Today, the UA for Druids and Paladins in the One D&D playtest just dropped. It's a pretty substantial document (I'm only about 75% through it myself, but wanted to write this while I still had the details of the classes in mind) with two classes and other things. Let's get into it:
First off, there's no longer the weird "you can wear medium armor, as long as it's not metal" thing. Now, you simply get armor training in light armor and shields, so you might want to get that Dexterity up (or take the feat for better armor).
As I predicted earlier, Druids will be getting "Channel Nature" to complement the Cleric's and Paladin's Channel Divinity. These priestly "Channel" abilities will all work the following way: You get a number of them based on your class level (maxing out at 4 at high levels) and regain 1 use on a short rest and all of them on a long rest. This is in contrast to the previous Cleric playtest, where they just got a number equal to their proficiency bonus per long rest - something they decided to change given that it would be easy to get a ton of these abilities even if you only multiclassed in a single level of the class.
Druids' initial use of Channel Nature is, of course, Wild Shape. This feature has changed significantly, becoming far more streamlined but also much less flexible. (I'll be honest and say I think I like the change - it's actually very similar to a homebrewed subclass I made a few months ago). Wild Shape now uses one of three scaling stat blocks. Animal of the Land is the first you get, with an attack that does 1d8+Wisdom damage, and you get multiattack at level 5, along with a climbing speed at that level. Animal of the Sea comes at level 7 and Animal of the Sky comes online at level 9, trading lower damage dice for the ability to swim or fly, respectively.
The enormous change here is that your Wild Shape forms no longer have their own hit points - you'll retain the same hit points in both forms, meaning that you can't endlessly tank massive damage by shifting into new forms (also, you won't ever get infinite wild shapes anyway, but we'll handle that later). In Animal of the Land form, you use your own ability scores but you replace your Strength and Dexterity with your Wisdom. In the other two forms, you only replace Dexterity with Wisdom (but their attacks are evidently "finesse" attacks, so it winds up fine). Also, you don't change creature type when you do this, despite appearing like an animal (as such, I think there's zero problem with going Owlbear in this mode - "animal" can encompass more than just beasts).
Now, each of these forms can come in Small, Medium, or Large size, and I think you just choose based on the animal whose form you want to take. You might then ask: "what if I want to turn into a sneaky rat and scout out ahead?" Well, at level 11, you can make any of these a Tiny form, however, your damage is halved and you can stay in the form no longer than 10 minutes (normally it's a number of hours equal to half your druid level).
At level 13, you gain Alternating Forms, which allows you to swap between your current Wild Shape and your normal form as a bonus action without spending a new use of Channel Nature.
Before we get ahead of ourselves, at 2nd level, you get Nature's Aid, which gives you two new Channel Nature options. The first is Healing Blossoms, where you conjure a spectral flower to bloom in a 10-foot radius sphere within 30 feet of you, which then heals a total amount of HP equal to a number of d4 rolls equal to your Wisdom modifier, distributed as you choose. The other use is Wild Companion, which allows you to cast Find Familiar without material components (and, while it doesn't say this, I assume also no spell slot) as an action, though your familiar only lasts until you finish your next long rest and it's automatically a Fey creature.
Moving forward again, Beast Spells comes at level 17 and now lets you perform verbal and somatic components in Wild Shape form, and lets you ignore free material components. Archdruid, now coming at level 18, now encompasses the Timeless Body feature (aging at 1/10th the speed you normally would) and rather than giving you infinite Wild Shape charges, now causes you to regain a Channel Nature use when you roll initiative. No totally ignoring spell components, as it did in the 2014 PHB.
Ok, before we get into the Circle of the Moon, let's do some analysis.
The first thing I think is noteworthy is that they've made Wild Shape a potential combat option for all druids. With the shape now scaling with a lot of your statistics, it'll be a decent option in a lot of cases. But if you really want to be more of a Primal Spellcaster, you can stick to that option and use the other Channel Nature options instead.
That being said, I think that the fact that Wild Shape no longer uses its own hit points is an enormous nerf to the power of that ability. Mind you, nerfs aren't necessarily a bad thing - sometimes they're necessary for balance - and the ability for a Druid to get, effectively, a massive number of hit points to chew through before you can actually start damaging them again was perhaps overpowered. I think that the distance between a Moon druid's use of the ability and other druids' has been shrunk, though as we'll see with that subclass, it'll be clear that Moon is still the way to go if you really want to focus on it.
Like the Cleric, Druids now come packing some healing capability regardless of what spells they choose, which is appropriate for the Priest class group. Personally, I think Tiny Critter could come way, way earlier.
Now, let's look at Circle of the Moon:
First off, because Wild Shape is now pretty viable for any Druid, and isn't based on CR, your base Wild Shape options are the same, but you get some enhancements to them.
At 3rd level, you get Combat Wild Shape, which allows the following:
You can now cast Abjuration spells while in Wild Shape as long as the spell doesn't require material components. Note that healing spells like Cure Wounds are now considered Abjuration.
Quick Attack lets you use an Unarmed Strike as a bonus action while transformed. Now, this is actually very interesting, because unless they've changed it, Unarmed Strikes now also include grapples and shoves. But, at the least, you'll be able to add a bit of damage (in Animal of the Land at least you'll be using Wisdom to determine your Strength, so this could be a nice 6-point hit eventually).
Finally, you get Swift Transformation, which lets you Wildshape as a bonus action or a "magic action," (aka an action) but only once a turn (I think it'd be very rare to need to do it twice in a turn).
At 6th level, you get Elemental Wild Shape. When you take on your Wild Shape form, you choose Acid, Cold, Fire, Lightning, or Thunder. While in the form, you get resistance ot that damage type and your Bestial Strike (the main attack) does that type of damage or its normal damage, choosing each time you hit (which could be useful if you're, say, fighting a red dragon and want the fire resistance but know that fire damage won't hurt the dragon).
At 10th level, you get Elemental Strike, which causes your Bestial Strike to do an extra 1d6 of your chosen element when you hit. This goes up to 2d6 when you hit level 17.
At level 14, you get Thousand Forms, which lets you cast Alter Self at will.
So, there's a lot to unpack. No more elemental forms, but also kind of yes? As a point of comparison, let's look at two level 10 Moon Druids, one using the 2014 rules and one using this version.
The 2014 one expends two Wild Shapes to get into Fire Elemental form. Now, they've got an AC of 13, 102 hit points (on top o their normal HP), a speed of 50 feet, two attacks per turn with a +6 to hit, which deal 2d6+3 (average of 10) fire damage and ignite the target, causing them to take 1d10 fire damage per turn unless they douse it. They also have immunity to fire and poison damage and resistance to nonmagical bludgeoning, piercing, and slashing damage. Creatures that hit them take 1d10 fire damage and the elemental can enter other creatures spaces, causing them to burn for 1d10 when they enter the creature's space and ignite, as with the attack.
The new version takes on, say, Animal of the Land. We'll assume our level 10 druid has 20 Wisdom by now. They now have an AC of 15, their normal hit points (so, effectively zero extra). They have a speed and climb speed of 40 feet. They have a +9 to hit (or more with something like a Moon Sickle) and attacks that do 1d8+1d6+5 (average of 16 per hit) damage per hit (the 1d6 must be fire damage). And resistance to fire damage.
The takeaway here is, I think, that the new version is significantly more capable on offense, at least by conventional means, but there's a huge nerf to the defensive utility of Wild Shape. But that might be fine - you can now just think of this as a choice of combat modes - do you want to be on the front lines in a wild form, or at the back hucking spells.
What I think these changes have really done is make Wild Shape a more broadly usable feature for all subclasses, while nerfing the historically high-powered Moon Druid. Perhaps the biggest takeaway is that players will no longer have to fumble for the Monster Manual to pick out specific stat blocks, which should make gameplay easier.
Reverting the old power of Wild Shape, if they decided to do it, could be as simple as just giving the Animal forms their own hit points.
Now, I haven't perused the entirety of the Primal Spell list, so I don't know if there are any big changes there. The one thing of note is that Find Familiar now allows you to attack with the familiar if you use your reaction on their turn (which immediately follows yours,) though the damage isn't huge.
I suspect we'll see a lot of discussion and debate around Wild Shape (I haven't yet seen the interview video with Jeremy Crawford to see how he addresses that).
Next up, we'll look at the Paladin, which is one of my favorite classes in 5E, and see how it does.
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