Fair; it could use a passive combat buff or spending Second Wind to re-up the charges between rests.

Granted, you are also getting more from the Brutality than you get from a Maneuver- Sap and extra damage, Vex and advantage on saving throws, and Topple with a mini stun effect. The idea might be to explore a midpoint between Champion where it's basically all passives and Battlemaster with a very large and involved repertoire. Personally I like the CHA part because it gives it synergy with some multiclasses while limiting others- you can dip it with a Paladin or Bard to add some combat moves but it less readily works with Barbarian- but at the moment it is gonna feel pretty meh on days with a lot of encounters.

The gladiator seems very similar in this regard to the arcane archer from the previous UA, it just uses charisma instead of intelligence.

How long will the survey be open. Cause a week is hardly enough time to test things thoroughly.
It took me 3 days to get my DM to look up from their 3 different campaigns on going to have cup of coffee and acknowledge that a new UA came out.

I gave this one pretty close to Green across the board.

Preserver needed to be toned down a bit and Gladiator needed a slight buff. The other two didn't really need to change.

Suggested a couple ribbon ideas for the Preserver and Defiler just because. 

Quote from Xalthu >>

Quote from Song_of_Blues >>

Quote from Xalthu >>

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[SNIPPED for Brevity]

 

[SNIPPED for Brevity]

    The point of having better outlined Exploration rules is to incentize people to write and publish modules with more Exploration included.  Right now the oudoor Exploration pillar is poorly represented in published modules. Example:  There are only a few books where anything like Navigation or Cartographer's tools would even remotely be worth choosing.  That's because most modules take place in a city, in a dungeon or some kind of place where you are intentionally supposed to get lost via magic (Feywilds, the Abyss).  That's just one example.

   Ofc the DM can, theoretically, make NPCs that are more active.  D&D can be played a lot of dfferent ways.  The point is that many do not and this is partially b/c the RAW does not incentivze or make it easy to do so in a way that is organized and meaningful.  Rolling on a table to generate PC traits  and known relationships is the very opposite of meaningful NPCs, but that's what we are encouraged to do. The published modules from WotC itself does not incetivize meaningful NPCs outside of a handful of recurring famous people. That's the point; to make Exploration meaningful, it has to start from the Top, not just say "Well, DMs can do anything if they want to."  I, mean, DMs can also not run D&D if they want to. That's not really a good argument for the lack of Exploration tie-ins.

 Well, published adventures are a different story, I was thinking in terms of homebrew. And I guess it remains to be seen if this will be an adventure or a setting book, or what.

But I will say there’s no rule that’s going to help people make a compelling NPC. Even if they write one in a campaign book it will fail to the DM to bring it to life, and I think we’ve all seen plenty of well written but poorly acted movies to know how that sort of thing turns out. Teaching a DM to create a good NPC would be more like a fiction writing workshop coupled with an acting seminar than something they can cover in a rule book.

     Acting skill has nothing to do with NPC-making. However, understanding story structure is. Part of the DMG should have been devoted to helping new DMs understand story structure and provided examples from previously published AD&D/D&D fiction to illustrate this. There are visual tools that exist which professional story writers use.  How do people like George R.R. Martin and Isayama Hajime manage to create multi-volume works while maintaining consistent characterization throughout?  Is that coincidence?  No, these people use visualisation tools, storyboards, and character bibles to keep track of all this stuff.  For  a role-playing game that is trying to evolve with the times, WotC isn't working very hard to provide new DMs with the kinds of tools we should have when we are paying $50 for a new book about "how to be gud DM."  

   Now, how does one tie the Exploration pillar with storytelling?  Make the environment itself an NPC. Most obvs example of this is when the city or island that the PCs journey to is actually a living entity or construct that possesses intelligence and motivation. A less obvious example is to disrupt the assumption that places do not change. Baldur's Gate, Waterdeep, the mines of Phandelver,  can and should change over time and the changes should be noticeable.  If there is a mountain or lake that the PCs keep returning to, a DM can change the characterization, change the types of sidequests related to it, provide plot-related points in terms of hidden artifacts or "trash" items that actually flesh out an NPC's backstory. A PC exploring the Shire of the LotR series at the beginning of the trilogy should feel differently than how they feel exploring the Shire near the end, not just b/c the Big Bad is dead at the end, but also because the NPCs age, move, or people who run the Shire are different. 

Quote from Song_of_Blues >>

Quote from Xalthu >>

Quote from Song_of_Blues >>

Quote from Xalthu >>

Quote from Song_of_Blues >>

[SNIPPED for Brevity]

 

[SNIPPED for Brevity]

    The point of having better outlined Exploration rules is to incentize people to write and publish modules with more Exploration included.  Right now the oudoor Exploration pillar is poorly represented in published modules. Example:  There are only a few books where anything like Navigation or Cartographer's tools would even remotely be worth choosing.  That's because most modules take place in a city, in a dungeon or some kind of place where you are intentionally supposed to get lost via magic (Feywilds, the Abyss).  That's just one example.

   Ofc the DM can, theoretically, make NPCs that are more active.  D&D can be played a lot of dfferent ways.  The point is that many do not and this is partially b/c the RAW does not incentivze or make it easy to do so in a way that is organized and meaningful.  Rolling on a table to generate PC traits  and known relationships is the very opposite of meaningful NPCs, but that's what we are encouraged to do. The published modules from WotC itself does not incetivize meaningful NPCs outside of a handful of recurring famous people. That's the point; to make Exploration meaningful, it has to start from the Top, not just say "Well, DMs can do anything if they want to."  I, mean, DMs can also not run D&D if they want to. That's not really a good argument for the lack of Exploration tie-ins.

 Well, published adventures are a different story, I was thinking in terms of homebrew. And I guess it remains to be seen if this will be an adventure or a setting book, or what.

But I will say there’s no rule that’s going to help people make a compelling NPC. Even if they write one in a campaign book it will fail to the DM to bring it to life, and I think we’ve all seen plenty of well written but poorly acted movies to know how that sort of thing turns out. Teaching a DM to create a good NPC would be more like a fiction writing workshop coupled with an acting seminar than something they can cover in a rule book.

     Acting skill has nothing to do with NPC-making. However, understanding story structure is. Part of the DMG should have been devoted to helping new DMs understand story structure and provided examples from previously published AD&D/D&D fiction to illustrate this. There are visual tools that exist which professional story writers use.  How do people like George R.R. Martin and Isayama Hajime manage to create multi-volume works while maintaining consistent characterization throughout?  Is that coincidence?  No, these people use visualisation tools, storyboards, and character bibles to keep track of all this stuff.  For  a role-playing game that is trying to evolve with the times, WotC isn't working very hard to provide new DMs with the kinds of tools we should have when we are paying $50 for a new book about "how to be gud DM."  

   Now, how does one tie the Exploration pillar with storytelling?  Make the environment itself an NPC. Most obvs example of this is when the city or island that the PCs journey to is actually a living entity or construct that possesses intelligence and motivation. A less obvious example is to disrupt the assumption that places do not change. Baldur's Gate, Waterdeep, the mines of Phandelver,  can and should change over time and the changes should be noticeable.  If there is a mountain or lake that the PCs keep returning to, a DM can change the characterization, change the types of sidequests related to it, provide plot-related points in terms of hidden artifacts or "trash" items that actually flesh out an NPC's backstory. A PC exploring the Shire of the LotR series at the beginning of the trilogy should feel differently than how they feel exploring the Shire near the end, not just b/c the Big Bad is dead at the end, but also because the NPCs age, move, or people who run the Shire are different. 

    

While I think a quick synopsis of The Hero's Journey could be pretty useful in the DMG, it should be noted that whole multi-hundred page books are written on this (and other story-telling techniques) and trying to fit all of that into the DMG with everything else as more than just an outline with a few sentences per stage is not feasible IMO.

I don't have my books in front of me and I can't find it in the digital versions, but perhaps just putting those on the "reading list" that I'm sure one of the sourcebooks has (if it's not already there) would be nice.