- 5e

Unearthed Arcana Character Origins was released yesterday and it brought about a ton of changes to the Player Handbook (PHB).

One DnD // One D&D

Races

Language matters.

This is kind of an elephant in the room for feedback. There's a lot of chatter about bio-essentialism here. Other people have noted the word race in the Dungeons and Dragons world doesn't have the same meaning as race in the "real world" and that races are more similar to species than race.

While I think that's correct, both the word "race" and "species" don't fit the intent. Creature type feels like a better description and even something more vague like "Physical Features" might work in the place of "Race" here.

Children of Different Humanoid Kinds

TLDR: Remove it. It's bad however you look at it.

Please don't read into this thinking that mixed/multiracial people shouldn't be represented -- it's not even close to what I'm talking about here. Racial representation in the real world is more closely associated with backgrounds or lineage than race in the Forgotten Realms.

The section titled Children of Different Humanoid Kinds is cringy.

Children of Different Humanoid Kinds
Thanks to the magical workings of the multiverse, Humanoids of different kinds sometimes have children together. For example, folk who have a human parent and an orc or an elf parent are particularly common. Many other combinations are possible.

If you’d like to play the child of such a wondrous pairing, choose two Race options that are Humanoid to represent your parents. Then determine which of those Race options provides your game traits: Size, Speed, and special traits. You can then mix and match visual characteristics—color, ear shape, and the like—of the two options. For example, if your character has a halfling and a gnome parent, you might choose Halfling for your game traits and then decide that your character has the pointed ears that are characteristic of a gnome.

Finally, determine the average of the two options’ Life Span traits to figure out how long your character might live. For example, a child of a halfling and a gnome has an average life span of 288 years.

The use of the word "wondrous" as an adjective in "wondrous pairing" is awful. Full stop. It reads poorly -- it can be condescending if you're looking for it to be condescending, sarcastically for those looking to it to be sarcastic.

Touching back on the idea of species vs race, I saw tweets trying to compare horses, donkeys, and mules to humans, elves, and half-elves (feel free to replace elves and orcs here if you want). People extended the topic by asking, "why can't we have combinations of combinations" and there was a response about how most mules are infertile.

Regardless of how you feel about race and breeding, there's no incentive for the core rule book to address breeding (especially giving the history surrounding orcs and humans in prior official material). If someone wants to introduce a concept of combining races, perfect -- the source material doesn't need to address this.

The official ruling on how to make combinations of two races felt lazy and the solution doesn't work with previously recognized combination of races (half-elves were expected to live 180 years, the new guidelines would say ~400 years).

Wizards of the Coast (WotC) are only opening themselves up to controversy by trying to address combinations of relationships.

Level 1 Feats (and getting one or two from the character background).

I really don't like the idea of giving feats as part of a background.. and particularly, I don't like that Humans get to double dip on those feats. I see little (read this as "no") reason to play anything but a Human under the current UA.

The power level between each of the level one feats has some canyons between them. There's very little reason to choose anything besides Lucky, as it's probably the best level one feat by a considerable margin -- it's even stronger than it was in the original rules.

Lucky
You have inexplicable luck that can kick in at just the right moment, granting you the following benefits:

Luck Points. You have a number of Luck Points equal to your Proficiency Bonus. You can spend the points on the benefits below, and you regain your expended Luck Points when you finish a Long Rest.

Advantage. Immediately after you roll a d20 for a d20 Test, you can spend 1 Luck Point to give yourself Advantage on the roll.

Disadvantage. When a creature rolls a d20 for an attack roll against you, you can spend 1 Luck Point to impose Disadvantage on that roll

If for some reason you don't choose Lucky (or more than likely, if you chose Human as your race), the second best option (again, by a long ways) is Magic Initiate.

Magic Initiate
You have learned the basics of a particular magical tradition. Choose one Spell list: Arcane,* Divine,* or Primal.* You gain the following benefits related to that choice:

Two Cantrips. You learn two cantrips of your choice from the Spell list.

1st-Level Spell. Choose one 1st-level Spell from the Spell list. You always have that Spell prepared. You can cast it once without a Spell Slot, and you regain the ability to cast it in that way when you finish a Long Rest.* You can also cast the Spell using any Spell Slots you have.

Intelligence, Wisdom, or Charisma is your spellcasting ability for these Spells (choose when you select this Feat). Consult the Player’s Handbook for the rules on spellcasting.

Whenever you gain a new level, you can replace one of the Spells you chose for this Feat with a different Spell of the same level from the chosen Spell list.

There's a lot to take in on Magic Initiate and my concern has to do with having super-spell lists (Arcane, Divine, or Primal) and being able to customize the super-spell lists with your choice of spellcasting abilities (Intelligence, Wisdom, or Charisma). This means a Wizard can choose the Divine spell list and get access to Guidance and Healing Word and use Intelligence as the modifier for those spells.

There's little incentive to choose a full caster other than Wizard with the introduction of the super-spell lists and custom ability modifiers. The previous interaction of the rules at least restricted healing spells to WIS or CHA casters and locked out INT casters (this isn't entirely true with the introduction of Artificer but the powerlevel between an Artificer and a Wizard is a lot).

If you want to play a full spellcaster, the Magic Initiate feat means the only reason you shouldn't play a wizard is if you don't want to play a wizard -- it's a perfectly fine reason when it comes to playing the game, it's just unlikely to ever be an optimal choice.

Alert and Healer are fine but both feel outclassed by Lucky and Magic Initiate.

The Musician's Inspiring Song is completely irrelevant in a party of humans due to Resourceful.

Inspiring Song
As you finish a Short Rest or a Long Rest, you can play a song on a Musical Instrument with which you have Tool Proficiency and give Inspiration* to allies who hear the song. The number of allies you can affect in this way equals your Proficiency Bonus.

Resourceful
You gain Inspiration* whenever you finish a Long Rest.*

Spell Lists

I've already touched on the issue with having the spellcasting ability deteached from the spell list in the previous section but there are two remaining issues with the current version of the spell lists.

  1. The lists are too similar, particularly The Divine and Primal spell lists.
  2. Unique, class-specific cantrips/spells, like Vicious Mockery, Armor of Agathys, and Hunter's Mark take away from those classes.

There should be no overlap between the Arcane, Divine, and Primal spell lists (sorry Cure Wounds, your flavor is on point for both Divine and Primal but you need to decide what you are).

Regarding the overlap between the Divine and Primal lists, I'd like to see another section of the spell lists, where these spells are available to all of the spell lists, then reduce the specific lists to say 3 cantrips and 8 level one spells. This gives all of the characters with Magic Initiate access to 6 cantrips and 16 spells. The fact that 3 of those cantrips and 8 of those spells overlap across all three lists, the cognitive load of trying to decide what spells to take is reduced significantly. Cantrips like message, mending, light can be part of the common spell list; spells like Detect Magic are already in all three lists.

To put further emphasis on my second point, the notable omission of Eldritch Blast from these spell lists seems to imply that Eldritch Blast will be a Warlock specific feature. That's great to see Eldritch Blast is protected, I like that -- but why is Vicious Mockery on the Arcane list? Armor of Agathys? Hex?

In direct conflict with my second point... I think I like seeing Searing Smite, Thunderous Smite, and Wrathful Smite on the Divine List. I guess maybe because those spells are no longer locked to paladin only (as the ranger gets it now, too).

Unarmed Strikes

I love what was done with Unarmed Strikes. The fact that Grapple and Shove are clearly written in this section is great. It's always felt weird that special attacks were hidden in random sections of the combat rules.

I'd love to see mention of the special non-lethal attack in this section, too... But at this point, I think I'm arguing for special attacks to be listed in one, concise part of the "Making an Attack" action instead.

Natural Spellcasting

A note about this section. I'm looking at this through the lense of "I want a martial character to have access to limited spells" instead of the more appropriate "I'm trying to make my spellcaster better" lense. In reality, trying to give spells to barbarians, fighters, and rogues isn't the intended design of offering spells through racial traits or feats.

With so many spells being added with background choices, I'd like to see those spells be streamline a little more. This is a bit pretty aggressive change but I think it makes spellcasting through your character background in line with how spellcasting works.

I'm willing to bet that players who gain spellcasting features through their race do not follow the spellcasting rules (specifically the material and somatic components) when they cast those spells and the following change makes those rules more clear. This should address all of the common questions related to spellcasting (components, upcasting, etc.):

Natural Spellcasting
When a spell is learned through a racial trait or feat, it is added to your Natural spell list. You gain a number of natural spell slots equal to your proficiency bonus.

When casting a spell using a natural spell slot, choose CON, INT, WIS, or CHA as the spell modifier and cast it at the spell's normal level (a spell cast with a natural spell slot cannot be upcast). Recover your natural spell slots on a long rest.

All spells in your natural spell list may be cast using other Spellcasting features, as if it were a spell of that spellcasting feature.

I think a better balance for this is to use PB - 1, maximum of 4.

In general, spellcasting is incredibly imbalanced and the idea that it's a limited resource is laughable. I ran this past a player in one of my games and he was concerned about having 4 unleveled spell slots at level 11 (that's what level we are right now). I initially agreed then looked up the spell slot progression for full casters -- a wizard at the same level can cast Fireball for nine (9) consecutive turns (Magic Missile or Burning Hands sixteen times) before needing to rest.

This is a minor buff for character that only have access to one natural spell since you'd be able to cast it twice per long rest instead of once; it's also a minor loss if a character decided to Magic Initiate multiple times as an Ardling, Elf, Gnome, or Tiefling.

My rational for this change is that it reuses the spellcasting feature that already exists and it tracks all of the spell resources in one spot (instead of trying to remember if you already cast the spell on the given adventuring day).

It slightly rewards players who chose the scaling features, like Celestial Legacies, so you can cast Lesser Restoration multiple times.

The addition of CON to the spell modifier list kind of breaks Magic Initiate but it falls in line features added in other books, like Abberant Dragonmark, and it provides a small buff to martial classes that have little-to-no interest in spending points in INT, WIS, and CHA.

I'd be interested to see how this interacts with legacy content. There might be an interesting build where a Fighter takes Magic Initiate (Legacy) and Eldritch Adept to give themselves a CON-scaling Eldritch Blast and Hex.

Shield and Absorb Elements are problematic for this design.

The Nit-Picky and Some Questions

A lot of these mentions are very finicky and I'm expecting players with power gaming tendency will argue:

With the ability for spell casting classes to have access to their spells provided by their race and background to cast it for free once per day and use spell slots to cast those spells, they get to double dip on those spells. Will non-casting spell casters get a minor bonus to that? Like being able to cast spells based off their proficency bonus per long rest (effectively giving them spellslots based off their proficency bonus)? It's shared across all of their sources of spells and it would never scale past level one -- it seems like an okay compromise now that spells seem to be much more common.