Analysing the Unearthed Arcana 2026 Underdark Options 2

Descend into the Underdark for Driders, Illithidkin, fungal options and more

What’s included in the playtest?

The playtest comes with 2 brand new subclasses and 1 updated subclasses. They are:

• Cleric: Freedom domain
• Druid: Circle of spores
• Sorcerer: Faerzress sorcery

We also get 5 brand new species that have never been included in 5e before. They are:

• Deep Imaskari
• Drider
• Illithidkin
• Kua-Toa
• Myconid

Freedom domain cleric

What is it?

Clerics devoted to the cause of freedom. This might be bringing liberty to captives, but could also mean freeing the mind from mind control, the hungry from starvation or the oppressed from tyranny. This is also built as a dexterity-focused cleric.

How good is it?

Loads of mobility spells

The spell list is full of options like teleportation (like misty step and dimension door), speed increases (like expeditious retreat and jump) and expanded movement capabilities (like fly and gaseous form).

This does lead to some amount of crossover in capabilities. For example, I can’t imagine bothering with expeditious retreat when I’ve already got jump (concentration-less increase to movement without using a bonus action each turn).

The spells are generally decent, but I also find knock an expensive way to open locks and tree stride hard to justify concentrating on (as well as relying on being in the vicinity of trees). Freedom of movement is sometimes good, but really hard to anticipate when you’ll need it.

Potential for high AC

Clerics can generally do well on AC, but the freedom domain can be better. It does make a heavier investment in ability scores though. Wisdom you’ll be investing in anyway and most clerics would have had 14 or 15 strength/dexterity too, but really, you’ll want to be pushing dexterity all the way up to 20 if you can. That may limit your feats a little, but this is still very good.

A lot of protection from losing mobility

In many ways, I think the subclass tends to be reactive. It can protect from or end effects that harm mobility, but that’s only situationally useful. There will be occasions every now and again when the party will be glad they have a freedom cleric around to end the restrained condition or make difficult terrain less difficult, but that won’t be every encounter.

Its not bad, but I think this speaks to an overall issue with the subclass is it can’t do much actively useful until level 17 when it’s enhancing speed. Until then, the freedom domain passively has improved AC, dexterity saving throws and can end conditions quite well, but it doesn’t do much until a nasty condition comes along.

Avatar of freedom is weaker than most level 17 cleric domain features

Not that it isn’t useful, but it feels likely to be less impactful than other high level cleric features. It should have frequent use though and I’m glad that this can more actively influence the combat.

Verdict

I’m torn on the freedom domain cleric. I like that it feels like a different and unique cleric subclass. I often get bored by the kind of samey cleric subclasses that we often end up with. My issue is that it feels too passive and reactionary. The spells are mostly fine, but you’re just either existing with better AC and dexterity saving throws, or waiting for someone to get a condition and help them. There’s nothing very active to do until level 17, at which point you just flick a switch and stay near everyone so they’re faster.

Here’s my alternatives. What if there’s a mechanic to backlash against those that do restrict movement. What if they take damage when they cause a condition or maintain a condition that restricts movement. And what if you had a bonus action you could use to do one of a few things; boost movement speed, boost saving throws to end movement restricting conditions or short range teleport a creature. You’d maybe want a limit on uses, but you could actively and tactically be moving allies around, speeding them up or ending conditions. I think this would make the subclass more interesting to play and better fulfill the fantasy of freedom.

2/5

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Circle of spores druid

What are they?

Druids that revere the natural, decaying process of spores and fungi. They see decay and death as well as life as important parts of nature’s cycle.

What’s changed?

The circle of spores was previously released in Tasha’s Cauldron of Everything and this updates that subclass with the following changes:

• Level 2 features move to level 3: Like all subclasses in 5.5e that used to start before level 3.
• Circle spells have been reduced and changed: Gentle repose, gaseous form, blight and cloudkill have all been removed with just charm person replacing them.
• Halo of spores: Grants short range telepathy and disadvantage on an attack roll on a successful saving throw.
• Symbiotic entity: Activates on a bonus action instead of an action. Extra damage can also be applied to unarmed strikes and has different end conditions.
• Fungal infestation: Can transfer temporary hit points to the zombie. It also isn’t limited to the attack action anymore.
• Explosive burst: Replaces spreading spores to allow your zombie to explode and damage enemies when it dies.
• Fungal body: When you gain the unconscious condition, spores will now keep you moving to safety.

How good is it?

Lost spells

The revision removes the 2 spells per level, reducing them to 1. This seems a shame as although druid subclasses have always had inconsistent subclass spell lists, some do have 2 spells per level (like the circle of the sea). It’s not like the new spores druid has a great spell list either. Charm person isn’t great and confusion is a bad hypnotic pattern.

This seemed like an unnecessary nerf to me.

Halo of spores is a tad uneven but layers with other features

Dealing 1d4 damage is barely worth using a reaction on and I weirdly think I’d rather have the creature succeed and have disadvantage on their next attack roll. However, when you’ve got symbiotic entity active, which should be quite a lot, the damage doubles. Now it is worthwhile (like getting another attack) and it scales fairly well. It also always does something.

With symbiotic entity, it is nice you can boost attack damage but the best way to use this is to grab true strike so you have a cantrip making a weapon attack. You won’t get It on your spell list though so will need something like magic initiate or being a High Elf to access it.

It seems a shame that it doesn’t work with chill touch. It feels like they wanted it to work with this, but chill touch is neither a weapon attack or an unarmed strike so doesn’t qualify.

Animating zombies only gets good at level 10

You’re mostly going to be animating zombies in combat as you have to do this when a creature dies. You could use it outside of combat to perhaps set off traps or be an early warning system for ambushes, but you probably want it getting in the way in combat and dealing damage.

You can get a whole bunch of these up and running at the same time if they can survive, but survivability is the main issue here, they have 1HP and I’m not sure gifting your temporary hit points is the optimal thing to do.

However, from level 10, they start exploding which makes them far more worthwhile.

More resilience at level 14

I love the idea of being moved around by your spores when you become unconscious to keep you safe. I think that’s a really fun way to survive dying and get close to a healer or away from being attacked some more. The resilience to conditions is welcome too.

Verdict

The circle of spores was decent before and has mostly been made better. The reduction in circle spells is a bit of a sour point and I think the zombies you animate at level 6 are too feeble until you hit level 10, which feels like a lot of levels to wait for them to get good. I’d prefer if they exploded at level 6, but maybe the explosion became better at level 10.

I also think it’s a shame that entropic empowerment doesn’t work with chill touch. It’s sort of an issue when you need a feat or racial traits to grab a spell that makes the best use of a feature (true strike). I hope they make it chill touch compatible in the final version.

This is still a decent druid subclass though and gives you a different kind of melee druid. I’ve criticised a few things here, but mostly, I think they just need tweaks. For now, the subclass feels solid.

4/5

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Faerzress sorcery sorcerer

What is it?

Sorcerers mutated by the the radiation Lolth used to shape the Underdark. This radiation is known as faerzress and these sorcerers can wield its powers.

Are they any good?

Faerzress has very situational effects

It seems like you can both generate areas of faerzress and it can occur naturally in the environment. Most features rely heavily on it’s properties, but those are quite situational.

Problem is, this also costs a lot of sorcery points. I’d just keep those sorcery points for metamagic and basically ignore your ability to use faerzress unless you have a really niche moment when you know it will be useful.

This doesn’t improve at higher levels

At level 14, you can wreathe creatures in faerzress. Problem is, for most creatures, it basically does nothing. Many creatures can’t teleport or use divination spells. The worse saving throws against divination spells feels like it could be useful, but you barely have any spells that help with this either.

At least you have the teleportation spell. That’s good I guess.

At least faerzress form is good

But this is your level 18 feature. This means you need to wait 18 levels to get a good feature. You can fly, are resistant to most damage and immune to a bunch of conditions while in this form. This is all great, but most players won’t reach this level making the entire subclass other than the spells, practically pointless.

Verdict

This is just a bad subclass! It has almost no features of value. Faerzress is just massively underwhelming and situational with your features basically work around this for some pretty pathetic use cases.

This needs an entire rework or just scrapping altogether. This subclass just doesn’t work!

1/5

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Species

We’ve also got 5 quite interesting species. They all happen to be species we’ve not seen before in 5e either which is even more exciting.

Deep Imaskari

These are Humans that have been transformed by unlight, which they used to help them survive the harsh, sunless Underdark.

Most of the traits here are fairly normal stuff. They get plenty of heroic inspiration due to their Human ancestry, have radiant resistance and shed light for 5ft. All fairly decent, but then we also get aura of unlight and it’s quite powerful.

You can basically choose for you and nearby allies to have a minute of enhanced AC (+1 to +3 which is a huge buff), make nearby enemies blinded on failed saving throws each turn or change spell damage into radiant damage and add an extra hit die to the damage (which combines with spellfire adept). That’s some big extra damage for AoEs and all of this lasts a minute. That’s a bit of a super buff once per day.

This one is too powerful to me and needs toning down a decent bit.

6/5

Drider

Transformed by Lolth into a creature that is part spider and part Drow. The big things here are the spells. Dancing lights and faerie fire are alright, but web is excellent, especially as you’re unaffected by webs (normally very situational, but since you can make webs, this becomes way more useful). The spider climb is decent for exploration too making this quite a solid species.

4/5

Illithidkin

A survivor of mind flayer experimentation, you are now part whatever species you were before, and part mind flayer.

The main thing here is some decent spells. Mage hand and levitate have plenty of utility and command can be quite useful. Darkvision and telepathy add more utility while you get some resilience through psychic resistance and charmed resilience. All of this makes for a pretty solid species.

4/5

Kuo-Toa

Fish-like humanoids, they are great in water which is situationally useful. Resilience to being grappled or restrained is often handy and having find familiar on tap is really useful as it’s a great utility spell.

The extra forms for find familiar are still pretty weak, but one can fly and is telepathically linked to you which is great in a scout. The other can grant telepathy to other creatures which can be quite useful too. Arcana Unleashed also has the battle familiar spell and several feats that can enhance your familiar further making this potentially more useful.

4/5

Myconid

Fungal folk that typically live in the Underdark. They are mostly about utility with telepathy, the ability to share telepathy, darkvision and are able to grant everyone in the party a shared skill proficiency, which is quite cool. Something like stealth or perception that everyone can benefit from can be good, but depending on the day’s activities, other skills can be a good idea too.

This is a decent subclass, though it’s mainly for out of combat use.

3/5

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Summary

I think the species in this Unearthed Arcana are pretty great. There’s a bunch of interesting and unique options and ideas in here that I really like. I think they just need to tone down the power levels of the Deep Imaskari and they’re all good here. The spores druid gets some generally good updates, though I think they would benefit from going a bit further on some of the changes.

Unfortunately, the new subclasses fall a bit flat. The freedom domain is just too passive, but not necessarily bad, but the faerzress sorcerer is just mechanically poor. I see very little reason to use most of those features, let alone want to take the subclass. It’s possibly the worst Unearthed Arcana subclass I’ve seen which is concerning. I think that one probably just needs scrapping.

What did you think of the latest Unearthed Arcana? Let me know in the comments below.

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