Descend into the Underdark for Drow house wars, unlight magic and some ceremorphosis.
Another month and we have another Unearthed Arcana playtest to trial, analyse and speculate on for future releases. Last time out we had the villainous options update. This time, we’ve been treated to some Underdark options.
For the uninitiated, the Underdark is a massive sprawling system of caverns and tunnels below the land that houses its own unique ecosystem of monsters and societies. These tend to be more aggressive, powerful and evil than most locales of the mortal plane. This is because they are home to the war-mongering Drow, deadly mind flayers and other horrors. Perhaps this implies we’ll be getting an Underdark or Drow-themed supplement in the future. This may even be the Icons release that R. A. Salvatore is working on (he is the creator of Drizzt after all and fleshed out the Underdark significantly in his books). It also introduced what I think is a new form of magic in unlight.
As usual, I’m analysing how they’ve updated these latest playtest options and will evaluate whether I think they’re satisfactory new options or not. You can find the full playtest material here.
What’s included in the playtest?
The playtest comes with 3 brand new subclasses with no updated subclasses. They are:
- Barbarian: Path of unlight
- Rogue: Faction agent
- Wizard: Imaskarcanist
We also get the path of ceremorphosis, a series of 5 feats that can be taken to indicate your progression towards becoming a mind flayer. This is very much inspired by events in Baldur’s Gate 3 and potential outcomes in the game.
You can also listen to what the designers have to say on this playtest in the video below:
Path of unlight barbarian
What is it?
Unlight seems to be a sort of magical force harnessed by the Imaskari. It’s used to see in the dark, blind the barbarian’s enemies and grant physical prowess. It is often granted to the Imaskari’s greatest warriors helping them lead their armies into battle.
How good is it?
Revenge damage is best against hoards
At level 3, when you’re hit by a creature, you deal an amount of damage equal to your rage damage bonus (so 2-4). This happens every time you’re hit by a melee attack.
Berserkers have a comparative damage boost occurring once on their turn of a number of d6s per rage damage bonus. This makes it on average, 3.5 times more potent on a single hit. However, the unlight barbarian has unlimited uses of this in a round. They’d essentially need to be hit 3.5 times by melee attacks to equal the average of a berserker. You have much less control over what hits you, but barbarians are good at being at the centre of attacks. This means that unlight barbarians have both a higher ceiling for boosted damage, and a lower floor than berserkers. I’m inclined to feel like that’s more interesting and will likely do them well against hoards, even if it’s a less reliable source of damage.
Great scout and handler of invisibility
At level 6, they gain expertise in perception and blindsight. Blindsight is a great way to handle invisibility and perception is always useful. Barbarians can make solid scouts too so this kindly gives you some utility outside of combat.
Spread infectious unlight around enemies for more damage
Brutal strikes become more important to an unlight barbarian as you can spread gradual damage among targets. This perhaps encourages less focus fire attacks, but remember that killing off enemies can be very important in ending their threat too. This can be a lot of fiddly little dice rolls though, especially if you spread your infectious unlight around.
AoE blinding allows for debuffs too
At later levels, you can blind and damage in an AoE to debuff enemies and deal a bit of damage. All of this for just a bonus action too. Because blinded ends at the end of your next turn, you potentially have 2 rounds of attacks against blinded targets which can be very useful. You can choose to miss allies with this too.
Verdict
The unlight barbarian feels like a solid subclass. There’s some decent variety in features that largely lean into a damage dealer with some extra utility, both in combat and out of it.
4/5
House agent rogue
What are they?
House agents are rogues used as part of the Drow houses of Menzoberranzan in the Underdark. They operate on behalf of their houses to better their position in highly competitive and cutthroat Drow society.
The entire background of the subclass is very drow-coded, but there is a sidebar explaining how the house agent can be used as part of other groups and species.
How good is it?
Smooth talkers
Not only do house agents rely on charisma to cast some of their spells, but they can also take the influence action as a bonus action and have proficiency in a face skill. At later levels, a hostile attitude won’t lead to disadvantage on influence actions either.
This means that trying to talk your way out of combat isn’t as punishing on your action economy and can be worth the effort. This can be a little DM dependant as the success of this depends on how easily swayed enemies might be. But if you’re happy trying to sway hostile creatures, then this subclass can work nicely for that.
Quite a lot of good spells considering they don’t have the spellcasting trait
You get 5 spells and some of them are quite good. You’ll only get a single casting for 3 of them while 1 is a ritual and the other a cantrip. Find familiar is great for subterfuge though as you now have a sneaky companion. Hypnotic pattern and suggestion are also great options in and out of combat for nullifying or influencing enemies.
Charm backstab combo that works
Charming can be a bit challenging and clunky at times, but this subclass really rewards using something like charm person, friends or one of your other spells to sway a creature. It encourages interesting roleplay where you sweet talk guards before murdering them with reckless brutality.
Stunning with a cunning strike also allows you to daze the guard while you or someone else finishes them off before they can raise an alarm.
Familiar for extra stealth
I recently played Star Wars Outlaws and did think a companion rogue would be great in D&D. While not the fully customisable companion you get in Outlaws, this fulfills the fantasy well enough.
Verdict
I really like the flavour of this rogue and while it perhaps lacks some of the pure damage of other roguish subclasses, it does a better job of the talky rogue than the mastermind by quite a distance.
It’s not an easy subclass to play, not because it’s complicated, but because you’re reliant on creative and challenging roleplay. I’d speak to your DM before using this one. It’s the kind of subclass that perhaps relies on the right DM and opportunities to get the most out of it. A campaign that’s combat heavy and heroic may not suit this subclass, but an intrigue-heavy story that’s high on roleplay will suit it really well.
4/5
Imaskarcanist wizard
What is it?
The Imaskari are a society of Underdark dwellers who uncovered ancient artefacts of unlight. They have uncovered the powers of unlight through these artefacts and use them to wage war and spread light throughout the Underdark. Imaskarcanists are those wizards that have studied the secrets of unlight.
Are they any good?
Adaptable damage types
Changing damage types can be really useful, especially with radiant being rarely resisted. There’s some common damage types in that list too meaning you don’t need to be hampered by fire damage from your fireball, for instance.
Decent healing
It’s always more useful to buff hit points in combat than during a short rest and this is worth a few extra HP as well due to your intelligence modifier. It’s not loads, but wizards often have bonus actions to spare making this a decent exchange. Anticipating the need for advantage in strength checks is hard so often will be of only minor benefit.
At level 6, you can just use your hit dice to heal instead or even cure a condition.
Too much usage of hit dice
The main problem here is you now have 2 features that require a bonus action and hit dice to invoke sort of similar effects. This feels a little wasted, but also relies too heavily on hit dice that will quickly be depleted. I think there should be a different mechanic here (perhaps using spell slots). It would also benefit from some better scaling with levels too.
Glyph of warding is now very useful
One of the issues with glyph of warding previously was that casting it at higher levels meant spending 2 spell slots of that higher level. This simply meant that some spell levels were not accessible or at least not till much later in your progression as you’d need 2 spell slots of those levels. This allows for you to attach spells of your highest spell level to your glyph of warding for excellent shenanigans.
Doom of unlight is potent, but comes too late
I think the curses of unlight should become accessible early on. Rather than having 2 healing options at levels 3 and 6, I think the Imaskarcanist should have a curse option at level 6. That level 14 curse is quite cool though, if a little complex. There is some language around which target is being referred to that needs cleaning up too.
Verdict
The Imaskarcanist is quite fun, from level 10. Before then, it’s a lot more average. I think there’s something promising here but did feel like unlight curses should come sooner and their much hyped capabilities with artefacts should do more than just attune to one rapidly. Otherwise, there’s a decent subclass here with more potential, especially to have fun with glyph of warding.
3/5
Path of ceremorphosis
Like the paths of villainy for death knights and liches before, the path of ceremorphosis is a bunch of feats that gives you options to progress towards an illithid (mind flayer) state. Like in Baldur’s Gate 3, you can allow this to progress to varying degrees gaining different capabilities.
Tadpole host
Intelligence is a very limiting ability score to increase. You’re primarily only catering for intelligence classes like wizards, artificers and the odd subclass like eldritch knights and arcane tricksters. This does limit the path a little as this is the necessary initial feat for the path.
Mind sliver is a good cantrip, but generally available to wizards and third caster subclasses. It might be handy for an artificer though.
The extra boost to psychic damage is alright, but not huge or common. The immediate instinct might be to use this with mind sliver, but it’s going to better on a psychic AoE spells when you get those, like synaptic static, as the damage affects all targets. I feel like this maybe needs a 1st or 2nd level psychic damage spell too but it’s just about alright as it stands.
3/5
Illithid thrallmaker
I don’t know if charm person really works for enthralling a creature. It more just makes you friends for a bit. It is at least enhanced making it more likely to succeed and overcoming the disadvantage of casting against a hostile creature. Telepathy and an improved psionic energy die are both decent and maybe make this just about good enough but I think I’d have liked a better spell/effect than charm person here.
3/5
Tadpole’s safeguard
An improved shield spell is more useful than charm person in my opinion. The telepathy and improved psionic energy dice helps here too making this reasonably good.
4/5
Ulitharid’s might
These are some serious facial tentacles with an increased reach of 5ft. Great for hit and run tactics or just more range. There aren’t many builds that suit this setup though. Especially when you consider tadpole host as a feat geared towards spellcasters. This is no good for wizards, artificers or even arcane tricksters. It might be good for some eldritch knight builds but unarmed builds rarely work well with intelligence or spellcasting. I guess at least this is an option for the odd build.
Extra reach on an unarmed build is really good, but I do have to dock it points just for being really limited in who can really benefit from it which is almost no one.
2/5
Full ceremorphosis
Improved psionic energy dice is decent and becoming an aberration has some niche benefits (like some spells that only work on humanoids won’t work on you). Brain seeking tentacles is again, great on the one very limited build that would enjoy unarmed strikes, spellcasting and intelligence, but is phenomenally specific.
Mind flayer spells is much better. There are 2 decent spells in there and mind blast which is excellent. Not only is it a 6th level spell with decent damage (though less than cone of cold at level 5), it also causes the stunned condition for a turn and imposes an intelligence saving throw which is rarely strong for creatures.
The challenge here is with an excellent 6th level spell available for the price of a single psionic energy die, it’s hard to justify using the other spells for this. That’s also a lot of mind blasts with the proficiency bonus you have. Ultimately, this makes it a really strong feat, if with a lot of prerequisites to get there.
5/5
Summary
There’s 3 solid subclasses here with just a bit of tweaking needed. There’s also some interesting flavour with the house agent doing something completely different for the rogue.
The path of ceremorphosis feels kind of uneven in application. I think ultimately, it needs to work for a wider range of builds. More specifically making tentacles work for more characters. There also needs to give more reason to use other spells than mind blast with full ceremorphosis. I also think that making thralls should be more than just making friends. There’s some pretty decent potential here though and the mind flayer flavour is definitely there.
Overall, this is a solid playtest with some tweaking and has some interesting and unique options. What did you think of the latest Unearthed Arcana? Let me know in the comments below.
