UA: Arcane Updates

 We have a new Unearthed Arcana from D&D. We've been getting these at a decent clip, though I'm a little surprised we haven't gotten any confirmed book releases. We're still waiting on the two Forgotten Realms books and the delayed Eberron one that was initially supposed to come out last month.

This one is actually just another pass at the previous "Arcane Subclasses" UA. Surprisingly, this actually has one fewer subclass, dropping the Hexblade Warlock (which did also show up twice already, having arrived in the Horror Subclasses UA, so I guess it's not that weird).

This brings us new looks at the Arcane Archer Fighter, Tattooed Warrior Monk, and the four 2014 PHB Wizard subclasses that didn't make it into the 2024 PHB.

I'll do a series of posts going over each of them, seeing how they changed from the previous UA (I don't know if I have the energy to compare them with their original versions - only the Tattooed Warrior hasn't had an official publication).

EDIT: Well, I was going to do a post looking at each of the subclasses (also, I had forgotten about the Arcana Domain Cleric, which is also not included) but the new UA appears to have been pulled from D&D Beyond.

Could it be that they did so because they were missing the subclasses? I'll check in again and hopefully have a chance to give my impressions.

Going purely from memory:

Arcane Archers got a few refinements, nothing enormous from the previous UA.

Tatooed Warrior Monks look a lot more appealing, emphasizing spells less and moving toward enhancing existing Monk abilities (they still get cantrips, but the tattoos now either give brand new effects, often without needing Focus Points, or buffing things like Patient Defense or Step of the Wind).

Enchantment and Transmutation Wizards got, in my opinion, more of a refinement than a redesign.

Conjuration Wizards got some cool buffs: giving their summons resistances to most damage types and also, at 14th level, letting you split the summons into two creatures, each with half the normal HP (but again, with the resistance, that's nearly as good as they were before), which is, possibly, insanely powerful.

Necromancers are back to getting Animate Dead automatically, but they get a few buffs to their raised minions (sadly this doesn't incorporate a bonus to hit). They also get to summon a Skeleton or Zombie with Find Familiar (which is fun) and they get a feature that lets them sacrifice undead minions, and then another that lets them blow up an undead creature when it dies (though as I read it, you can't use these at the same time because they both take a reaction). I think it's closer to the fantasy we're looking for, but I still think Necromancers should be a pet subclass.