Arcana Unleashed Review

Some of the best and most interesting new gameplay options yet for D&D 5.5e.

At a glance

What to expect from Arcana Unleashed

Contents	Arcana Unleashed	Ravenloft: The Horrors Within	Forge of the Artificer	Heroes of Faerun
Pages	160	288	112	192
Species	0	4	5	0
Classes	0	1 (D&D Beyond only)	1	0
Subclasses	8	7	5	8
Backgrounds	10	4	17	18
Feats	29	11	28	34
Spells	33	0	1	19
Magic items	47	2	9	3
Items	0	0	0	12
Monsters	19	68	25	2
Maps	1	57	1	13
Adventures	1	17	0	0
Edition	5.5e	5.5e	5.5e	5.5e
Publisher	Wizards of the Coast	Wizards of the Coast	Wizards of the Coast	Wizards of the Coast

In the table above, I’ve outlined what you can expect in the book itself and compared it with other 5.5e expansions so you can see how it stacks up.

It actually comes in smaller than average, but definitely delivers in volume on the magical front with more spells and magic items than any of the other expansion. Where it falls short in page count is on lore. While some magical factions and patrons are detailed in the book, the meat of the book is on usable options in games rather than on setting information.

The book also packs a few other things in its pages including:

• 9 magical factions
• 9 bastion facilities (one per faction)
• 6 group patrons
• A brand new mechanic for evolving magic items

It’s $10 cheaper than Ravenloft: The Horrors Within, which is nearly twice the length, continuing the adaptive pricing Wizards have been using for their books.

The real question though, is whether what’s inside is any good…

How good is the content?

Subclasses are a massive step up from the 2014 versions

Of the 8 subclasses in Arcana Unleashed, 6 were refreshed versions of previous releases and 2 were brand new. It gives us:

• Arcana domain cleric
• Arcane archer fighter
• Warrior of the mystic arts monk (new)
• Vestige patron warlock (new)
• Conjurer wizard
• Enchanter wizard
• Necromancer wizard
• Transmuter wizard

I think it’s fair to say that all the returning subclasses badly needed a refresh. The wizard subclasses from the 2014 Player’s Handbook had far too many lacklustre or situational features and felt very much like a rush job to ensure the book crammed in all 8 schools of magic as wizard subclasses. In contrast, these versions feel thoughtful and have some really interesting interactions (especially for the summoner subclasses of the conjurer and necromancer).

It’s not all smooth sailing though. The arcana domain is perhaps a little boring, if functional (though I feel this way about many cleric subclasses). I also feel like the enchanter is only OK. That is the worst of the lot though, and they’re still perfectly servicable. I think the other 6 are all quite interesting options I’d love to try out.

With the new subclasses, they manage to grant something quite different for both the monk and warlock classes. The vestige patron warlock is companion style subclass while the mystic arts monk can cast spells. It may borrow heavily from the eldritch knight, but that formula works and makes the mystic arts monk one of the best and most interesting monk subclasses available.

So yes, I think the subclasses in this book are for the most part, pretty great.

Feats are great, but introduce some power creep

There are 29 feats in total, and unlike with Heroes of Faerun where the feats were a bit average or situational, Arcana Unleashed gives us loads of options that are well worth taking and creates some choice paralysis for players.

Many of the feats amount to granting some kind of boost for a certain school of magic and at times, granting spells from that spell school. Already, this gives loads of options for spellcasters to grab strong options not available on their spell list. Other options will enhance your familiar, make your spellcasting more discrete or allow you to teleport with your movement.

There’s little wasted space here, and while there were a few feats I felt weren’t worthy of being taken, most were for at least some build or another. Many were even great on lots of different builds. It’s definitely a strong bunch of feats.

There is however, an element of power creep. Nothing overpowered or broken, but many of these options do overshadow a lot of other feats available. That’s not necessarily a bad thing. You do want lots of great options, and many Player’s Handbook feats will still get chosen by players, but it is something to be aware of that players using these options wil have a slight advantage over those that don’t.

Spells try something new with mixed results

I need to give the designers some credit. The spells in here are not just slight alterations on existing spells. they genuinely attempt something no other spell has done before. This gives spellcasters more to play with, but with such mixed results, it’s about 50/50 whether you have a decent spell or not.

When they work though, these spells are really satisfying. Battle familiar makes your familiar able to actually join in with combat, summon dinosaur lets you summon dinosaurs (which also happens to be one of the better summons around) and hindsight is a brilliant, investigative spell. Sadly, there are spells like Mordenkainen’s lucuburation which is practically pointless, spirit lantern which is too fiddly and demanding on your action economy and dueling ground which is basically a flavour only spell.

I’m happy enough that we have some good new spells to use, but would have liked a few more to be worth taking.

Backgrounds support a variety of spellcasting builds

I reviewed the backgrounds, comparing against the origin feats, ability scores and skills offered, and most had a place in some build or another. There was just one that landed a completely flatly (the covenant of the grave recruit unfortunately for any necromantic fans). That background just had a bad mix of capabilities.

Everything else worked at least reasonably well and there are even options that will appeal to martials too, like the horizon weaver jumper. As you’d expect, these are mostly geared up for spellcasters though.

Evolving magic item mechanics are easy to use, but perhaps a little underpowered

The one new mechanic in the book comes from evolving magic items. This creates an easy to pick up mechanic for allowing magic items to retain their potency as your players increase in levels. It’s all really easy to pick up and follow. However, when using a formulated set of advancing properties, the result is often underpowered. Not badly so and magic items only hold to a vague amount of balance. It’s also still the case that you get a better item than you had before, but it does dull the appeal a little.

I did also find that the majority of evolving properties were simply sticking a use of a spell onto the magic item. It did feel that perhaps there could be a little more variety on display.

If I’m honest though, amidst all the other things I need to remember while DM’ing, I suspect this is the kind of thing I’d just forget about. I don’t think it solves a major problem in my games, but for those that can remember and bother with it, the mechanics are alright.

Creatures fill some magical gaps and grant tools for dealing with spellcasters

Arcana Unleashed gives loads of tools to arm player spellcasters and make them even better, but it also has a few tools for dealing with them too. For instance, the spellguard is great against spells and can even protect allies from spellcasting (excellent in an anti-magic locale like Amn or a high magic setting too). The Taisus can also drain the highest level spell slots from a creature which could really frustrate the party wizard.

It also resolves some gaps. For instance, the current archmage stat block is very generic, but most archmages are specialists. Arcana Unleashed resolves this with an archmage stat block for every school of magic. There are other high level casters too like the Baelnorn. They’ve also provided stat blocks for living spells and a few other interesting creatures including Venger himself.

These stat blocks are solid and look worthy of inclusion in games, especially higher level campaigns.

We actually get new lore!

Wizards has tended to shy away from giving us anything new in the lore department lately. Even when it has revisited lore, it has tended to stick to rehashing lore as briefly and generically as possible.

However, Arcana Unleashed actually gives us new lore (albeit in bite-sized chunks). We get 9 never before seen magical factions. They also happen to be quite cool, from magical artefact trackers to good necromancers. The lore is actually fun and the patron ideas interesting. The plot hooks continue a trend of being just too barebones and generic, but if we view this lore as inspirational, then it gets a lot right and that’s promising for future books.

Art and design is expectedly strong

We’ve gotten used to excellent art and design from Wizards of the Coast for years now and standards have been consistently high. Information is organised neatly and in a way that is easy to read and artwork embodies the magic on the pages in evocative ways.

Because magic is less of a strong theme than a setting like Eberron and Ravenloft, I actually feel like the art has less of a strong theme to it and preferred the art in both of those books. But this is still strong artwork, if a little less appealing to my tastes.

Verdict

Arcana Unleashed is smaller in scope than something like Ravenloft: The Horrors Within, but what it does, it usually does very well. In fact, you can see the progression of the design team over the last year of releases as they’ve learnt from past mistakes. Mechanics are tighter and more appealing, they’re dipping their toes into writing lore and they’re even giving us proper adventures to run straight from the book rather than just feeding plot hooks and barebones, generic one pagers.

For this reason, this is actually a strong outing in my opinion, even if thematically, I was far more excited for the Eberron and Ravenloft releases we’ve had recently. Yes, there’s some slight power creep, but I think the mechanics would be less fun without it. There are also some quite underwhelming spells, but at least they’re unique, and when they do get those right, they give something interesting and fun.

Arcana Unleashed is not a perfect book (those don’t exist), it’s also more limited in scope than many others. But it is strongly written, and has careful and considered mechanics that actually make you want to buy the book so you can do new and interesting things in your games and this is the most important part. For this, it gets a nearly top score despite some minor blemishes.

4.5/5

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