Deep dive into the latest playtest subclasses for D&D 2024.
It’s not even been 3 weeks since Wizards of the Coast released their last Unearthed Arcana. In fact that’s the same amount of time since they released their last villainous subclasses. Yet here we are with another set of villainous subclasses to analyse and dig into.
Thankfully for the sake of my free time, we have just 3 subclasses to look at in the latest Unearthed Arcana. And there are no more paths of villainy to sink our teeth into either (for now).
I’ve pulled together a deep dive into these subclasses to look at how good they are and whether they stack up.
What’s included in the playtest?
The playtest comes with 3 brand new subclasses. They are:
- Barbarian: Path of lament
- Monk: Warrior of venom
- Warlock: Primordial patron
If you want to check out the full playtest material, you can find it all here. Just remember that this is playtest material and will likely change before we get the final version.
Path of lament barbarian
What is it?
Barbarians afflicted by grief who channel these emotions into bouts of rage.
Are they any good?
Area of effect option
Barbarians don’t tend to have methods of handling lots of enemies simultaneously. Banshee’s wail changes that by giving you a fairly large AoE emanation. The damage scales with your rage bonus and you can choose not to affect allies.
It’s a pretty strong AoE option and starts with similar damage levels to shatter, but with a larger area. The deafened condition is a bonus but is rarely impactful in combat.
Some utility with speak with dead
Speak with dead is a really handy spell so it’s nice for the barbarian to get something extra to do outside of combat. It can be easy for barbarians to fade outside of combat but this helps that issue a little.
Fairly frightening
By level 6, they can attempt to frighten a target once per turn as part of an attack. There’s no resource or action economy cost here making it really useful and easy to throw into the mix. It does encourage targeting enemies that might easily be frightened.
You could do fun things here with a throwing build, stopping enemies moving any closer, but only as long as you don’t have other allies for the enemy to target instead.
Otherworldly anguish may not be that anguishing
Immunity to possession is fine, but a ribbon feature. Cold and necrotic resistance are decent enough, but the main feature here is supposed to be deathly wail. This drops an enemy to 0HP if their HP is equal to or less than twice your barbarian level.
Theres a potential problem here. At level 10, this means 20HP, but banshee’s wail causes an average of 26 damage at this level so chances are, you already cause more damage than this anyway.
This does improve at later levels and I guess it gives a higher chance of knocking to 0HP for times when you perhaps get a lower damage roll. But I do think the fact that more than half of your uses of this will do nothing is perhaps a bit disappointing, and that’s assuming the enemy actually has HP low enough to be affected by this (many won’t).
You can become undead!
At level 14, you can become temporarily undead. There’s not a lot mechanically that affects this, but it is pretty grim! Immunity to charmed, frightened and exhaustion is nice, but the big thing is layering on damage and healing with your horrifying strike. The extra damage is solid, but with so many resistances, that healing could be doing a lot of heavy lifting for your resilience and requires no action economy to activate.
I have a feeling that may be too powerful and could be toned down a bit following playtests.
Verdict
The path of lament is mostly a rock solid barbarian path. However, at level 14, it does get some very potent and regular healing which could be unbalanced. Level 10 feels potentially less impactful and I do think it needs a way to make deathly wail more consistently useful. Otherwise, I think this is a pretty good subclass with quite a lot of nice effects layering onto your features.
the flavour is interesting, but I’m not sure the justification of undead powers necessarily makes sense. Rather than just sorrow, I think there needs to be a magical trigger to why you can suddenly wail like a banshee and become undead. I also think that would make this more of a villainous subclass. I think the features can sort of fit the idea of someone villainous, but the description of the subclass doesn’t follow suit. Tragedy doesn’t necessarily lead to villainy (sometimes it just means you become Batman).
4/5
Warrior of venom monk
What is it?
These monks pollute their own bodies with toxins and poisons, eventually developing a poisonous touch as deadly as a viper’s bite.
Are they any good?
Poisonous weapons for debuffs or damage
There’s no action required to envenom your weapon so this is nearly a free damage enhancement or debuff. There’s also no savings throws from this so a hit means it works.
This can work nicely for high damage monks. If you want to be using hit and run tactics and still want to be using your bonus action for flurry of blows, then you can use slowing toxin to prevent opportunity attacks and follow up movement when you move away, but retaining the higher damage from your flurry of blows. If you’re happy standing your ground, you can use venom for more damage.
Poison build that bypasses poison resistance
A lot of creatures have resistance to poison damage which could make a poison focused character feel very un-impactful in some encounters. This is bypassed nicely by being able to convert poison damage into acid damage.
Toxic touch is intended for out of combat utility
Usually when we think of a feature causing the poisoned condition, we think of it being used in battle to debilitate enemies. Toxic touch can be used this way, though it’s a fairly expensive use of action economy. However, I think it’s more built for utility because of the other effects it causes. Consider shaking hands with a guard and charming them to let you in the keep or putting a guard on high alert to sleep so your less stealthy allies can sneak in. Consider capturing an enemy and enforcing a truth serum on them. I think that this is less for combat and more for utility.
Imbibe poison for buffs
From level 11, you actually benefit from being inflicted with poison. How much this happens may depend on the generosity of your DM. I doubt many poison creatures will target you more than once with these effects. You can also choose to drink poison and be healed.
Sadly, this is less practical and probably less effective than drinking a healing potion, but if you happen to loot some poison, I guess that can be useful and you are able to craft your own poison.
I’d mostly consider these ribbon effects, but poison immunity is quite nice.
Bad blood!
At level 11, you also damage creatures that hit you with melee attacks. Monks tend to prefer being evasive, but there’s no stopping some creatures hitting you, and when they do, they’ll be damaged a bit. This is especially nasty against multi-attack creatures as there’s no limit on damage here (other than being killed). Interestingly, you don’t even have to be conscious for this so if an enemy tries to finish you off once you’ve been knocked to 0HP, they might still take damage and even die themselves (though this would be incredibly rare).
Spam hallucinogenic breath
Hallucinogenic breath is an enhanced attack. It has range, deals more damage and causes frightened and for creatures to run from you which will occupy their action. This is pretty nice for just 2 focus points and at level 17, you have 17 focus points every single rest! That’s plenty for you to be spamming hallucinogenic breath, envenom weapon and flurry of blows each turn on many turns (perhaps even with stunning strike thrown in for good measure). That’s a lot of damage and conditions. Just make sure you fit in those short rests between encounters.
Verdict
The warrior of venom is quite a high damage monk, especially if you’ve got the focus points and enough rests to make this work. This is perhaps balanced out by restricting short rests between encounters, but often, this will be an option. I do wonder if they’ll balance this a little further. There’s some nice utility for interrogations and stealth here too and lots of unique ways to use this monk making it quite different from other subclasses.
The theme is tricky though. Some may revel in a poison monk, but it feels a bit icky to me. Even when I do want to play something villainous, I generally don’t want them to be icky, but perhaps that’s just me.
5/5
Primordial patron warlock
What are they?
Warlocks that make a pact with a primordial being of the elemental planes receiving their own elemental powers.
Are they any good?
Elemental node for crowds and damage build up
Elemental node kind of needs a turn for build up as it needs an action to conjure up and deals low damage with a small radius. It becomes much more useful on subsequent turns by moving into spaces where creatures are and trying to affect as many creatures as possible. If you can affect 3 creatures this way, that’s 3d6 damage with your bonus action which is handy. There’s no concentration cost either. But that first turn build up is a slight pain.
Or you can use your node for protection
Once you hit level 6 though, you’ll want to think very carefully about the movement of yourself and your node. It grants a bonus to AC equal to your charisma modifier which is a lot! And with the damage it causes, may be enough to discourage enemies from attacking you in melee too. But you have to be within its radius which can be tricky if it’s zipping off damaging enemies. It can also act as a teleportation location too.
You can mix and match tactics here, firing ranged salvos while it zips around damaging enemies before switching into defensive or teleportation mode when enemies get close. You can even use it to close down enemies in turn 1 by casting it 60ft away, using your bonus action to teleport to it, then moving your movement speed giving you 90ft+ of movement.
Elemental spells requires a bit of a trade off and swapping
Water spells are probably the weakest of the list, but cold damage is quite good as it’s rarely resisted. Thunder is also rarely resisted though and has a much better spell list. Having said this, there is a bit of a consideration over your level and pact magic. Because pact magic casts spells at the highest possible level, you want spells that scale well. As an example, shatter is good for a level 2 spell, but scales worse than a fireball. If you cast shatter and fireball at level 3, you’ll average 18 damage per target with shatter or 28 damage per target with fireball (which has a bigger radius).
Fortunately, this is accounted for. You can change your spell list when you increase levels so can easily switch to the most suitable spell list for your level.
In fact it is almost all about your node
Your node gets better at higher levels granting a larger radius, a damage type immunity and a pulling mechanism while in your node. It feels like you can go a bit nuts with your node with lots of little benefits. It’s unlike anything I think I’ve seen in a subclass so far and I quite like it. There’s loads of flexibility for different build and play styles too.
Eldritch invocations add some elemental options
I like elemental transmutation. Grab fireball from the fire spell but make the damage type thunder so it’s not being resisted so much. It may push you away from an eldritch blast build though, but good for warlocks with plenty of elemental spells.
Elemental overflow is trickier. You have to use an elemental spell and then get the benefit for a round. but the benefit is just too small. 1d4 damage against melee attacks just isn’t worth forcing your spellcasting down an elemental route I think. It’s not useless, just a bit inconsequential for the cost and frequency.
Verdict
The elemental node gives a really unique playstyle to this subclass that’s really flexible and has a range of benefits that I think will push players towards more considered approaches to gameplay. I think this is a big positive. On top of that, I think it’s quite easy to use even without mastering more advanced tactics.
Is this a villainous subclass though? Perhaps, but no more than any other warlock subclass, and certainly not more than those with fiend, undead or some of the other nasty patrons. Primordials and elementals seem like a relatively neutral bunch to me.
5/5
Summary
I really like the mechanics behind these subclasses. I think there are a bunch of unique ideas that really push you towards new builds and gameplay approaches. From a mechanical point of view, I think we’ve seen a big upgrade in Wizard’s output over the last couple of Unearthed Arcana’s.
When it comes to flavour, I’m a little less sold. The flavour is fine, but I don’t love the idea of roleplaying these overly much. The barbarian maybe feels the most flavourful, but even then, I think the trigger for their powers needs more consideration.
Largely though, I think this is a pretty good effort from the designers and one I’m intrigued by.
