As We Periodically Do: Asking What We Want for 5.5 Books

 Arcana Unleashed is, I think, maybe the most successful supplement to come out for D&D since the debut of 5.5 edition, other than the core books.

For the main book, we have a big influx of spells, feats, subclasses, and I think we have a pretty good hit to miss ratio.

I think it's likely that the impetus for this book was first to reprint the four Wizard subclasses that had been in the 2014 PHB but not the 2024 one, given the standardization of 4 subclasses per class in that book.

Even if it wound up reducing the number of updates for Clerics and Wizards, I actually applaud the "4 for everyone" approach that we got in the PHB. The funny thing, though, is that the books we've gotten since haven't taken the same even-handed approach.

5.5 is still relatively new, though we're now two years out, so it's not brand-new. In that time, we've gotten a revisit to Eberron (a book whose purpose I think was to get the Artificer updated to catch it up with the other 5.0 classes,) an adventure anthology in Dragon Delves, the Forgotten Realms books last year, Horrors Within, and the these two with Arcana Unleashed, with Deadfall giving us our first full campaign book of 5.5 (which, interestingly, matches the last 5.0 campaign book's level range, at least roughly).

Now, I have all of the adventure books, because I'm a bit of a collector, but I don't really use them - to me, a big part of the fun of DMing is building by own campaign. Thus, I'm more likely to borrow ideas from them, or monsters. But I recognize this isn't necessarily the typical thing: plenty of groups and players run these adventures, even exclusively.

In 5E's early days, we'd get a lengthy adventure book at least once a year. But they seem to have leaned away from that model. I don't know if it's just that most players don't make it through all those adventures (the only one I finished was part of Adventurer's League, with a lot of players who were not there for the RP, and my friend who was DMing was keeping things moving quite fast).

What I find interesting is that the early days of 5E - and actually, not even that early - some of the big supplements we got were sort of universal rules expansions.

Volo's Guide to Monsters was something of an expansion to the monster manual, and while it had pretty extensive lore chapters (a fair degree of which seemed to be retconned away) it was also the biggest influx of monsters for DMs to use, as well as new playable races.

Then, we got Xanathar's Guide to Everything, which provided at least two subclasses for every class other than the Wizard, along with the biggest addition of spells and, for DMs, a far easier encounter-building system than what we had gotten in the DMG (it was a big improvement, and one I used for a long time, though I think the 2024 DMG one is what I currently find most effective).

Later, we got Mordenkainen's Tome of Foes, which provided another good influx of monsters to use, along with some more playable races (a little less broad in scope).

And then, finally, Tasha's Cauldron of Everything gave us more subclasses and, I think pretty crucially, new variant rules that divorced ability score bonuses from races - something I, frankly, think they erred in then stapling to backgrounds in the 2024 PHB and would not mind seeing a similar corrective.

Tasha's did do a fair amount of consolidation: giving us setting-agnostic versions of the Artificer as well as several subclasses. In other words, WotC has always done a fair bit of reprinting (even Xanathars repeated some options that had shown up in Sword Coast Adventurer's Guide).

Toward the end of 5.0, WotC released a "Rules Expansion Box Set," which included Xanathar's, Tasha's, and the new Mordenkainen Presents: Monsters of the Multiverse. This latter book effectively cut out much of the length lore chapters from Volo's and Mordenkainen's Tome of Foes, and included nearly all of the monsters in the books, plus most of the playable races that had shown up in either (along with some that had shown up in setting books,) with a few revisions.

This box set, if you didn't already have those books, was the obvious "next thing to buy" if you were getting into 5E and had only gotten the Core Books. Truly, with those six in your collection, I'd say you were basically covered when it came to having what you needed for a decade of games.

This might appeal to me more strongly than other players/DMs, but I really prefer rules expansion books over just about everything else. As much as I love, say, the Ravenloft setting (and wish the Planescape set had been better,) and I truly think Van Richen's Guide to Ravenloft is my favorite 5E supplement they came out with, the books that provide the most utility are, in my opinion, these ones that sort of get out of the way of the people trying to come up with original stories (aka, DMs and players) and just gives them more stuff to work with.

I thus rank a broad expansion of player options and/or monsters as the best thing that WotC can release. Next, I'd probably put campaign setting books, maybe at an equal footing with thematic monster books (the latter being stuff like Fizban's or Bigby's).

Arcana Unleashed (the main book, of course) is thus sort of in that first category. There is some extensive stuff about the various magic-school-affiliated factions, that's all well and good and probably something I'll never touch in any of my campaigns. But the crux of it is player options, and that, to me, feels like fuel for player creativity.

The slightly narrower focus on the Arcane theme kind of pushes it toward that second category.

What I wonder, though, is if WotC has shifted their philosophy against "of Everything"-style books. Truly, Xanathar's and Tasha's have no singular thematic throughline, other than cheeky little commentary written in the voices of their title characters.

But what they ultimately gave us was just more stuff to use, and they wound up being, I would think, the most popular supplements in 5.0.

Given the UAs we've gotten in recent months, I suspect that we're going to have themed supplements for the forseeeable future: the announced Dark Sun book, some kind of "villain" book, now probably some Underdark book. Oddly, the revisits to older subclasses from Xanathar's seems to have been preparation for the Warcraft book (a game/franchise that can play different tones of fantasy about as well as D&D can).

But I was thinking: between Heroes of Faerun, Horrors Within, and Arcana Unleashed, we have still not gotten a new Druid subclass in 5.5 since the PHB.

There was something kind of nice about how the of Everything books really touched on each class and gave them cool stuff.

Some More Critical Role Campaign Four Theories

 As a longterm fan of both Critical Role and Dimension 20, I've been keeping up with CR's fourth campaign, with its new world and new DM.

Brennan Lee Mulligan likes to weave complex mysteries in his campaigns - more or less every Dimension 20 is a mystery for the players to solve amidst all the monsters. While I think Matt Mercer's style has certainly contained mysteries, I think that the idea of investigating and discovering what the bad guys are doing is less of an emphasis than simply trying to survive their plots and bring the fight to them.

The broad goal of the extended party (meta-party?) in Campaign Four is to subvert the power of the Sundered Houses, noble families whose nobility is kind of defined by their sorcerous capabilities, and who have sought to hold ultimate power within the world after the death of the gods. Arguably "noble" is underselling them, as they occupy a position higher than, say, King Augustus "Gus" Valian of Timmony (who seems about the best-case scenario for royalty - someone who was lost as a child and grew up among the common folk, and only discovered royal lineage in adulthood, but has retained his "man of the people" values).

The houses, Halovar, Tachonis, Einfasen, Royce, and Cormoray, are each associated essentially with a different source of magical power and creature type in D&D terms - Halovar with Celestials (though eyebrow-raisingly, also fiends - something that I'll be focusing on mostly here,) Tachonis with Undead, Einfasen with Giants, Royce with Fey, and Cormoray with Elementals.

I don't have any new evidence for this, but I think it's notable that Azune, Luis Carazo's Paladin/Sorcerer, speaks a native language we now know to be Araman's version of Draconic, and that the only other Sorcerers we've encountered have been members of the Sundered Houses. Not only do I guess that Azune's Sorcerer subclass (not sure if he has one yet, as I think the party is only level 5 currently, and he might have put 3 levels into Paladin) is Draconic, but I do wonder if there's some "lost sundered house" that he belongs to that had the power of dragons.

But let's talk about a different Sundered House: Specifically, Halovar, and specifically, the house matriarch, Yanessa Halovar.

Yanessa is, pretty explicitly from the audience's perspective, a conwoman. Not only did Wick come into the campaign falsely labeled as a Cleric (because Wick thought he was,) only to turn out to be a Sorcerer (evidently a Clockwork sorcerer rather than Divine Soul, a I'd guessed. Not sure what to make of that other than just that Divine Soul hasn't gotten a 5.5 update yet,) but I noted that the voice that Yanessa uses with family is a decidedly working-class one.

While I had perhaps thought that this was just Mulligan's way of showing duplicity, the idea that Mulligan, famously an old-school leftist preaching working class solidarity, would invoke the trope of using lower-class accents to denote wicked and villainous characters seemed unlikely.

So, in the most recent episode, we got another little detail that seemed pretty important:

After Hal puts on his play Kotherai without making any of the Candescent Creed-mandated edits (that would have turned it from a stirring tribute to the proud history of the orcs rising up against their oppressive creator god into a piece of anachronistic Creed propaganda,) Yanessa shows up at his home to threaten him.

As part of her threat, though, she puts on a false face of civility and makes him breakfast with his own food in his own kitchen. And Hal notices that the food is cooked expertly - a stark contrast when Aranessa Royce, Hal's once-sister-in-law, tried to cook and was an utter disaster because, as a member of a Sundered House, she had always had cooks to prepare her meals.

The very strong implication here, I think, is that Yanessa was not always a member of such an august house. But how did she become the head of one, in that case?

Well, it could be as simple as the idea that she married into it. But if that were the case, it seems strange that she would be the family's leader. While she's worked hard to redefine House Halovar as simply the stewards of the false religion she's cooked up, the basis of their power is that family history.

We know that they have a celestial locked away in their family estate, from which the Filament that fuels their Luxes' powers (and Wick's... maybe?) is harvested.

But Yanessa is not a sorcerer - in an act of intimidation and maybe frustration, she shatters two mugs of Hals that were made by his daughters with Eldritch Blast, a spell only Warlocks have access to.

We also know that the demons, like Tyranny, who have been pledged to serve the Candescent Creed, are not, of course, actually reformed, but simply there as part of a contract with the demon lord K'sharavi (Tyranny's "dad"). I think the demons are more complicated than just "evil," (I think that Tyranny is a reskinned Tiefling, and they retain the concept of a "virtue name." Tyranny believes wholeheartedly that there must be a strong tyrant to lead, but wants someone as kindhearted and goodnatured as Wick to embody that role - a kind of extreme lawful position. (Ok, parenthetical inside a parenthetical, I have thoughts about how you can think of law as institutionalist and chaos as personalist, in which case this would actually be the chaotic position, but I'll set that aside for now).)

So, presumably, Yanessa is a Warlock, and might have K'sharavi as her patron. But is there something deeper going on?

See, Warlock powers are great, but making deals with demons and devils often involves some life-transforming change - the powers could be just a means to accomplish that. So here's my big theory:

Was Yanessa just a common woman before all of this? We're told the Halovars were originally the priests of Tonsul, the human-aligned god of the sun. But what if she's not actually a Halovar at all? What if the Halovars were all killed off, and Yanessa came with the claim of being the House's last scion (this is admittedly even bigger than my initial pitch, so let me get back to that)?

What if she sold her soul for power and influence, to become a high aristocrat of the Sundered Houses, to escape what she at least saw as her wretched state of poverty and irrelevance?

We know that Wick is an Aasimar - though we're not totally clear on whether he's truly directly descended from the celestial in the Halovars' basement or if this is the longterm effect of being pumped full of Filament (I'm leaning the former).

But it is really interesting: if Azune is secretly a member of a lost Sundered House, or at least some equivalent thereof, it does mean that these families may not be as immutable as they'd like us to think.

D&D Characters I'd Be Excited to Play

 One of the challenges of being a D&D obsessive is that, even as we sometimes bemoan the slow pace of content, the truth is that it comes out at a far faster rate than I imagine most people make enough characters to keep up with.

As a player, I haven't actually started a new campaign or even one-shot since the 5.5 Core Rulebooks have come out. I was able to convert my Wizard to the new rules, but the Rogue I was playing in Wild Beyond the Witchlight was not allowed to given that our DM was inexperienced and not eager to learn all the changes to the rules mid-campaign (he had hoped that the light tone of Witchlight and fewer combat encounters would make it easier to run. As a DM with over a decade of experience under my belt, I warned him that combat is the easiest thing to run in D&D).

Anyway, the result, of course, is a big character pile-up.

I've actually had a number of characters waiting in the wings since before 5.5 dropped, but I've perhaps re-ordered them based on which have gotten updates and how my priorities have changed.

I'll also say that these priorities really aren't hard and fast rules: my Wizard was something created a little spur-of-the-moment based on the campaign we were doing. While I wasn't sure the Scribes Wizard was the subclass I was most enamored of, I came up with a fun hook for my character, which was that he was a junior archivist with the Cobalt Soul who discovered the spirit of an Age of Arcanum Wizard who had put himself into a book. I will note here that the campaign was already in full swing for over a year before Emily Axford's guest character on Critical Role's third campaign arrived with almost an identical premise - I will not be accused of plagiarism! (Nor do I think she's ever heard of me or my character, so no accusations either way, of course.)

My background is in writing - I'm very lazily hoping to eventually get a novel or two published - and so I just have a lot of fun coming up with character backstories (it is kind of the cheapest high you can get as a writer - coming up with a premise without having to resolve anything). So, honestly, writing the backstories is a fun exercise in and of itself, likewise fleshing out my homebrew setting (though I do think it helps to have all that material to draw from once the players start interacting with said world).

So, I've got these following ideas:

Conrad, the Great Old One Warlock:

This was the first character I came up with when I got the 5.0 core books back in 2015. I did actually get to play him, but only in a brief adventure my best friend ran for the group from my original campaign when he wanted to give DMing a try. We only hit level 2 near the end of that adventure, so I didn't really get a ton of time with him.

I will say, I'm not entirely sure that I'd be so excited to play him - not because of any underlying flaws to the character concept, but just because I did already play an Eldritch Blast-focused Warlock in Descent into Avernus, and I don't know that he would necessarily play all that differently. Conrad is a very "dark powers, good person" kind of character, and I think after several years playing my very innocent Wizard, I don't know that this would be the next one on the list (though unlike the Wizard, for whom things are basically going ok other than the world-ending dangers of the campaign, Conrad is allowing is patron to change his body and mind in ways that might not be healthiest if he wants to stay human).

Hack, the Elements Monk:

This was the one that emerged after the 5.5 Player's Handbook came out. The Warrior of Elements is such a massive upgrade over the godawful Way of Four Elements that I was eager to try it out. An aeronaut from a flying town (this is something that I'd need to run by my DM) who got shipwrecked on an island with a monastery, Hack's trying to get home and blend his bar-brawling skills from his days as a sailor with the more focused martial arts the monks have taught him while also tracking down the massive flying dreadnaught that blew his ship out of the sky.

The new Monk might not be strictly super-powerful, but it did improve significantly with the 5.5 update, and I think you could play some very interesting games with a Grappler build that takes advantage of the Elements' Monks longer reach on unarmed strikes.

Jax, the Eldritch Knight:

This is actually the character I've played longest other than the Wizard. But while my whole gameplan in the game that ran from about 2019 to around 2022 was to make him nigh-impossible to hit, I'd like to rebuild him as a Great Weapon Master and lean into the high damage output (the Shield spell and Plate is still pretty good for survival, even without a +1 Shield).

Also, the campaign fell apart when we were trapped in Avernus without any of the gear we'd acquired (we were level 12, so we had a fair amount). I'd love to just have an opportunity to think that they're doing better now.

Aldric, the Undead Bladelock:

Another character I actually did briefly get to play. This was in 2024 right after the PHB had come out, so the DM (a friend of my sister's in New York - I was there for a little over a month after my nephew was born to help out because my brother-in-law had to work) was keeping things with the 2014 rules.

But between the improvements to Pact of the Blade and the admittedly minor updates to the Undead Warlock in Horrors Within (though notably, the change from an Expanded Spell List to Patron Spells is a pretty big bonus) I felt it was a good opportunity to have my Reborn guy working as essentially a fixer for an order of Death Knights who are all trapped in a crumbling, ruined castle to go in that direction. Aldric isn't bad per se, but is far less idealistic and generous than Conrad.

Name and Backstory TBD: Necromancer:

Yeah... I'm yearning to play a somewhat sinister character. And the Arcana Unleashed Necromancer has been on my mind now quite a bit. It's a character concept that needs a lot of coordination with the DM (primarily just seeing how practical it is for you to maintain a group of undead minions when traveling from town to town). Obviously, the issue is that I've already been playing a Wizard for quite a while, and while the vibe would be very different (though my innocent young Triton does dabble in a bit of ethical necromancy here and there) Wizards' biggest asset is their spell list. Could I really resist the urge to take all the same really good spells?

Abram, Armorer Artificer:

Broadly, I'm of the opinion that the Forge of the Artificer... er, Artificer is stronger overall than the one from Rising From the Last War. But I can also understand why the player in my Ravnica group chose not to convert at level 19, because the old level 20 capstone is so very, very good.

But if I were to play one from level 1, or level 3, I'd want to revisit the one I very excitedly started up in a Spelljammer game that lasted all of two sessions before the DM got busy (this was the same DM who had run the campaign with my Eldritch Knight for years, but a lot of the plot was built around the Paladin PC whose player became a dad and moved to the East Coast. Advice to DMs: building plots around your PCs is great, but be sure to evenly distribute this across the party, with threads that can be picked up even if a key player leaves).

Anyway, I'm pretty thoroughly convinced that the Battle Smith is the current best subclass, but I really like the Armorer concept (I just wish that the 5.5 one would make it explicitly clear that we could separately Replicate magic versions of the built-in weapons and magic armor, which the 5.0 one did make very clear).

The Artificer feels like a fun toolbox class in similar way to the Wizard, and I think some of the magic item shenanigans in the 5.5 version could be very fun to play around with.

Unnamed Mystic Arts Monk:

Look, the Elements Monk got such a massive glow-up. But also, the Mystic Arts Monk has got to be the best Monk subclass now, right?

Beyond power, I do think that getting spells, even as a one-third caster, opens up such possibilities for your character that it's really had to turn down.

    And that is, I think, the big list. Obviously, there are ideas I'd be eager to try with other classes (actually, while I'd love to see how the Oath of the Ebon Blade Paladin replicates WoW's Death Knight class, I'd actually be pretty tempted to play the build I made for my Undead Subtlety Rogue, as seen in a recent post.)

Realistically, I'll be happy if I get to play any of these characters. And by the time I do, we likely will have a bunch of new options come out that will excite me more.

See the name of the blog.

Power Gaming and the Will to Self-Nerf

 After a few weeks of canceled games, we finally got to play my Wildemount game two days ago. (We were still missing one player, but with the other four we felt we could continue.) After we had teleported into what was apparently some kind of weird illegal trap set by a greedy man, we engaged in combat with him and our Fighter/Rogue was subjected to Befuddlement. While the only character in the party who didn't have spell slots, the spell still does prevent him from using the Magic action, which included preventing him from using certain magic items and some of his High Elf innate spells.

Without a Cleric or Druid in the party, even at level 11 we don't have someone with Greater Restoration (we determined that Dispel Magic wouldn't work because Befuddlement's actual spell is instantaneous) so we went to the Temple of the Knowing Mentor (we're in Vasselheim currently) and sought out help from the local priest, but the fee for a 5th level spell (with component) was too pricey (I'm hoping we'll have a well-paying adventure soon, because Wizard Needs Gold Badly - I truly don't think we've gotten any significant amount of loot in, like, a couple levels).

Anyway, the priest came up with a side quest for us - a dinosaur that was menacing a nearby village (we wanted to go out of the city given that a bunch of us are arcane casters, and Vasselheim doesn't allow such magic) that the Slayer's Take had been unable to deal with.

So, we went out to a farm, where we saw signs of the beast, only for it to show up and attack us. The thing was a Regisaur (from Bigby's Glory of the Giants) - by far the largest creature we'd encountered in the campaign so far (I think it was like 40x40 on the map, one of those "gargantuan is 20x20 and up" monsters).

We got some good attacks in, though our Paladin/Warlock got swallowed.

And then I annihilated it with a combination of Conjure Minor Elementals and Scorching Ray.

I used my Scribes Wizard ability, Manifest Mind, to send the ancient Age of Arcanum Wizard spirit living in the book I carry around over to the Regisaur, then cast Conjure Minor Elementals as if I were in its space, upcasting to 6th level. Then, from way back and safe, I cast a 5th level Scorching Ray, doing 6 beams, but could still hit the target while it was inside the spell's emanation.

Only half of them actually hit, because I rolled pretty poorly, except one of them crit, so it was as if I had hit with 4. The damage rolls went better, and I think I wound up doing something like 125 damage (quite good, as each beam, doing 4d8+2d6, should have been doing an average of 25, so with two hits and a crit that should have been about 100) and killed the dinosaur before it could get a second turn and before the swallowed party member took any acid damage from being in its guts (which... I think you could argue that a dead creature's stomach juices don't immediately neutralize on death, but given the damage I dealt, it was also reasonable to say that I had made a giant hole in this thing's abdomen).

Here's the thing:

I love doing good damage as a D&D player. I love having that feeling of system mastery, especially if I can do it without compromising on the vision for the character that I've got. This wasn't some insane multiclass build that would stretch the narrative. This is a Wizard doing pure Wizard stuff. And I'd even argue that using clever spell combinations like this is in-keeping with a Wizard's modus operandi.

The danger, I think, is that you can fall into patterns. I'm not sure that there is a better single-target damage strategy that even exists in D&D that outdoes this spell combination. And it just keeps getting better the higher the spell slots you use. If you were to do a 9th level CME and an 8th level Scorching Ray, you're talking about 9 beams that each deal 2d6+7d8 damage, so 38.5 apiece, meaning that that's potentially 346.5 damage, which will kill all but the very toughest high-CR legendary monsters.

There are a lot of things that can be useful in combat. But few things are as directly linked to victory as blowing away your foes as quickly as possible.

My best friend, our DM, seemed to be in shock, and lamented that his big scary monster only got a single turn. And like, I've DM'd longer than I've ever been a player. This is a feeling I totally get. 

It also means that he's likely to feel we need tougher encounters, but that will put added pressure on me to continue doing this maximal damage output strategy.

And part of the real joy of playing a Wizard is that you have so many different things you can do.

So: the solution?

I'm resolved to only bust out this spell combination occasionally. The DM had perhaps oversold how deadly and dangerous this particular foe was (though it had hit the Paladin for 40 damage with one attack, so maybe not?) But I'm eager to approach each fight differently.

Certainly a fight with widespread enemies, and lots of enemies, will see me adjust what I do. We've actually had a Wand of Fireballs lying around in party loot for a long time that I finally claimed, and I think we'll start using that once we have some multi-target fights.

But I also want to play around with more spells. I love Summon Undead (actually, as you can probably tell from this blog, I'm kind of itching to play a Necromancer now that the subclass is updated) and all these other things I can get my hands on.

The way I see it, this is maybe something to reserve for climactic moments. Or... maybe reserve for side quests where getting it over and done as quickly as possible isn't going to negatively impact any of the other players' desire for high stakes and drama.

UA Species: Deep Imaskari, Drider, Illithidkin, Kuo-Toa, and Myconid

 In case you had any doubts about a big Underdark sourcebook based on the recent UAs, we're also getting a healthy 5 species options. Three of these are straight-up creatures from the Monster Manual. One is almost but not quite one of the classic, iconic D&D monsters, and the last (well, first) is I believe a new concept. Let's take a look:

Deep Imaskari:

The Deep Imaskari are the descendants of humans who once had a powerful magical empire, but fled its ruin into the Underdark. Using the Great Seal, their false underground sun, to provide them with Unlight to nourish crops and get some Vitamin D, they've been mutated and warped by its power, with colorless glowing crystals that protrude from their skin.

They're humanoid, and like normal humans, can be Small or Medium with a speed of 30 feet.

Photoresistant gives them resistance to radiant damage.

Resourceful, like with humans, gives them Heroic Inspiration when they finish a long rest.

Unluminescent lets you do the following: an action, you can cause your crystals to glow, shedding bright light in a 5 foot radius until you take an action to stop the effect. They also stop glowing if you die or are unconscious.

Aura of Unlight: At level 3, you can use a bonus action to shine bright light in a 10 foot emanation. This aura lasts 1 minute or until you choose to end it. When you use this, you choose an option from the following:

Abjuring Unlight gives you and your allies in the aura a bonus to their AC equal to half you proficiency bonus (rounded down).

Brilliant Unlight causes creatures other than your allies that start their turn in the emanation to have to make a Con save (DC based on your Charisma modifier) or be blinded until the end of your next turn.

Corrupting Unlight lets you change the damage when you hit with an attack to Radiant. Also, you can roll one of your unexpended hit dice and deal extra radiant damage equal to the number rolled, expending the die.

    Big note here, and I don't know if this is intentional: There is no limit on the uses of Aura of Unlight. Now, it does take an action and only lass a minute, so it's unlikely you can use this before combat breaks out, meaning it's a round of set-up. But getting a +1 to AC for you and any nearby allies, and eventually growing that to a +3, is not too bad. Because the DC for Brilliant Unlight is Charisma-based, you'll probably want to play a Charisma-focused character or a Paladin, but that is, also, actually a very strong option.

    Honestly, some pretty strong features here, and while we don't get the Human's bonus origin feat, which is tough to beat, we get a little connection to them with the free Heroic Inspiration feature.

Drider:

Yes, it's everyone's favorite drow spider centaurs. Despite the fact that they take on a form similar to the preferred form of the evil demon goddess Lolth, this is apparently a punishment for Drow, which is sort of odd. Could be kind of fun to play as an outcast of Lolth-worshipping society.

You're a Medium monstrosity with a speed of 30 feet.

    Real quick, I know that WotC never makes species that aren't Medium or Small, which I find to be a bit of a shame. Let us have a Large species! Let Fairies be Tiny (as they've flavored Thimble in Critical Role Campaign 4)! Still, good to have another playable Monstrosity like the Thri-Kreen.

Arachnid Build: This is basically Powerful build, letting you carry more.

Darkvision: 120 feet of Darkvision, pretty standard for subterranean species.

Spells of the Spider Queen: You get Dancing Lights, and then Faerie Fire at 3rd level and Web at 5th level. You can cast each for free once per long rest without a spell slot, or use your spell slots to cast them again, and you pick Int, Wis, or Cha as your spellcasting stat.

    These are good spells. Dancing Lights is maybe not game-changing, but Faerie Fire is a fantastic debuff and Web can be very powerful when used well.

Spider Climb: You have a climb speed equal to your speed. At level 3, you can move up, down, and across vertical surfaces and along ceilings while leaving your hands free.

    So, just like the Dhampir. Good stuff, and could be very fun as a sneaky infiltrator.

Web Walker: You ignore movement restrictions caused by webs, and you know the location of any other creature in contact with the same web.

    This is obviously very niche except that we can make our own webs with the Web spell.

    Overall, I think this Drider, with the exception of being shrunk down to Medium size, delivers on the fantasy of being a Drider, and seems like a perfectly solid, even pretty good species option. Thumbs up.

Illithidkin:

Hey, do you want to play as an Illithid? Well, there are those feats that they presented in the last UA that let you become one. But do you want to just go for the aesthetic of being a Mind Flayer without actually being one? The Illithidkin are evidently the result of weird Mind Flayer experiments to create a kind of middle-ground of ceremorphosis, where you have the tentacles and purple skin and psionics of a Mind Flayer but retain some of your old features.

Illthidkin are, bafflingly, humanoids (surely if a Kalashtar is an Aberration, these would be, right?) and can be Medium or Small, and have a 30 foot movement speed.

Darkvision: you have 120 feet of darkvision.

Psionic Aptitude: You have Mage Hand, and can make the hand invisible. When you reach 3rd level you get Command, and at 5th level, you get Levitate. You can cast each for free once per long rest, or spend spell slots to cast them again. You pick Int, Wis, or Cha as your spellcasitng ability.

    Command is fantastic - steal a creature's action without worrying about charm immunity, and potentially get them to do something that helps you. Levitate is a little less broadly useful.

Sharpened Mind: You have resistance to Psychic damage, and you have advantage on saving throws against the Charmed condition.

Telepathy: You have telepathy out to 30 feet.

    Here's my one issue: where to the tentacles come in? Can I not make unarmed strikes with them? Can I not deal damage and grapple with them? We might not have a full-on Extract Brain feature, but I don't really see this as feeling all to different from one of the many creatures that the Illithid altered.

Kuo-Toa:

I adore the Kuo-Toa, though in part because I always imagine them as the D&D antecedents to Murlocs from World of Warcraft. Truly, they're more akin to the Deep Ones from The Shadow Over Innsmouth (though there are a few other monsters, like Sea Spawn or Deep Scions, that also kind of fit that niche).

Honest, the UA kind of nerfs their lore: it's supposed to be that the bizarre gods they make up actually manifest as very minor deities, whereas this one says that they are simply forgotten gods that no one agrees on. Boo!

Also boo to them being Humanoids, after getting upgraded to aberrations in the Monster Manual. While I get that in some cases the change from humanoid to other creature types was a perhaps overzealous attempt to avoid implying that any humanoid peoples are defined by their species, I actually thought that the change for Kuo-Toa felt appropriate (certainly more than Lizardfolk being elementals).

Anyway, they're Medium (not small?) humanoids with a 30 foot speed.

Amphibious: You can breathe both air and water, and have a swim speed equal to your speed.

Slippery: You have advantage on saving throws to avoid or end the Grappled or Restrained conditions.

    Note that thanks to a lot of monsters auto-grappling on a hit with attacks, this isn't quite as good as it would have been in 5.0.

Deific Manifestation: You get Find Familiar and can cast it without material components. You can cast it once per long rest without a spell slot. When you cast the spell, you can choose a normal form or you can pick the Homunculus or Myconid Sprout. The creature is a Celestial.

Additionally, the familiar is a mix of creatures, so when you cast the spell, you can choose a secondary form from your available choices, and the familiar gains one action, reaction, or trait from that second form.

    I love this. Not only is Find Familiar a nice spell to have (even if in most games we mainly use it just for flavor and roleplay, or some scouting,) but this mix-and-match system could potentially create some really interesting options. Also, we save on gold by never having to have a brazier or incense.

Myconid:

Myconid are the mushroom people! The very weird, sometimes friendly, but deeply different fungal folk of the Underdark. Sadly, individuals rarely live past 25.

Gloriously, this is the first playable Plant species (yes, I'm aware that fungi are more closely related to animals than plants, but that's how D&D treats them). I hope this leads to more! You can be Medium or Small, and get a 30 foot speed.

Darkvision: 120 feet of darkvision, standard for underground.

Telepathy: You have telepathy out to 30 feet.

Rapport Spores: As an action, you can expel spores in a 30 foot emanation. Creatures in the area with an intelligence of 2 or higher that aren't constructs, elementals, or undead gain telepathy to a range of 30 feet for one hour. You can do this once per long rest.

    It's not super-long-range telepathy, but this could come in handy, especially if you're about to go into some tight social situation so you can strategize with your party without speaking out loud.

Skill Meld: When you finish a long rest, you can choose up to six allies (you can include yourself) within 30 feet of you to take part in a ritual. Pick a skill that at least one participant has proficiency with. Every participant gains that proficiency until they finish a long rest.

    This one's fun! The most obvious use I can think of is granting everyone Stealth if you need to sneak in somewhere, but this could be a way to grant Perception, Deception, Athletics - just any skill that you'll be making group checks with.

Yeah, I really like the Myconid!

    So, overall, I think we have some cool and solid options. I think the Illithidkin is the only one I find truly disappointing.

UA: Faerzress Sorcery

 Now, the biggest challenge to playing this subclass is pronouncing it.

The Faerzress is a chaotic, demonic radiation found in the Underdark (at least in the Forgotten Realms) that acts like a weird magical electricity and drives people crazy (in the Acquisitions Incorporated game were I first heard about it, they had to subdue a maddened Drizz't Do'Urden).

Anyway, this is a weird subclass, in part because it also includes a description of what Faerzress does in general, which the subclass then has to refer to.

So, before we get into any subclass features, we need to go into what the radiation does:

Creatures within an area affected by it automatically succeed on saving throws against Divination effects. Magic sensors and invisible eyes (like from Clairvoyance or Arcane Eye) can't enter areas affected by Faerzress.

Creatures teleporting a distance of a mile or more can't teleport into or out of Faerzress (so, Misty Step and Dimension Door are fine, not so much for Teleport.)

An area of Faerzress is illuminated by Dim Light, but creatures with Darkvision within such an area can see in color and have Advantage on Wisdom (Perception) checks relying on sight (I thought that you only couldn't see color if it was totally dark and you were relying on darkvision. Hm.)

Ok, got it? Now let's get into the subclass.

Faerzress Spells:

1st level: Faerie Fire, Witch Bolt

2nd level: Magic Weapon, Misty Step

3rd level: Nondetection, Sending

4th level: Arcane Eye, Stone Shape

5th level: Passwall, Scrying

    You might think some of these choices are quite odd given that a lot of them won't work in the environment that this subclass is built around. We'll get to that. But broadly, we have some solid ones here and some that are very situational.

Level 3:

Faerzress Zone:

As a Magic action, you can spend 3 Sorcery Points to fill an area within 120 feet of you and no larger than a 40-foot cube with faerzress, causing the effects described earlier. The area lasts for 24 hours, and if you fill the same area with it every day for 365 days, the effect becomes permanent.

    Now, obviously, this is costly at level 3, but it's a very long persistent effect, and the ability to thwart divination and teleportation into an area could be really powerful if you need a secret place to plan things out with your allies. This could be a really great thing for lengthy periods of downtime if you're in an intrigue-heavy campaign.

Immunity to Faerzress:

You ignore the detrimental effects of Faerzress. Specifically:

Creatures within an area of Faerzress don't automatically succeed on saves against your divination spells, and your magical sensors from spells like Clairvoyance and Arcane Eye can enter areas of Faerzress. When you teleport yourself or other creatures, the teleporting creatures can teleport into or out of an area of Faerzress at any distance.

    Great. That solves that problem. Now, you love Faerzress and are happy to hang out in there as much as you like. Note that if your allies try to do some of this stuff, it won't work. Thus, even if Sorcerers lean a little more into the blasty side of things, we might consider taking some more utility spells to aid the party if we assume the campaign is going to involve areas of Faerzress. And obviously this makes our Faerzress Zone feature much better for us.

Level 6:

We gain resistance to Lightning damage. We also gain Darkvision out to 60 feet, or an extra 30 feet of darkvision if we already have darkvision. We can discern color in areas of Darkness unlike most darkvision.

    One quick note: it's weird that we don't get an extra 60 feet if we already have darkvision. Otherwise this is fine and reasonable.

Also, we have advantage on Perception checks we make to see in Dim Light or Darkness.

    Let's quickly run this down: In dim light, a creature without darkvision has disadvantage on perception checks to see, but with darkvision, it basically gets treated as bright light, so we'll get full advantage. However, darkvision only treats total darkness as dim light, so we'll have disadvantage, but this gets cancelled out. So, there's still some benefit to illuminating an area here, but weirdly only with dim light, as we don't get advantage if the light is bright. Bit weird.

Finally, our immunity to Faerzress feature extends to any allies within 30 feet of us.

    Ok, that's interesting. Guess we can let the Wizard handle the utility teleportation spells and such once we hit level 6.

Level 14:

Faerzress Spell:

When one or more creatures fail a saving throw against a spell we cast, we can spend 1 SP to lace the creature with Faerzress. For 1 minute, they have the following effects on them:

They can't teleport. They can't cast Divination spells. And they have disadvantage on saving throws against Divination spells.

    Anti-teleportation could really shut down a slippery enemy spellcaster. I guess it's a question of how frequently you're casting divination spells.

Faerzress Step:

You always have Teleportation prepared and can cast it once without expending a spell slot per long rest. Also, when you roll on the Teleportation Outcome table, you can choose any outcome available for your familiarity.

    Nevermind! You'll be the teleporter for the party, with effectively a free extra 7th level spell slot! Now, as for the available outcomes, this means you'll always arrive where you want to go as long as the location you're trying to get to is real. If it's a false destination, you can arrive at a similar area, which is the best you can hope for. But yes, this basically makes Teleport foolproof for you. Pretty nice.

Level 18:

Faerzress Form:

When you use Innate Sorcery, you can turn yourself into pure Faerzress energy. You retain your general shape, personality, etc., and while your equipment doesn't transform, you can continue to wear/carry it. You get the following benefits:

You become immune to being Grappled, Paralyzed, Petrified, Poisoned, Prone, or Restrained.

    Pretty good, and again, very good for high-level titan-like monsters that might swallow you.

You gain resistance to every damage type except Force or Psychic.

    Now, you might encounter some psychic damage, especially in the Underdark, but these "every damage type except X and Y" features are going to be pretty great most of the time.

You have a fly speed equal to your speed and can hover. You can also move through other creatures and objects as if they were difficult terrain, but take 1d10 force damage if you end your turn inside an object.

    Little late for a Sorcerer to get a fly speed (Storm Sorcerers get an always-on fly with hover equal to 60 feet at level 18, and Aberrant and Draconic Sorcerers get concentration-free flight at level 14). I guess the incorporeal movement is nice? (I think the stipulation that your equipment doesn't transform is there more for flavor, but this could be a sticking point with a very strict DM).

You revert to your true form after 1 minute, if you choose to end it early, or if you die.

You can do this once per long rest, but you can spend 7 Sorcery Points to restore your use of it.

    I think the damage resistance is the best part of this, and the condition immunities are very nice. Is it worth the equivalent of a 7th level spell? Maybe? Innate Sorcery itself is also a somewhat limited resource, and we need to spend more SP to use it more than twice a day. Though that said, by the time you're this high-level, you might be burning a lot of your low level spell slots to just recoup SP. So maybe it's fine.

Overall Thoughts:

    I think this subclass works for very particular kinds of campaigns. It could be great in an intrigue-heavy campaign with lots of enemy spellcasters. But some of these features might have no impact if you're just fighting big burly monsters.

    I think I hold a view that is contrary to some other prominent thinkers when it comes to TTRPG design, which is that I think specificity can sometimes be a detriment: the appeal, as I see it, of TTRPGs is for players to make things their own - their own characters, their own worlds, their own stories. And this is one of those subclasses that feels not only tied to a very specific setting but a very specific part of that setting, which makes me feel far less likely to get excited about making a character with this subclass.

    Anyway, that's the three subclasses for this UA. Next, we'll look at some of the species.

UA: Circle of Spores Druid

 I love a creepy Druid.

Indeed, I think basically the only Druid concepts I've ever been drawn toward are those that lean into the "scary pagan in the dark forest" vibe. The Circle of Spores, more than any other (and yes, I'd include the "villainous" Titan Druid) leans into that idea, with a good deal of necromancy mixed in.

In my Ravnica campaign, two players who ultimately exited both went for Spores Druids (one was full Golgari Swarm while the other was a House Dimir spy embedded within the Swarm who likened the mycelial network to an intelligence network.

The Spores Druid is cool, but it's also one that has always been a little tricky to really make work - it's one of the few non-shapeshifting Druid subclasses that strongly encourages you to fight in melee.

I won't be comparing this with the Ravnica/Tasha's versions, though at first glance, it's relatively similar, with a few tweaks and changes.

Circle Spells:

Cantrip: Chill Touch

1st: Charm Person

2nd: Blindness/Deafness

3rd: Animate Dead

4th: Confusion

5th: Contagion

    Note that Chill Touch is now a melee spell, so you might want to pack a Starry Wisp or other ranged spell with you. I do think, though, that overall you might be inclined to fight more in melee, and thus might choose to take the Warden Primal Order here for a better AC and potentially better weapons (though Shillelagh might be the best weapon option for you unless you can get True Strike through Magic Initiate Wizard). For other spells, Animate Dead got buffed with the buff to Skeletons' Dexterity. Confusion is also a spell that I believe works even against Charm-immune foes.

Level 3:

Halo of Spores:

You have a 10-foot emanation around you of invisible spores. You have telepathy within 10 feet of you, or if you already have telepathy, the range increases by 10 feet.

    This is new, I believe, and a nice little perk.

When a creature you can see starts its turn within your emanation or enters it, you can use a reaction to infect them with your spores. They make a Con save. On a failure, they take 1d4 Necrotic damage. On a success, they have disadvantage on the next attack roll they make before the end of their turn.

The damage increases to 1d6 at 6th level, 1d8 at 10th level, and 1d10 at 14th level.

    This is a little cleaner than the old version, which let you kind of take your reaction at any time (though maybe I'm thinking of how Emily Axford played Moonshine on NADDPOD, which was based on the original UA version of this subclass). The weirdness here is that, given how relatively light the damage is, you might actually prefer that the target succeeds on their saving throw. Maybe just make the disadvantage go through on a success or failure? That's really not much more powerful, as it's kind of the Protection fighting style plus some damage.

Symbiotic Entity:

As a bonus action, you can expend a Wild Shape usage to awaken your spores. You gain Temp Hp equal to 4 times your Druid level. This lasts for 10 minutes or ends early if you choose to do so or become incapacitated (or use the feature again). While your spores are awakened you gain the following two benefits:

You can roll two dice rather than one when you deal damage with Halo of Spores.

Once per turn, you can deal an extra 1d6 Necrotic damage when you hit with a melee attack using a weapon or unarmed strike.

    Ok, I said I wasn't going to compare it to the old version, but it's a big deal that this is a bonus action, making it easier to get into the fight. But how do we like it?

    Well, it's a solid number of Temp HP. And the Halo of Spores bonus starts to make the damage feel at least a bit impactful. Also notable that this should persist even if we chew through our Temp HP now. But...

    Is that extra d6 of Necrotic damage enough to get us to fight in melee? We sort of have to, actually, also to use Halo of Spores (technically we don't have to, but we need to be within 10 feet). This is certainly less than the damage bonus that, say, a Berserker or Zealot Barbarian would get.

Level 6:

Fungal Infestation:

When a beast or humanoid that is Small or Medium dies within 10 feet of us, we can use a reaction to reanimate it, causing it to stand immediately with 1 HP. If we have Symbiotic Entity active, we can transfer any number of Temp HP we have to the reanimated creature as part of the same reaction.

The creature uses the Zombie stat block, and remains animate for an hour. We can end it early with a bonus action, and the animation ends if the zombie drops to 0 HP.

The zombie is an ally that will act on our initiative immediately after our turn. It will obey our mental commands (no action required) and will dodge and move away from danger if you don't issue it commands.

You can do this Wis times per long rest.

    The nice thing here is that this thing can actually become somewhat resilient, and in theory, especially with the changes to healing spells, we could theoretically heal it up to a Zombie's max HP. The problem, though, that this has always had, is that a Zombie is not a very powerful minion. Its attack bonus doesn't scale, and so will just be a +3, which is going to struggle to hit even low-CR targets. Its best use is probably just standing in the way of things.

    Again, I love the flavor, but I'd love some scaling with the stat block to keep this relevant.

Level 10:

Explosive Blast:

When an undead creature you created dies, it explodes in a burst of spores. Each creature you choose within 10 feet of it makes a Con save, taking 2d8 Necrotic damage on a failure or half as much on a success.

    Notably we don't need to use a reaction to trigger this explosion, and it avoids friendly fire. Thus, I would recommend getting a real army of undead via Animate Dead and then swarming a foe. A single minion dying is not going to do a whole lot of damage this way, but the bigger your army, the better this scales.

Level 14:

Fungal Body:

You are immune to being Blinded, Deafened, Frightened, or Poisoned. Any critical hit against you is a regular hit unless you're incapacitated.

    Before we continue, this is pretty big. Note that being in Darkness or areas that are Heavily Obscured gives you the Blinded condition, so being immune to blindness is roughly like having blindsight, though invisible creatures will still benefit from that against you. But also: crit immunity? That's going to really help prevent any massive spikes of damage that could cause you to auto-fail concentration.

Also, if you are Unconscious, your spores take over your body's movement, so your speed while unconscious is no longer reduced to 0. Your spores will direct your movement to stay near allies and away from danger.

    That is, frankly, really silly and fun. At level 14, we really want to avoid going unconscious, of course (we always want to avoid it, but it's easier to avoid at higher levels) but this... it's very fun.

Overall Thoughts:

    I want to love the Spores Druid. On a conceptual level, I adore it. But I do think it has some flaws: minions that don't scale very well, an emphasis on close-quarters combat without really enough to compensate you for getting in close.

    I actually think in some ways the older version might be better, as you could throw your spore cloud once you got to higher levels and play more as a "safe in the back" spellcaster.

    Basically, I think the subclass could stand to focus a bit more on what it really wants to be: is this the weapon-using melee Druid? Let's maybe beef up that melee damage then? Is this the Druid Necromancer? Give us some better-scaling minions.