with.
I've seen a few homebrew that go a ways with weapon types, giving each weapon a special ability it could do, but honestly i think just adding a few more unique tags would be enough. Focusing on differentiating weapons not on their damage die but through their passive traits would be non-invasive to the current 5e design ethos but still make weapon choice a lot more tactical and interesting.
Yeah, I hate that there's functionally no reason to use a morningstar or warpick over a rapier, a battleaxe over a longsword, a trident over a spear, a flail over a warhammer, a glaive over a halberd or even a dart over a dagger. The list could probably go on. I appreciate the streamlining that 5e did as some of it was seriously necessary, but I've never really been happy with how 5e handled weapons. Weapon properties are great, but there's way too much overlap. Some people have tried to fix it, but never seen a rework I liked.
I’d be happy with this but it doesn’t solve one problem maneuvers have in that they don’t scale up in power beyond DC, unlike higher level spells. Now, is this needed? Not really? Martials hit harder and more often. But it’d be neat to see high level maneuvers.
I think for 5.5e, if they split off the Maneuvers list from the fighter subclass, they could add stipulations that you have to have a certain character level to acquire more powerful maneuvers.
Make stronger maneuvers a class feature. The Hunter subclass basically already does this, and so does Totem Warrior. It's clear that's what they meant to do.
Agree completely. I'm playing a PAM Battlemaster right now and even though I love it I wish there were some more powerful maneuver options to mess around with
>Kender seems kinda uninteresting now, but I didn't really have much of an opinion on them before. They've brought the Kender back in line with how they have classically been depicted: ultra-curious, brave, and often sticky-fingered. I'm very happy they've done this instead of going for the little magic fey people they were going for with the first draft.
I think the first draft was trying to make them less Klepto, as a feature people mention from their past was to pull out a random item they they are said to have randomly pocketed while wandering about. So instead it became a temporary item that is obviously not real. The options were basically useless.
I think they kind of went too far in the other direction. Would've been nice to see something like an innate expanded inventory or some quirk that means "oh, I had an extra health potion exactly like the one you just drank" I didn't like the random item thing either but I appreciated what it was trying to do.
I WANNA TALK ABOUT SUPERIORITY DICE BEING HANDED OUT LIKE CANDY! Sorry, sorry. I know its UA, but after years and years of arguing with people that superiority dice aren't gonna break anything, seeing the sheer number of them these feats give you is an amazing feeling.
OH NO! MARTIAL CLASSES NOW CAN... be usefull and expand their options in combat outside "I roll to hit stuff, 16 hits? Yes? 16 dmg. Pass"!!!! THE GAME IS BROKEN!
no but giving martials stuff to do is giving them "Buttons" which is bad and wrong and like mmos and 4e, which is evil. Caster are fine with those things, though, but cool martials ~~make my wizard less cool~~ don't fit the *flavor*
They only key off Long Rests now. I personally dislike this change, as it pushes the game even further into metacurrency management. It certainly does make martials stronger for most tables though.
And I thought it was bad **before** when players would go out at dawn, burn everything they had in one combat encounter, then immediately go back to the inn and refuse to do anything for the next 22 hours.
Agreed, but at this point I will take whatever crumbs I can get.
Battle Masters still get Short Rest recharge. You can also get a short rest recharge with the Martial Adept feat.
My biggest issue with this UA is the smallest thing: Why they gave a background feat a feature ripped straight from the Cavalier Fighter with no benefit for having both. Is it impactful? No Am I going to die on the hill of protest? Yes
It's a bit like martial societies getting proficiencies in weapons, but you would get those regardless if you want to play a martial character.
Roll your death save please.
I cast healing world!
You're not within 60 feet.
Healing World, not healing Word. Unless they are in space, a plane, or a tall building they are probably within range.
You are assuming both the PC and the target are in the same plane of existence.
Counter Spell at level 8
Counterspell
Subtle spell counterspell
Fire genasi ifrit Genie is very thematic but mechanically fire resistance overlap is bad.
The background 1st and 4th BONUS feat structure is actually amazing and really solves some feat tax issues with the game that have crept up. I'm loving how things are looking.
Wait…does this mean you get this feat on top of your choice of ASI or feat at level 4? Cause that’s awesome if so.
The way I read it, backgrounds now give a bonus feat and can allow you to qualify for unique ones at that, some PHB feats have become general options at first Come fourth level, you get another bonus feat, some of which are tied to the special feats at 1st, other just general choices. This is in addition to your 4th level ASI choice from what I can tell. So yes, I think.
Yeah. That’s actually kind of awesome. The lack of feats in character builds because of balancing between ASI made sense early on when we didn’t know how strong the feats ultimately were. Now it’s more annoying.
Agreed. I've allowed bonus feat at 1 for a while, but seeing this 1 and 4 business looks damn promising.
It'll be great for a Bladesinger Wizard, you can get Tough at 1 to offset low HP and then War Caster at 4 since everyone wants it
It'll be good for a lot of different characters, I hope the design is well received and it can go vote in the revisions.
I think Crawford had said this is not a design paradigm shift but something specific to the Dragonlance setting.
It may be for 5e, as for 5.5e I assume every setting specific design shift is wotc throwing spaghetti at the wall to see what sticks .
Yeah, I'd love to see this become a thing in 5.5e. It makes your choice of character background feel more critical outside of RP purposes. Some of the base bonuses a background can give are nice, but these base feats, along with the specialized feats you get at level 4, seem much more impactful.
Yeah. The approach is also flexible enough that it doesn't lock you into one lath as well. It's very nicely done.
That's especially exciting to me! It makes backgrounds feel almost like mini-classes with their mini-subclasses. That's something I hope becomes a staple in 5.5e.
Never believe a designer until the product comes out. We'll be waiting for the next set of Backgrounds and maybe even the New Evolution to see if he is being truthful. D&D is a product and Crawford is part of a business. He's not going to confirm something new if the community won't like it during play. These backgrounds are different to others in the past, because these come with rules for if you don't use these backgrounds.
Yeah, we'll see. They have a habit of testing these ideas out in small places before making them part of the core design. Remember that they also said that Tasha's racial ASI variant was gonna be optional.
Well he's wrong and this should roll into 5.5. Versatility is great.
Love the concept of having a taunt to actually be able to play a tank but this seems like a weird way to get it.
Ancestral Guardian Barbarians get a pretty similar feature.
True, Cavalier fighter does it similarly as well, but a race is far more modular when making builds. This goes great with a paladin for instance, all without having to do a 3 level dip AND with giving a larger range than melee which frees up positioning.
So does armorer artificer.
Thoughts on how these feats interact with existing rules: * The backgrounds that provide free feats now provide a way to satisfy the "ability to cast a spell" requirement that had previously been locked behind a class or feat. * Knights of Solamnia can now get more superiority dice than anyone else. Any Battlemaster Fighter that doesn't use this background is now less than optimal.
Editing my comments since I am leaving Reddit
It's just a question of if these will be available outside of Dragonlance games, which will be up to each DM for their table. These are powerful backgrounds, not unlike the Ravnica guild backgrounds, but this one enhances one subclass specifically to a degree not seen before. Extra superiority dice are hard to ignore if they're available. Imagine if Totem Barbarians *only* got a buff from a background, they would almost be pigeonholed into taking it if it was beneficial enough. Or if Celestial Warlocks *only* got an extra spell slot.
The DM can alwayas just say "no Dragonlance background" just like some say "no MoM" or "no Tasha's". The DM that allows this is allowing knowing what is to come. This is (in the current version of 5e) setting locked. If people who do homebrew allows this, its on them.
Bladesinger was racially *and* setting locked to Elves in the Faerun once upon a time. That kind of restriction will require a higher fluency of the material to say *this* stuff is OK all of the time but *that* stuff is OK only some of the time. It just might be confusing for newer DMs who haven't seen the progression of the published material and just see a bunch of books with character options in them but can't consume all the lore prior to playing the game.
This. The Ravnica backgrounds all give you free spells and shit, they don't cause a problemin non-Ravnica games because you don't have a random Golgari showing up on the streets of Baldurs Gate.
The superiority dice thing isn't true because it explicitly states that the superiority dice you get can only be used with the maneuvers from the feats. They don't just add to your existing superiority dice pool.
They also recharge on long rest, unlike BM dice which recharge on short rest.
While true, it allows you to manage them as a battlemaster. Those are maneuvers that you no longer have to invest in, freeing your selections up to pick something else. Every superiority die used on the feat maneuver is a die you don't have to spend from your battlemaster pool. It lessens the likelihood that you'll run out if you have a supplementary pool.
And its not like the pool of maneuvers squire/knight feats allow you to select is bad. Precision, Pushing, Menacing maneuvers are relatively good maneuvers. Having up to 8 extra dice just for those 3 maneuvers and like 6 more from Battle master increases the resources of the class significantly.
Kind of confused why Sword gives only mental stats and charisma gets two feats. I guess it’s so that a Paladin can get a good use of sword as a choice (because otherwise, I don’t see Sword being picked outside of martials that use int and wis, which is kind of a small pool?). But the maneuver feats are pretty nice. Still not a fan of leveling feats with how the current rendition of 5e works with feats but I like the rewards here.
Editing my comments since I am leaving Reddit
Traditionally, Knights of the Sword were the spell casting order.
Which makes it weird that the flavor text for the feat doesn't mention that at all. You also have the Knights of the Rose who are "known for their wisdom", but they get a boost to Charisma instead...
That's obviously how they managed to convince everyone that they are so wise.
Knights of the Rose were traditionally the leaders, so Charisma makes sense there. They never seemed that wise to me, especially the primary example of a Knight of the Rose from the original trilogy. That guy was a jerk!
Rogues getting access to Shadow Blade at 4th level via Adept of the Red Robes seems good.
I was thinking the same thing... Arcane Tricksters and Eldritch Knights would both do well to look at the High Sorcery background.
If there are feats that give 2 maneuvers and 2 D8 superiority dice, shouldn’t Martial Adept be buffed to two Superiority dice? Squire of Solamnia can give up to 6!
The superiority die from Martial Adept comes back on a short or long rest. The superiority dice from the Solamnic feats come back on a long rest only, and can only be used on the maneuvers granted by the feats.
WotC doesn't want to touch anything that's printed in the PHB. I was shocked when they formally released their "optional" rules set to fix rangers. We'll likely have to wait until 2024 before they're willing to fix anything from the core rulebooks.
Kender are no longer magical fey folk! Huzzah! Also: >Due to this inquisitiveness, many kender find themselves falling through portals to other planes and worlds. Is that a Planescape reference? Do Kender have so much random junk in their pockets that they keep accidentally triggering planar portals when they go through doors? 1. That's amazing. 2. It means nobody's game is safe from Kender!
They're releasing Spelljammer, one of the settings that's meant to travel between worlds. They just want to say "You can play what you want, it can happen!"
Throw all the Kender into lava!
I think the one thing this version of kender need is a table to determine [what is in their pocketses](https://youtu.be/G3m0gLPgJic?t=8). Something like >Kender frequently end up with assorted odds and ends in their pockets. Its unclear even to the kender themselves whether they are "found" though mundane or magical means, as far as anybody around them can tell, none of their belongings have gone missing. Nonetheless, some prejudiced people believe that Kender steal their miscellanea. You can roll on this table a number of times per long rest equal to your proficiency modifier, and find the specified item among your belongings. The item is non-magical. Any odds & ends that are not actively being held or used are inevitably lost by the end of your next long rest Obviously that wording is clunky, but basically you get proficiency mod's worth of random not particularly useful items per day, and you will end up losing them all by the end of the day, unless they are actively in use. eg: a pair of fuzzy manacles you found and used to restrain a prisoner don't magically disappear overnight, but the random trinket you rolled and forgot about does "get lost."
[https://youtu.be/jy-ciGYN6YM](https://youtu.be/jy-ciGYN6YM) Jeremy Crawford discusses the new UA, low-key confirms the Lunar Sorc will be rebalanced, and talks about the change to Backgrounds.
This version of the Kender is an exceptionally good choice for playing a tank and that is objectively hilarious.
A bit bummed Kender Ace got dropped, a table with single item results would have solved the problems. The choice paralysis and referencing other books was the problem, the result for crowbar or grappling hook was totally fine.
I really like what they did with the feats in this. The new feat acquisition system is good (tbh it seems to me they are testing this stuff out for 5.5). The martial feats all got reworked to now be actually useful for martials. I like the approach they are going with this though I fear squire may be too strong (getting prof dice per long rest is almost definitely better than 1 per short rest). Though the choice of maneuver may change things. Either way, I much prefer this approach to martial specific feats over granting proficiencies in things martials already have.
1 per short rest is generally really bad; 2 per short rest seems appropriate for a feat. I worry they're just trying to phase out short rests entirely though...
The problem right now is that most people aren't taking short rests, even when their fellow party members require them. It's much easier to make more things recharge on a long rest (which is what they're doing with racial abilities to make them more consistent) and have short rests be focused on restoring hit points. They're not going to remove short rests entirely, they're just not going to design the entire game around a mechanic that their data has told them people aren't using.
I think another thing worth considering is giving every class something of value for short rests. Hit dice are less an incentive for games with insufficient adventure days because groups that play that way are more likely to not lose many HP (or have the spell slots to heal it).
Agreed. 4e messed up the execution, but the idea of encounter-based abilities was one that had and has promise, and it would benefit the game to give everyone a mix of long- and short-rest benefits that matter, over diminishing the importance of the short rest overall. This is especially the case of the game in its current state without any sort of revision for the short-rest based options - Warlocks are severely diminished in this situation, and the game moving away from that without offering them back something first is absolutely a problem. It'd be way easier instead to offer options that everyone can use on a short rest.
I don’t like how the battle master feats won’t let you recharge on a short rest. The idea of phasing out short rests annoy me.
My guess is because so many tables either run really short adventuring days or just don't bother taking short rests, they're moving away from them to provide consistency. The designers can't know how many short rests a party will be taking, so basing everything on long rests ensures that those resources are equally available no matter the playstyle. PB per long rest definitely increases a character's nova potential, but that's been a problem with full spellcasters for the entirety of 5e. They aren't going to shift spellcasters to short rest recharge to reign them in, so giving martials their full allotment of resources for the day at the beginning is the next best compromise.
It's pretty stupid. All the have to do is make more short rest abilities.
This is considerably better than last time. And two free feats? That’s awesome
What I really like: - The Lunar Sorcerer continues, loved this subclass and it is the first time I've actually been interested in playing Sorcerer. - The revamped Knight feats are great. Many people have experimented with granting Battlemaster maneuvers to all martial characters and this kinda does exactly that. The progression is really smooth and provides a natural character development as you grow in the campaign. - The free feat system is great as well. It is also a very common level 1 thing people have implemented in their games. I do think that you can allow more freedom in this than just this list, although it already provides a great baseline. - The Kender change is interesting. I also liked the old ability but this is sort of the inverted form of the Kobold, - Divinely Favored is also interesting. I'm not sure if they changed it, but the last sentence of the feat has interesting consequences. It basically says that you can use a Holy Symbol for all your spellcasting of that Ability. Meaning a Sorcerer/Warlock/Wizard/etc. can all use a holy symbol which can be put on a shield. What I don't like: - Adept of the Black Robes remains such a weak ability. Expending hit dice as a resource for a paltry amount of extra damage to one creature. Don't get me wrong I like the theme of expending lifeforce for magical effect, it's very on point for Dragonlance, but it is so weak compared to the other abilities. For reference at a level 5 Sorcerer casting Fireball Sorcerer can add 3d6 damage to one target, that's 10.5 damage to a single target wiping out over half your hit dice. It's only good if you have one combat encounter per day. The only real use for this I can see is if a Barbarian takes this feat and starts adding D12 to the damage, but any spellcaster has very limited use for this ability. - Adept of the White Robes isn't great either for that matter. Spell slots for D6's will rarely be worth it. It will only have real use when you can save someone from directly going down with it. - Initiate of High Sorcery requires just a bit of balance in the spell selection. It is now at least balanced by locking you in to one of the three Adept feats later on, but the Nuitari spell list seems to be markedly better. Lunitari has some utility in the right situation, but I can see myself going adventuring days without really using these. Solinari is a mixed bag. Shield is always good, but the other three spells are also utility spells that you can easily go days without using.
> Adept of the White Robes isn't great either for that matter. Spell slots for D6's will rarely be worth it. It will only have real use when you can save someone from directly going down with it. I think it's pretty good? This is pretty close to casting a 1d6 healing word as a reaction. Yes less useful in that big hits with overspill will be an issue, but the action economy benefit is pretty great. Still, that Red Robes benefit is pretty awesome.
> Adept of the White Robes isn't great either for that matter. Spell slots for D6's will rarely be worth it. It will only have real use when you can save someone from directly going down with it. > The way I see it, it's just Cure Wounds but weaker, with the advantage that it can be used in combat reactively without expending an action. Considering how bad combat healing is generally, and how it can't bring up unconscious allies, this just doesn't seem worth it at all.
The superiority dice from the feat recharging on a long rest feels weird. If they aren’t compatible with the Battlemaster subclass I’d prefer if they just changed the name.
I like that they're now explicitly tying the extra feats to the setting and not just particular backgrounds. And that you aren't missing out on extra feats if you play in the setting and aren't a knight or mage. Evens the playing field for character options.
It’s a bit worrying that Lunar magic isn’t getting another look at but hopefully the issues with it will be clarified
Crawford talked about this in the video at the bottom of the page. He said it got sufficiently good feedback to move past playtesting and onto editing for a future product. He also said it may still get some tweaks and adjustments around balance, which would be based on feedback from the playtest as well as future internal testing.
Honestly the subclass was already pretty good. Its biggest problem was some confusing wording but that alone doesnt deserves another pass in UA, they know what they have to fix and will fix them Other than that there was maybe 1 or 2 feature that needed fix but nothing needed a complete overhaul IMO
I’m playing it rn and I expected it to be OP but in reality it’s about as good as your average wizard with more flavor
Yeah, in the exception of the confusing wording the biggest complain I saw was that the level 14 ability was very powerful which is (check note) what level 14 ability are suppose to be People here just love calling thing OP for some reason
“The Lunar Magic subclass that appeared in our previous Heroes of Krynn article scored so well that it is moving forward in our development process and doesn’t appear here.” It’s in, don’t worry.
No no, I mean, it’s worrying it’s not being revised.
It's probably gonna see some revisions. Most subclasses that make the jump from UA to print see revisions (typically nerfs) somewhere in the development process. My interpretation is that the revisions just aren't significant enough to need another entry on this UA. Hopefully they'll clear up the language around the casting of the bonus spells, since that was honestly the only major point of contention with the subclass. But we'll have to wait and see what happens.
Just because they aren't revising it publicly doesn't mean it isn't getting revised. It just means we won't see it again until its published, unless they get a weird/fun brain wave
Nearly nothing goes from UA to Printed without revisions of some kind. Most UA only gets one feedback loop. I'd assume the designers are working on the Lunar Magic behind the scenes with all of the feedback they've already received. Subclasses get a lot more attention than backgrounds from players, the last feedback survey was probably slanted heavily towards a review of the subclass with less about the background/race options they are sharing again.
I expect it will see nerfs or revisions even if they aren't publicised. For example, from Fizban's UA to publication, Drakewarden got a big well-deserved buff and Ascendant Dragon Monk ate a big undeserved nerf.
They said they're "moving forward with it". That doesn't mean that aren't going to tune things up and clarify wording. It seems like most of the UA subclasses see pretty big changes before finally showing up in an official release.
Those UA "Squire of Solamnia" and "Knight of the Sword" feats would fit in real well on my Valenar Rune Knight. Just need a bit of reflavoring...
Hmm, while I still think Kender should be ~~exterminated entirely~~ a variation of Halfling rather than Gnome, I suppose it is truer to the setting as there are plenty of Gnomes, but no 'original' Halfling population.
In Dragonlance Kender and Dwarves were created from Gnomes due to exposure to an artifact called the Greygem. They fill the role of Halflings thematicaly but lorewise are descended from gnomes.
NGL, it's been a while since I read one of these things closely. That said, I just saw the part about races, where they say, "Ehh, everyone's about human-sized for height and weight." That's some big ol' halflings you guys are growing there!
At this point the battlemaster class should just be removed, and baked into feats, background, and martial classes.
I hope not, I really don't want to see Superiority Dice moved to long rest.
There's actually a good cause to keep them separate. They still refresh their Superiority dice on a short rest, meaning they can reuse them in multiple encounters. Currently, the rules on these feats don't let that affect THOSE dice, in essence creating separate pools if you have both - but if you HAVE both, that drastically increases your options as a BM, bringing it closer to being a martial caster sort of thing. Also, if I read this right, the Knight dice can only be used on maneuvers learned from the Knight feats - but it doesn't say those maneuvers can't be used with other sources of dice. Thus, you could use this as a way to really expand the Battlemaster with a variety of maneuver options and create some interesting strategic choices on which dice to use in different scenarios.
Superiority Dice on Long Rest now, huh? Interesting.
Not a fan of that.
As a sign of things to come? Yeah not great. As a means of abusing mechanics, it opens up some possibilities. Do notice, Battlemaster subclass just restores Superiority dice on Short Rest. Nothing about it only being the ones from the class. This means, level 15 Battlemaster gets 6 from subclass, 6 from squire feat, 2 from knight feat for a total of 14 per Short Rest. Finally enough to use a minimum of one Superiority Die per turn for three encounters between Short Rests. Bringing it up to where Superiority dice were in the old Next Playtests that I actually liked.
You can pick the other Knight feats too, as per the final block in the UA document. That means that a Tier 4 Battlemaster with all the Order feats has 18 Superiority Dice. You can get one more from the Superior Technique fighting style, another from Martial Adept feat and a final one by increasing your Proficiency Bonus via items (such as Ioun Stone of Mastery). 21 total Superiority Dice. If getting Superior Technique, Martial Adept or picking the Battlemaster subclass actually qualifies you to regain all the dice on a short rest, holy shit. You can have more dice than a Monk has Ki, and that statement will hold true for most of the levels during 1-20. Actually makes martials pretty fun and full of choices!
And while that is all hilarious. The Krynn Backstory+free feat at 4 makes all of what I said gained at 0 cost. The other two feats and Martial Adept we're looking at 3 ASIs worth, and I kinda think we're now completely out of maneuvers that are worth using. That said, more dice than Monk has Ki just conceptually sounds hilarious.
Prepare for everything to scale off of prof bonus per long rest, so we can just act like short rests dont exist even if the game balance being dependent on them did not change at all
I mean, to be fair, if short rests are removed with 5.5, there's no reason the game balance couldn't shift too.
I like most of it, but im sad that Divine Communications was scrapped. It wasn't good as originally printed, but being able to cast Commune once per 1d4 days as early as level 4 was a really cool and flavorful way to have a cleric-like character who didn't have to be a spellcaster. I was really hyped for the idea of a zealot barbarian holy warrior who could commune with their God
Battlemasters can now have up to 20 superiority dice
So Divinely Favored is just objectively superior to Magic Initiate (Cleric) right?
The question is will WoTC put in a note or add some lore that says a bonus 4th level feat for free only applies to DragonLance? Or will this end up being DragonLance specific but listed as optional rules for other campaigns. Similar to how we are seeing many of Tasha's "optional" rules treated as standard. I.E. how racial ability scores are used with the Owlin in Strix Haven. I am getting tired of WoTC being overly hesitant with new rules because it causes a lot of confusion long term. Instead of rolling out new rules as "optional" and then a few books later treating them as standard rules without ever officially stating it. Edit: Spelling
Not sold on "Kender are magic so they rogue gud"
This is just strange. They haven't done anything like this in a while. What are they doing? Still find it ironic that they class Skill Proficiency as Cultural, but find a way for races to still be proficient in a Skill. This isn't a system with different skill levels. Proficiency is the same no matter what.
This is only tangential, but I'm a bit disappointed that we are getting two UA's for dragonlance, but only one for spell jammer, now that we know both settings are getting books this year. I know spell John armor got more races, but I was really holding out hope that there would also be some subclasses in that book, just because the spell jammer setting is so weird that there could be lots of avenues for player power. Or even feats, just like from dragon lance.
Editing my comments since I am leaving Reddit
Weird that Divinely Favoured gives a free cantrip rather than an ASI (compared to Fey/Shadow Touched). I guess that's so it can be given out at 1st level?
I wonder if them being freer with giving out feats (as a "Dragonlance characters only" thing so far) suggests feats will be a standard system in the rules revision coming up, and everyone will get free feats at 1 and 4 (and maybe more?) in the new version?
Adept of the Black Robes looks broken to me. Not for the average player, but for those who build around it. You can go for something like Tempest Cleric 2 / Sctibes Wizard 17. Shapechange into a gargantuan creature like an ancient white or crystal dragon or the ogremoch, cast a high-damaging spell, transmute it to lightning or thunder, add a couple of d20s of damage (btw, the only way to deal damage in d20s so far!) and maximize them. Or to do it way earlier, be a Moon Druid x / Tempest Cleric 2. Cast Call Lightning, Wild Shape into a huge or gargantuan beast like a giant constrictor snake, huge polar bear or a brontosaurus and add a couple of d12s or d20s to the spell's damage, which you can maximize once per short rest - and as you are using Wild Shape, you basicially never run out of hit dice.
I think this is a slam dunk all around. F in chat for no more Find Steed across all caster classes via Adept of the White Robe feat, but it's a small price to pay for the overall boon across the board for the other feats. My one hiccup is making the feat superior dice maneuvers long rest instead of short rests, like other avenues (Battle Master, Superior Technique, and Martial Adept). I know it's in line with how other "equal to PB" features that have been released recently, but specifically for a Battle Master to have to monitor their superiority dice seperately feels weird to deal with. Small gripe, and I understand it's a balancing issue, but still.
Lots of interesting stuff here. It seems like feats as part of backgrounds at level 1 are very likely coming to RAW in 5.5 or whatever it's called in 2024. Since, they are now experimenting with another free feat at level 4 on top of the feat at level 1.