I personally didn't see anything obviously broken at a glance. The racial flexibility is nice - now every character can be a variant human.
Obviously races with bad ASIs but strong Racial Features benefit the most from this. Lizardfolk spellcasters, Yuan-Ti Barbarians, etc. Personally I see this as a good thing. There are a lot of races I like that I feel are pigeonholed into certain classes and vice versa, but how do you feel about it?
What are you excited to play, and what do you think is the most useful from an optimization standpoint?
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Another medical problem. Indefinite hiatus. Sorry, all.
thanks to the new lineage system where you can make your own everything, you can pick the size small category and not have the walking speed penalty the other small races get. Feels like an over sight to me an def not something I will allow. If you want to make a small character they get a movement speed of 25. Or else we better see gnome and Halfling get an errata.
What mechanical benefits does being a 'custom' small character give you aside from niche mount builds? You can't wield heavy weapons, have a harder time with grapples, and don't get the benefit of gnome and halfling racial traits. Some of that is a wash with the bonus feat but still.
Also Kobolds and Goblins have speed 30. This might be another intentional move away from racial penalties.
I don't necessarily disagree with you, I should stress.
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Another medical problem. Indefinite hiatus. Sorry, all.
I'm still not thrilled with the idea of just wildcarding all the racial ability bonuses. I liked the idea of the different races each having their own strengths. For Humans, one of those strengths was their diverse nature, a sign of humanity traditionally being one of the younger and more diverse races. And I think Mountain Dwarves and Half-Elves are going to get exploited a bit with their 4 total points of stat bonuses versus most races' 3 points. I still believe that they could have accomplished much of the flexibility they wanted by allowing a simple +1/-1 swap between two of your stats after assigning rolls and other initial bonuses. But overall I can live with the racial/lineage customization choices, given that they're optional and not a part of the core rules.
You don't see anything broken? Things that you previously had to multiclass for...a significant price mind you...now you can get with a feat. Using Eldritch Adept for example to pick up Devil's sight for all your darkness casters. Abjurer wizards using the same feat to pick up armor of shadows to keep a fully charged abjuration ward at all times. That's just a start. The new wizard can change the damage type on it's spells. A 2 level dip into tempest cleric gives you their channel divinity to max damage on lightning spells. so, change your damage type to lighting, and use your channel divinity to maximize damage on your firelightning ball for 8d8 64 damage. Twilight cleric. I mean all those temp hp that refresh every round is /totes/ balanced.
Not to mention now, you can have your cake and eat it too by not having to deal with crap armor class on your squishies if you don't want to by just picking mountain dwarf. Oh, by the way, you get weapons and more stat increases too if you go that route. Frankly, I find very little about this book balanced at all. It's entirely broken.
This powercreep is bad, because the people who do not choose to make the power gamer choices are going to be left with sub-par characters. It raises the ceiling for what is mathematically possible for characters, without doing anything to address the floor. That leads to a gap between maximizers and the people who build junk characters, then look down their nose at maximizers for "doing it wrong"
Any time an unfathomably powerful entity sweeps in and offers godlike rewards in return for just a few teensy favors, it’s a scam. Unless it’s me. I’d never lie to you, reader dearest.
You don't see anything broken? Things that you previously had to multiclass for...a significant price mind you...now you can get with a feat. Using Eldritch Adept for example to pick up Devil's sight for all your darkness casters. Abjurer wizards using the same feat to pick up armor of shadows to keep a fully charged abjuration ward at all times. That's just a start. The new wizard can change the damage type on it's spells. A 2 level dip into tempest cleric gives you their channel divinity to max damage on lightning spells. so, change your damage type to lighting, and use your channel divinity to maximize damage on your firelightning ball for 8d8 64 damage. Twilight cleric. I mean all those temp hp that refresh every round is /totes/ balanced.
Not to mention now, you can have your cake and eat it too by not having to deal with crap armor class on your squishies if you don't want to by just picking mountain dwarf. Oh, by the way, you get weapons and more stat increases too if you go that route. Frankly, I find very little about this book balanced at all. It's entirely broken.
That's a nice point on the Abjuration wizard. There were other ways to do it in a similar fashion, but the feat tax is probably the easiest.
I never felt the Darkness-Devil's Sight was that strong to begin with because of Concentration and because, in practical play, it screwed up the party a lot. I guess Oathbreaker Paladins could abuse it, but they might as well go full Hexblade anyway. Other than that, Darkness is available to. . what, Sorcerers and Wizards? They're not going to be able to break it like a Hexblade or Paladin gish did. It was usually safer to hold concentration on Hex or some other spell. Notably, these Eldritch adept builds required a 2-level dip - worse than an ASI to be sure, but given how often people like to dip Hexblade anyway. . . .
Tempest Cleric/Wizard: Requires 13 wisdom (not impossible in point buy, but costly), having Lightning Bolt in your spellbook, the loss of two levels of wizard to maximize a Fireball. . . once per rest. Strong, but not much stronger than a straight wizard casting more fireballs or those of a higher level.
Twilight: Again, one encounter per rest, you cast a souped-up heroism. Thats pretty strong, but if it ruins all my encounters, I'm not throwing enough encounters at the party. (Also, Fireball Formation). But I do think this is one of the straight-up strongest domains. Good catch.
I won't know for sure until I see it in play a little more but I don't know that I'd ban anything from my table yet.
Edit: Mountain Dwarf races: Yeah. But you'd have to play a dwarf.:P That said, Mountain Dwarf isn't the only way people have been getting armor proficiencies. Multiclassing, obviously. Natural armor. Hobgoblins and Gith. I think overall the goal was to 'raise the floor' on what races are 'good'. Mountain Dwarf got a bit better, but the 'worst races' got a LOT better in many cases.
Artificers gain access to all Common level items as part of the Replicate Magic Item Infusion. Spellwrought Tattoos that allow one to cast Cantrips and 1st level spells are Common. 2nd level Artificers have easy access to any Cantrip or 1st level spell and it negates the Material component. Once your Artificer gets to level 2, every member of your party can have a familiar.
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Canto alla vita alla sua bellezza ad ogni sua ferita ogni sua carezza!
I sing to life and to its tragic beauty To pain and to strife, but all that dances through me The rise and the fall, I've lived through it all!
Metamagic adept and the new transmutation metamagic is super broken, it's why the lore wizard was scrapped. Now every caster can change the type of damage any spell has as well as being able to have subtle spell that is uncounterable. The book should be renamed Tasha's book on min/maxing lol. There is a lot of good stuff in there, a little too good in some areas but lacking in new spells and items.
You don't see anything broken? Things that you previously had to multiclass for...a significant price mind you...now you can get with a feat. Using Eldritch Adept for example to pick up Devil's sight for all your darkness casters. Abjurer wizards using the same feat to pick up armor of shadows to keep a fully charged abjuration ward at all times. That's just a start. The new wizard can change the damage type on it's spells. A 2 level dip into tempest cleric gives you their channel divinity to max damage on lightning spells. so, change your damage type to lighting, and use your channel divinity to maximize damage on your firelightning ball for 8d8 64 damage. Twilight cleric. I mean all those temp hp that refresh every round is /totes/ balanced.
Not to mention now, you can have your cake and eat it too by not having to deal with crap armor class on your squishies if you don't want to by just picking mountain dwarf. Oh, by the way, you get weapons and more stat increases too if you go that route. Frankly, I find very little about this book balanced at all. It's entirely broken.
That's a nice point on the Abjuration wizard. There were other ways to do it in a similar fashion, but the feat tax is probably the easiest.
I never felt the Darkness-Devil's Sight was that strong to begin with because of Concentration and because, in practical play, it screwed up the party a lot. I guess Oathbreaker Paladins could abuse it, but they might as well go full Hexblade anyway. Other than that, Darkness is available to. . what, Sorcerers and Wizards? They're not going to be able to break it like a Hexblade or Paladin gish did. It was usually safer to hold concentration on Hex or some other spell. Notably, these Eldritch adept builds required a 2-level dip - worse than an ASI to be sure, but given how often people like to dip Hexblade anyway. . . .
Tempest Cleric/Wizard: Requires 13 wisdom (not impossible in point buy, but costly), having Lightning Bolt in your spellbook, the loss of two levels of wizard to maximize a Fireball. . . once per rest. Strong, but not much stronger than a straight wizard casting more fireballs or those of a higher level.
Twilight: Again, one encounter per rest, you cast a souped-up heroism. Thats pretty strong, but if it ruins all my encounters, I'm not throwing enough encounters at the party. (Also, Fireball Formation). But I do think this is one of the straight-up strongest domains. Good catch.
I won't know for sure until I see it in play a little more but I don't know that I'd ban anything from my table yet.
Edit: Mountain Dwarf races: Yeah. But you'd have to play a dwarf.:P That said, Mountain Dwarf isn't the only way people have been getting armor proficiencies. Multiclassing, obviously. Natural armor. Hobgoblins and Gith. I think overall the goal was to 'raise the floor' on what races are 'good'. Mountain Dwarf got a bit better, but the 'worst races' got a LOT better in many cases.
thats exactly it...it lowers the cost of many options. None of this stuff is /original/. now it's simply easy to get cheese. Few sacrifices are made. The one level hexblade dip, then a feat to get agonizing blast looks good. Darkness/devil's sight on a arcane trickster is great. devils sight on a sorc or wizard is very very good. the 1 level dip to twilight cleric for anything that wants heavy armor is pretty amazing.
the 13 wis isn't hard to get with the new rules for racial points. use half-elf and profit. max damage lightning. And you don't have to have lightning bolt in your book to do so. You have to have a lightning spell in your spellbook. Chromatic Orb for example gives you a wide variety of damage types, from one first level spell. if your DM calls BS on using a spell like that, you get witchbolt instead. if you are built around that strategy, you WILL have a spell in your spell book (that you don't even have to prepare!) with the damage type you want.
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Any time an unfathomably powerful entity sweeps in and offers godlike rewards in return for just a few teensy favors, it’s a scam. Unless it’s me. I’d never lie to you, reader dearest.
Artificers gain access to all Common level items as part of the Replicate Magic Item Infusion. Spellwrought Tattoos that allow one to cast Cantrips and 1st level spells are Common. 2nd level Artificers have easy access to any Cantrip or 1st level spell and it negates the Material component. Once your Artificer gets to level 2, every member of your party can have a familiar.
I thought artificers are only allowed to use Xanathars guide items and a few selected ones? I haven't actually gotten the book, so they might have updated it in ways I don't know. Otherwise that is very powerful
Artificers gain access to all Common level items as part of the Replicate Magic Item Infusion. Spellwrought Tattoos that allow one to cast Cantrips and 1st level spells are Common. 2nd level Artificers have easy access to any Cantrip or 1st level spell and it negates the Material component. Once your Artificer gets to level 2, every member of your party can have a familiar.
I thought artificers are only allowed to use Xanathars guide items and a few selected ones? I haven't actually gotten the book, so they might have updated it in ways I don't know. Otherwise that is very powerful
They updated it to include all common Magic items, including future items.
I would probably fix Replicate Magic Item to only apply to permanent magic items; no using it for consumables (it's already banned for potions and scrolls, just left hand not knowing what right hand was doing for tattoos).
thats exactly it...it lowers the cost of many options. None of this stuff is /original/. now it's simply easy to get cheese. Few sacrifices are made. The one level hexblade dip, then a feat to get agonizing blast looks good. Darkness/devil's sight on a arcane trickster is great. devils sight on a sorc or wizard is very very good. the 1 level dip to twilight cleric for anything that wants heavy armor is pretty amazing.
the 13 wis isn't hard to get with the new rules for racial points. use half-elf and profit. max damage lightning. And you don't have to have lightning bolt in your book to do so. You have to have a lightning spell in your spellbook. Chromatic Orb for example gives you a wide variety of damage types, from one first level spell. if your DM calls BS on using a spell like that, you get witchbolt instead. if you are built around that strategy, you WILL have a spell in your spell book (that you don't even have to prepare!) with the damage type you want.
I know we're splitting hairs at this point, but if the Channel Divinity of the Twilight Domain is really that powerful, you're going to want to go to level 2, not level 1.
One of the changes from the UA to the published version for Order of Scribes:
When you cast a wizard spell with a spell slot, you can temporarily replace its damage type with a type that appears in another spell in your spellbook, which magically alters the spell’s formula for this casting only. The latter spell must be of the same level as the spell slot you expend.
So, if you want to throw a Lightning Fireball, you need to have a 3rd level lightning spell in your book. If you want to throw it at 4th level, you better have Storm Sphere in your spellbook to meet the requirement. This also shuts down 'Magic Missile' to turn all your damage into Force.
I disagree with the rest of your post there, but its kind of subjective at this point.
You're right on the spell level, mea culpa. clearly it's subjective, but it also clearly power creep. You can argue that it's not bad, but you can't argue that it's not real.
Something I /do/ like to be something other than a negative nancy is that the walk magic barb no longer blows up his teammates. I had massive heartburn over that.
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Any time an unfathomably powerful entity sweeps in and offers godlike rewards in return for just a few teensy favors, it’s a scam. Unless it’s me. I’d never lie to you, reader dearest.
Abjurer wizards using the same feat to pick up armor of shadows to keep a fully charged abjuration ward at all times.
Perhaps I'm missing something, but "Whenever you cast an abjuration spell of 1st level or higher, the ward regains a number of hit points equal to twice the level of the spell." and casting Mage Armor cost an action. Spending an action to have your ward regain 2 HP doesn't seem super crazy to me. That is also assuming that the DM would allow you to cast it multiple times on yourself without ending the spell effect first. It also does in fact count as casting a leveled spell, so no bonus action spell craziness for you if you do this. You are singularly committing to boosting your ward's HP by 2.
You're right on the spell level, mea culpa. clearly it's subjective, but it also clearly power creep. You can argue that it's not bad, but you can't argue that it's not real.
Yeah. I actually think I'm just coming at it from a different angle.
I think a lot of the changes are good for players with less system mastery. Flexibility racial traits, swapping proficiencies and subclasses, class features changes - these all help reduce the consequences of a player making a 'mistake'. You want to play a Volo's Orc Beastmaster Ranger? Now you won't feel like you screwed up as bad. Want to play a Githyanki Psi Knight? Great - now you can do something with those 'wasted' proficiencies.
In other words, it has raised the floor of optimization by a few feet. It has, admittedly, raised the ceiling as well, but I don't think it blew the roof off. I think they foresaw that, too, which is why the first chapter is "hey talk to your DM guys". Granted, feats and Multiclassing are optional rules too, so that doesn't give them a power creep pass.
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Another medical problem. Indefinite hiatus. Sorry, all.
You don't recharge in combat, you recharge between combats so you start with a fully powered ward every time.
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Any time an unfathomably powerful entity sweeps in and offers godlike rewards in return for just a few teensy favors, it’s a scam. Unless it’s me. I’d never lie to you, reader dearest.
You don't recharge in combat, you recharge between combats so you start with a fully powered ward every time.
Probably a case where "cast an abjuration of first level of higher" should be "cast an abjuration using a first level spell slot or higher". Any at-will casting of abjuration spells (spell mastery, or even items; at-will casting is rare but a staff of the woodlands qualifies) has the same effect.
it was intentional. I found this post on another forum about it:
Originally Posted by <username changed>
Abjurer can now get the mage armor invocation to top off their Arcane Ward also. That is really powerful.
The design team was aware of this one before releasing the UA.
Source: They told me. I told them I’d broken the UA, in jest, and Dan Dillon went “Yeah I did that one while writing it”.
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Any time an unfathomably powerful entity sweeps in and offers godlike rewards in return for just a few teensy favors, it’s a scam. Unless it’s me. I’d never lie to you, reader dearest.
This powercreep is bad, because the people who do not choose to make the power gamer choices are going to be left with sub-par characters. It raises the ceiling for what is mathematically possible for characters, without doing anything to address the floor. That leads to a gap between maximizers and the people who build junk characters, then look down their nose at maximizers for "doing it wrong"
This assumes a competitive/combative relationship between the people around the table that's likely to lead to a lot more problems than power creep.
From where I'm sitting, the stat reallocation allows our mechanically-inclined group to help out the non-maxing player who wants to be a Tabaxi Barbarian for the lolz. Now at least that guy can get a STR boost. This raises the floor as well, providing you have a group that is actually interested in working together and helping each other out.
It's not like you couldn't be extremely unbalanced already through something like poor multiclassing choices.
I personally didn't see anything obviously broken at a glance. The racial flexibility is nice - now every character can be a variant human.
Obviously races with bad ASIs but strong Racial Features benefit the most from this. Lizardfolk spellcasters, Yuan-Ti Barbarians, etc. Personally I see this as a good thing. There are a lot of races I like that I feel are pigeonholed into certain classes and vice versa, but how do you feel about it?
What are you excited to play, and what do you think is the most useful from an optimization standpoint?
Another medical problem. Indefinite hiatus. Sorry, all.
thanks to the new lineage system where you can make your own everything, you can pick the size small category and not have the walking speed penalty the other small races get. Feels like an over sight to me an def not something I will allow. If you want to make a small character they get a movement speed of 25. Or else we better see gnome and Halfling get an errata.
What mechanical benefits does being a 'custom' small character give you aside from niche mount builds? You can't wield heavy weapons, have a harder time with grapples, and don't get the benefit of gnome and halfling racial traits. Some of that is a wash with the bonus feat but still.
Also Kobolds and Goblins have speed 30. This might be another intentional move away from racial penalties.
I don't necessarily disagree with you, I should stress.
Another medical problem. Indefinite hiatus. Sorry, all.
I'm still not thrilled with the idea of just wildcarding all the racial ability bonuses. I liked the idea of the different races each having their own strengths. For Humans, one of those strengths was their diverse nature, a sign of humanity traditionally being one of the younger and more diverse races. And I think Mountain Dwarves and Half-Elves are going to get exploited a bit with their 4 total points of stat bonuses versus most races' 3 points. I still believe that they could have accomplished much of the flexibility they wanted by allowing a simple +1/-1 swap between two of your stats after assigning rolls and other initial bonuses. But overall I can live with the racial/lineage customization choices, given that they're optional and not a part of the core rules.
You don't see anything broken? Things that you previously had to multiclass for...a significant price mind you...now you can get with a feat. Using Eldritch Adept for example to pick up Devil's sight for all your darkness casters. Abjurer wizards using the same feat to pick up armor of shadows to keep a fully charged abjuration ward at all times. That's just a start. The new wizard can change the damage type on it's spells. A 2 level dip into tempest cleric gives you their channel divinity to max damage on lightning spells. so, change your damage type to lighting, and use your channel divinity to maximize damage on your
firelightning ball for8d864 damage. Twilight cleric. I mean all those temp hp that refresh every round is /totes/ balanced.Not to mention now, you can have your cake and eat it too by not having to deal with crap armor class on your squishies if you don't want to by just picking mountain dwarf. Oh, by the way, you get weapons and more stat increases too if you go that route. Frankly, I find very little about this book balanced at all. It's entirely broken.
This powercreep is bad, because the people who do not choose to make the power gamer choices are going to be left with sub-par characters. It raises the ceiling for what is mathematically possible for characters, without doing anything to address the floor. That leads to a gap between maximizers and the people who build junk characters, then look down their nose at maximizers for "doing it wrong"
Any time an unfathomably powerful entity sweeps in and offers godlike rewards in return for just a few teensy favors, it’s a scam. Unless it’s me. I’d never lie to you, reader dearest.
Tasha
That's a nice point on the Abjuration wizard. There were other ways to do it in a similar fashion, but the feat tax is probably the easiest.
I never felt the Darkness-Devil's Sight was that strong to begin with because of Concentration and because, in practical play, it screwed up the party a lot. I guess Oathbreaker Paladins could abuse it, but they might as well go full Hexblade anyway. Other than that, Darkness is available to. . what, Sorcerers and Wizards? They're not going to be able to break it like a Hexblade or Paladin gish did. It was usually safer to hold concentration on Hex or some other spell. Notably, these Eldritch adept builds required a 2-level dip - worse than an ASI to be sure, but given how often people like to dip Hexblade anyway. . . .
Tempest Cleric/Wizard: Requires 13 wisdom (not impossible in point buy, but costly), having Lightning Bolt in your spellbook, the loss of two levels of wizard to maximize a Fireball. . . once per rest. Strong, but not much stronger than a straight wizard casting more fireballs or those of a higher level.
Twilight: Again, one encounter per rest, you cast a souped-up heroism. Thats pretty strong, but if it ruins all my encounters, I'm not throwing enough encounters at the party. (Also, Fireball Formation). But I do think this is one of the straight-up strongest domains. Good catch.
I won't know for sure until I see it in play a little more but I don't know that I'd ban anything from my table yet.
Edit: Mountain Dwarf races: Yeah. But you'd have to play a dwarf.:P That said, Mountain Dwarf isn't the only way people have been getting armor proficiencies. Multiclassing, obviously. Natural armor. Hobgoblins and Gith. I think overall the goal was to 'raise the floor' on what races are 'good'. Mountain Dwarf got a bit better, but the 'worst races' got a LOT better in many cases.
Another medical problem. Indefinite hiatus. Sorry, all.
Artificers gain access to all Common level items as part of the Replicate Magic Item Infusion. Spellwrought Tattoos that allow one to cast Cantrips and 1st level spells are Common. 2nd level Artificers have easy access to any Cantrip or 1st level spell and it negates the Material component. Once your Artificer gets to level 2, every member of your party can have a familiar.
Canto alla vita
alla sua bellezza
ad ogni sua ferita
ogni sua carezza!
I sing to life and to its tragic beauty
To pain and to strife, but all that dances through me
The rise and the fall, I've lived through it all!
Metamagic adept and the new transmutation metamagic is super broken, it's why the lore wizard was scrapped. Now every caster can change the type of damage any spell has as well as being able to have subtle spell that is uncounterable. The book should be renamed Tasha's book on min/maxing lol. There is a lot of good stuff in there, a little too good in some areas but lacking in new spells and items.
thats exactly it...it lowers the cost of many options. None of this stuff is /original/. now it's simply easy to get cheese. Few sacrifices are made. The one level hexblade dip, then a feat to get agonizing blast looks good. Darkness/devil's sight on a arcane trickster is great. devils sight on a sorc or wizard is very very good. the 1 level dip to twilight cleric for anything that wants heavy armor is pretty amazing.
the 13 wis isn't hard to get with the new rules for racial points. use half-elf and profit. max damage lightning. And you don't have to have lightning bolt in your book to do so. You have to have a lightning spell in your spellbook. Chromatic Orb for example gives you a wide variety of damage types, from one first level spell. if your DM calls BS on using a spell like that, you get witchbolt instead. if you are built around that strategy, you WILL have a spell in your spell book (that you don't even have to prepare!) with the damage type you want.
Any time an unfathomably powerful entity sweeps in and offers godlike rewards in return for just a few teensy favors, it’s a scam. Unless it’s me. I’d never lie to you, reader dearest.
Tasha
I thought artificers are only allowed to use Xanathars guide items and a few selected ones? I haven't actually gotten the book, so they might have updated it in ways I don't know. Otherwise that is very powerful
When players get creative.
They updated it to include all common Magic items, including future items.
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I would probably fix Replicate Magic Item to only apply to permanent magic items; no using it for consumables (it's already banned for potions and scrolls, just left hand not knowing what right hand was doing for tattoos).
I know we're splitting hairs at this point, but if the Channel Divinity of the Twilight Domain is really that powerful, you're going to want to go to level 2, not level 1.
One of the changes from the UA to the published version for Order of Scribes:
So, if you want to throw a Lightning Fireball, you need to have a 3rd level lightning spell in your book. If you want to throw it at 4th level, you better have Storm Sphere in your spellbook to meet the requirement. This also shuts down 'Magic Missile' to turn all your damage into Force.
I disagree with the rest of your post there, but its kind of subjective at this point.
Another medical problem. Indefinite hiatus. Sorry, all.
You're right on the spell level, mea culpa. clearly it's subjective, but it also clearly power creep. You can argue that it's not bad, but you can't argue that it's not real.
Something I /do/ like to be something other than a negative nancy is that the walk magic barb no longer blows up his teammates. I had massive heartburn over that.
Any time an unfathomably powerful entity sweeps in and offers godlike rewards in return for just a few teensy favors, it’s a scam. Unless it’s me. I’d never lie to you, reader dearest.
Tasha
Perhaps I'm missing something, but "Whenever you cast an abjuration spell of 1st level or higher, the ward regains a number of hit points equal to twice the level of the spell." and casting Mage Armor cost an action. Spending an action to have your ward regain 2 HP doesn't seem super crazy to me. That is also assuming that the DM would allow you to cast it multiple times on yourself without ending the spell effect first. It also does in fact count as casting a leveled spell, so no bonus action spell craziness for you if you do this. You are singularly committing to boosting your ward's HP by 2.
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"Play the game however you want to play the game. After all, your fun doesn't threaten my fun."
Yeah. I actually think I'm just coming at it from a different angle.
I think a lot of the changes are good for players with less system mastery. Flexibility racial traits, swapping proficiencies and subclasses, class features changes - these all help reduce the consequences of a player making a 'mistake'. You want to play a Volo's Orc Beastmaster Ranger? Now you won't feel like you screwed up as bad. Want to play a Githyanki Psi Knight? Great - now you can do something with those 'wasted' proficiencies.
In other words, it has raised the floor of optimization by a few feet. It has, admittedly, raised the ceiling as well, but I don't think it blew the roof off. I think they foresaw that, too, which is why the first chapter is "hey talk to your DM guys". Granted, feats and Multiclassing are optional rules too, so that doesn't give them a power creep pass.
Another medical problem. Indefinite hiatus. Sorry, all.
You don't recharge in combat, you recharge between combats so you start with a fully powered ward every time.
Any time an unfathomably powerful entity sweeps in and offers godlike rewards in return for just a few teensy favors, it’s a scam. Unless it’s me. I’d never lie to you, reader dearest.
Tasha
Probably a case where "cast an abjuration of first level of higher" should be "cast an abjuration using a first level spell slot or higher". Any at-will casting of abjuration spells (spell mastery, or even items; at-will casting is rare but a staff of the woodlands qualifies) has the same effect.
it was intentional. I found this post on another forum about it:
The design team was aware of this one before releasing the UA.
Source: They told me. I told them I’d broken the UA, in jest, and Dan Dillon went “Yeah I did that one while writing it”.
Any time an unfathomably powerful entity sweeps in and offers godlike rewards in return for just a few teensy favors, it’s a scam. Unless it’s me. I’d never lie to you, reader dearest.
Tasha
This assumes a competitive/combative relationship between the people around the table that's likely to lead to a lot more problems than power creep.
From where I'm sitting, the stat reallocation allows our mechanically-inclined group to help out the non-maxing player who wants to be a Tabaxi Barbarian for the lolz. Now at least that guy can get a STR boost. This raises the floor as well, providing you have a group that is actually interested in working together and helping each other out.
It's not like you couldn't be extremely unbalanced already through something like poor multiclassing choices.
My homebrew subclasses (full list here)
(Artificer) Swordmage | Glasswright | (Barbarian) Path of the Savage Embrace
(Bard) College of Dance | (Fighter) Warlord | Cannoneer
(Monk) Way of the Elements | (Ranger) Blade Dancer
(Rogue) DaggerMaster | Inquisitor | (Sorcerer) Riftwalker | Spellfist
(Warlock) The Swarm