Quote from Kotath >>

Supposedly there is something clarifying that (and backing up Mearls) in the new book....

Guess I'll be saving myself some money in that case! I don't tend to buy books to lose features.

Retroactively changing it at this point would just be silly; they explicitly described them as unarmed strikes, and it's not as if the Monk Martial Arts feature is widely regarded as overpowered.

WotC announced that, moving forward, all natural weapons will “count as simple/martial weapons for you, with which you are proficient” like those Barbarian natural weapons or the Dhampire’s Bite. Content will no longer be coming out stating that Natural Weapons “can be used to make Unarmed Strikes” like the Tabaxi Claws or Minotaur Horns. I can’t find the statement now, but I remember reading it somewhere official, either here or on WotC’s site.

Quote from IamSposta >>

WotC announced that, moving forward, all natural weapons will “count as simple/martial weapons for you, with which you are proficient” like those Barbarian natural weapons or the Dhampire’s Bite. Content will no longer be coming out stating that Natural Weapons “can be used to make Unarmed Strikes” like the Tabaxi Claws or Minotaur Horns. I can’t find the statement now, but I remember reading it somewhere official, either here or on WotC’s site.

I mean I guess it's a bit off-topic for here, but I'm very much opposed to that change if they are trying to apply it retroactively in that way.

The wording makes sense for a Dhampir's Bite because chomping down on someone's neck to drink their blood hardly screams an attack of finesse. Path of the Beast's natural weapons likewise make some degree of sense because it closes a potential mechanical loophole with its bite and tail; i.e- if they were unarmed you could just take a level in Monk for another attack.

But the idea that Aarakocra, Tabaxi etc. would not develop martial arts using their claws/talons is insane, and again, such a change serves no logical purpose; the Monk sub-forum is not filled with threads of people whining about how overpowered it is, and how Tabaxi Monks are the most broken combo in the game. This would be revisionism purely for the sake of it, and it's that their goal then I will not buy any content that implements it, because after years of increasingly shoddy rules writing it'd be a silly thing to dump on us when there are things we need so much more.

Quote from Haravikk >>

Quote from IamSposta >>

WotC announced that, moving forward, all natural weapons will “count as simple/martial weapons for you, with which you are proficient” like those Barbarian natural weapons or the Dhampire’s Bite. Content will no longer be coming out stating that Natural Weapons “can be used to make Unarmed Strikes” like the Tabaxi Claws or Minotaur Horns. I can’t find the statement now, but I remember reading it somewhere official, either here or on WotC’s site.

I mean I guess it's a bit off-topic for here, but I'm very much opposed to that change if they are trying to apply it retroactively in that way.

The wording makes sense for a Dhampir's Bite because chomping down on someone's neck to drink their blood hardly screams an attack of finesse. Path of the Beast's natural weapons likewise make some degree of sense because it closes a potential mechanical loophole with its bite and tail; i.e- if they were unarmed you could just take a level in Monk for another attack.

But the idea that Aarakocra, Tabaxi etc. would not develop martial arts using their claws/talons is insane, and again, such a change serves no logical purpose; the Monk sub-forum is not filled with threads of people whining about how overpowered it is, and how Tabaxi Monks are the most broken combo in the game. This would be revisionism purely for the sake of it, and it's that their goal then I will not buy any content that implements it, because after years of increasingly shoddy rules writing it'd be a silly thing to dump on us when there are things we need so much more.

 
As “simple melee weapons with which you are proficient” they automatically qualify as Monk weapons, qualify for use with Divine Smite, and can be buffed with stuff like Rune Knight Runes / Infusions, or spells (like magic weapon), etc. It retains all of the previous uses (at the cost of flavor), but gains many, many benefits.

PS- Pro’ly won’t go “retroactive” until 5.5 in ‘24 (unless it got implemented in M3 🤷‍♂️).

Quote from IamSposta>>

As “simple melee weapons with which you are proficient” they automatically qualify as Monk weapons, qualify for use with Divine Smite, and can be buffed with stuff like Rune Knight Runes / Infusions, or spells (like magic weapon), etc. It retains all of the previous uses (at the cost of flavor), but gains many, many benefits.

Natural weapons already qualify for most of these* as natural weapons are weapons; all this change will accomplish is to render them incompatible with unarmed strikes, i.e- the Martial Arts bonus action attack, Flurry of Blows and anything similar (several Monk sub-class abilities), for no reason.

*I say most, because there are a handful of rules that specifically apply only to "a weapon you are holding" or similar wording, which natural weapons still will not be a valid target for.

Quote from Haravikk >>

Quote from IamSposta>>

As “simple melee weapons with which you are proficient” they automatically qualify as Monk weapons, qualify for use with Divine Smite, and can be buffed with stuff like Rune Knight Runes / Infusions, or spells (like magic weapon), etc. It retains all of the previous uses (at the cost of flavor), but gains many, many benefits.

Natural weapons already qualify for most of these* as natural weapons are weapons; all this change will accomplish is to render them incompatible with unarmed strikes, i.e- the Martial Arts bonus action attack, Flurry of Blows and anything similar (several Monk sub-class abilities), for no reason.

*I say most, because there are a handful of rules that specifically apply only to "a weapon you are holding" or similar wording, which natural weapons still will not be a valid target for.

 
They previously did not qualify for anything that requires “a simple or martial weapon you are proficient with,” now they will. If I understand things correctly I believe that previously they could only be used to make unarmed strikes and did not qualify for some of those things, at least not RAW. (I may be mistaken on that however. 🤷‍♂️)

 As “simple melee weapons” they can also now get weapon properties such as light or finesse. That’s a plus since it opens up interactions with things like Two-Weapon Fighting or Sneak Attack. C’mon, ya can’t tell me that Tabaxi claws shouldn’t have had finesse built in this whole time. Yes it limits Monks’ Bonus Action damage until their Martial Arts die meets/surpasses those natural weapons, but I think that might have been part of the point. But I believe it will open them up for uses with more features & traits in the grand scheme of things.

Quote from IamSposta>>

Quote from Haravikk>>

Quote from IamSposta>>

As “simple melee weapons with which you are proficient” they automatically qualify as Monk weapons, qualify for use with Divine Smite, and can be buffed with stuff like Rune Knight Runes / Infusions, or spells (like magic weapon), etc. It retains all of the previous uses (at the cost of flavor), but gains many, many benefits.

Natural weapons already qualify for most of these* as natural weapons are weapons; all this change will accomplish is to render them incompatible with unarmed strikes, i.e- the Martial Arts bonus action attack, Flurry of Blows and anything similar (several Monk sub-class abilities), for no reason.

*I say most, because there are a handful of rules that specifically apply only to "a weapon you are holding" or similar wording, which natural weapons still will not be a valid target for.

They previously did not qualify for anything that requires “a simple or martial weapon you are proficient with,”

There are extremely few rules that use that kind of wording; one of the few examples is the Monk's Dedicated Weapon optional class feature, which wouldn't enable anything new anyway.

If I understand things correctly I believe that previously they could only be used to make unarmed strikes and did not qualify for some of those things, at least not RAW.

That's not the existing RAW.

Natural weapons are melee weapons. Melee weapons can be used to make melee weapon attacks. Unarmed strikes are melee weapon attacks ordinarily made without weapons. Aarakocra talons, Tabaxi claws etc. are explicitly unarmed strikes made using weapons (with their own damage), so they are melee weapon attacks, made using weapons, that also count as unarmed strikes.

We have always been able to poison, smite etc. using claws so long as the requirement is not a held weapon, because natural weapons are weapons, so anything that can be applied to a weapon can be be applied to them.

 As “simple melee weapons” they can also now get weapon properties such as light or finesse.

Being simple melee weapons has nothing to do with whether or not WotC can apply weapon properties in a rule; they have always had the power to add these features to natural weapons if they wanted to, this is not some required step on the road to finally putting things right, and certainly not if they do it in this way by also making it worse.

Yes it limits Monks’ Bonus Action damage until their Martial Arts die meets/surpasses those natural weapons, but I think that might have been part of the point.

And why? To penalise Monk players for wanting to play as one of these races? Again, if this is what they're doing then it's either stupid, cruel, or both; that is why I dearly hope this rumour isn't true, because if it is they're also choosing to not get anymore money from me, because the standard of rules coming out of WotC lately has been increasingly poor, and if this rumour is true it will be the final straw for me.

If they want to fix something they should be clarifying the many, many rules issues with the Armorer sub-class, or fix the broken Twilight Domain, instead all they seem to want to do is f*** around with races for no reason. But whatever, all of this is off-topic for a Tasha's issues and support thread, there's no sense in continuing; I was responding to a RAW query, and I've pointed out what the RAW is now and my answer was correct, rumoured possible future changes don't make my answer any less correct.

Quote from BSessio>>

Quote from JesterDavid>>

 Don't see this on a casual search.

The natural attacks for the barbarian Path of the Beast are simple weapons. So they'd count as monk weapons, for the Martial Arts feature.

EDIT: Update!

No, you're right, but not for the reasons you cited. Form of the Beast says:

"When you enter your rage, you can transform, revealing the bestial power within you. Until the rage ends, you manifest a natural weapon. It counts as a simple melee weapon for you..."

This specification is critical, as a Simple Melee Weapon you're proficient with IS a monk weapon.

So these SHOULD be Monk Weapons. But not because they're Natural Weapons: because they're Simple Melee Weapons.

Twilight Domain Cleric; there is no option to use spells slots to re-use the Eyes of Night ability.

Since you can use any spell slot of any level, you just manually tick off the spell slot.

Quote from pocketmouse >>

Since you can use any spell slot of any level, you just manually tick off the spell slot.

 I'm familiar with the work arounds.  But they are work arounds.

Quote from NoxInruptio >>

Quote from pocketmouse >>

Since you can use any spell slot of any level, you just manually tick off the spell slot.

 I'm familiar with the work arounds.  But they are work arounds.

 
It's not a workaround. It is the intended way to use the feature. It isn't a spell so will not function as one. This is why you can tick/untick spell slots manually - for non-spell features that interact with spell slots as a resource.

Maybe already mentioned or not: The additional cleric spells dont pop up on the divine sorcerers spell list.

Quote from Cyb3rM1nd >> 

It's not a workaround. It is the intended way to use the feature. It isn't a spell so will not function as one. This is why you can tick/untick spell slots manually - for non-spell features that interact with spell slots as a resource.

 let's agree to disagree.  I see it as an unimplemented feature - that should exist for any class feature that can use spell slots, which should ideally appear alongside the ability ( dialogue box for use via spells slot - drop down, select spell slot to be used (if applicable). In the case of class features that aren't duplicated spell effects (which you are correct about - this one is not a duplicated spell effect). 

You're correct in that it's not a spell per say, can it be added to the Twilight cleric spell list for track purposes? Yes, just as a valid a solution as click off a spell slot manually.  Neither is ideal imo.

Quote from NoxInruptio >>

Quote from Cyb3rM1nd >> 

It's not a workaround. It is the intended way to use the feature. It isn't a spell so will not function as one. This is why you can tick/untick spell slots manually - for non-spell features that interact with spell slots as a resource.

 let's agree to disagree.  I see it as an unimplemented feature - that should exist for any class feature that can use spell slots, which should ideally appear alongside the ability ( dialogue box for use via spells slot - drop down, select spell slot to be used (if applicable). In the case of class features that aren't duplicated spell effects (which you are correct about - this one is not a duplicated spell effect). 

You're correct in that it's not a spell per say, can it be added to the Twilight cleric spell list for track purposes? Yes, just as a valid a solution as click off a spell slot manually.  Neither is ideal imo.

I'm inclined to agree with Cyb3rM1nd; the description tells you to spend a spell slot, that's what ticking off a spell slot is. If you think about playing the game on pen and paper then this is exactly how you do it, so in that respect there is nothing missing.

While obviously D&D Beyond thrives on the fact that it does more than just what you would do manually, with tracking of limited uses and so-on, these have a more clear case of something being missing (i.e- without limited use boxes, how would you track them on a digital sheet?). While a special GUI might be nice, it'd be a fair bit of added complexity to implement it; first of all it would need some kind of new Limited Use feature(s) to describe the spell slot cost for this and similar features, then you'd need to implement it on the sheet somehow. Do you use a button that just marks off the "lowest" slot (1st-level, 2nd-level etc.)? Or do you show all the slots in some kind of simplified form so a user can tick off whichever they like? Where do you put it (sidebar for the feature maybe)? It gets a lot harder than just "tick it off under Spells".

There's a balance to strike between implementing what is needed, and implementing literally everything described in text.

Some of the  old spells newly added to classes in Tasha's are not showing up on those class lists in the Game Rules section.

For example: Power Word Heal is, as of Tasha's, a level 9 cleric spell, but in the Game Rules>Spells, it does not show up as an option. 

It does show up in the Character Builder if you select 'Use optional rules', which is fine, but when just reading over stuff in the Games Rules portion, it never shows up as even an option.

Quote from MikeLyons >>

Some of the  old spells newly added to classes in Tasha's are not showing up on those class lists in the Game Rules section.

For example: Power Word Heal is, as of Tasha's, a level 9 cleric spell, but in the Game Rules>Spells, it does not show up as an option. 

It does show up in the Character Builder if you select 'Use optional rules', which is fine, but when just reading over stuff in the Games Rules portion, it never shows up as even an option.

 That's because they aren't added to a class's spell list; they are just made available to the class as an optional feature. It's a subtle but important distinction, at least based on how WotC wrote the book, so that's why it works that way on DDB.

Hi,

I am not sure if it is something I am doing incorrectly, but I can't seem to select metamagic adept as an option for the gained feat in the modifiers section for a magic item.

Quote from Esmerald1no >>

Hi,

I am not sure if it is something I am doing incorrectly, but I can't seem to select metamagic adept as an option for the gained feat in the modifiers section for a magic item.

 
Magic items don't grant feats.