One concern that I have about this is that I feel it makes the Sorcerer too strong compared to the Wizard. I realize that the Wizard as it currently stands is stronger, but reversing that shouldn't be the answer. If your campaign allows for lots of downtime/travel montages, you could switch out your entire list of spells between major encounters. Wizards, meanwhile, are stuck with what they have in their book, and their only advantage is that they can have a few more spells available at a given moment. What I would suggest instead is to completely redo the Sorcerer's capstone ability (to what, I don't know) and give them a means of recovering some of their sorcery points on a short rest.
I suppose this would apply to Bards, Rangers, and Warlocks as well, but it stuck out with Sorcerers to me because they are defined almost exclusively by their spells. Warlocks have invocations, boons, and in combat they're pretty much spamming Eldritch Blast/Hexblade no matter what their list is. Bards don't have quite as much variety in their spells as Sorcerers, but they get a lot of interaction and exploration out of their other class features, and they have Bardic Inspiration. And Rangers don't depend on their spells too much for combat (other than Hunter's Mark).
Wait how does this make sorcerers more powerful than wizards? Wizards can change out their entire list of prepared spells for the day every long rest this feature would just allow a sorcerer to change 1 spell for another of equal level when they long rest. Wizards start with 6 spells and get 2 new ones every level up. Which means at 20th level they have a minimum of 44 spells known that they can choose from to prepare. This is not including spells that they find during their journey as an adventurer through scrolls or enemy wizard spell books etc. By comparison a Sorcerer at 20th level is hard capped at 15 and without this feature can only change the ones they learn when they level up.
One problem with swapping skills is, right now the Background feature in 5E is a really great way to subtly force players to round their characters out with a real sense of a life before adventuring instead of just optimize them as battle bots. Freedom to swap these often non-optimal "fluff" skills out for more mechanically useful ones will quickly lead to everyone around the table having athletics and perception and stealth, and fewer and fewer "oh hey, the Fighter actually has History!" moments around the table.
Im just glad the ranger lovers are being acknowledged finally and their class is getting some much needed attention. First time i've ever seen people worried that any other full caster will be stronger than the wizard though lol. Most people voice concerns without ever actually trying out the UA in their games though. They just see something on paper and immediately think its OP which is odd. Try it out first at least
You can only swap your class-based proficiencies, Chicken. Not your background proficiencies. And the class ones can only be swapped to other proficiencies on your class' skill list. Background proficiencies are unaffected.
Having just listened to J-Craw's mini-interview with Todd on this document, the entire idea behind it was to smooth out pain points and allow players the flexibility to play the character they want to play. Jeremy specifically, explicitly addressed the "but muh class identity!" thing - "the identity is fine." Skill versatility, spell versatility, and the like are there because the design team realized that some groups spend an entire freaking year at level 4 at their design for classes like bards, sorcerers, and other spell-swap-on-level-up guys did NOT include the player having to wait an entire freaking year to fix a spell mispick.
Half the point of this document isn't even playtesting official features; it's letting groups know that it's okay to let your players switch things around a little if it makes them happier with their character. The game can tolerate some wiggle. In point of fact the game can tolerate a giant heap of wiggle because it has to; keen and precise balance is impossible.
In connection to what I said above that although this is being touted as a 'feature swap' UA really only the ranger is given these (MUCH needed) swaps with 2 to barbarian and one to cleric.. and although the rest are just enhancement/additions, to honestly, pretty solid classes (especially at lower levels), I REALLY hope that add some swap features for some capstones or even higher level features. The Sorcerer, Bard and Monk are pretty well known for subpar and NEED one almost as badly as the ranger needed to be revised as a whole (they still have a meh capstone).. but even classes like the warlock which are okay can be at the very least improved... It's no Druid or Paladin capstone..
which would be good to have even if 'majority of campaigns don't get that high anyway'... That may be a reason not to prioritize higher level feature reviews but no excuse to neglect them completely
You can only swap your class-based proficiencies, Chicken. Not your background proficiencies. And the class ones can only be swapped to other proficiencies on your class' skill list. Background proficiencies are unaffected.
No, you CAN replace proficiency from you background, or race, or wherever you got them from.
"Whenever you gain the Ability Score Improvement feature from your class, you can also replace one of your skill proficiencies with a skill proficiency offered by your class at 1st level (the proficiency you replace needn’t be from the class)"
So you can replace ANY proficiency, but you can only replace it with one on your Class list. What you are removing can come from ANYWHERE, but what you add has to be on your Class list, so a Ranger for example with the Outlander Background could drop Athletics or Survival or ANY one of the three they initially took, but can only replace it with Animal Handling, Athletics, Insight, Investigation, Nature, Perception, Stealth, or Survival
You can only swap your class-based proficiencies, Chicken. Not your background proficiencies. And the class ones can only be swapped to other proficiencies on your class' skill list. Background proficiencies are unaffected.
Untrue.
...you can also replace one of your skill proficiencies with a skill proficiency offered by your class at 1st level (the proficiency you replace needn’t be from the class)...
Heck, you could swap out your Racial skills, if you really were so inclined.
One concern that I have about this is that I feel it makes the Sorcerer too strong compared to the Wizard.
I feel like a good number of the variant rules that step on other classes are at least partially working under the assumption that the other class isn't present in the party comp.
For instance, if your party has one Arcanist, and that Arcanist is a Sorcerer, Bard, or Warlock, then it really is not a problem that you lean a little into the wizard wheelhouse.
I'm still having issues with the spell/cantrip/maneuver versatilities...
Clerics, Druids, and Warlocks, traditionally have what i call PSE's (Power Source Entities) so swapping out spells/cantrips is more a "my source gifted me with this power instead"
I have a harder time with the Sorcerers, Bards, and less so on the Rangers getting to swap their spells after a long rest. I don't think its mechanically OP or Game-Breaking in any way...i just have problems with the rational behind why they can do that, suddenly being unable to cast a spell you cast the previous day. These classes already have the "swap spell on level up" mechanic to fix bad choices. I don't see the point in making these classes "prep casters"
there are certain ways it could work. People like to imagine sorcerers as x-men that are constantly learning new abilities. You went to sleep with a couple of spells and when you woke up you could do something new, your body just adapted or if ur a wild magic sorcerer you just shrug and chuck it up to one of the many random things that happen to you. Bards (more so lore but still) already get a bunch magical secrets where they pick up and learn spells that ordinarily would be locked off to divine classes or nature classes so its not too weird that they picked up a new trick in their spare time or maybe learned how to do a new spell from a party member that can do something similar or even an enemy. The rangers are deff the hardest sell cause its never super clearly defined where they even learn there magic
I understand and agree with what you're saying in terms of the learning things that are NEW, but its the "forgetting" what they swapped out that breaks my mental explanation. With the divine casters and the warlock its "i didn't receive those gifts this day" with the wizard its "i'm out of X so i can't cast that right now, or I didn't prep that one" with the Wild Sorcerer i can see it as a "well that's odd, it worked yesterday...OH cool i can do THAT!" but other sorcerers and the bard i have trouble with...less so the ranger since you can just give them a similar divine/nature power source... but i can't come up with an "in game" reason why they suddenly can't cast X for the day unless they too have to prepare their spells like the wizard..
Bard: "The song of that spell just doesn't speak to me anymore. If it doesn't evoke my muse, doesn't arouse my passions, I cannot perform it." Sorcerer: "The power in my blood is fickle and poorly understood. Man was not meant to hold this power, yet hold it I do. Who's to say why it does what it does?"
Bards and Sorcerers have always had the ability to forget one spell and replace it with another. This only gave them the ability to do it more than only when they level up.
I'm tempted to implement a house rule that gives Wild Magic Sorcerers the ability to swap three or four spells every long rest with three of them being mandatory
You can do that now. Just create a homebrew creature with the stat block of the Primal Beast of your choice and attach it to your Beastmaster. Boom - done.
After thinking on these changes for a few days, I just wanted to throw out some thoughts on the Beastmaster changes.
The changes are a significant improvement to what they used to be. Action economy makes a lot more sense when you're able to attack and such while still commanding your pet. Unfortunately, I don't think the companion scales all that well. 5 extra hit points every level is meh; it puts them about on par with a wizard that has a decent CON stat. For a beast that's supposed to be getting into melee range in combat, that's not going to help it stand up against monsters that get multiattack on top of various other abilities and stronger stats, especially since their AC never scales up either (which, btw, it's odd to me that the flying option has a higher AC than the land-locked one). It's still better than having a companion you never use because it would take your action to command it, but I feel like there's plenty of room for improvement still since the beast's usefulness is going to rapidly dwindle as the Ranger levels up.
My second nitpick is thematic. The Beast of the Air and Beast of the Land have way more personal flavor and utility than the old way of taming whatever you can find and replacing it when it dies. However... I feel like it locks the character into a mystic druid archetype where they're channeling the power of Nature into manifesting as one of two forms. It definitely precludes some of the quirky and fun concepts where you pick animal companions with unique abilities or to fulfill specific roles. There was a huge difference stylistically between a gnome ranger who rides on the back of the wolf companion they were raised with and consider their brother, or the ranger whose snake companion has been specially trained to grapple and restrain enemies in a fight to give the ranger an advantage. Boiling the companion down to a choice between two stat blocks with generic abilities really strips out a lot of the creative grounds that made beastmasters fun to build.
Again, I think these changes are definitely steps in the right direction, but I also feel like there's a lot of room for improvement still.
You can still select any other beast that fits the Beastmaster criteria. You don't HAVE to bond with a Primal Beast, even if they exist in your game.
The trouble is that the original Beastmaster seems to be operating on the assumption that animal companions will come and go, and the ranger is simply supposed to tame a new one whenever the last one dies against that silly ancient dragon. People (rightly) reject this idea because Animal Cruelty: the Subclass doesn't sit right with anybody, but that doesn't stop the subclass from being designed around the idea of its beast companions being temporary and expendable.
Wizards is as aware of action economy as anyone else and they super, super hate giving anyone extra actions. Allowing the beastmaster to have an entire viable second character to play is too powerful for them; the companion either needed to be baked into the base ranger class, a'la Pillars of Eternity, so the class's power curve could be built around having a second set of actions to throw around, or it needed to not happen at all.
EDIT: @Ruiner - then I suppose you'll have to wait. This is a super complex and messy thing for DDB to program, it's gonna take them quite some time. I wouldn't expect it any sooner than two weeks after release of the document, and wouldn't be surprised if it got pushed back further than that.
The changes are a significant improvement to what they used to be. Action economy makes a lot more sense when you're able to attack and such while still commanding your pet. Unfortunately, I don't think the companion scales all that well. 5 extra hit points every level is meh; it puts them about on par with a wizard that has a decent CON stat. For a beast that's supposed to be getting into melee range in combat, that's not going to help it stand up against monsters that get multiattack on top of various other abilities and stronger stats, especially since their AC never scales up either (which, btw, it's odd to me that the flying option has a higher AC than the land-locked one). It's still better than having a companion you never use because it would take your action to command it, but I feel like there's plenty of room for improvement still since the beast's usefulness is going to rapidly dwindle as the Ranger levels up.
...
The new Beastmaster options "enhance" the feature, they don't replace it. So, these news beasts still benefit from the Beastmater feature that enhances AC and attacks
At 3rd level, you gain a beast companion that accompanies you on your adventures and is trained to fight alongside you. Choose a beast that is no larger than Medium and that has a challenge rating of 1/4 or lower. Add your proficiency bonus to the beast’s AC, attack rolls, and damage rolls, as well as to any saving throws and skills it is proficient in. Its hit point maximum equals the hit point number in its stat block or four times your ranger level, whichever is higher. Like any creature, it can spend Hit Dice during a short rest to regain hit points.
BTW, this also means that the ranger still has its current "spend your action to make it attack" command.
On your turn, you can verbally command the beast where to move (no action required by you). You can use your action to verbally command it to take the Attack, Dash, Disengage, or Help action.
vs.
Ready Companion. As a bonus action, you can command the beast to make its shred attack or to Hide.
The original feature uses both your Action and the Beat's action, the new UA feature only uses your Bonus Action and no action type of the Beast's. So you can use an Action to make a Beast Shred or Maul, and your Bonus to make it do so again, right out of the gate at Level 3. Pretty good.
Wait how does this make sorcerers more powerful than wizards? Wizards can change out their entire list of prepared spells for the day every long rest this feature would just allow a sorcerer to change 1 spell for another of equal level when they long rest. Wizards start with 6 spells and get 2 new ones every level up. Which means at 20th level they have a minimum of 44 spells known that they can choose from to prepare. This is not including spells that they find during their journey as an adventurer through scrolls or enemy wizard spell books etc. By comparison a Sorcerer at 20th level is hard capped at 15 and without this feature can only change the ones they learn when they level up.
So much of the feedback to this UA is people being territorial about their favorite class's role.
One problem with swapping skills is, right now the Background feature in 5E is a really great way to subtly force players to round their characters out with a real sense of a life before adventuring instead of just optimize them as battle bots. Freedom to swap these often non-optimal "fluff" skills out for more mechanically useful ones will quickly lead to everyone around the table having athletics and perception and stealth, and fewer and fewer "oh hey, the Fighter actually has History!" moments around the table.
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I'm going to make this way harder than it needs to be.
Im just glad the ranger lovers are being acknowledged finally and their class is getting some much needed attention. First time i've ever seen people worried that any other full caster will be stronger than the wizard though lol. Most people voice concerns without ever actually trying out the UA in their games though. They just see something on paper and immediately think its OP which is odd. Try it out first at least
You can only swap your class-based proficiencies, Chicken. Not your background proficiencies. And the class ones can only be swapped to other proficiencies on your class' skill list. Background proficiencies are unaffected.
Having just listened to J-Craw's mini-interview with Todd on this document, the entire idea behind it was to smooth out pain points and allow players the flexibility to play the character they want to play. Jeremy specifically, explicitly addressed the "but muh class identity!" thing - "the identity is fine." Skill versatility, spell versatility, and the like are there because the design team realized that some groups spend an entire freaking year at level 4 at their design for classes like bards, sorcerers, and other spell-swap-on-level-up guys did NOT include the player having to wait an entire freaking year to fix a spell mispick.
Half the point of this document isn't even playtesting official features; it's letting groups know that it's okay to let your players switch things around a little if it makes them happier with their character. The game can tolerate some wiggle. In point of fact the game can tolerate a giant heap of wiggle because it has to; keen and precise balance is impossible.
So wiggle away, folks. WIGGLE HARDER.
Please do not contact or message me.
In connection to what I said above that although this is being touted as a 'feature swap' UA really only the ranger is given these (MUCH needed) swaps with 2 to barbarian and one to cleric.. and although the rest are just enhancement/additions, to honestly, pretty solid classes (especially at lower levels), I REALLY hope that add some swap features for some capstones or even higher level features. The Sorcerer, Bard and Monk are pretty well known for subpar and NEED one almost as badly as the ranger needed to be revised as a whole (they still have a meh capstone).. but even classes like the warlock which are okay can be at the very least improved... It's no Druid or Paladin capstone..
which would be good to have even if 'majority of campaigns don't get that high anyway'... That may be a reason not to prioritize higher level feature reviews but no excuse to neglect them completely
No, you CAN replace proficiency from you background, or race, or wherever you got them from.
"Whenever you gain the Ability Score Improvement feature from your class, you can also replace one of your skill proficiencies with a skill proficiency offered by your class at 1st level (the proficiency you replace needn’t be from the class)"
So you can replace ANY proficiency, but you can only replace it with one on your Class list. What you are removing can come from ANYWHERE, but what you add has to be on your Class list, so a Ranger for example with the Outlander Background could drop Athletics or Survival or ANY one of the three they initially took, but can only replace it with Animal Handling, Athletics, Insight, Investigation, Nature, Perception, Stealth, or Survival
Untrue.
Heck, you could swap out your Racial skills, if you really were so inclined.
dndbeyond.com forum tags
I'm going to make this way harder than it needs to be.
Yeah, I keep looking to see if I can update my ranger with these options
I feel like a good number of the variant rules that step on other classes are at least partially working under the assumption that the other class isn't present in the party comp.
For instance, if your party has one Arcanist, and that Arcanist is a Sorcerer, Bard, or Warlock, then it really is not a problem that you lean a little into the wizard wheelhouse.
I understand and agree with what you're saying in terms of the learning things that are NEW, but its the "forgetting" what they swapped out that breaks my mental explanation. With the divine casters and the warlock its "i didn't receive those gifts this day" with the wizard its "i'm out of X so i can't cast that right now, or I didn't prep that one" with the Wild Sorcerer i can see it as a "well that's odd, it worked yesterday...OH cool i can do THAT!" but other sorcerers and the bard i have trouble with...less so the ranger since you can just give them a similar divine/nature power source... but i can't come up with an "in game" reason why they suddenly can't cast X for the day unless they too have to prepare their spells like the wizard..
Bard: "The song of that spell just doesn't speak to me anymore. If it doesn't evoke my muse, doesn't arouse my passions, I cannot perform it."
Sorcerer: "The power in my blood is fickle and poorly understood. Man was not meant to hold this power, yet hold it I do. Who's to say why it does what it does?"
Please do not contact or message me.
Okay I'll buy the drama bard lol the sorcer....seems a little too "wild magic" to me
Bards and Sorcerers have always had the ability to forget one spell and replace it with another. This only gave them the ability to do it more than only when they level up.
I'm tempted to implement a house rule that gives Wild Magic Sorcerers the ability to swap three or four spells every long rest with three of them being mandatory
I 100% love what they've done with the Ranger's companion. I hope it's added to the site soon.
You can do that now. Just create a homebrew creature with the stat block of the Primal Beast of your choice and attach it to your Beastmaster. Boom - done.
Please do not contact or message me.
After thinking on these changes for a few days, I just wanted to throw out some thoughts on the Beastmaster changes.
The changes are a significant improvement to what they used to be. Action economy makes a lot more sense when you're able to attack and such while still commanding your pet. Unfortunately, I don't think the companion scales all that well. 5 extra hit points every level is meh; it puts them about on par with a wizard that has a decent CON stat. For a beast that's supposed to be getting into melee range in combat, that's not going to help it stand up against monsters that get multiattack on top of various other abilities and stronger stats, especially since their AC never scales up either (which, btw, it's odd to me that the flying option has a higher AC than the land-locked one). It's still better than having a companion you never use because it would take your action to command it, but I feel like there's plenty of room for improvement still since the beast's usefulness is going to rapidly dwindle as the Ranger levels up.
My second nitpick is thematic. The Beast of the Air and Beast of the Land have way more personal flavor and utility than the old way of taming whatever you can find and replacing it when it dies. However... I feel like it locks the character into a mystic druid archetype where they're channeling the power of Nature into manifesting as one of two forms. It definitely precludes some of the quirky and fun concepts where you pick animal companions with unique abilities or to fulfill specific roles. There was a huge difference stylistically between a gnome ranger who rides on the back of the wolf companion they were raised with and consider their brother, or the ranger whose snake companion has been specially trained to grapple and restrain enemies in a fight to give the ranger an advantage. Boiling the companion down to a choice between two stat blocks with generic abilities really strips out a lot of the creative grounds that made beastmasters fun to build.
Again, I think these changes are definitely steps in the right direction, but I also feel like there's a lot of room for improvement still.
It's always nice to have material from WoTC premade so I don't have to go out of my way to make something.
You can still select any other beast that fits the Beastmaster criteria. You don't HAVE to bond with a Primal Beast, even if they exist in your game.
The trouble is that the original Beastmaster seems to be operating on the assumption that animal companions will come and go, and the ranger is simply supposed to tame a new one whenever the last one dies against that silly ancient dragon. People (rightly) reject this idea because Animal Cruelty: the Subclass doesn't sit right with anybody, but that doesn't stop the subclass from being designed around the idea of its beast companions being temporary and expendable.
Wizards is as aware of action economy as anyone else and they super, super hate giving anyone extra actions. Allowing the beastmaster to have an entire viable second character to play is too powerful for them; the companion either needed to be baked into the base ranger class, a'la Pillars of Eternity, so the class's power curve could be built around having a second set of actions to throw around, or it needed to not happen at all.
EDIT: @Ruiner - then I suppose you'll have to wait. This is a super complex and messy thing for DDB to program, it's gonna take them quite some time. I wouldn't expect it any sooner than two weeks after release of the document, and wouldn't be surprised if it got pushed back further than that.
Please do not contact or message me.
The new Beastmaster options "enhance" the feature, they don't replace it. So, these news beasts still benefit from the Beastmater feature that enhances AC and attacks
BTW, this also means that the ranger still has its current "spend your action to make it attack" command.
vs.
The original feature uses both your Action and the Beat's action, the new UA feature only uses your Bonus Action and no action type of the Beast's. So you can use an Action to make a Beast Shred or Maul, and your Bonus to make it do so again, right out of the gate at Level 3. Pretty good.
dndbeyond.com forum tags
I'm going to make this way harder than it needs to be.