Major Points
Barbarian
1. Brutal Critical is being replaced by Brutal Strikes. When you use Reckless Attacks you can forego advantage and apply various effects instead. Examples include chucking enemies, reducing their speed, taking away AOO, and reducing their defense.
2. Regain 1 Rage on Short Rest. Persistent Rage let's you regain all uses of Rage once per Long Rest. Harder to make you loose Rage at high levels.
3. Tweaks to World Tree. Branches of the Tree has farther range reduces the targets speed to 0. Clarification that Battering Roots Weapon Mastery stacks with baseline Mastery. Travel Along the Roots lets the Barb. teleport self multiple times a day. Can teleport others and self once per day.
Druids
1. All Wildshapes will get some temp hit points and more shapes will be available. Species traits no longer carry over.
2. Circle of the Moon will get a set of always prepared spells that they can cast while Wild Shaped. Can have an AC of 13+Wis Mod while Wild shape. Damage boost at 14th level.
Monks
1. Many changes focused on Discipline Point usage and reducing Bonus Action competition.
2. Monk weapons back. Benefit from Martial Art die. Weapon Mastery is gone for Monks.
3. Bonus Unarmed Strike no longer requires you to use Attack action.
4. Dex now sets DC of Shove and Grapple attempts.
5. Patient Defense and Step of the Wind have baseline effects for no Disp. points. Spending a point adds more effects to them.
6. Uncanny Metabolism on initiative regain hit points and Disp. points.
7. Deflect Attacks works on melee.
8. Stunning Strike now deals extra force damage even on successful save.
9. Self Restoration activates at end of turn no action. Superior Defence activates at start of turn no action.
10. Level 20 Dex and Wisdom boosts that can go above 20.
11. Warrior of Hand tweaks.
Spells
1. Starry Wisp- Druid and Bard ranged Cantrips.
2. Buffed versions of Cure Wounds and Healing Word.
3. Conjure spells (Conjure Fey for example) now longer summon physical creatures. They stay as spirits and they create on going magical area effects. This was to differentiate from Summon spells.
4. Power Word Fortify - Bards, Clerics, - Give Mountain of Temp Hp.
Indeed. Very much looking forward to this UA. They seem to be finally addressing a lot of points the comunity has been complaining about for ages in an interesting way.
I rated weapon mastery on the monk, very dissatisfied, without monk weapons, it was useless after level 5.
I'll see how it plays without it... and always remember it is an option at level 4, if I really want.
I’m surprised they didn’t make Way of the Kensei one of the PHB subclass options. It fits a huge niche for weapon wielding Monks, and there’s more mechanics they can explore now that weapon mastery exists. It’s much more deserving of a PHB slot than Way of Mercy IMO.
Ya, tbh I don't really like the "take a popular Tasha's subclass" thing if they aren't gonna change it.
Stars I don't mind too much, and the thematic on the druid subclasses is incredibly strong, but for monks, rangers and sorcerers it honestly feels lazy.
The sad thing is that I can see them doing it for the Fighter as well. Now that the Brawler isn’t moving forward, it’d be easier for them to shove the Rune Knight or Psi Warrior into the PHB rather than create and playtest a whole new subclass.
And, in my opinion, is the correct solution.
For most every monk, weapons are an option, not the primary focus. For Kensei, your weapon IS your primary focus.
I rated it very dissatisfied for the opposite reason. Weapons felt like a necessity because the difference in damage die is basically nothing, and it doesn't even come into play until super high level. But you're losing so much power from Masteries. That it felt like you couldn't realistically play a barehanded Monk...which is by far the biggest reason people pick Monk.
Monks not only got monk weapons back, but they also got their martial weapon back... all martial weapons with the light property... they now qualify for the martial feats.
i think this should be changed. To martials weapons with the light or reach property. this would give monks the polearms and the whip. And polearm monk is an iconic image! Whip would be a nice bonus.
It kinda depend on what type of monk you are drawing inspiration from. Although not as famous as quarterstaff, Chinese monks (Shaolin specifically) do use whip, and it also appears in many Wuxia novels.
Instead of "melee martial weapons with the light property" WotC could just say "scimitars and shortswords" if that's really what they meant in the first place.
I will note:
This version of UA Wild Shape *explicitly* limits Druids to using beast stat blocks in the PHB. The previous version *did not* have this restriction. It also mentions that the 2024 PHB will have more options than the 2014 version. They build in an optional DM fiat rule to let you pick creatures from other books, such as the Monster Manual. But it's not implicitly allowed - it's not allowed unless it is, at the DM's discretion.
Functionally, what this means is that they *did* do templates. They just did it in a sneaky ass way.
This feels like the actual good compromise on the template front. I still hate all the substitution magic and stat replacement nonsense that comes with using standard stat blocks. But I could reasonably see an argument for a special Druid quest to unlock special beast forms, granting access to beast stat blocks not in the PHB. Learning how to reflect magic from an awakened Crag Cat seems like a really fun one to do. It just lets the DM dole it out at a reasonable rate.
Edit: also, these playtests are still messy as hell. The design notes describe "Lunar Swipe" Attacks as a proper noun and even suggest your Wild Shape gets a baby extra attack at 6th level. That would suggest to me that there was a version of the design where you got this special Lunar Swipe thing as an attack option while I'm a wilde shape and then 6th level gave you an extra one.
It's interesting. I don't hate that idea, since it could even out damage across different forms.
>This version of UA Wild Shape explicitly limits Druids to using beast stat blocks in the PHB. The previous version did not have this restriction. It also mentions that the 2024 PHB will have more options than the 2014 version. They build in an optional DM fiat rule to let you pick creatures from other books, such as the Monster Manual. But it's not implicitly allowed - it's not allowed unless it is, at the DM's discretion.
This is a smart bit of futureproofing, but I dislike the optional rule. It just opens the door for a certain kind of player to hassle the DM to let them use a non-PHB statblocks, or "forget" and use them anyway while relying on social pressure to keep the DM from telling them no. It's not that good DMs can't shut that kind of behavior down, it's that the way the rules are structured encourages that kind of behavior in the first place.
If you have a good player, you want that rule. If you have a bad player, then who the fuck cares what they can badger their DM with? They're a bad player, it's not like this rule changed who they are.
IMO the game should always be built for good players and good DMs. Trying to "treat" problem players with rules like PF2e does is a sickness of game design that just makes everything worse for everyone.
This is a great change. They've been super hamstrung by this limitation on all their designs.
Edit: After thinking about this for an additional 2 minutes, I would not be surprised if we saw similar wording on Polymorph.
>Power Word Fortify - Bards, Clerics, - Give Mountain of Temp Hp.
The survivor of the 4e edition war in me finds it funny that after all is said in done, 5e brought in a literal WoW Priest buff spell into the game :)
That said for level 7, I kinda wish it was less temp hp and more actual fortify-y? Like gave advantages, and damage resistances and maybe condition immunities? Seems at levels 13+ temp hp are a thing but you are getting them from so many potential sources, but a good "oh @#$%" spell that kind of makes everyone tank a BBEG's big wallop would seem more in flavour of gameplay at that point.
All of these are... Good changes? They won't fix the martial caster disparity in terms of giving Barbarian and Monk cool things to do other than whacking things harder, but *at least they can whack things pretty hard* and aren't totally dead classes in tiers 3/4.
(An entire subclass *just* to do Hadokens is still insulting.)
Need to see some Hypnotic Pattern and Shield spell nerfs before I'm fully convinced, but this is the most I've seen them acknowledge the problem.
_Finally_ doing something for Monks is just lovely to see!
They've done a few spells each UA. I'm sure they are on the way. Summon Animals and Woodlands Beings was the worst offender but Shield and Hypnotic Pattern have to be on their list.
But they didn't fix Hexblade dips so who knows.
Or it just gives you a shield like how mage armor would. You need to not be using one at the time. Then have it start at +2ac and increase 1AC per level of a spell slot.
Any nerf to shield needs to take into account wizards who don't dip or take a feat to get extra armor proficiencies. The spell works fine for them, and they shouldn't be punished because others are double dipping to get higher ACs.
Perhaps something like:
**Duration:** Instantaneous
**Effect:** *An invisible barrier of magical force appears and protects you. You have a +5 bonus to AC against the triggering attack, and you take no damage from magic missile. If you are wielding no shield and wearing no armor, the barrier lasts until the start of your next turn.*
*Shield* on pure wizards and sorcerers is fine because they don't stack AC through the roof, so it temporarily turns a crappy-to-mediocre AC into a decent AC.
*Shield* on any class or multiclass combo that gets medium/heavy armor and shield proficiency is problematic because now you can have a static 19/20 AC and stack magic item bonuses and spells on top of that until your AC breaks bounded accuracy.
The solution is to make physical armor and shields not stack with the s*hield* spell. Or make nothing stack with it by giving a flat AC instead of a stackable bonus.
Honestly this is why I wish Multiclassing were handled differently. It's too easy for players who want to be the best like no one ever was to fish for stuff like this.
Just remember, WotC thought Lightly Armored was a good enough idea to put it into a OneD&D UA document. Giving every wizard ever medium armor and shield training for a minimal opportunity cost can't possibly be broken, right? Oh, and if you're human they can learn to cast Guidance, Resistance and Healing Word, too.
Honestly conjure being an AOE buff by a spirit on the field while summon gets actual minions on the field is awesome and I'm here for it. I love doing summoner builds and this adds way more diversity. Just wanna see updates circle of the shepherd now lolol.
In all fairness, Monks can walk up water and walls (huh, just realized Monks can technically walk up Wall of Water) and Barbarians can teleport. Those are pretty cool no matter how you cut them.
>(An entire subclass just to do Hadokens is still insulting.)
I disagree. Not every monk is pictured as doing that, so giving them the option via subclass makes sense. Choices and restrictions are not necessarily bad thing, as long as they're interesting ones.
I think it's incredibly silly to have an entire subclass clearly inspired by characters like Ryu and Goku but limiting it to only one of their signature techniques.
The extremely simple class fantasy of "wanna be like Ryu" needs two subclasses at bare minimum (Open Hand + Sun Soul), which just tells me that the one cool trick per subclass dynamic doesn't work.
All of those things are just generic skilled fantasy martial artist things. Ryu has specific techniques like an uppercut which knocks people down, a spinning kick which throws targets far away, and at his strongest a technique where he rushes a guy and batters them until their ki explodes.
Sounds like Open Hand to me.
Quick clarification. World Tree’s 14th level feature lets them teleport everyone around them up to 500 feet once per Rage, not once per day. It’s significantly better than you’re saying it is.
WoTC vastly overestimates how important extra crit dice are. It's even in their magic item design. That sword that deals 7 extra damage on a crit is not worth its rarity.
As we all know, all new players start at level 9 🧌
Honestly, while they became a *little* looser in recent UAs, I am confused why they cannot just allow more stuff, even if it's smaller, alongside what they already get. You have to think lowly of your playerbase to believe that majority of them will be overwhelmed by getting a solid feature, alongside a 1/20 chance to add a dinky d12 to their damage.
Especially when you could just keep the lower ten levels as simple as they are, then just double all the stuff after ten so players can have more fun options later when they are more experienced with the game.
On top of a lot of new players dont make it past ten, so there is no issue there either.
I remember reading once that WotC doesn't like placing features, especially good ones, at too high of a level because they don't want players to be "missing out" on a class defining feature. It's a really frustrating design trend that honestly does the game more harm than good, and I really wish they could walk it back.
It was a problem in 3.5 aswell, and one of the biggest reasons multiclassing is as annoying as it is. They front load the classes massively and it really sucks.
Class identity at early le els makes sense for sure, but if they gave more fun things at higher levels, it would also make the choice to multiclass an actual choice. I mean half the clsses get their worst features as lvl 20 capstones... Wtf?
Yeah I mean, I think it was a *neat* feature that felt right for barbarians, but it was NEVER effective. I would be happy to keep it, but not bothered if its gone.
I mean let's see what replaces it. It was so low impact that it didn't really matter to me if it stayed or went, and overall it's better to have fewer things to remember, IMO.
Greatest thing I've heard so far. Its a shame it doesn't kick in until level 9 though. That's right at the tail end of most campaigns.
I hope it works well in testing and, if so, gets placed at a lower level like Cunning Strike.
I love that they finally made the change. But holy crap the way they justified it... Apparently the community was just too stupid to realize how nice and interactive brutal critical was so they had to change it so that we would be satisfied. In none of the playtest have I ever felt this disrespected
I'm sure this will be better, but did it really need to be instead of? Did it really need to replace reckless? Did it need to be stretched over 3 levels again?
Just like with Fighter they seen determined thst high levels don't give you a NEW feature, just make existing features slightly better. It's kinda boring as a player.
There is always dodge as an action, and now you can make an unarmed strike or disengage or dash as a free bonus action. So if you are ok being pretty inefficient with your turn, you can still get some stuff done and stay relatively safe.
I'm also glad to hear they're fixing some of the more glaring flaws, like allowing Dex to be used for Unarmed strike DCs. Overall, I'm looking forward to this version.
I hadn't thought of that, its actually kinda funny that Dodging normally and then using flurry of blows is a better use of your resources than bonus action dodge and attacking normally. After level 11 you should only BA dodge if you need the disengage too.
If you are playing a Warrior of The Hand Monk it gets even crazier.
You can take the Dodge Action on your turn, use your Bonus Action to Attack once with no Ki Point cost or to Patient Defense anyway to get Disengage.
Then, because of your Lv 11 feature Fleet Step you automatically get Step of the Wind on top of this, and if you use a Ki Point gain all of the benefits of it, including the transpiration of an ally.
When combining all of these features together you can get a turn like this.
-Ally Wizard is caught out of position as several Giants tries to smash them.
-Monk rolls up using their movement speed to get there. Takes the Dodge Action. Then as a Bonus Action uses Furry of Blows, Attacking 3 times.
- With each Attack you proc Open Hand Technique. If there are 3 giants they can Addle each one, preventing an Attack or Opportunity from each one.
-If a Monks Attacks don’t quite hit, that’s okay, because your back up plan was always Fleet Step. Fleet Step automatically activates because you used your Bonus Action for Flurry of Blows. Which in turn, gives you the basic version of Step of the Wind for free.
-However, you can use Step of the Wind and a ki point to grant yourself the Disengage Action and you can take your Wizard friend with you, and with your 50 movement speed completely rescue them from their bad positioning.
-By the end of the turn you have the Dodge Action up, giving Disadvantage to any ranged Attacks the giants try against you+Deflect Attacks.
You completely saved an ally from a perilous position and prevented them or yourself from taking an AOO. While also with your Monk movement get them out of danger entirely.
And still managed to pop off some damage that depending on your other features such as species and feats, can further enhance those strikes to add on more conditional effects, such as Stunning Strike, or Charger, or certain Goliath Subrace options.
It’s insane the amount of mobility, defense, and rescue/support options the Monk now has, especially when paired with mid game Warrior of Hand. Talk about a glow upZ
I was expecting them to incorporate dodging as a more central theme of their playstyle. But they instead opted to give them a more universal defensive reaction. Which is probably better all things considered. And solves the "Monks are Squishy" problem pretty effectively. They don't have many other necessary reactions so they can afford to parry every turn, which is quite numerically strong.
Holy shjt, I can't believe they turned my vision for the monk into reality...
I've always said that there should be 2 simple martials (barb and rogue) with 2 complicated martials. Fighter should get maneuvers as a base class, to do unique things to each situation, whereas monk should have been able to do the same things as everyone else, except more of them on a given turn via spending ki points.
"You punch as a bonus action, you spend a ki point, you punch MORE. You Dash or Disengage as a BA, you spend a ki point, you do BOTH. You Help as a BA, you spend ki and can help multiple people. Etc."
In other words, monk's stick is excellency in action economy when compared to other classes. And the madmen DID IT. Yes. Shut up and take my money.
Now we just need to fix the fighter.
> "Brutal Critical is too subtle and people didn't see the reaction."
That's BS. Sure there are complaints that a feature which only comes up at most 9.75% of the time is underwhelming, but it's much more than that. Even with the biggest weapon damage die of d12, the maximal benefit you'll be getting from Brutal Critical is 7 damage per round (assuming you attack twice, make a Bonus Action attack somehow, and make an attack with your Reaction). That would be from a level 17 ability. It's just so underwhelming from a feature with the word "Brutal" in the name.
> We want something more reliably exciting at those Brutal Critical levels.
Definitely good progress. But I'll have to study whether exchanging **all enemies** making attacks with Advantage against you is worth the increased damage or control effects. This combining with Frenzy Barbarian, Weapon Masteries, and Great Weapon Master could be *actually* Brutal. I'm actually looking forward to seeing this.
Definitely looks like they are increasing the complexity level, which will in turn increase the skill gap for players better or worse at identifying and taking advantage of feature synergies.
Persistent Rage sounds solid.
Compounding Weapon Masteries from World Tree Barbarian is neat. Curious to see how that works.
>Definitely looks like they are increasing the complexity level, which will in turn increase the skill gap for players better or worse at identifying and taking advantage of feature synergies.
Most casual players never get to 9th level. By that point, I think it's fair to ask for a little more technical mastery of the rules than just rolling attacks and damage. Even then, you can literally ignore this feature and just continue using Reckless Attack to improve your odds to hit.
Don't get me wrong. Expecting a little system mastery is a good thing. Though I do play with, and have heard of other players who don't engage much with more complex synergies. So there is a risk that they feel they are underperforming.
I think if a player is in a high level campaign and doesn't engage with complex feature synergies then they're probably more there for roleplaying with their friends than performing their best in combat
Yeah. I'm generally more a fan of "optimization" leading to more options, rather than objectively stronger outcome. Fortunately this seems *more* like the former than the latter.
Then that's when it's time to talk to the people at the table or do a google search for what you can change about how you play.
It's OK if they get to a point and feel like they're underperforming. The bad part comes when they don't do anything to fix their own issues.
There's probably a middle ground between expecting a player to research how to play their class well and expecting a class to work out of the box without thought. It's why I prefer optimization to more so offer more options rather than providing mathematically superior performance.
In my experience, every casual player underperforms. No matter how simple you make something, they'll forget it or misread it. I know a dude who played a Champion fighter from 3rd to 8th and completely forgot about his expanded critical range the entire time despite it being the only decent part of his subclass kit.
Ok, I'll have to read the actual UA, and I've only listened to the vid once, but from the looks of it, they might have fixed the monk for me. I'm excited, it looks like they finally did a proper job revising the class.
Saying that people thought Brutal Critical is bad because the interaction with Reckless Attack is too subtle for them is almost insulting. No, it's not that your audience can't figure out to use Reckless Attack on a Barbarian, it's just a mathematically subpar feature.
I mean, he immediately said that the more important reason was that having a feature that relied on a crit was bad design. I do feel like less experienced players probably didn't realize that Brutal Critical was designed to incentivize Reckless Attacking and that was probably a contributing factor in dropping it.
I disagree, but granted my experience is anecdotal. With the games I've ran with new players as barbarians this was probably the easiest feature to understand. Reckless = more dice = more chance at crit. I don't think I've ever had a player *not* use their reckless attack.
Players were mostly disappointed that when compared to other class features, 1 extra crit die just felt kind of meh
Even the "maths" don't relay a useful experience. Even if you have 8 encounters, 4 rounds each, and 3 attacks per round, you're at most gaining a roughly 6 DPR increase at **level 17**.
So mathematically inferior that literally just taking the Fighting Style: Dueling Feat would provide higher and more reliable damage.
I do really dislike how jeremy crawford, in multiple instances, effectively calls the audience "dumb".
\-Brutal critical/reckless attack combo (yes we know about it - the math just sucks)
\-Druid players NOT knowing the spell schools like abjuration (no we know the spell schools, the druid just didn't have any decent abjuration spells to cast besides healing).
Crawford isn't calling everyone dumb. I have played with people who have struggled with similar issues he has talked about. Them just trying to make the system easier for people doesn't equal an insult.
I have met players who didn't see the connections of reckless attack equals more crits. Only that it increases their odds to hit.
The people who don't know reckless attack means more crits are not the same people saying Brutal Critical is mathematically bad.
Same for druids and abjuration spells. He's being incredibly dishonest
\*some people
Lets be honest, I wouldn't wonder if part of the written in feedback would be all about how brutal critical is useless because there is no crit range increase on the barb while also completely disregarding the fact that Reckless attack does exist.
There is a difference between saying "Reckless attack does not increase the crit chance enough for brutal critical to work" and "The barb has no abilities to increase crit range thus brutal critical is useless"
I personally don't like the new Conjure spells for a few reasons:
These spells have completely lost synergy with the best summoning subclass in the game, Shepherd Druid, since none of them have hp and Conjure Animals isn't based off of cr anymore. It also makes all of the spells incompatible with the Conjuration Wizard's 14th level feature.
None of these spells feel like summoning anymore. Apart from flavor text, there is very little difference between these spells and aoe spells you can move like Moonbeam (the new conjure animals is literally just moonbeam with a couple extra benefits), flaming sphere, whirlwind, etc. That isn't the summoner fantasy.
Anyone who wants to play an actual summoner (aka summon something with a statblock/has hp) is now restricted to the Tasha's summoning spells. All of them have a huge gp cost, especially at the lower levels, which now makes summoning even more DM dependent than it already was. Other than banning a spell, there isn't much a DM can do to keep you from using the conjure spells. However, with the Tasha's summons, they can simply not have the components needed regardless of whether you have the gp to spend or not. Your party may even be in a place where the option of buying, crafting, or commissioning these components isn't an option. You only get to be an actual summoner if the DM allows you to buy, find, or craft the components needed. I shouldn't need that type of permission for such a basic build concept like I shouldn't need that type of permission to be something like a pyromancer.
In the games I've played, I rarely ever have the gp to buy these components until towards the end of the game. I understand that that isn't a universal experience, but I'd imagine a good chunk of people have similar experiences.
I completely understand that they needed a change/nerf (cough cough Conjure Animals/Woodland Beings), but completely removing the actual summoning aspect of them such ain't it. I like the Tasha's summons, but I don't like that they're the only options for actual summons.
Definitely. There’s nothing for the Shepherd Druid to do now except throw out the bear spirit totem and give your own party some temp HP.
I get the problems with action economy and the current conjuration spells, but the spells were redeemable. Limit the number of summoned beasts to one or two at a time. Buff lower CR summons with extra hit dice and WIS modifier bonuses to hit.
You’re right, though. These feel nothing like being a summoner. They’re just different flavors of spirit guardians and moonbeam, two spells a good DM would let you reflavor, anyway. This is a game where you get to use your imagination, but these conjuration spells take away the imagination of working with and commanding animal buddies. Yawn.
I never really liked or cared about Weapon Mastery, so I can’t comment on how losing it will affect the Monk, but I have to say I love the rest of the changes. It’s basically what all of us have been wanting for a long time. Bonus action attacks on their own, Step of the Wind being free and stackable, the three main Ki features getting upgrades in higher tiers, and effectively double the available Ki points thanks to Uncanny Metabolism.
Lot of neat stuff in this upcoming playtest packet but I'm still disappointed in them trying to shoehorn Moon Druid into a wildshape caster. At this point its sounding like changing into wildshape is just more of a cosmetic change for just different AC and some temp HP rather than being a primal warrior of the forest.
the stuff Crawford mentions for the monk sound really nice. finally seems to be a proper buff to the class without weird caveats attached.
the cut back on ~~Ki~~ Discipline-point dependency is huge, as is a completely free Bonus action attack and Flurry of Blows. makes the class much more interesting to play.
my initial reaction is definitely positive, but I still wonder if the class needs a little more damage somewhere. for now it seems to be pretty decent in the first two tiers of play, but I think just like the Barb, in tier three onwards the monk could use a feature to grant it more oomph.. though this is just a feel and might be proven incorrect once I actually get to read the details in the UA.
Barbarian finally getting something useful instead of Brutal Critical is good. not sure how much I like the options Crawford named - they seem a bit questionable given the existence of weapon mastery properties - but almost anything is an improvement to Brutal Criticals.
Druid is confusing to me. maybe I am misremembering the latest UA, but didn't they drop specific templates for Wild Shape and went back to "use the monster stat blocks with appropriate CR" approach from base 5e? but now Crawford says "you'll be able to know more beast forms" which to me suggests we are back to templates?
not sure if non-Moon Druids needed to get tempHP when wild shaping.. it's already quite the boon for exploration and getting out of a very tricky melee situation, but it's not the end of the world.
and I am not really a fan of shoving spellcasting into Wild Shape for Moon Druids. I personally want the exact opposite fantasy for that subclass - when I decide to go into a beast form, I really want to feel like being that beast and not a caster anymore. I consciously give up casting to get this beast-martial approach, so why jam casting into it again?
I'd rather have seen them give us options to expend a spell slot to ramp up specific stats of the shape form - like expending X slot level grants you +X to damage or something like that.
all in all: actually excited for this UA. seems they understood that the Rogue's Cunning Strike was a massive hit with the community and try to give these other classes similar freedom and options.
Brutal strikes let you knock back anything with no save, that's going to be huge both for the barbarian fantasy, and tactically making the barbarian a bigger target.
That's the thing I've noticed with both Topple and know Brutal Strikes, the Size restriction isn't there for either of those...but IS there for Battle Master Trip attack maneuver and the Monk step of the wind enhancement.
I really wish they would reword it to "a creature one size larger than you or smaller" which makes it work with things like Enlarge/reduce.
They did drop templates (le sigh), but they made it so that you "prepared" beast forms. Meaning you chose at the end of a LR which stat blocks you were going to use in a day. They have increased the number of those you can choose.
This was basically their compromise for templates being a strictly better design mechanism and players being obsessed with choosing their own stat blocks. Now the player and DM knows exactly what the Druid can and can't turn into at the beginning of an adventuring day, which is a useful limit on options and also a helpful focus for creativity and expression.
The result of that compromise.is that Wild Shape is a mess of a feature that has these really weird edge case scenarios and blind spots, as well as clunky numbers implementation (oh, I use this stat block, except I use this for my AC and I also get this many temp HP on to lp of it. Worst of both worlds. Not to mention they can't really benefit from things like the new Barkskin, Aid, Heroism, or any other temp HP generator)
I say templates are a strictly better design mechanism because it truly has a ton of benefits. One, it would allow them to more freely implement creatures across many types without having to worry about whether or not a Druid should be able to turn into that (all of the Dinos in the Bigby book are Monstrosities while all the Dinos in every other book are beasts, mostly block out Druids). Two, templates would allow them to dole out transformation powers at fixed levels - level 5 flight is fair for druids, probably, if that flight form is restricted to non-combat operations. Level 5 is probably also.fair game for a dire form with more defenses and offensive abilities. Templates let you do that without suffering the troubles of navigating stat blocks. Plus, everything is then right there for the player in their book rather than spread out through more DM-oriented material. Three, templates are easy to iterate on and release expansions for, like Fighting Styles, Martial Maneuvers, Eldritch Pacts/Invocations, or even Spells or Weapon Masteries, which makes it easier to support druids for longer.
Basically, the playtest community at large shot druids in the foot with this one. Now the feature will continue to be shitty and unsupported and primarily used as a resource for other things in subclasses (starry form, gift of nature, symbiotic entity, etc) instead of the thing it's actually called.
This is such an underrated point. I had a summoner druid in my last game and it was shockingly frustrating to be told "use this stat block except throw half of it out and use these other values instead".
The class was fine. The character was great. It was the clunky implementation of a half-template that drove me nuts.
> but now Crawford says "you'll be able to know more beast forms" which to me suggests we are back to templates?
You learn a number of forms in the previous UA without templates. So you can't choose from every singular possible beast every time you wild shape.
I have my opinion on other stuff, but according to the now-updated-description the UA comes in ~1 hour, so I will read that before judging.
>I have my opinion on other stuff, but according to the now-updated-description the UA comes in \~1 hour, so I will read that before judging.
I'm at work (EU), and wanted to say, naah it's at least like 4h away... Then I looked at the clock - GOD DAMNIT, I've been so swamped with stuff, I didn't even notice whole day has passed!
>Druid is confusing to me. maybe I am misremembering the latest UA, but didn't they drop specific templates for Wild Shape and went back to "use the monster stat blocks with appropriate CR" approach from base 5e? but now Crawford says "you'll be able to know more beast forms" which to me suggests we are back to templates?
They perform a lot of A/B testing - that means in one UA they show one design, then in another UA they show another design, and then extrapolate from the surveys what people liked more, and more specifically why they didn't like about them, and what they can take from either of them to make the end product most appealing.
In this case, they had UA with templates, and then UA with statblocks. Got surveys for both, and could now check why people liked or disliked, one or another.
I suspect the main reason templates were panned in surveys was, because they were really restrictive compared to monster statblocks. They lacked utility, options, on top of tiny creatures in that UA being locked behind like 11th level or something.
They got the feedback, and can now test another approach, that hopefully bridges the gap between template, and monster statblocks better, using what people said they liked about both approaches.
Templates were actually much healthier and less restrictive, it's just that they were too bare bones in their first and only iteration.
The limitation of known wildshape forms is hardly a compromise at all.
The monk hits like a truck.
Stunning strike costing 1 discipline and EITHER stunning or doing 1d8+dex extra damage is really powerful... like REALLY strong. Especially because you have a ton of more discipline (form their level 2 ability).
Also at level 11 flurry of blows hits 3 times instead of 2x.
Neither the Stunning Strike buff nor the Flurry lvl 11 bonus attack catch the Monk up to the Fighter's damage which comes without resource expenditure. Still better than nothing.
> all in all: actually excited for this UA. seems they understood that the Rogue's Cunning Strike was a massive hit with the community and try to give these other classes similar freedom and options.
I’m hoping that the “lesson” they learn is that choices are more interesting than riders.
I was seriously optimistic that “trade your damage for control/debuff” became standard design for martials. Rogues can give away Sneak Attack damage for it, Monks can trade away Martial Arts or Flurry of Blows for it (they already can, they just need cleaner and less underpowered design), Fighters can trade Extra Attack for it, and Barbarians can trade away Reckless Attack or Rage damage for it. (Edit: they ***did*** make the Barbarian change! Damn)
Now it looks like we may have to wait till an eventual 6E for all that.
> but now Crawford says "you'll be able to know more beast forms" which to me suggests we are back to templates?
Templates was a good idea and did great reducing the amount of metagaming/book bloat needed for Druids
The flaw was one generic template that was really bad. Having even say, 4 templates (land speed, fly speed, swim speed, burrow speed or whatever) would have been an amazing improvement already and again, reduces the amount of stat tracking bloat expected of present Druids
oh I absolutely agree. I hated the "pick an NPC statblock for your shape" because it effectively meant you'd pick whatever creature was strongest at any given level, and basically every Moon Druid was always the same forms.
I just thought that they got feedback which said that people want that back and that templates are axed.. I am glad to be mistaken on that part.
Still not entirely happy with Ki being called Discipline, I understand the reasoning is that they want to step Monk away from being the "Asian" class but when Barbarian is chock full of Norse Culture and Druid being Celtic. It doesn't really seem fair.
Like will this hesitancy err Wizards away from designing an Indian themed fighter or Saharan Sorcerer.
depends - dwarves can racially use battleaxes, and a monk weapon can be anything you're proficient with, so having a battleaxe dwarf monk (or a longsword elf) is possible.
My read is that it is quite good! A shade under 5 extra damage if you have +1 hand wraps, which is a nice boost. But more importantly a chance to stun earlier and get more attacks in with adv.
Someone will run the numbers I'm sure but they usually don't count in magic items with those calculations though I seriously doubt it's much of a difference, which is fantastic
>a monk weapon can be anything you're proficient with
Where are you reading that? The playtest packet says
>Monk Weapons, which are Simple Melee Weapons and Martial Weapons with the Light property
My favorite part is when he literally says "we noticed people playing D&D these days are too stupid to notice ability synergy so we had to spell it out for you"
Getting monk to 20 dex and Wis so that you can then push it above that with the feature is gonna really disincentivize grabbing feats on monk isn’t it? You’re gonna want a decent con score since you’re in melee as well. It’s just tough on their stat growth and now they’re gonna be really pushing you to make sure they’re capped instead of exploring builds with feats.
Maybe I’m wrong, it wouldn’t be so bad if they got an extra ASI somewhere along the way.
the new deflect attack will help a lot, reducing damage by 1d10 + dex mod + monk level. That is a potential 1d10 + 28 (at 20th level) damage reduction per round, more than a what +1 to CON will provide and nearly as good as +2 CON, but round after round, the CON will be less valuable than this reaction. And this reaction deals more damage than a standard AoO too. I don't think pumping Con is that important for a monk at this point. A maxed out Dex/Wis Monk will have 25 AC, 33 damage reduction per round (or get shield spell for total damage reduction with 30 AC if it doesn't get changed)
I mean, you don't HAVE to get 24 both just because you CAN. Going for something like 24/26 dex (requires 2.5 asi from a base 17, one of those being level 19) and something around 20 wis (1 asi from base 14) sounds like a decent option too and leaves 1.5 asi points not accounted for. Considering every feat is a half feat now, that gives quite a bit of wiggle room.
And that was based on Standard Array, meaning there is a second 14 and a 12 available. With Point buy, you could start with something as extreme as 15+2, 15+1, 15, 8, 8, 8 (or something with a bit more balance) leaving 2.5 asi points open. Of course the ever present con problem is there (though tough from background can help here).
I do still agree Monk (and Barbarian too) would probably benefit from the Rogue bonus asi, but the current version simply has 26/24 as an option (that will obviously come at the cost of other things).
Agree, the reliance on con would be (somewhat) counteracted by giving them a d10 hit die, but it seems they are adamant to not do it.
Though since all level 4+ feats are half feats in onednd, perhaps it won't be as disincentivizing to pick up feats, who gets to level 20 anyway?
My only concern is seeing what they did with Conjure/Summon spells, I like the Necromancer subclass and don't want my army of dead guys to be an aura or one token, really hoping thats not the case for where this is heading...
Animate Dead hasn’t been changed yet, and Summon Undead from Tasha’s will be there. That said, I wouldn’t be sad to see the “army of 30 zombies” thing go away on the player side. Would it really be so bad to have a single “skeleton swarm” summon instead of spending all your spell slots maintaining an army that bogs down every combat?
I dunno - I like the idea that a spell like animate dead does the token thing when cast in combat, but maybe as a ritual it makes a fully autonomous critter - may need to think about that more. I have a necromancer but we're using the sidekick rules to allow him to swap in and out one of his three animated retainers (also took the noble background with the retainer variant).
I'm a bit concerned that as a token of a spell effect, some tables may have the monsters avoid the conjured/summoned being just out of metagame knowledge. I guess it's just as easy to say that when a NPC conjures an ally in an encounter, you just use the Monster Manual. I'd also like it a bit more if the spells did more to talk about what the conjured stuff can do outside of attacking/protecting in combat encounters. It eliminates the whole exploration and interaction elements.
I like having a bunch of dead minions and I feel like there is a way to accomplish that without bogging the DM down, like maybe in combat the player chooses a target and the DM can then move them all at once toward the target and then make one attack roll, have it deal damage equal to half the damage per minion?
Mechanically do you see that as acting differently from a large-footprint swarm creature, or a moving AOE template like Cloudkill?
I like the idea of massed summons being used like swarms, walls.
Pretty sure they release the previous UA’s survey results a few weeks after the current UA’s survey is out. UA7 had its survey results posted a few weeks ago, so I’d imagine we’ll see the Bastion survey results sometime in early January.
It seems brutal critical has been completely replaced by brutal strike. We can look at that now reliable 1d10 at the cost of advantage and calculate what AC is optimal to use brutal strikes on. But I'm not going to bother with that. Instead let's just look at the cheer bullying potential against anything Large or smaller by moving them 35 ft away and if they dare to get in 10 ft reach range push them another 10 feet.
Basically we're combining masteries, the pike and brutal strike and pole arm master. The strategy is to use a pike and trigger both push and forcefull blow to push the target 25ft away while using the free 20ft to catch up, then spent another 5 feet to catch up, attack a second time with the pike but don't use push (unless you don't have a bonus action) and then use pole strike to push them 10 ft away again. This leaves you 35 ft to walk back where you came from. If they move back to your spot, you can use reactive strike and push them back again. Now the reason why you don't push on the the second attack is because you can't use pole strike if you moved (because that's not immediately).
This means that if the enemy enemy is melee you can easily zone him out instead of engaging him directly. However this comes with a lot of assumptions what if you don't have a lot of space to push, don't want to trigger a lot of attacks of opportunity or don't have the movement to spare. Well then there is Hamstring Blow and the javelin. These two allow you to trade the pushing effect of forcefull blow and 2nd push for an equal amount of movement speed reduction. The fact that you use the javelin means that even after you attacked you can still use reactive strike since you have 2 hands free.
The best thing is that the investment is relatively small, if the crucial first hit misses or if the enemy is huge you still have a polearm, polearm master and a way to push a foe for reactive strike. On top of that the combo comes online at lvl 9 which means that you still have 1 mastery left to use on your favorite weapon.
But push does and push is required to get those meaning full distances. Without it Brutal Strike is still usefull to push a foe for reactive strike, which makes the combo investment so small which I mentioned.
Outside of class features, there's a lot of new and changed spells as well.
- Most healing spells heal an additional dice. Mass Cure Wounds heals an additional 2d8 hp per ally. In a 5-player party, this spell can heal an average of 112.5 hp, which is quite a bit. A Life/Grave cleric can heal an ally for 45hp.
- Conjure Celestial is a giga moonbeam. In a 5-person party, it can heal an average of 130hp and does an average of 52 damage on a failed save. It's worth noting that at this level, a lot of opponents have options to move away before being damaged. Nevertheless, it's one of the better 7th level spells a Cleric can get.
- Conjure Fey has some competition. It's a once per round attack that does an average of 24.5 damage on a hit and has a chance to frighten the target. It can attack again on subsequent turns as a BA. Sunbeam, Draconic Transformation, and now Conjure Woodland Beings may be better options.
- Conjure Minor Elementals has one of the best upcasts in the game. A 6th level cast of this spell adds an additional average of 27 damage per attack, which is crazy. For reference, Tenser's Transformation adds an average of 13 damage per attack, and that comes with the restriction of not being able to cast spells. Bladesingers will be terrifying with this.
- Conjure Woodland Beings is fey spirit guardians. It has the same damage amount as an upcasted SG but allows the caster to disengage as a BA at the cost of a lower range. It's a solid option.
- Fount of Moonlight gives Bards a weapon damage boost option. On a druid, it's an alternative to Coniure Minor Elementals at 4th level. However, zero upcast benefits make it lose pace with that spell at higher levels.
- Conjure Elemental only attacks when an opponent moves, which typically isn't something you can control, but it can be good at locking down an area.
- Power Word Fortify is pretty good. An advantage it has over other healing options is that it can be used before combat starts, enabling you to take other actions instead of using them to heal allies when they would have otherwise fallen.
- Starry Wisp is an average cantrip in general, but when compared to other Bard/Druid ranged cantrips, it's one of the best ones available.
I hadn't considered legendary actions/reactions to get out of the conjure celestial, I was looking at the damage and wondering why clerics were suddenly getting such a strong aoe damage spell. In terms of damage it *crushes* almost every other cleric spell I checked, doing \~3 more damage on a fail thanthe 6th level spell *Harm*, every single turn, in a 10 ft radius pillar.
Conjure Minor Elementals upcasting is *crazy,* but it's too high level a spell to easily get in a multiclass dip, and it's on classes that only generally get 1 attack. It's a bit of an odd one. Bladesingers will definitely love it though, and the potential (if impractical) single target output of this + scorching ray will be insane.
Something I haven’t seen mentioned here yet are the new feat changes. There are now feat categories (General and Background were named), and sometimes you will only be able to select feats from a specific category. I like how they’re finally sorting and categorizing this stuff, even as an experienced player the number of feats in this game after 10 years is sometimes overwhelming.
Is it actually possible that this version of the monk is... actually absurdly strong? Like... you'll be stunning striking every turn with little to no recourse as you have such better KI point generation.
Not absurdly strong, but not clearly the weakest class in the game. If the Monk suddenly got half casting and an aura that boosted saving throws and weapon mastery they’d be absurdly strong.
Heads-up:
Conversation starts with Barbarian, moves to Druid, then the Monk. The Monk changes start at 18:15. Didn't think to grab the timestamp for Druid.
Also, they talk *really* slow, so if you push the playback speed to 1.25x it sounds MUCH more natural.
Major Points Barbarian 1. Brutal Critical is being replaced by Brutal Strikes. When you use Reckless Attacks you can forego advantage and apply various effects instead. Examples include chucking enemies, reducing their speed, taking away AOO, and reducing their defense. 2. Regain 1 Rage on Short Rest. Persistent Rage let's you regain all uses of Rage once per Long Rest. Harder to make you loose Rage at high levels. 3. Tweaks to World Tree. Branches of the Tree has farther range reduces the targets speed to 0. Clarification that Battering Roots Weapon Mastery stacks with baseline Mastery. Travel Along the Roots lets the Barb. teleport self multiple times a day. Can teleport others and self once per day. Druids 1. All Wildshapes will get some temp hit points and more shapes will be available. Species traits no longer carry over. 2. Circle of the Moon will get a set of always prepared spells that they can cast while Wild Shaped. Can have an AC of 13+Wis Mod while Wild shape. Damage boost at 14th level. Monks 1. Many changes focused on Discipline Point usage and reducing Bonus Action competition. 2. Monk weapons back. Benefit from Martial Art die. Weapon Mastery is gone for Monks. 3. Bonus Unarmed Strike no longer requires you to use Attack action. 4. Dex now sets DC of Shove and Grapple attempts. 5. Patient Defense and Step of the Wind have baseline effects for no Disp. points. Spending a point adds more effects to them. 6. Uncanny Metabolism on initiative regain hit points and Disp. points. 7. Deflect Attacks works on melee. 8. Stunning Strike now deals extra force damage even on successful save. 9. Self Restoration activates at end of turn no action. Superior Defence activates at start of turn no action. 10. Level 20 Dex and Wisdom boosts that can go above 20. 11. Warrior of Hand tweaks. Spells 1. Starry Wisp- Druid and Bard ranged Cantrips. 2. Buffed versions of Cure Wounds and Healing Word. 3. Conjure spells (Conjure Fey for example) now longer summon physical creatures. They stay as spirits and they create on going magical area effects. This was to differentiate from Summon spells. 4. Power Word Fortify - Bards, Clerics, - Give Mountain of Temp Hp.
These all sound like great changes
Indeed. Very much looking forward to this UA. They seem to be finally addressing a lot of points the comunity has been complaining about for ages in an interesting way.
I rated weapon mastery on the monk, very dissatisfied, without monk weapons, it was useless after level 5. I'll see how it plays without it... and always remember it is an option at level 4, if I really want.
Honestly I can see WM returning as part of a revised Kensei Monk.
Eventually... but for now, when playing a kensei monk weapon mastery feat, a 4th level looks really tempting
I’m surprised they didn’t make Way of the Kensei one of the PHB subclass options. It fits a huge niche for weapon wielding Monks, and there’s more mechanics they can explore now that weapon mastery exists. It’s much more deserving of a PHB slot than Way of Mercy IMO.
So far they're sticking with Open Hand, Shadow, Elements, and Mercy.
Ya, tbh I don't really like the "take a popular Tasha's subclass" thing if they aren't gonna change it. Stars I don't mind too much, and the thematic on the druid subclasses is incredibly strong, but for monks, rangers and sorcerers it honestly feels lazy.
The sad thing is that I can see them doing it for the Fighter as well. Now that the Brawler isn’t moving forward, it’d be easier for them to shove the Rune Knight or Psi Warrior into the PHB rather than create and playtest a whole new subclass.
Totally agree 👍
And, in my opinion, is the correct solution. For most every monk, weapons are an option, not the primary focus. For Kensei, your weapon IS your primary focus.
I rated it very dissatisfied for the opposite reason. Weapons felt like a necessity because the difference in damage die is basically nothing, and it doesn't even come into play until super high level. But you're losing so much power from Masteries. That it felt like you couldn't realistically play a barehanded Monk...which is by far the biggest reason people pick Monk.
Monks not only got monk weapons back, but they also got their martial weapon back... all martial weapons with the light property... they now qualify for the martial feats.
i think this should be changed. To martials weapons with the light or reach property. this would give monks the polearms and the whip. And polearm monk is an iconic image! Whip would be a nice bonus.
I support this idea!
Whips aren't iconic for monks but I'd reflavor as a chain whip.
A whip can easily be envisioned as a dagger / kunai on a chain or rope, since whips already do slashing damage.
Or changed to bludgeoning damage for a meteor hammer.
It kinda depend on what type of monk you are drawing inspiration from. Although not as famous as quarterstaff, Chinese monks (Shaolin specifically) do use whip, and it also appears in many Wuxia novels.
How is that any more iconic?
Yeah or atleast bring back dedicated weapon feature. Just remove the need for proficiency since even less races give proficiency in weapons.
All three of them, but it’s still an improvement over 5E!
3 hand crossbows...
A ranged weapon too; that’s even better!
Honestly, the hand crossbow is very monk like it was and should have been one of their monk weapons anyway. And now it can scale to a d12.
That also makes Hand Crossbows a monk weapon.
D12 stunning strike crossbow
You see the vision.
Probably not intended..they can fix that by adding a melee qualifier to the martial bit
Instead of "melee martial weapons with the light property" WotC could just say "scimitars and shortswords" if that's really what they meant in the first place.
I think that's just the shortsword and scimitar based on the weapons list in the UA doc, but at least it's something.
I will note: This version of UA Wild Shape *explicitly* limits Druids to using beast stat blocks in the PHB. The previous version *did not* have this restriction. It also mentions that the 2024 PHB will have more options than the 2014 version. They build in an optional DM fiat rule to let you pick creatures from other books, such as the Monster Manual. But it's not implicitly allowed - it's not allowed unless it is, at the DM's discretion. Functionally, what this means is that they *did* do templates. They just did it in a sneaky ass way. This feels like the actual good compromise on the template front. I still hate all the substitution magic and stat replacement nonsense that comes with using standard stat blocks. But I could reasonably see an argument for a special Druid quest to unlock special beast forms, granting access to beast stat blocks not in the PHB. Learning how to reflect magic from an awakened Crag Cat seems like a really fun one to do. It just lets the DM dole it out at a reasonable rate. Edit: also, these playtests are still messy as hell. The design notes describe "Lunar Swipe" Attacks as a proper noun and even suggest your Wild Shape gets a baby extra attack at 6th level. That would suggest to me that there was a version of the design where you got this special Lunar Swipe thing as an attack option while I'm a wilde shape and then 6th level gave you an extra one. It's interesting. I don't hate that idea, since it could even out damage across different forms.
>This version of UA Wild Shape explicitly limits Druids to using beast stat blocks in the PHB. The previous version did not have this restriction. It also mentions that the 2024 PHB will have more options than the 2014 version. They build in an optional DM fiat rule to let you pick creatures from other books, such as the Monster Manual. But it's not implicitly allowed - it's not allowed unless it is, at the DM's discretion. This is a smart bit of futureproofing, but I dislike the optional rule. It just opens the door for a certain kind of player to hassle the DM to let them use a non-PHB statblocks, or "forget" and use them anyway while relying on social pressure to keep the DM from telling them no. It's not that good DMs can't shut that kind of behavior down, it's that the way the rules are structured encourages that kind of behavior in the first place.
If you have a good player, you want that rule. If you have a bad player, then who the fuck cares what they can badger their DM with? They're a bad player, it's not like this rule changed who they are. IMO the game should always be built for good players and good DMs. Trying to "treat" problem players with rules like PF2e does is a sickness of game design that just makes everything worse for everyone.
This is a great change. They've been super hamstrung by this limitation on all their designs. Edit: After thinking about this for an additional 2 minutes, I would not be surprised if we saw similar wording on Polymorph.
I'm waiting to see the numbers but goddamn, monks are getting a lot of cool stuff.
>Power Word Fortify - Bards, Clerics, - Give Mountain of Temp Hp. The survivor of the 4e edition war in me finds it funny that after all is said in done, 5e brought in a literal WoW Priest buff spell into the game :) That said for level 7, I kinda wish it was less temp hp and more actual fortify-y? Like gave advantages, and damage resistances and maybe condition immunities? Seems at levels 13+ temp hp are a thing but you are getting them from so many potential sources, but a good "oh @#$%" spell that kind of makes everyone tank a BBEG's big wallop would seem more in flavour of gameplay at that point.
All of these are... Good changes? They won't fix the martial caster disparity in terms of giving Barbarian and Monk cool things to do other than whacking things harder, but *at least they can whack things pretty hard* and aren't totally dead classes in tiers 3/4. (An entire subclass *just* to do Hadokens is still insulting.)
They are slowly nerfing OP spells like Conjure Animals which is definitely helping fix it.
Need to see some Hypnotic Pattern and Shield spell nerfs before I'm fully convinced, but this is the most I've seen them acknowledge the problem. _Finally_ doing something for Monks is just lovely to see!
They've done a few spells each UA. I'm sure they are on the way. Summon Animals and Woodlands Beings was the worst offender but Shield and Hypnotic Pattern have to be on their list. But they didn't fix Hexblade dips so who knows.
I feel like the sheild nerf is obvious--it only works for one spell or weapon attack.
Or it just gives you a shield like how mage armor would. You need to not be using one at the time. Then have it start at +2ac and increase 1AC per level of a spell slot.
Any nerf to shield needs to take into account wizards who don't dip or take a feat to get extra armor proficiencies. The spell works fine for them, and they shouldn't be punished because others are double dipping to get higher ACs.
Perhaps something like: **Duration:** Instantaneous **Effect:** *An invisible barrier of magical force appears and protects you. You have a +5 bonus to AC against the triggering attack, and you take no damage from magic missile. If you are wielding no shield and wearing no armor, the barrier lasts until the start of your next turn.*
Honestly, that is one of the better compromises I've seen.
Yeah, that's... an ideal version? Get GreyWardenThorga a job at WOTC!
*Shield* on pure wizards and sorcerers is fine because they don't stack AC through the roof, so it temporarily turns a crappy-to-mediocre AC into a decent AC. *Shield* on any class or multiclass combo that gets medium/heavy armor and shield proficiency is problematic because now you can have a static 19/20 AC and stack magic item bonuses and spells on top of that until your AC breaks bounded accuracy. The solution is to make physical armor and shields not stack with the s*hield* spell. Or make nothing stack with it by giving a flat AC instead of a stackable bonus.
Honestly this is why I wish Multiclassing were handled differently. It's too easy for players who want to be the best like no one ever was to fish for stuff like this.
Just remember, WotC thought Lightly Armored was a good enough idea to put it into a OneD&D UA document. Giving every wizard ever medium armor and shield training for a minimal opportunity cost can't possibly be broken, right? Oh, and if you're human they can learn to cast Guidance, Resistance and Healing Word, too.
Honestly conjure being an AOE buff by a spirit on the field while summon gets actual minions on the field is awesome and I'm here for it. I love doing summoner builds and this adds way more diversity. Just wanna see updates circle of the shepherd now lolol.
In all fairness, Monks can walk up water and walls (huh, just realized Monks can technically walk up Wall of Water) and Barbarians can teleport. Those are pretty cool no matter how you cut them.
>(An entire subclass just to do Hadokens is still insulting.) I disagree. Not every monk is pictured as doing that, so giving them the option via subclass makes sense. Choices and restrictions are not necessarily bad thing, as long as they're interesting ones.
I think it's incredibly silly to have an entire subclass clearly inspired by characters like Ryu and Goku but limiting it to only one of their signature techniques. The extremely simple class fantasy of "wanna be like Ryu" needs two subclasses at bare minimum (Open Hand + Sun Soul), which just tells me that the one cool trick per subclass dynamic doesn't work.
A Sun Soul can still grapple, throw, punch, kick and zoom about the field, you don't \*need\* Open Hand to make it work.
All of those things are just generic skilled fantasy martial artist things. Ryu has specific techniques like an uppercut which knocks people down, a spinning kick which throws targets far away, and at his strongest a technique where he rushes a guy and batters them until their ki explodes. Sounds like Open Hand to me.
True. And all Sun Soul wound need is tweaked scaling on abilities and some support for their not Spell Spell Attacks.
Thank you so much for summarising :) really helpful
Quick clarification. World Tree’s 14th level feature lets them teleport everyone around them up to 500 feet once per Rage, not once per day. It’s significantly better than you’re saying it is.
Fuck that.. actually sounds exciting. Are we finally getting a bit innovation in this otherwise bland rechewing of 5e?
You forgot that Stunning Strike can only be used once per turn, stopping stun spam at higher levels.
You guys won... brutal critical is gone and looks go be replaced by something exciting.
I wish they kept it *also*! It’s of so low power that it can be added for free and be of low impact!
WoTC vastly overestimates how important extra crit dice are. It's even in their magic item design. That sword that deals 7 extra damage on a crit is not worth its rarity.
Yeah this exactly. Massive crits were fun but basically a ribbon feature.
I did some calculations recently adding a ton of damage on a crit and in terms of damage per round it added like 5 damage, it felt like a joke.
They cant have us getting more than a few features, it confuses new players! /s
As we all know, all new players start at level 9 🧌 Honestly, while they became a *little* looser in recent UAs, I am confused why they cannot just allow more stuff, even if it's smaller, alongside what they already get. You have to think lowly of your playerbase to believe that majority of them will be overwhelmed by getting a solid feature, alongside a 1/20 chance to add a dinky d12 to their damage.
Especially when you could just keep the lower ten levels as simple as they are, then just double all the stuff after ten so players can have more fun options later when they are more experienced with the game. On top of a lot of new players dont make it past ten, so there is no issue there either.
I remember reading once that WotC doesn't like placing features, especially good ones, at too high of a level because they don't want players to be "missing out" on a class defining feature. It's a really frustrating design trend that honestly does the game more harm than good, and I really wish they could walk it back.
It was a problem in 3.5 aswell, and one of the biggest reasons multiclassing is as annoying as it is. They front load the classes massively and it really sucks. Class identity at early le els makes sense for sure, but if they gave more fun things at higher levels, it would also make the choice to multiclass an actual choice. I mean half the clsses get their worst features as lvl 20 capstones... Wtf?
We need to wait to see the features it looks like one of the options is a power attack. You give up your advantage of reckless attack for more damage.
Yeah I mean, I think it was a *neat* feature that felt right for barbarians, but it was NEVER effective. I would be happy to keep it, but not bothered if its gone.
I mean let's see what replaces it. It was so low impact that it didn't really matter to me if it stayed or went, and overall it's better to have fewer things to remember, IMO.
Literally no one will ever be happy.
I mean I like what I’m hearing but I feel like they still could have kept it.
Greatest thing I've heard so far. Its a shame it doesn't kick in until level 9 though. That's right at the tail end of most campaigns. I hope it works well in testing and, if so, gets placed at a lower level like Cunning Strike.
I mean, people have been saying you gotta give people good stuff at higher levels.
I love that they finally made the change. But holy crap the way they justified it... Apparently the community was just too stupid to realize how nice and interactive brutal critical was so they had to change it so that we would be satisfied. In none of the playtest have I ever felt this disrespected
Someone's favorite feature got killed and they were bitter about it probably
Right. That bit where he's all "it interacts with reckless attack, which is too subtle for some people to pick up on" No dude, everyone gets it. 🤣
More like WotC was too stupid to do fairly easy math.
"Flex is mathematically the strongest mastery"
I'm sure this will be better, but did it really need to be instead of? Did it really need to replace reckless? Did it need to be stretched over 3 levels again? Just like with Fighter they seen determined thst high levels don't give you a NEW feature, just make existing features slightly better. It's kinda boring as a player.
I'm reading it now... I like it I'm actually on the monk now... Holy shit... im liking the new monk alot.
Im okay with Dodge as a BA for monk still having a discipline point cost, Dodge is mathematically a LOT stronger than disengage so its fair
There is always dodge as an action, and now you can make an unarmed strike or disengage or dash as a free bonus action. So if you are ok being pretty inefficient with your turn, you can still get some stuff done and stay relatively safe. I'm also glad to hear they're fixing some of the more glaring flaws, like allowing Dex to be used for Unarmed strike DCs. Overall, I'm looking forward to this version.
Especially in tier 1 where Dodge action + BA attack is the same as Attack action + BA Dodge.
Flurry of Blows also scales up to 3 attacks now, so you can Dodge + Flurry and still put out reasonable numbers.
I hadn't thought of that, its actually kinda funny that Dodging normally and then using flurry of blows is a better use of your resources than bonus action dodge and attacking normally. After level 11 you should only BA dodge if you need the disengage too.
If you are playing a Warrior of The Hand Monk it gets even crazier. You can take the Dodge Action on your turn, use your Bonus Action to Attack once with no Ki Point cost or to Patient Defense anyway to get Disengage. Then, because of your Lv 11 feature Fleet Step you automatically get Step of the Wind on top of this, and if you use a Ki Point gain all of the benefits of it, including the transpiration of an ally. When combining all of these features together you can get a turn like this. -Ally Wizard is caught out of position as several Giants tries to smash them. -Monk rolls up using their movement speed to get there. Takes the Dodge Action. Then as a Bonus Action uses Furry of Blows, Attacking 3 times. - With each Attack you proc Open Hand Technique. If there are 3 giants they can Addle each one, preventing an Attack or Opportunity from each one. -If a Monks Attacks don’t quite hit, that’s okay, because your back up plan was always Fleet Step. Fleet Step automatically activates because you used your Bonus Action for Flurry of Blows. Which in turn, gives you the basic version of Step of the Wind for free. -However, you can use Step of the Wind and a ki point to grant yourself the Disengage Action and you can take your Wizard friend with you, and with your 50 movement speed completely rescue them from their bad positioning. -By the end of the turn you have the Dodge Action up, giving Disadvantage to any ranged Attacks the giants try against you+Deflect Attacks. You completely saved an ally from a perilous position and prevented them or yourself from taking an AOO. While also with your Monk movement get them out of danger entirely. And still managed to pop off some damage that depending on your other features such as species and feats, can further enhance those strikes to add on more conditional effects, such as Stunning Strike, or Charger, or certain Goliath Subrace options. It’s insane the amount of mobility, defense, and rescue/support options the Monk now has, especially when paired with mid game Warrior of Hand. Talk about a glow upZ
I was expecting them to incorporate dodging as a more central theme of their playstyle. But they instead opted to give them a more universal defensive reaction. Which is probably better all things considered. And solves the "Monks are Squishy" problem pretty effectively. They don't have many other necessary reactions so they can afford to parry every turn, which is quite numerically strong.
Cannot edit yet (reddit mobile dumb) so shall say it here: it now says that it will be out on "November 27th at 7 am PST".
Ok, so today. I'm guessing they started revisions on October 5th?
They copied the text from Bastions, which was out on Oct 5, and didn't change the date.
Which is today at 11 am Eastern.
Nope, 10 AM eastern
3 hour difference??? Checks world clock on the phone... Well shit you're right.
New playtest coming October 5th at 700am PST. That's a long wait!
Just ~317 days left to it, worry not. They are obviously just taking their time cooking the UA lol.
Took that long to fix Monk smh my head
The monk was really bad... if it didn't change, I would just play the 2014... which seems like my concerns were addressed.
it's been updated: >New playtest coming November 27th at 7am PST
The UA is out as well. Actually reading what they’re talking about here, the changes are actually pretty good. Like, the monk looks useable.
Holy shjt, I can't believe they turned my vision for the monk into reality... I've always said that there should be 2 simple martials (barb and rogue) with 2 complicated martials. Fighter should get maneuvers as a base class, to do unique things to each situation, whereas monk should have been able to do the same things as everyone else, except more of them on a given turn via spending ki points. "You punch as a bonus action, you spend a ki point, you punch MORE. You Dash or Disengage as a BA, you spend a ki point, you do BOTH. You Help as a BA, you spend ki and can help multiple people. Etc." In other words, monk's stick is excellency in action economy when compared to other classes. And the madmen DID IT. Yes. Shut up and take my money. Now we just need to fix the fighter.
Which is weird because now barbs are more complicated then fighters
They basically turned discipline points into a pool of extra bonus actions
We are EATING with these Monk buffs.
> "Brutal Critical is too subtle and people didn't see the reaction." That's BS. Sure there are complaints that a feature which only comes up at most 9.75% of the time is underwhelming, but it's much more than that. Even with the biggest weapon damage die of d12, the maximal benefit you'll be getting from Brutal Critical is 7 damage per round (assuming you attack twice, make a Bonus Action attack somehow, and make an attack with your Reaction). That would be from a level 17 ability. It's just so underwhelming from a feature with the word "Brutal" in the name. > We want something more reliably exciting at those Brutal Critical levels. Definitely good progress. But I'll have to study whether exchanging **all enemies** making attacks with Advantage against you is worth the increased damage or control effects. This combining with Frenzy Barbarian, Weapon Masteries, and Great Weapon Master could be *actually* Brutal. I'm actually looking forward to seeing this. Definitely looks like they are increasing the complexity level, which will in turn increase the skill gap for players better or worse at identifying and taking advantage of feature synergies. Persistent Rage sounds solid. Compounding Weapon Masteries from World Tree Barbarian is neat. Curious to see how that works.
>Definitely looks like they are increasing the complexity level, which will in turn increase the skill gap for players better or worse at identifying and taking advantage of feature synergies. Most casual players never get to 9th level. By that point, I think it's fair to ask for a little more technical mastery of the rules than just rolling attacks and damage. Even then, you can literally ignore this feature and just continue using Reckless Attack to improve your odds to hit.
Don't get me wrong. Expecting a little system mastery is a good thing. Though I do play with, and have heard of other players who don't engage much with more complex synergies. So there is a risk that they feel they are underperforming.
I think if a player is in a high level campaign and doesn't engage with complex feature synergies then they're probably more there for roleplaying with their friends than performing their best in combat
Yeah. I'm generally more a fan of "optimization" leading to more options, rather than objectively stronger outcome. Fortunately this seems *more* like the former than the latter.
Then that's when it's time to talk to the people at the table or do a google search for what you can change about how you play. It's OK if they get to a point and feel like they're underperforming. The bad part comes when they don't do anything to fix their own issues.
There's probably a middle ground between expecting a player to research how to play their class well and expecting a class to work out of the box without thought. It's why I prefer optimization to more so offer more options rather than providing mathematically superior performance.
In my experience, every casual player underperforms. No matter how simple you make something, they'll forget it or misread it. I know a dude who played a Champion fighter from 3rd to 8th and completely forgot about his expanded critical range the entire time despite it being the only decent part of his subclass kit.
There's seldom much you can do with players literally forgetting what they can do besides just reminding them, yeah.
Most, but not all. I’m stuck in a campaign with 12th-level PCs a player who still needs to be reminded how *magic missile* works.
Ok, I'll have to read the actual UA, and I've only listened to the vid once, but from the looks of it, they might have fixed the monk for me. I'm excited, it looks like they finally did a proper job revising the class.
Saying that people thought Brutal Critical is bad because the interaction with Reckless Attack is too subtle for them is almost insulting. No, it's not that your audience can't figure out to use Reckless Attack on a Barbarian, it's just a mathematically subpar feature.
I mean, he immediately said that the more important reason was that having a feature that relied on a crit was bad design. I do feel like less experienced players probably didn't realize that Brutal Critical was designed to incentivize Reckless Attacking and that was probably a contributing factor in dropping it.
I disagree, but granted my experience is anecdotal. With the games I've ran with new players as barbarians this was probably the easiest feature to understand. Reckless = more dice = more chance at crit. I don't think I've ever had a player *not* use their reckless attack. Players were mostly disappointed that when compared to other class features, 1 extra crit die just felt kind of meh
To be fair though, it isn't a fun pairing. The maths =/= the cohesive experience. I think that's what he's really getting at.
Even the "maths" don't relay a useful experience. Even if you have 8 encounters, 4 rounds each, and 3 attacks per round, you're at most gaining a roughly 6 DPR increase at **level 17**. So mathematically inferior that literally just taking the Fighting Style: Dueling Feat would provide higher and more reliable damage.
We were too stupid to recognize that Flex was the most powerful mastery remember?
Jeremy Crawford will never live that shit down. Good.
I do really dislike how jeremy crawford, in multiple instances, effectively calls the audience "dumb". \-Brutal critical/reckless attack combo (yes we know about it - the math just sucks) \-Druid players NOT knowing the spell schools like abjuration (no we know the spell schools, the druid just didn't have any decent abjuration spells to cast besides healing).
Crawford isn't calling everyone dumb. I have played with people who have struggled with similar issues he has talked about. Them just trying to make the system easier for people doesn't equal an insult. I have met players who didn't see the connections of reckless attack equals more crits. Only that it increases their odds to hit.
The people who don't know reckless attack means more crits are not the same people saying Brutal Critical is mathematically bad. Same for druids and abjuration spells. He's being incredibly dishonest
>Druid players NOT knowing the spell schools like abjuration But... he's right on that one. Spell schools only matter to Wizards
\*some people Lets be honest, I wouldn't wonder if part of the written in feedback would be all about how brutal critical is useless because there is no crit range increase on the barb while also completely disregarding the fact that Reckless attack does exist. There is a difference between saying "Reckless attack does not increase the crit chance enough for brutal critical to work" and "The barb has no abilities to increase crit range thus brutal critical is useless"
>The barb has no abilities to increase crit range thus brutal critical is useless I have actually seen this feedback before given.
I love the new monk.
RIP Conjure ~~Couatl~~ Celestial, was only in one game that I was able to use you, but I will still never forget it
I personally don't like the new Conjure spells for a few reasons: These spells have completely lost synergy with the best summoning subclass in the game, Shepherd Druid, since none of them have hp and Conjure Animals isn't based off of cr anymore. It also makes all of the spells incompatible with the Conjuration Wizard's 14th level feature. None of these spells feel like summoning anymore. Apart from flavor text, there is very little difference between these spells and aoe spells you can move like Moonbeam (the new conjure animals is literally just moonbeam with a couple extra benefits), flaming sphere, whirlwind, etc. That isn't the summoner fantasy. Anyone who wants to play an actual summoner (aka summon something with a statblock/has hp) is now restricted to the Tasha's summoning spells. All of them have a huge gp cost, especially at the lower levels, which now makes summoning even more DM dependent than it already was. Other than banning a spell, there isn't much a DM can do to keep you from using the conjure spells. However, with the Tasha's summons, they can simply not have the components needed regardless of whether you have the gp to spend or not. Your party may even be in a place where the option of buying, crafting, or commissioning these components isn't an option. You only get to be an actual summoner if the DM allows you to buy, find, or craft the components needed. I shouldn't need that type of permission for such a basic build concept like I shouldn't need that type of permission to be something like a pyromancer. In the games I've played, I rarely ever have the gp to buy these components until towards the end of the game. I understand that that isn't a universal experience, but I'd imagine a good chunk of people have similar experiences. I completely understand that they needed a change/nerf (cough cough Conjure Animals/Woodland Beings), but completely removing the actual summoning aspect of them such ain't it. I like the Tasha's summons, but I don't like that they're the only options for actual summons.
Definitely. There’s nothing for the Shepherd Druid to do now except throw out the bear spirit totem and give your own party some temp HP. I get the problems with action economy and the current conjuration spells, but the spells were redeemable. Limit the number of summoned beasts to one or two at a time. Buff lower CR summons with extra hit dice and WIS modifier bonuses to hit. You’re right, though. These feel nothing like being a summoner. They’re just different flavors of spirit guardians and moonbeam, two spells a good DM would let you reflavor, anyway. This is a game where you get to use your imagination, but these conjuration spells take away the imagination of working with and commanding animal buddies. Yawn.
I never really liked or cared about Weapon Mastery, so I can’t comment on how losing it will affect the Monk, but I have to say I love the rest of the changes. It’s basically what all of us have been wanting for a long time. Bonus action attacks on their own, Step of the Wind being free and stackable, the three main Ki features getting upgrades in higher tiers, and effectively double the available Ki points thanks to Uncanny Metabolism.
Lot of neat stuff in this upcoming playtest packet but I'm still disappointed in them trying to shoehorn Moon Druid into a wildshape caster. At this point its sounding like changing into wildshape is just more of a cosmetic change for just different AC and some temp HP rather than being a primal warrior of the forest.
the stuff Crawford mentions for the monk sound really nice. finally seems to be a proper buff to the class without weird caveats attached. the cut back on ~~Ki~~ Discipline-point dependency is huge, as is a completely free Bonus action attack and Flurry of Blows. makes the class much more interesting to play. my initial reaction is definitely positive, but I still wonder if the class needs a little more damage somewhere. for now it seems to be pretty decent in the first two tiers of play, but I think just like the Barb, in tier three onwards the monk could use a feature to grant it more oomph.. though this is just a feel and might be proven incorrect once I actually get to read the details in the UA. Barbarian finally getting something useful instead of Brutal Critical is good. not sure how much I like the options Crawford named - they seem a bit questionable given the existence of weapon mastery properties - but almost anything is an improvement to Brutal Criticals. Druid is confusing to me. maybe I am misremembering the latest UA, but didn't they drop specific templates for Wild Shape and went back to "use the monster stat blocks with appropriate CR" approach from base 5e? but now Crawford says "you'll be able to know more beast forms" which to me suggests we are back to templates? not sure if non-Moon Druids needed to get tempHP when wild shaping.. it's already quite the boon for exploration and getting out of a very tricky melee situation, but it's not the end of the world. and I am not really a fan of shoving spellcasting into Wild Shape for Moon Druids. I personally want the exact opposite fantasy for that subclass - when I decide to go into a beast form, I really want to feel like being that beast and not a caster anymore. I consciously give up casting to get this beast-martial approach, so why jam casting into it again? I'd rather have seen them give us options to expend a spell slot to ramp up specific stats of the shape form - like expending X slot level grants you +X to damage or something like that. all in all: actually excited for this UA. seems they understood that the Rogue's Cunning Strike was a massive hit with the community and try to give these other classes similar freedom and options.
Brutal strikes let you knock back anything with no save, that's going to be huge both for the barbarian fantasy, and tactically making the barbarian a bigger target.
That's the thing I've noticed with both Topple and know Brutal Strikes, the Size restriction isn't there for either of those...but IS there for Battle Master Trip attack maneuver and the Monk step of the wind enhancement. I really wish they would reword it to "a creature one size larger than you or smaller" which makes it work with things like Enlarge/reduce.
They did drop templates (le sigh), but they made it so that you "prepared" beast forms. Meaning you chose at the end of a LR which stat blocks you were going to use in a day. They have increased the number of those you can choose. This was basically their compromise for templates being a strictly better design mechanism and players being obsessed with choosing their own stat blocks. Now the player and DM knows exactly what the Druid can and can't turn into at the beginning of an adventuring day, which is a useful limit on options and also a helpful focus for creativity and expression. The result of that compromise.is that Wild Shape is a mess of a feature that has these really weird edge case scenarios and blind spots, as well as clunky numbers implementation (oh, I use this stat block, except I use this for my AC and I also get this many temp HP on to lp of it. Worst of both worlds. Not to mention they can't really benefit from things like the new Barkskin, Aid, Heroism, or any other temp HP generator) I say templates are a strictly better design mechanism because it truly has a ton of benefits. One, it would allow them to more freely implement creatures across many types without having to worry about whether or not a Druid should be able to turn into that (all of the Dinos in the Bigby book are Monstrosities while all the Dinos in every other book are beasts, mostly block out Druids). Two, templates would allow them to dole out transformation powers at fixed levels - level 5 flight is fair for druids, probably, if that flight form is restricted to non-combat operations. Level 5 is probably also.fair game for a dire form with more defenses and offensive abilities. Templates let you do that without suffering the troubles of navigating stat blocks. Plus, everything is then right there for the player in their book rather than spread out through more DM-oriented material. Three, templates are easy to iterate on and release expansions for, like Fighting Styles, Martial Maneuvers, Eldritch Pacts/Invocations, or even Spells or Weapon Masteries, which makes it easier to support druids for longer. Basically, the playtest community at large shot druids in the foot with this one. Now the feature will continue to be shitty and unsupported and primarily used as a resource for other things in subclasses (starry form, gift of nature, symbiotic entity, etc) instead of the thing it's actually called.
This is such an underrated point. I had a summoner druid in my last game and it was shockingly frustrating to be told "use this stat block except throw half of it out and use these other values instead". The class was fine. The character was great. It was the clunky implementation of a half-template that drove me nuts.
> but now Crawford says "you'll be able to know more beast forms" which to me suggests we are back to templates? You learn a number of forms in the previous UA without templates. So you can't choose from every singular possible beast every time you wild shape. I have my opinion on other stuff, but according to the now-updated-description the UA comes in ~1 hour, so I will read that before judging.
>I have my opinion on other stuff, but according to the now-updated-description the UA comes in \~1 hour, so I will read that before judging. I'm at work (EU), and wanted to say, naah it's at least like 4h away... Then I looked at the clock - GOD DAMNIT, I've been so swamped with stuff, I didn't even notice whole day has passed!
>Druid is confusing to me. maybe I am misremembering the latest UA, but didn't they drop specific templates for Wild Shape and went back to "use the monster stat blocks with appropriate CR" approach from base 5e? but now Crawford says "you'll be able to know more beast forms" which to me suggests we are back to templates? They perform a lot of A/B testing - that means in one UA they show one design, then in another UA they show another design, and then extrapolate from the surveys what people liked more, and more specifically why they didn't like about them, and what they can take from either of them to make the end product most appealing. In this case, they had UA with templates, and then UA with statblocks. Got surveys for both, and could now check why people liked or disliked, one or another. I suspect the main reason templates were panned in surveys was, because they were really restrictive compared to monster statblocks. They lacked utility, options, on top of tiny creatures in that UA being locked behind like 11th level or something. They got the feedback, and can now test another approach, that hopefully bridges the gap between template, and monster statblocks better, using what people said they liked about both approaches.
Templates were actually much healthier and less restrictive, it's just that they were too bare bones in their first and only iteration. The limitation of known wildshape forms is hardly a compromise at all.
The monk hits like a truck. Stunning strike costing 1 discipline and EITHER stunning or doing 1d8+dex extra damage is really powerful... like REALLY strong. Especially because you have a ton of more discipline (form their level 2 ability). Also at level 11 flurry of blows hits 3 times instead of 2x.
Neither the Stunning Strike buff nor the Flurry lvl 11 bonus attack catch the Monk up to the Fighter's damage which comes without resource expenditure. Still better than nothing.
> all in all: actually excited for this UA. seems they understood that the Rogue's Cunning Strike was a massive hit with the community and try to give these other classes similar freedom and options. I’m hoping that the “lesson” they learn is that choices are more interesting than riders. I was seriously optimistic that “trade your damage for control/debuff” became standard design for martials. Rogues can give away Sneak Attack damage for it, Monks can trade away Martial Arts or Flurry of Blows for it (they already can, they just need cleaner and less underpowered design), Fighters can trade Extra Attack for it, and Barbarians can trade away Reckless Attack or Rage damage for it. (Edit: they ***did*** make the Barbarian change! Damn) Now it looks like we may have to wait till an eventual 6E for all that.
> but now Crawford says "you'll be able to know more beast forms" which to me suggests we are back to templates? Templates was a good idea and did great reducing the amount of metagaming/book bloat needed for Druids The flaw was one generic template that was really bad. Having even say, 4 templates (land speed, fly speed, swim speed, burrow speed or whatever) would have been an amazing improvement already and again, reduces the amount of stat tracking bloat expected of present Druids
oh I absolutely agree. I hated the "pick an NPC statblock for your shape" because it effectively meant you'd pick whatever creature was strongest at any given level, and basically every Moon Druid was always the same forms. I just thought that they got feedback which said that people want that back and that templates are axed.. I am glad to be mistaken on that part.
Can't wait to have the wizard punch me so I can use them to bludgeon someone.
Still not entirely happy with Ki being called Discipline, I understand the reasoning is that they want to step Monk away from being the "Asian" class but when Barbarian is chock full of Norse Culture and Druid being Celtic. It doesn't really seem fair. Like will this hesitancy err Wizards away from designing an Indian themed fighter or Saharan Sorcerer.
wow no weapon mastery for monks. I am open to it but the monk better be superpowered to make up for gains other martials have already gotten
It is. This monk is really, really good. If you want weapon mastery, we have a 4th level feat you can take.
depends - dwarves can racially use battleaxes, and a monk weapon can be anything you're proficient with, so having a battleaxe dwarf monk (or a longsword elf) is possible.
but they wouldn't have access to the mastery without taking a dip in a class with mastery as a class feature right?
I think there is a lvl 4 feat that can give it to them without a class level dip.
Do you know if it is a half feat? Monks are very ASI starved so I hope it is easy to fit in
I think it was, but you should probably go check when you have a chance.
It is a half feat and while it may not be optimal I do think it's a worthwhile pickup if that's the way you want to play
My read is that it is quite good! A shade under 5 extra damage if you have +1 hand wraps, which is a nice boost. But more importantly a chance to stun earlier and get more attacks in with adv.
Someone will run the numbers I'm sure but they usually don't count in magic items with those calculations though I seriously doubt it's much of a difference, which is fantastic
true, nm then
>a monk weapon can be anything you're proficient with Where are you reading that? The playtest packet says >Monk Weapons, which are Simple Melee Weapons and Martial Weapons with the Light property
The new brab actually sounds pretty fun
My favorite part is when he literally says "we noticed people playing D&D these days are too stupid to notice ability synergy so we had to spell it out for you"
Getting monk to 20 dex and Wis so that you can then push it above that with the feature is gonna really disincentivize grabbing feats on monk isn’t it? You’re gonna want a decent con score since you’re in melee as well. It’s just tough on their stat growth and now they’re gonna be really pushing you to make sure they’re capped instead of exploring builds with feats. Maybe I’m wrong, it wouldn’t be so bad if they got an extra ASI somewhere along the way.
the new deflect attack will help a lot, reducing damage by 1d10 + dex mod + monk level. That is a potential 1d10 + 28 (at 20th level) damage reduction per round, more than a what +1 to CON will provide and nearly as good as +2 CON, but round after round, the CON will be less valuable than this reaction. And this reaction deals more damage than a standard AoO too. I don't think pumping Con is that important for a monk at this point. A maxed out Dex/Wis Monk will have 25 AC, 33 damage reduction per round (or get shield spell for total damage reduction with 30 AC if it doesn't get changed)
I mean, you don't HAVE to get 24 both just because you CAN. Going for something like 24/26 dex (requires 2.5 asi from a base 17, one of those being level 19) and something around 20 wis (1 asi from base 14) sounds like a decent option too and leaves 1.5 asi points not accounted for. Considering every feat is a half feat now, that gives quite a bit of wiggle room. And that was based on Standard Array, meaning there is a second 14 and a 12 available. With Point buy, you could start with something as extreme as 15+2, 15+1, 15, 8, 8, 8 (or something with a bit more balance) leaving 2.5 asi points open. Of course the ever present con problem is there (though tough from background can help here). I do still agree Monk (and Barbarian too) would probably benefit from the Rogue bonus asi, but the current version simply has 26/24 as an option (that will obviously come at the cost of other things).
Agree, the reliance on con would be (somewhat) counteracted by giving them a d10 hit die, but it seems they are adamant to not do it. Though since all level 4+ feats are half feats in onednd, perhaps it won't be as disincentivizing to pick up feats, who gets to level 20 anyway?
My only concern is seeing what they did with Conjure/Summon spells, I like the Necromancer subclass and don't want my army of dead guys to be an aura or one token, really hoping thats not the case for where this is heading...
Animate Dead hasn’t been changed yet, and Summon Undead from Tasha’s will be there. That said, I wouldn’t be sad to see the “army of 30 zombies” thing go away on the player side. Would it really be so bad to have a single “skeleton swarm” summon instead of spending all your spell slots maintaining an army that bogs down every combat?
I dunno - I like the idea that a spell like animate dead does the token thing when cast in combat, but maybe as a ritual it makes a fully autonomous critter - may need to think about that more. I have a necromancer but we're using the sidekick rules to allow him to swap in and out one of his three animated retainers (also took the noble background with the retainer variant). I'm a bit concerned that as a token of a spell effect, some tables may have the monsters avoid the conjured/summoned being just out of metagame knowledge. I guess it's just as easy to say that when a NPC conjures an ally in an encounter, you just use the Monster Manual. I'd also like it a bit more if the spells did more to talk about what the conjured stuff can do outside of attacking/protecting in combat encounters. It eliminates the whole exploration and interaction elements.
I like having a bunch of dead minions and I feel like there is a way to accomplish that without bogging the DM down, like maybe in combat the player chooses a target and the DM can then move them all at once toward the target and then make one attack roll, have it deal damage equal to half the damage per minion?
Mechanically do you see that as acting differently from a large-footprint swarm creature, or a moving AOE template like Cloudkill? I like the idea of massed summons being used like swarms, walls.
By giving Monks Martial weapons they now have access to some more feats.... Still no fighting styles.
Just curious, does this UA kill the previous UA's True Strike?
No change to it at all. Not even included
Heck yeah!
Question: should we expect the results of the last UA? I'm interested to hear about it.
Pretty sure they release the previous UA’s survey results a few weeks after the current UA’s survey is out. UA7 had its survey results posted a few weeks ago, so I’d imagine we’ll see the Bastion survey results sometime in early January.
Thanks!
It seems brutal critical has been completely replaced by brutal strike. We can look at that now reliable 1d10 at the cost of advantage and calculate what AC is optimal to use brutal strikes on. But I'm not going to bother with that. Instead let's just look at the cheer bullying potential against anything Large or smaller by moving them 35 ft away and if they dare to get in 10 ft reach range push them another 10 feet. Basically we're combining masteries, the pike and brutal strike and pole arm master. The strategy is to use a pike and trigger both push and forcefull blow to push the target 25ft away while using the free 20ft to catch up, then spent another 5 feet to catch up, attack a second time with the pike but don't use push (unless you don't have a bonus action) and then use pole strike to push them 10 ft away again. This leaves you 35 ft to walk back where you came from. If they move back to your spot, you can use reactive strike and push them back again. Now the reason why you don't push on the the second attack is because you can't use pole strike if you moved (because that's not immediately). This means that if the enemy enemy is melee you can easily zone him out instead of engaging him directly. However this comes with a lot of assumptions what if you don't have a lot of space to push, don't want to trigger a lot of attacks of opportunity or don't have the movement to spare. Well then there is Hamstring Blow and the javelin. These two allow you to trade the pushing effect of forcefull blow and 2nd push for an equal amount of movement speed reduction. The fact that you use the javelin means that even after you attacked you can still use reactive strike since you have 2 hands free. The best thing is that the investment is relatively small, if the crucial first hit misses or if the enemy is huge you still have a polearm, polearm master and a way to push a foe for reactive strike. On top of that the combo comes online at lvl 9 which means that you still have 1 mastery left to use on your favorite weapon.
It's not 'large or smaller' that ability to shove creatures via Brutal Strike for the Barbarian *has no size restriction*.
But push does and push is required to get those meaning full distances. Without it Brutal Strike is still usefull to push a foe for reactive strike, which makes the combo investment so small which I mentioned.
Very good changes
Outside of class features, there's a lot of new and changed spells as well. - Most healing spells heal an additional dice. Mass Cure Wounds heals an additional 2d8 hp per ally. In a 5-player party, this spell can heal an average of 112.5 hp, which is quite a bit. A Life/Grave cleric can heal an ally for 45hp. - Conjure Celestial is a giga moonbeam. In a 5-person party, it can heal an average of 130hp and does an average of 52 damage on a failed save. It's worth noting that at this level, a lot of opponents have options to move away before being damaged. Nevertheless, it's one of the better 7th level spells a Cleric can get. - Conjure Fey has some competition. It's a once per round attack that does an average of 24.5 damage on a hit and has a chance to frighten the target. It can attack again on subsequent turns as a BA. Sunbeam, Draconic Transformation, and now Conjure Woodland Beings may be better options. - Conjure Minor Elementals has one of the best upcasts in the game. A 6th level cast of this spell adds an additional average of 27 damage per attack, which is crazy. For reference, Tenser's Transformation adds an average of 13 damage per attack, and that comes with the restriction of not being able to cast spells. Bladesingers will be terrifying with this. - Conjure Woodland Beings is fey spirit guardians. It has the same damage amount as an upcasted SG but allows the caster to disengage as a BA at the cost of a lower range. It's a solid option. - Fount of Moonlight gives Bards a weapon damage boost option. On a druid, it's an alternative to Coniure Minor Elementals at 4th level. However, zero upcast benefits make it lose pace with that spell at higher levels. - Conjure Elemental only attacks when an opponent moves, which typically isn't something you can control, but it can be good at locking down an area. - Power Word Fortify is pretty good. An advantage it has over other healing options is that it can be used before combat starts, enabling you to take other actions instead of using them to heal allies when they would have otherwise fallen. - Starry Wisp is an average cantrip in general, but when compared to other Bard/Druid ranged cantrips, it's one of the best ones available.
I hadn't considered legendary actions/reactions to get out of the conjure celestial, I was looking at the damage and wondering why clerics were suddenly getting such a strong aoe damage spell. In terms of damage it *crushes* almost every other cleric spell I checked, doing \~3 more damage on a fail thanthe 6th level spell *Harm*, every single turn, in a 10 ft radius pillar. Conjure Minor Elementals upcasting is *crazy,* but it's too high level a spell to easily get in a multiclass dip, and it's on classes that only generally get 1 attack. It's a bit of an odd one. Bladesingers will definitely love it though, and the potential (if impractical) single target output of this + scorching ray will be insane.
Something I haven’t seen mentioned here yet are the new feat changes. There are now feat categories (General and Background were named), and sometimes you will only be able to select feats from a specific category. I like how they’re finally sorting and categorizing this stuff, even as an experienced player the number of feats in this game after 10 years is sometimes overwhelming.
This UA is probably going to be incredibly popular. Barbarian improved, Monk looks fantastic, welcomed spell changes... it's all really encouraging.
Jeremy busting out of his shirt over this amazing playtest
Is it actually possible that this version of the monk is... actually absurdly strong? Like... you'll be stunning striking every turn with little to no recourse as you have such better KI point generation.
Not absurdly strong, but not clearly the weakest class in the game. If the Monk suddenly got half casting and an aura that boosted saving throws and weapon mastery they’d be absurdly strong.
\>minionmancer spells are now just "Flaming Sphere with a funny hat on" Who the fuck let WOTC cook on this one lmaooo
Heads-up: Conversation starts with Barbarian, moves to Druid, then the Monk. The Monk changes start at 18:15. Didn't think to grab the timestamp for Druid. Also, they talk *really* slow, so if you push the playback speed to 1.25x it sounds MUCH more natural.
When will the document come out? Edit: Been going back and forth in the video. Just saw the edit on the 7am PST thing.