Just a shout out to the trident, which wasn't discussed. As a thrown weapon with the Topple property, this is fantastically potent against flying enemies. At 7th level, you can give the Topple property to the longbow, which makes attacks on the party from the air pretty futile.
You are right, but I just want more from an Epic Boon. I want stupid anime crap. Barbs like it because Rage extends their HP pool anyway, but I'm still personally not too keen. Also they shouldn't call it Recovery, that says to me that you get HP regen or a boost to your healing magic or something, not that you survive after dropping to 1/functionally just have +50% HP.
@@the_twig131 one other option they might be considering is moving Exhaustion to the new DMG and have it as an optional rule. They removed Exhaustion from the Bezerker Barbarian, which I think is the only PHB Sub Class that requires it.
They should have added "Shield bash- Make a STR based attack with your bonus action causing 1D4 bludgeoning damage" as a weapon mastery or combat style.
Sword and Board definitely needs an upgrade. I'm not sure that Weapon Masteries is the place for it, but it needs something. May be they could add something like a shield boss or a spiked shield as a weapon with a property like that. Either way, Flex needs a bit of a boost.
Graze is great with Mage Slayer. 3 attacks? 3 guaranteed disadv concentration saves, even if you "miss." It's like Half on Save but for weapon attacks.
The concentration thing is decent, but it's honestly considerably less than half on save when you take the multitude of ways of boosting weapon damage into account, and you miss weapon attacks far less than enemies succeed on saves, especially now that GWM doesn't have -5. I do think that Graze is probably a fairly decent option for a Fighter's second Mastery though.
Looking at your chart of which weapons meet which prerequisites, I believe the Whip also qualifies for Topple, as it has the Reach property. Topple's prerequisites are "Heavy, Reach, or Versatile Property". That makes the Whip a potential "trip at range" weapon, appropriately enough.
The versatile mastery should boost your AC by 1. That's the strength of going sword and board or using a versatile weapon in two hands. The +1 damage is an insult.
+1 damage is ridiculously poor, yeah. Not sure that +AC is the way to go though, because damage is the main thing that sword and board lacks. Maybe they could make something like a shield boss item which allows you to BA shield bash, and then tern the versatile mastery into something like a disarm attack.
I honestly hope Ranger/Paladin get at least 2 weapon masteries, hopefully 3. Ranger is *the* dual wielder class and having to take a feat just to make it work would be just criminal, and they want the ability to rock a solid ranged weapon. I'd even argue give Barbarian and fighter another mastery in the later levels ngl, just to let them compete better with caster versatility. And will we ever see the blowgun be viable? Like honestly, why is it a martial weapon? Why is it 10GP? Why does it do 1 damage?
I definitely remember them saying something like "other, previously playtested classes will receive weapon Masteries" in one of the interviews. Not a direct quote, and I may be making that up entirely, but I think it would be stupid for them not to get masteries.
@the_twig I could see maybe the ranger and paladin getting access to 1 or 2 masteries, or the same amount as martials but restricted to ranged and melee weapons respectivly
Maybe versatile needs to be updated overall. The one damage die increase doesn't mean much and it would be nice to have a version of it that encourages holding the sword with one hand and having the other hand empty. The new equipping and unequiping rules mean you don't really need a free hand anymore to initiate a grapple. You can just unequip your shield as part of the attack. Now the only one handed swordsmen have a spellfocus in their other hand.
Versatile is kind of a nothing property, yeah. There's essentially no reason why you would pick a versatile weapon over a heavy weapon or another one-handed weapon which isn't versatile. As for unequipping shields, you can't do that because shields aren't weapons. Doffing a shield still requires an action.
I love the weird things you get to do with weapon juggling. I hope the insane buff the wizard got in this playtest don’t get published, otherwise there won’t be any point in trying out the Martials’ fun new toys.
By insane buff I'm assuming you mean Modify Spell and Create Spell. It seems to me that they are trying to balance Create Spell with the gold cost of 1050 per spell level, which is big, but there's literally no guidance as to how much gold you should give out so it's incredibly variable between campaigns. In the campaigns I run, you'd not be able to use it very often at all, but in other campaigns, and especially on things like westmarches, GP is simply not an issue. As for Modify, that really needs to have the ritual tag removed. After they've done that, I think it should also probably increase the modified spell's level. I'll talk a lot more about Modify when I cover the Wizard, but there's some crazy stuff you can do with it, especially regarding the Targets effect. I also think that it kind of eats into Metamagic a bit. A lot of the effects are fairly similar.
Yep, that's right. In the example I used a handaxe and a dagger, which are two different weapons, although you could also do the same by wielding two different daggers or whatever. You don't need to have the weapons in different hands though, you can use one of them, and then use a different one in the same hand.
Yeah, this is definitely true. There's a lot of ways to boost the damage, I just think that it's likely not that useful in big fights, which is when you'd want to make the most out of your mastery. As you level up, you get more and more masteries though, so I think having a cleave weapon as a backup isn't a terrible idea.
Holy shit, the more I think about the new "weapon juggling" rules, the more I hate them. The only thing martials need now is some clown music and the picture is complete. On the other hand, I actually quite dislike how they've implemented the masteries. There was already an implementation that was quite good. It was called...well, Slasher, Crusher, Piercer (to a degree). You can't just copy/paste the Critical Weapon Specialization from Pathfinder basically and slap it on and call it a day. Also, cantrip-like effects usually only work once per turn, if not once on your turn only. Being able to do them over and over just makes it quite wild with some (like push and topple). I think, if they wanted to make it actually good, they should've just stuck to the Crusher/Slasher/Piercer formula and just made a few more. Also, for the love of god, I know I said it in the beginning, but remove weapon juggling. It is terrible mechanically and flavor-wise (except on rare cases). Just bake it into the Attack Action that you can draw one weapon before the action, two if you have the feat. There, fixed. The thrown weapon thing is fine, at our tables we've always played it like that.
So there was a UA years ago (2016 by the looks of it) simply called Feats. I can't actually find it any more, since WotC seem to have removed everything before 2020 from their website, but it had things like a feat for the flail and a feat for the spear. They never did anything with it though. I remember that the Flail feat let you just ignore shields entirely because you could swing your flail around it. As for Juggling, I think that it was intended to be a fix to both Two Weapon Fighting and Thrown weapons. Given that they're updating the actual properties though, they could probably just move it into there. I personally like Juggling, because it's micromanagy, which I find fun, but I entirely understand why people dislike it.
I tend to ignore things which aren't in the actual playtests. I know that they've said everything is backwards compatible, but I think that until we get something explaining exactly how old features tie in, it's best to ignore them for the purposes of analysing the playtests.
Lance also works with the Dual Wielder feat as a one-handed weapon while you’re mounted. If you’re a 7th level fighter, you can switch the Lance’s Mastery out for Cleave and wield a scimitar or other Nick weapon in the offhand, you can make 4 attacks with your action, 2 more with an action surge, and 1 more with a BA attack from PAM or GWM, all with advantage potentially if you take Mounted Combatant.
@@shadow-faye Unless mounted. In which case, it's 1-handed. And fortunately, the updated Polearm Master applies to any weapon with both Heavy and Reach, which the Lance now has, making it eligible for a 1-handed Polearm Master bonus attack and Great Weapon Master. That said, the question will become at what AC with and without advantage on attacks will players prefer to Nick throw a Handaxe and Dagger and then Extra Attack Lance with Bonus Action PAM+GWM, and when will you rather just attack twice with your Lance+GWM and then PAM+GWM. Because 1d4+1d6+10 is outperformed by 1d10+15 if you have a high enough chance to hit. Without doing any math, I'd expect advantage to usually be enough to make the Lance preferable over the dual handaxe+dagger Nick. You'd expect something like 8.2 DPR out of the GWM Lance but 11.5 or so (loosely account for Vex) out of the Nick combo. This is assuming 65% chance to hit at-level enemies. But with advantage, suddenly the Lance jumps to almost 10.25 and the Nick combo only bumps up to about 9.5. So any enemies with an AC even a couple points below average could easily make it preferable when combined with something like Bless. So, I really like this, because it raises the floor of damage without pushing the ceiling too much, and reliability is valuable.
I think while the old exhaustion rules definitely needed tweaking, the proposed bookkeeping-intensive, overly granular bland numerical modifier version was not an improvement for D&D and it was incoherent with the general style of the game where many don’t track water and food rations either. Imho, exhaustion should come in occasionally, be narratively meaningful, and then get out of the way again quickly in a game like D&D. I’m not a fan of what effectively meant “you slept on a pea last night so you’re ever so slightly slightly worse at everything for the rest of the day!” or “Half your brain got sucked out by a monster today, but after a good night’s sleep your INT will be back to normal. You will only be slightly less tired, though….”
That seems like a fair complaint to me. Having a variant rule could be a good way of doing exhaustion, then people can decide whether they want their game to be more heroic fantasy where everything is good after a short nap, or more gritty fantasy where you get worn down over time. The current gritty realism rules suck.
@@the_twig131 Yeah, the heroic ultra-magic fantasy sits very deeply in the systems of 5e, so it's tough to switch to gritty realism with just a few rules changes, you'd have to start banning spells etc. I agree it is curious they removed the exhaustion rules, because I think I stumbled upon someone sharing my opinion exactly once on twitter, while most felt positively about the changes. I do hope they give tweaking the original rules a try, make them less punishing from the get-go and so they don't discourage participating in play, but are narratively more meaningful than "here's a -1 to everything!"
I think you missed a HUGE thing about the net. It replaces only one attack. So if you have extra attack you can; throw the net with your first attack (if they fail they are restrained) then all your subsequent attacks will be at advantage because they are restrained, plus every other attack from your buddies will be ALSO MADE AT ADVANTAGE. If the creature wants to get out of the net they have to either use a full action to make a strength check or attack the net at disadvantage. First option is not to try to get out of the net. All their attacks are made at disadvantage and all attacks at them are at advantage. Second option is pretty easy to get out of the net at a DC 10 but that is one full action that they aren't attacking you or casting a spell. Third option seems pretty easy just roll a 16 on an attack. Well the first attack will be at disadvantage regardless of the attack destroys the net. There is a chance they can miss that first attack.
bouneary stealed sir'fetchd big leek i'm sure rogues will love this wapon changes, but i thing there was a little item left out of this discussion that's the adition of guns. (also, i'm not that well updated but does the revised rogue for odnd have RAW innate acces to the heavy crossbow and the musquet?)
No, Rogues only have simple weapons and martial weapons with finesse. You would need to multiclass, but I think that Fighter 1 is really good on Rogue in this playtest. As for guns, there's just not much to say really, the loading property means that they just aren't very good.
I think they might get one at level 2 when they get their Fighting Styles, and then more at a slower pace. They're half casters, so it makes sense for them to also be half martials.
Would the weapon juggling actually work? It seems to me that you grant yourself an extra draw weapon to draw the lance at the end. You use the normal equip/unequip at the start, get two extra draws for throwing two weapons, but where does the last draw come from?
So you get one draw/stow for each attack. That means if you have extra attack, you get two draws/stows. That character actually had 3 attacks, so they even had an extra one that they didn't use Stow 1 from the first attack to stow lance Draw from thrown to draw handaxe Draw from thrown to draw dagger Draw 2 from Nick attack to draw lance Draw 3 from Extra Attack unused.
Its interesting how graze synergizes with shooting something at your long range distance. Getting disadvantage from shooting something super far away isnt as impactful. If you want to play a sniper it becomes a good option.
Unfortunately, Graze requires a heavy, melee weapon. You can't put it on any ranged weapons. The only real use for Graze in my opinion is as a secondary option for 13th level Fighters. They could have something like Push/Graze, so something happens whether they hit or miss.
Also as I read cleave it's not splitting your attack. It is giving you another attack on a thing that is with in 5 feet of that creature. So to me it seems like if you have extra attack you can make two on one creature and two on a different creature that is 5 feet from the other.
Sword and Board definitely needs more damage. It's the best in terms of just straight AC, but has absolutely nothing for damage options, and Flex currently doesn't help even close to enough.
glad im not the only one who feels that Graze and Flex are weak, the new mastery properties could definitely use some rebalancing but i like the overall idea of them
I don't see how Graze is weak, imho. Half on save is what makes blast spells have 75% of their efficacy, and Graze is nearly Half on Save for weapon damage, because 6.5 is only 1.5 more than 5. It also guarantees a DC10 concentration save on enemy casters for every attack, even if you miss all of them.
@Peder W, a level 17* fighter with 4 attacks and an assumed 60% chance to hit is adding 8 dpr. That’s quite a lot actually. That being said, giving up topple or some other juicy property is tough.
Enemies don't like to stand next to each other. Especially once the DM finds out that you get free damage from it. This is the same reason why Whirlwind from the Hunter Ranger is bad. Edit: Whoops, I was thinking of Cleave. Ignore me.
I like your analysis a lot and hope you do more. I think your way to skeptical on graze, Im more skeptical than most but ive seen plenty of people show that its a considerable DPR boost. Also flex is bad but i do think ( particularly since i think we will see changes to the weapon juggling rules) Flex spear will be good as a backup thrown weapon option.
I think Graze is only really a worthwhile (primary) option at very low levels. At higher levels you're adding magic weapons, additional dice, and other stuff, AND you have to give up Push or Topple to get Graze. If you look at a 20th level Fighter using a +3 Graze PAM weapon to make 5 attacks vs 20 AC (which is the median for enemies of CR 20+), Graze only adds 5.99 (10.54%) damage, and only 1.10 (1.73%) if you have advantage. I do think it's a reasonable option for the Fighter to put on their weapon when they get to add two effects though.
@@the_twig131 I feel similarly, as I said more skeptical than some, but do think the caveat that many players may not have such gear has to be said. As for the alternatives i think topple and push both have downsides. Push requires you to spend movement to keep applying and topple makes your ranged fighters have to shoot at disadvantage. I can see a lot of scenarios where the safer option of graze would be reasonable around mid level play where most dnd is done,
Hej guys, here is a copy/paste of my survey comments to WoTC, what do you think? Hej guys, First of all, I would like to thank you for making an attempt to provide more tactical options to fighters and barbarians and to try to add specific effects to each single weapon. These are definitely 2 steps in the right direction but it feels that we are still far away from providing martial classes a real set of tactical tools on the battlefield. I love D&D martial classes and I would like you to consider the following feedback: 1) WEAPON MASTERIES: Add weapon masteries to shields - make the choice of specific type of shield something significant 2) WEAPON MASTERIES: Add armor masteries to make the choice more impactful 3) WEAPON MASTERIES: Design another weapon mastery for Versatile weapon, the current design is underpowered and tactically uninteresting 4) WEAPON MASTERIES: Nerf the VEX weapon mastery, this is too strong compared to the other weapon masteries 5) BATTLEMASTER MANEUVERS FOR ALL MARTIAL CLASSES - ABOVE ALL, PLEASE: - Give battlemaster maneuvers to all martial (Barbarian, Fighter, Monk, Ranger, Rogue & Paladin) classes. There are so many great examples of 5e compatible books (ex: www.levelup5e.com/) or homebrew (www.gmbinder.com/profile/laserllama). "Power balance-wise" compared to casters, this should be ok given the nerfs of the Great Weapon Master & Sharpshooter feats. This would drastically increase the tactical options given to martial classes. The weapon masteries can be kept (see below point 6) but alone they do not add a massive amount of tactical options, unless your character carries a massive bag of different weapons, which at least for me does not sound thematically appealing as I love the idea of a character growing in power with a specific weapon. In the event, my character would only have 1 melee weapon, the tactical choices offered by 1 melee weapon are very limited and extremely repetitive. - There are several ways to make this introduction, ex: a) different set of maneuvers per martial class b) different number of superiority dice per martial class c) different types of superiority dice per martial class d) introduce maneuver increasing in power when a martial reaches a certain level etc... 6) WEAPON MASTERIES & BATTLEMASTER MANEUVERS: In the event all martial classes would get battlemaster maneuvers It does not mean weapon masteries should be removed, I believe this is something interesting when making an impactful choice between weapons and potentially for shields and armors - weapon masteries could potentially synergize with new battlemaster maneuvers 7) NEW COMBAT ACTIONS: ex: -5 to attack roll could be introduced as a standard combat action, I love the idea of having to think twice before trying to make a powerful melee move. I am not sure where should the extra damage should lie for a standard combat action, maybe +1d8? or maybe it could potentially scale with the proficiency bonus? Keep up the good work and have fun designing the best possible martial classes for the world's most famous TTRPG!
I like net change. Not needing the quick toss maneuver to be remotely action efficient is really good and loosing the interactions it had with weapon attack features don't really matter because it's more of an anti-flyer gotcha. Flyers might be a bad target because of often being dex heavy but not needing a feat (or smoke trick) to remove disadvantage more than makes up for it. The size clause should be a "2 over" rather than be hardcoded to huge for enlarge purposes but that's an easy rule call to make. The lance nerf was needed, as much as I loved the idea of abusing it, it really was an extremely easy weapon to abuse. The weapon masteries are really cool as options. And Topple really rounds up the efficiency of a grappler build pulling off the prone+grappled combo. In fact, it's the best tool for it I've seen so far. But I'm getting worried that the "simple" action economy of 5e continues to be patched with more and more once per turn effects that are effectively conditional free actions. Really like the weapon juggling tech but I also don't think it will be that relevant simply because of resistance to non magic weapons and throwables needing to be recovered. Overall these changes are the best I've seen so far. They feel a bit pointless of trying to hack the system into being something it is not supposed to be but they would make returning to the game something tolerable when I thought I'd pretty much seen everything it had to offer.
New net is definitely better. A soft coded size limit like you suggested would be an improvement though, and we do need to wait until we see interaction rules before we can really work out how easy they are to use. I remember that in one of the older interviews they mentioned that they hadn't put Interact with an Object in yet because they weren't sure what to do with it. Personally, I think that the lance was actually buffed, or at worst, given a sidegrade. Having PAM and Topple available, on top of being one-handed while mounted, is extremely good. I like Weapon Masteries a lot, but you are right, there's a lot of things to keep track of now. They do also give unarmed strikes a massive kick down. I think that's probably why they've held back the Monk, they're trying to work out how they can compete with the Weapon Masteries. I am really, really hoping that they get rid of non-magical resistance. In Druid and Paladin there were a few ways to change your damage type away from B/P/S, where previously it just said that the attacks were considered magical. As for recovering the weapons, it costs 7 GP for a set. It's not exactly a big investment.
@@the_twig131 The lance nerf doesn't feel like a nerf because it's bringing together the two extremes of the weapon. As a two-hander, it was the worst of the bunch because it didn't qualify for either PM or GWM. While in a mounted build it was TWF with the biggest damage die available.
Golfclub Fighters... bleh If things aren't cleaned up, playing a Fighter is going to be a nightmate to keep track of for DMs and players alike. How about we get some straight forward, but good upgrades to martial DPR and utility to make them more competitive with casters?
I'm glad to see martials get a DPR go up but I'd rather they didn't have to do tech as obscure, nonintuitive, and silly as weapon juggling. And also. The 7 DPR bonus from the previous best weapon set up is still not enough. And I'd rather that *all* martials got a DPR boost of at least 7, not just pam-thrown weapons build. Ideally, a DPR boost of twice that at level 5 if you really want to compete with casters
You have to be careful, though. The caster's strength isn't purely in damage. Especially when you go higher levels, martials do outdamage casters unless you're not building for damage. The strength of casters is being able to shit down encounters with ridiculous spells without even needing to do damage. We don't need martials on the same level, cause then combat will be actual cancer. We need casters brought down a peg so that they can't just handwave an encounter away.
So in terms of damage, the things that set martials and casters apart are that casters have AoE, and they also use spell slots. A Fighter can just do this stuff all day, and that would actually make them fantastic, if people played the game in the way that it was balanced. For some god forsaken reason, 5E is balanced for 8 encounters per day. That doesn't mean 8 combats, social encounters count towards the number too, but it does mean significantly more daily combat than anyone I know plays with. In that scenario, the Wizard only has two Fireballs per day, they can't use them on every fight. No one plays like that though, so they really just need to nerf spells big time. Also, casters have spells like Web and Wall of Force which are designed more for shutdown than damage. That's very hard for a Fighter to replicate.
about the Exhaustion change, it night be that they going back the an earlier draft, since the previous UA they changed it from Exhaustion to Exhausted[condition] and the changelog mentions the condition if i am right, its crap wording and should have been explained
Don't you need to have a light weapon equipped in both hands to get the light weapon extra attack? I wouldnt allow the lance, axe, dagger weird combo. Its just crazy
You do need to have a light weapon in both hands. You’d go hand axe (light), dagger (Light, nick). However, it wouldn’t work with a lance because a lance isn’t a polearm and doesn’t qualify for the Polearm Mastery Bonus attack. It’s a Great Weapon, so it would qualify for GWM, but not not a polearm.
As of this UA, the lance DOES qualify for Polearm Master. Polearm Master now says that the weapon must be heavy and reach, it no longer has that list of specific weapons that it works with. This also means that spears and quarterstaffs no longer qualify for PAM.
Nick isn't really the criminal here, it's probably Equipping and Unequipping Weapons. I personally really like the micromanagy aspects of weapon juggling, but a lot of people don't.
I read the "you can draw that weapon as part of the attack" portion of the Thrown property as a reiteration of the "You can either equip or unequip one weapon when you make an attack as part of this action" rule in the ATTACK [ACTION] glossary, I wonder if that was the intention or if your interpretation was the intention. Either way, it should be cleared up. They have this kind of 'reiteration' at least one other time in the new UA, such as Quickened Spell's casting two spells in one turn clarification. Something like "as per [Rule X]" could be included at the end of these statements to avoid double diping.
I actually hope they keep Topple as is. Imagine how badass it'd feel to run up to a Giant and take out their legs out from under them. The only thing I don't get is why it's a Con save. I feel like Str to hold your ground or Dex to catch yourself would make more sense
I think it's a con save because it's on a generic hit. So it's less a shove or trip, and more of a smashed knee or stubbed toe situation. You're not falling over because you lost your balance, you're falling over because "Ow. That really hurt".
@@the_twig131 It seems a lil weird at first yeah. It's described as them "channeling primal power" so I assume it's meant to be like primal instincts like heightened strength, senses etc. Mechanically I really like it. It allows for Barbarians to have better utility without having to have high ability scores in abilities they wouldn't normally be using. Plus you can be John Cena while raging
Your explanation at 16:39 is completely incorrect. 1. you attack with the lance and unequip as part of the attack action, 2 you attack with a thrown light weapon as part of the same attack using the handaxe. so far so goo. That ends attack 1 as you cannot use NICK to get another attack with the light feature as NICK says this can only occur once. After this you are off the rails and just wrong.
You do not attack with the lance first, your first attack is with the handaxe. Here's a step by step breakdown: Attack 1 - Equipping and Unequipping Weapons: Unequip Lance - Thrown Property: Equip Handaxe - Attack with Handaxe Light attack - Thrown Property: Equip Dagger - Nick: Attack with Dagger (no BA required) - Equipping and Unequipping Weapons: Equip Lance Attack 2 - Attack with Lance Bonus Action -Polearm Master: Attack with Lance
@@the_twig131 Thank you for clarifying. Yes under this it does work due to synergies with thrown and nick. One change in this particular UA is the wording of the light property now does not require that the light weapon be in the other hand to trigger but instead be a different light weapon. I missed that until your video. One other note it appears that cleave can triggers off turn (OA) where as nick cannot. Your thoughts on that?
You're right, Cleave can trigger on reactions too. I think that this is probably even less common than normal, although it does depend on how your DM runs monsters. The enemies have to be within 5 ft of each other, and while moving it's really easy to just walk around your allies to prevent it. Also Disengage is a thing. It's a niche for Cleave, but I still don't think it's great.
@@hircenedaelen Reflect what an exhausted character is like. If I asked you if skipping on 5 days of sleep would only make you 25% worse at a spelling bee or would it keep you bedridden and delirious and unable to do much, which one sounds like it describes which Exhaustion mechanic?
@Matis Krawiec OK i see what you mean, but exhaustion is very rarly actually caused by missing sleep, its usually by other game or monster mechanics and for those i feel 10 level System is more appropriate
Not a fan of the weapon juggling. in my opinion, it feels like a circus sideshow and isn't fit for most character styles. Wizards just can't make characters who adventure and fight for a living feasible in a fantasy setting.
I like it because it's micromanagy, but I completely understand that it's a turnoff for many people in moth mechanics and thematics. I think that it probably came about as an attempt to fix both two-weapon fighting and thrown weapons, but they're changing the properties now, so they may axe the equipping and unequipping weapons section, or at least make it considerably less powerful.
@@Mr_Maiq_The_Liar One D&D human fighter gets 2 feats are 1st 1 at 4th And one at 5th So for the build in the video it goes 1st level: Bonus fighting style 4th level Polearm master 5th level great weapon master
My main issue with the 6 stages was how random the effects were. It wasn't intuitive. The 10 stages were much easier to understand for a beginner, and so I think that even though it was less thematic, it was better.
@@the_twig131 I completely agree with this. This is why I (unfortunately :) ) think the 6 stages will inevitably go and the 10 stages of penalties will remain. Maybe the 10 stages should be just 6 stages. Giving a -5 ft speed on top of the -1 penalty to rolls and saves... and then at 6 stages your speed would be 0. and one more (stage 7) would kill you.
Yeah, I think it's really good. Flex is the big one that needs cleaning up, that is just not even close, and I think Topple needs a bit of straightening up to make it more fluid, rather than requiring a save on every single hit.
@@the_twig131 ya. Maybe add your pro. To damage or if you use 2 hands add double your str mod instead. Topple could be useing a bonus action maybe to do it.
I prefer the 6 stages of exhaustion. The new system makes it too messy to keep track of, especially it a pc uses an ability recklessly and adds up the number. Soon a pc will have a 6 to 8 in exhaustion and be in extreme cold or heat before realizing they have to rest for a tenday just to recover. Or encourage a party to continue without a long rest because a penalty of 1 is nothing and they’ll recover the during the next long rest. To keep a player from forgetting or cheating, it’s one more thing the DM has to track for every single player at the table. The 6 levels of exhaustion pack more weight and a pc will make sure to rest.
Honestly, I don't get that at all. In 6 stage, you have to write down a number, refer to a table, and that table then tells you that you arbitrarily have disadvantage on ability checks and your speed is halved. In 10 stage, you write down a number, and then every time you roll a d20 or tell the DM your DC you subtract that number. You don't get to Exhaustion 8 without realising. -8 on every roll is absolutely punishing. That turns a 60% chance to hit into a 20% chance. The 16 you just rolled is now an 8. You will notice. In both cases the player could 'cheat' by not halving their speed or by not subtracting the number. If you don't trust your players, you have to keep track no matter what system you use. If you don't trust your players though, I'd seriously question why you're allowing them to play like that.
Just a shout out to the trident, which wasn't discussed. As a thrown weapon with the Topple property, this is fantastically potent against flying enemies. At 7th level, you can give the Topple property to the longbow, which makes attacks on the party from the air pretty futile.
I actually completely forgot to look for ranged Topple options, nice catch.
Gotta disagree about the epic boon of recovery, the Last Stand feature effectively increases your max HP by 50%, that’s pretty huge
I came to say exactly this. Taking it on all my fighters and barbarians.
You are right, but I just want more from an Epic Boon. I want stupid anime crap. Barbs like it because Rage extends their HP pool anyway, but I'm still personally not too keen. Also they shouldn't call it Recovery, that says to me that you get HP regen or a boost to your healing magic or something, not that you survive after dropping to 1/functionally just have +50% HP.
@@sillvvasensei that's a lot of level 20 games
I honestly just wait for your breakdowns to understand the UA. Fantastic as always!
I was surprised on the Exhaustion removal as well. Let's hope they are just tweaking the new one and not returning to the old one.
Yeah, I really hope so. New Exhaustion was much better.
@@the_twig131 one other option they might be considering is moving Exhaustion to the new DMG and have it as an optional rule. They removed Exhaustion from the Bezerker Barbarian, which I think is the only PHB Sub Class that requires it.
They should have added "Shield bash- Make a STR based attack with your bonus action causing 1D4 bludgeoning damage" as a weapon mastery or combat style.
That's not a bad idea. I always thought it would make sense to have something like this with the shield master feat.
Sword and Board definitely needs an upgrade. I'm not sure that Weapon Masteries is the place for it, but it needs something. May be they could add something like a shield boss or a spiked shield as a weapon with a property like that.
Either way, Flex needs a bit of a boost.
Graze is great with Mage Slayer. 3 attacks? 3 guaranteed disadv concentration saves, even if you "miss."
It's like Half on Save but for weapon attacks.
Interesting point! It does say "when you damage" and not "when you hit".
The concentration thing is decent, but it's honestly considerably less than half on save when you take the multitude of ways of boosting weapon damage into account, and you miss weapon attacks far less than enemies succeed on saves, especially now that GWM doesn't have -5.
I do think that Graze is probably a fairly decent option for a Fighter's second Mastery though.
Looking at your chart of which weapons meet which prerequisites, I believe the Whip also qualifies for Topple, as it has the Reach property. Topple's prerequisites are "Heavy, Reach, or Versatile Property". That makes the Whip a potential "trip at range" weapon, appropriately enough.
Yeah, I accidentally put it on the hand crossbow instead of the whip.
The versatile mastery should boost your AC by 1. That's the strength of going sword and board or using a versatile weapon in two hands. The +1 damage is an insult.
That's... exactly what it does? With the mastery, you can equip a shield and still get the good damage. That's +1 AC.
2d10 dual wielding at level 1 with dual wielder feat as a variant human/custom lineage with two weapon fighting style sounds good to me.
@@tokeivo +2 right?
+1 damage is ridiculously poor, yeah. Not sure that +AC is the way to go though, because damage is the main thing that sword and board lacks. Maybe they could make something like a shield boss item which allows you to BA shield bash, and then tern the versatile mastery into something like a disarm attack.
@PhantasySeiba the new Dual Wielder feat requires 4th level, and only one of your weapons can be non-light.
I honestly hope Ranger/Paladin get at least 2 weapon masteries, hopefully 3. Ranger is *the* dual wielder class and having to take a feat just to make it work would be just criminal, and they want the ability to rock a solid ranged weapon. I'd even argue give Barbarian and fighter another mastery in the later levels ngl, just to let them compete better with caster versatility.
And will we ever see the blowgun be viable? Like honestly, why is it a martial weapon? Why is it 10GP? Why does it do 1 damage?
My suspicion is they'll make the feat "Warrior only" and so Paladin and Ranger can get it via a feat, but that would be a mistake.
I've honestly never thought of rangers as duel wielders that spot went to rouges
I definitely remember them saying something like "other, previously playtested classes will receive weapon Masteries" in one of the interviews. Not a direct quote, and I may be making that up entirely, but I think it would be stupid for them not to get masteries.
@@the_twig131 Looking back through the weapon mastery video, he says "Monk and others" so yeah, I'm a lot more hopeful now.
@the_twig I could see maybe the ranger and paladin getting access to 1 or 2 masteries, or the same amount as martials but restricted to ranged and melee weapons respectivly
The more I hear about weapon juggling, the more I hate it...
Maybe versatile needs to be updated overall. The one damage die increase doesn't mean much and it would be nice to have a version of it that encourages holding the sword with one hand and having the other hand empty. The new equipping and unequiping rules mean you don't really need a free hand anymore to initiate a grapple. You can just unequip your shield as part of the attack. Now the only one handed swordsmen have a spellfocus in their other hand.
Versatile is kind of a nothing property, yeah. There's essentially no reason why you would pick a versatile weapon over a heavy weapon or another one-handed weapon which isn't versatile.
As for unequipping shields, you can't do that because shields aren't weapons. Doffing a shield still requires an action.
I love the weird things you get to do with weapon juggling. I hope the insane buff the wizard got in this playtest don’t get published, otherwise there won’t be any point in trying out the Martials’ fun new toys.
By insane buff I'm assuming you mean Modify Spell and Create Spell. It seems to me that they are trying to balance Create Spell with the gold cost of 1050 per spell level, which is big, but there's literally no guidance as to how much gold you should give out so it's incredibly variable between campaigns. In the campaigns I run, you'd not be able to use it very often at all, but in other campaigns, and especially on things like westmarches, GP is simply not an issue.
As for Modify, that really needs to have the ritual tag removed. After they've done that, I think it should also probably increase the modified spell's level. I'll talk a lot more about Modify when I cover the Wizard, but there's some crazy stuff you can do with it, especially regarding the Targets effect. I also think that it kind of eats into Metamagic a bit. A lot of the effects are fairly similar.
Nick does not change the requirement that the attacks must be made with two different light weapons.
Yep, that's right. In the example I used a handaxe and a dagger, which are two different weapons, although you could also do the same by wielding two different daggers or whatever. You don't need to have the weapons in different hands though, you can use one of them, and then use a different one in the same hand.
Cleave also lets you add other bonuses like rage and magic weapon.
Yeah, this is definitely true. There's a lot of ways to boost the damage, I just think that it's likely not that useful in big fights, which is when you'd want to make the most out of your mastery. As you level up, you get more and more masteries though, so I think having a cleave weapon as a backup isn't a terrible idea.
@@the_twig131 I can see it on a Giant Barbarian. Throw one enemy at another, then run up and cleave them both.
Holy shit, the more I think about the new "weapon juggling" rules, the more I hate them. The only thing martials need now is some clown music and the picture is complete.
On the other hand, I actually quite dislike how they've implemented the masteries. There was already an implementation that was quite good. It was called...well, Slasher, Crusher, Piercer (to a degree). You can't just copy/paste the Critical Weapon Specialization from Pathfinder basically and slap it on and call it a day. Also, cantrip-like effects usually only work once per turn, if not once on your turn only. Being able to do them over and over just makes it quite wild with some (like push and topple). I think, if they wanted to make it actually good, they should've just stuck to the Crusher/Slasher/Piercer formula and just made a few more.
Also, for the love of god, I know I said it in the beginning, but remove weapon juggling. It is terrible mechanically and flavor-wise (except on rare cases). Just bake it into the Attack Action that you can draw one weapon before the action, two if you have the feat. There, fixed. The thrown weapon thing is fine, at our tables we've always played it like that.
It's kinda wild the amount of things they have stolen direct from Pathfinder 2
So there was a UA years ago (2016 by the looks of it) simply called Feats. I can't actually find it any more, since WotC seem to have removed everything before 2020 from their website, but it had things like a feat for the flail and a feat for the spear. They never did anything with it though. I remember that the Flail feat let you just ignore shields entirely because you could swing your flail around it.
As for Juggling, I think that it was intended to be a fix to both Two Weapon Fighting and Thrown weapons. Given that they're updating the actual properties though, they could probably just move it into there. I personally like Juggling, because it's micromanagy, which I find fun, but I entirely understand why people dislike it.
You forget about the gunner feat for loading firearms.
I tend to ignore things which aren't in the actual playtests. I know that they've said everything is backwards compatible, but I think that until we get something explaining exactly how old features tie in, it's best to ignore them for the purposes of analysing the playtests.
Lance also works with the Dual Wielder feat as a one-handed weapon while you’re mounted. If you’re a 7th level fighter, you can switch the Lance’s Mastery out for Cleave and wield a scimitar or other Nick weapon in the offhand, you can make 4 attacks with your action, 2 more with an action surge, and 1 more with a BA attack from PAM or GWM, all with advantage potentially if you take Mounted Combatant.
lance is two handed
@@shadow-faye Unless mounted. In which case, it's 1-handed. And fortunately, the updated Polearm Master applies to any weapon with both Heavy and Reach, which the Lance now has, making it eligible for a 1-handed Polearm Master bonus attack and Great Weapon Master. That said, the question will become at what AC with and without advantage on attacks will players prefer to Nick throw a Handaxe and Dagger and then Extra Attack Lance with Bonus Action PAM+GWM, and when will you rather just attack twice with your Lance+GWM and then PAM+GWM. Because 1d4+1d6+10 is outperformed by 1d10+15 if you have a high enough chance to hit. Without doing any math, I'd expect advantage to usually be enough to make the Lance preferable over the dual handaxe+dagger Nick. You'd expect something like 8.2 DPR out of the GWM Lance but 11.5 or so (loosely account for Vex) out of the Nick combo. This is assuming 65% chance to hit at-level enemies. But with advantage, suddenly the Lance jumps to almost 10.25 and the Nick combo only bumps up to about 9.5. So any enemies with an AC even a couple points below average could easily make it preferable when combined with something like Bless.
So, I really like this, because it raises the floor of damage without pushing the ceiling too much, and reliability is valuable.
@@RaethFennec thought they changed that
This is exactly the sort of silliness that is making me leave 5e for good
@@RaethFennec yeah I’m assuming they’re not gonna bring back GWM’s -5/+10, I only mentioned it because it might give you a BA attack
I think while the old exhaustion rules definitely needed tweaking, the proposed bookkeeping-intensive, overly granular bland numerical modifier version was not an improvement for D&D and it was incoherent with the general style of the game where many don’t track water and food rations either.
Imho, exhaustion should come in occasionally, be narratively meaningful, and then get out of the way again quickly in a game like D&D. I’m not a fan of what effectively meant “you slept on a pea last night so you’re ever so slightly slightly worse at everything for the rest of the day!” or “Half your brain got sucked out by a monster today, but after a good night’s sleep your INT will be back to normal. You will only be slightly less tired, though….”
That seems like a fair complaint to me. Having a variant rule could be a good way of doing exhaustion, then people can decide whether they want their game to be more heroic fantasy where everything is good after a short nap, or more gritty fantasy where you get worn down over time. The current gritty realism rules suck.
@@the_twig131 Yeah, the heroic ultra-magic fantasy sits very deeply in the systems of 5e, so it's tough to switch to gritty realism with just a few rules changes, you'd have to start banning spells etc.
I agree it is curious they removed the exhaustion rules, because I think I stumbled upon someone sharing my opinion exactly once on twitter, while most felt positively about the changes.
I do hope they give tweaking the original rules a try, make them less punishing from the get-go and so they don't discourage participating in play, but are narratively more meaningful than "here's a -1 to everything!"
You can do the same thing with Light Hammers as well, though the only situation I think that might be useful is skeletons and oozes.
Yep. Light Hammers also lack the Finesse property, but other than that they are pretty much functionally identical.
Crusher feat pushing! Idk if it's even in the UA tho.
I think you missed a HUGE thing about the net. It replaces only one attack. So if you have extra attack you can; throw the net with your first attack (if they fail they are restrained) then all your subsequent attacks will be at advantage because they are restrained, plus every other attack from your buddies will be ALSO MADE AT ADVANTAGE. If the creature wants to get out of the net they have to either use a full action to make a strength check or attack the net at disadvantage.
First option is not to try to get out of the net. All their attacks are made at disadvantage and all attacks at them are at advantage.
Second option is pretty easy to get out of the net at a DC 10 but that is one full action that they aren't attacking you or casting a spell.
Third option seems pretty easy just roll a 16 on an attack. Well the first attack will be at disadvantage regardless of the attack destroys the net. There is a chance they can miss that first attack.
I think I did mention this, I just didn't go in depth. You're absolutely correct though, It's a big improvement to the net.
bouneary stealed sir'fetchd big leek
i'm sure rogues will love this wapon changes, but i thing there was a little item left out of this discussion that's the adition of guns. (also, i'm not that well updated but does the revised rogue for odnd have RAW innate acces to the heavy crossbow and the musquet?)
No, Rogues only have simple weapons and martial weapons with finesse. You would need to multiclass, but I think that Fighter 1 is really good on Rogue in this playtest.
As for guns, there's just not much to say really, the loading property means that they just aren't very good.
I highly doubt rangers and paladins will get weapon mastery. It seems like the trademark of the warrior group.
I think they might get one at level 2 when they get their Fighting Styles, and then more at a slower pace. They're half casters, so it makes sense for them to also be half martials.
Would the weapon juggling actually work? It seems to me that you grant yourself an extra draw weapon to draw the lance at the end. You use the normal equip/unequip at the start, get two extra draws for throwing two weapons, but where does the last draw come from?
So you get one draw/stow for each attack. That means if you have extra attack, you get two draws/stows. That character actually had 3 attacks, so they even had an extra one that they didn't use
Stow 1 from the first attack to stow lance
Draw from thrown to draw handaxe
Draw from thrown to draw dagger
Draw 2 from Nick attack to draw lance
Draw 3 from Extra Attack unused.
Its interesting how graze synergizes with shooting something at your long range distance. Getting disadvantage from shooting something super far away isnt as impactful. If you want to play a sniper it becomes a good option.
Unfortunately, Graze requires a heavy, melee weapon. You can't put it on any ranged weapons. The only real use for Graze in my opinion is as a secondary option for 13th level Fighters. They could have something like Push/Graze, so something happens whether they hit or miss.
Also as I read cleave it's not splitting your attack. It is giving you another attack on a thing that is with in 5 feet of that creature. So to me it seems like if you have extra attack you can make two on one creature and two on a different creature that is 5 feet from the other.
Unfortunately, no. Cleave has a hard limitation of once per turn on it.
Yay, your back.
Thinking about Flex I think may be "Do the 2H damage +150% of your attribute bonus rounding up."
Sword and Board definitely needs more damage. It's the best in terms of just straight AC, but has absolutely nothing for damage options, and Flex currently doesn't help even close to enough.
glad im not the only one who feels that Graze and Flex are weak, the new mastery properties could definitely use some rebalancing but i like the overall idea of them
I don't see how Graze is weak, imho. Half on save is what makes blast spells have 75% of their efficacy, and Graze is nearly Half on Save for weapon damage, because 6.5 is only 1.5 more than 5.
It also guarantees a DC10 concentration save on enemy casters for every attack, even if you miss all of them.
@@dragonboyjgh I think people don’t like it because it’s hard to optimize around, but I bet numbers will show it really increase average damage
@@pederw4900it's better when you have low chance to hit. It would have paired very well with the old version of GWM.
@Peder W, a level 17* fighter with 4 attacks and an assumed 60% chance to hit is adding 8 dpr. That’s quite a lot actually. That being said, giving up topple or some other juicy property is tough.
Enemies don't like to stand next to each other. Especially once the DM finds out that you get free damage from it. This is the same reason why Whirlwind from the Hunter Ranger is bad.
Edit: Whoops, I was thinking of Cleave. Ignore me.
I like your analysis a lot and hope you do more. I think your way to skeptical on graze, Im more skeptical than most but ive seen plenty of people show that its a considerable DPR boost. Also flex is bad but i do think ( particularly since i think we will see changes to the weapon juggling rules) Flex spear will be good as a backup thrown weapon option.
I think Graze is only really a worthwhile (primary) option at very low levels. At higher levels you're adding magic weapons, additional dice, and other stuff, AND you have to give up Push or Topple to get Graze.
If you look at a 20th level Fighter using a +3 Graze PAM weapon to make 5 attacks vs 20 AC (which is the median for enemies of CR 20+), Graze only adds 5.99 (10.54%) damage, and only 1.10 (1.73%) if you have advantage.
I do think it's a reasonable option for the Fighter to put on their weapon when they get to add two effects though.
@@the_twig131 I feel similarly, as I said more skeptical than some, but do think the caveat that many players may not have such gear has to be said. As for the alternatives i think topple and push both have downsides. Push requires you to spend movement to keep applying and topple makes your ranged fighters have to shoot at disadvantage. I can see a lot of scenarios where the safer option of graze would be reasonable around mid level play where most dnd is done,
Hej guys, here is a copy/paste of my survey comments to WoTC, what do you think?
Hej guys,
First of all, I would like to thank you for making an attempt to provide more tactical options to fighters and barbarians and to try to add specific effects to each single weapon. These are definitely 2 steps in the right direction but it feels that we are still far away from providing martial classes a real set of tactical tools on the battlefield. I love D&D martial classes and I would like you to consider the following feedback:
1) WEAPON MASTERIES: Add weapon masteries to shields - make the choice of specific type of shield something significant
2) WEAPON MASTERIES: Add armor masteries to make the choice more impactful
3) WEAPON MASTERIES: Design another weapon mastery for Versatile weapon, the current design is underpowered and tactically uninteresting
4) WEAPON MASTERIES: Nerf the VEX weapon mastery, this is too strong compared to the other weapon masteries
5) BATTLEMASTER MANEUVERS FOR ALL MARTIAL CLASSES - ABOVE ALL, PLEASE:
- Give battlemaster maneuvers to all martial (Barbarian, Fighter, Monk, Ranger, Rogue & Paladin) classes. There are so many great examples of 5e compatible books (ex: www.levelup5e.com/) or homebrew (www.gmbinder.com/profile/laserllama). "Power balance-wise" compared to casters, this should be ok given the nerfs of the Great Weapon Master & Sharpshooter feats. This would drastically increase the tactical options given to martial classes. The weapon masteries can be kept (see below point 6) but alone they do not add a massive amount of tactical options, unless your character carries a massive bag of different weapons, which at least for me does not sound thematically appealing as I love the idea of a character growing in power with a specific weapon. In the event, my character would only have 1 melee weapon, the tactical choices offered by 1 melee weapon are very limited and extremely repetitive.
- There are several ways to make this introduction, ex: a) different set of maneuvers per martial class b) different number of superiority dice per martial class c) different types of superiority dice per martial class d) introduce maneuver increasing in power when a martial reaches a certain level etc...
6) WEAPON MASTERIES & BATTLEMASTER MANEUVERS: In the event all martial classes would get battlemaster maneuvers It does not mean weapon masteries should be removed, I believe this is something interesting when making an impactful choice between weapons and potentially for shields and armors - weapon masteries could potentially synergize with new battlemaster maneuvers
7) NEW COMBAT ACTIONS: ex: -5 to attack roll could be introduced as a standard combat action, I love the idea of having to think twice before trying to make a powerful melee move. I am not sure where should the extra damage should lie for a standard combat action, maybe +1d8? or maybe it could potentially scale with the proficiency bonus?
Keep up the good work and have fun designing the best possible martial classes for the world's most famous TTRPG!
I like net change. Not needing the quick toss maneuver to be remotely action efficient is really good and loosing the interactions it had with weapon attack features don't really matter because it's more of an anti-flyer gotcha. Flyers might be a bad target because of often being dex heavy but not needing a feat (or smoke trick) to remove disadvantage more than makes up for it. The size clause should be a "2 over" rather than be hardcoded to huge for enlarge purposes but that's an easy rule call to make.
The lance nerf was needed, as much as I loved the idea of abusing it, it really was an extremely easy weapon to abuse.
The weapon masteries are really cool as options. And Topple really rounds up the efficiency of a grappler build pulling off the prone+grappled combo. In fact, it's the best tool for it I've seen so far. But I'm getting worried that the "simple" action economy of 5e continues to be patched with more and more once per turn effects that are effectively conditional free actions.
Really like the weapon juggling tech but I also don't think it will be that relevant simply because of resistance to non magic weapons and throwables needing to be recovered.
Overall these changes are the best I've seen so far. They feel a bit pointless of trying to hack the system into being something it is not supposed to be but they would make returning to the game something tolerable when I thought I'd pretty much seen everything it had to offer.
New net is definitely better. A soft coded size limit like you suggested would be an improvement though, and we do need to wait until we see interaction rules before we can really work out how easy they are to use. I remember that in one of the older interviews they mentioned that they hadn't put Interact with an Object in yet because they weren't sure what to do with it.
Personally, I think that the lance was actually buffed, or at worst, given a sidegrade. Having PAM and Topple available, on top of being one-handed while mounted, is extremely good.
I like Weapon Masteries a lot, but you are right, there's a lot of things to keep track of now. They do also give unarmed strikes a massive kick down. I think that's probably why they've held back the Monk, they're trying to work out how they can compete with the Weapon Masteries.
I am really, really hoping that they get rid of non-magical resistance. In Druid and Paladin there were a few ways to change your damage type away from B/P/S, where previously it just said that the attacks were considered magical. As for recovering the weapons, it costs 7 GP for a set. It's not exactly a big investment.
@@the_twig131 The lance nerf doesn't feel like a nerf because it's bringing together the two extremes of the weapon. As a two-hander, it was the worst of the bunch because it didn't qualify for either PM or GWM. While in a mounted build it was TWF with the biggest damage die available.
Golfclub Fighters... bleh
If things aren't cleaned up, playing a Fighter is going to be a nightmate to keep track of for DMs and players alike. How about we get some straight forward, but good upgrades to martial DPR and utility to make them more competitive with casters?
Good Buneary Teacher.
I'm glad to see martials get a DPR go up but I'd rather they didn't have to do tech as obscure, nonintuitive, and silly as weapon juggling. And also. The 7 DPR bonus from the previous best weapon set up is still not enough. And I'd rather that *all* martials got a DPR boost of at least 7, not just pam-thrown weapons build. Ideally, a DPR boost of twice that at level 5 if you really want to compete with casters
You have to be careful, though. The caster's strength isn't purely in damage. Especially when you go higher levels, martials do outdamage casters unless you're not building for damage. The strength of casters is being able to shit down encounters with ridiculous spells without even needing to do damage. We don't need martials on the same level, cause then combat will be actual cancer. We need casters brought down a peg so that they can't just handwave an encounter away.
So in terms of damage, the things that set martials and casters apart are that casters have AoE, and they also use spell slots. A Fighter can just do this stuff all day, and that would actually make them fantastic, if people played the game in the way that it was balanced.
For some god forsaken reason, 5E is balanced for 8 encounters per day. That doesn't mean 8 combats, social encounters count towards the number too, but it does mean significantly more daily combat than anyone I know plays with. In that scenario, the Wizard only has two Fireballs per day, they can't use them on every fight.
No one plays like that though, so they really just need to nerf spells big time.
Also, casters have spells like Web and Wall of Force which are designed more for shutdown than damage. That's very hard for a Fighter to replicate.
about the Exhaustion change, it night be that they going back the an earlier draft, since the previous UA they changed it from Exhaustion to Exhausted[condition] and the changelog mentions the condition
if i am right, its crap wording and should have been explained
I would never allow a polearm mastery bonus attack with a 1 handed (couched) lance. That defies all sense.
The retiarius net is no longer a weapon. Relegated to a humble fishnet. So good luck trying to be a retiarius gladiator.
Wtf? Weird take to think people don’t know what cobblers are.
Ooooh I was waiting for this
Don't you need to have a light weapon equipped in both hands to get the light weapon extra attack? I wouldnt allow the lance, axe, dagger weird combo. Its just crazy
You do need to have a light weapon in both hands. You’d go hand axe (light), dagger (Light, nick). However, it wouldn’t work with a lance because a lance isn’t a polearm and doesn’t qualify for the Polearm Mastery Bonus attack. It’s a Great Weapon, so it would qualify for GWM, but not not a polearm.
No, you don't. The requirement to have your weapons in both hands was removed in Druid and Paladin.
As of this UA, the lance DOES qualify for Polearm Master. Polearm Master now says that the weapon must be heavy and reach, it no longer has that list of specific weapons that it works with. This also means that spears and quarterstaffs no longer qualify for PAM.
wooo the_twig returns
They really need to fix the Nick property to not allow for cheesing.
Nick isn't really the criminal here, it's probably Equipping and Unequipping Weapons. I personally really like the micromanagy aspects of weapon juggling, but a lot of people don't.
I read the "you can draw that weapon as part of the attack" portion of the Thrown property as a reiteration of the "You can either equip or unequip one weapon
when you make an attack as part of this action" rule in the ATTACK [ACTION] glossary, I wonder if that was the intention or if your interpretation was the intention. Either way, it should be cleared up. They have this kind of 'reiteration' at least one other time in the new UA, such as Quickened Spell's casting two spells in one turn clarification. Something like "as per [Rule X]" could be included at the end of these statements to avoid double diping.
It may be intended to work that way, but if so, they do really need o make it clear.
They rewrote quickened spell to clarify how that rule actually works because that is the most misunderstood rule in 5e.
I actually hope they keep Topple as is. Imagine how badass it'd feel to run up to a Giant and take out their legs out from under them. The only thing I don't get is why it's a Con save. I feel like Str to hold your ground or Dex to catch yourself would make more sense
I think it's a con save because it's on a generic hit. So it's less a shove or trip, and more of a smashed knee or stubbed toe situation. You're not falling over because you lost your balance, you're falling over because "Ow. That really hurt".
There's a few weird ability score choices in this UA. The Barbarian has a way to make Stealth rolls using Strength now.
@@the_twig131 It seems a lil weird at first yeah. It's described as them "channeling primal power" so I assume it's meant to be like primal instincts like heightened strength, senses etc. Mechanically I really like it. It allows for Barbarians to have better utility without having to have high ability scores in abilities they wouldn't normally be using. Plus you can be John Cena while raging
Your explanation at 16:39 is completely incorrect. 1. you attack with the lance and unequip as part of the attack action, 2 you attack with a thrown light weapon as part of the same attack using the handaxe. so far so goo. That ends attack 1 as you cannot use NICK to get another attack with the light feature as NICK says this can only occur once. After this you are off the rails and just wrong.
You do not attack with the lance first, your first attack is with the handaxe. Here's a step by step breakdown:
Attack 1
- Equipping and Unequipping Weapons: Unequip Lance
- Thrown Property: Equip Handaxe
- Attack with Handaxe
Light attack
- Thrown Property: Equip Dagger
- Nick: Attack with Dagger (no BA required)
- Equipping and Unequipping Weapons: Equip Lance
Attack 2
- Attack with Lance
Bonus Action
-Polearm Master: Attack with Lance
@@the_twig131 Thank you for clarifying. Yes under this it does work due to synergies with thrown and nick. One change in this particular UA is the wording of the light property now does not require that the light weapon be in the other hand to trigger but instead be a different light weapon. I missed that until your video. One other note it appears that cleave can triggers off turn (OA) where as nick cannot. Your thoughts on that?
You're right, Cleave can trigger on reactions too. I think that this is probably even less common than normal, although it does depend on how your DM runs monsters. The enemies have to be within 5 ft of each other, and while moving it's really easy to just walk around your allies to prevent it. Also Disengage is a thing. It's a niche for Cleave, but I still don't think it's great.
I may be the only person who likes the six levels of exhaustion 😅
Same, they're actually flavourful and do what Exhaustion is supposed to do. Now it's just a bland malus to your DCs.
@@matiskrawiec The more material from oneDND that's playtest the more likely I'll stick with basic 5E
@Matis Krawiec what do you mean by supposed to do?
@@hircenedaelen Reflect what an exhausted character is like. If I asked you if skipping on 5 days of sleep would only make you 25% worse at a spelling bee or would it keep you bedridden and delirious and unable to do much, which one sounds like it describes which Exhaustion mechanic?
@Matis Krawiec OK i see what you mean, but exhaustion is very rarly actually caused by missing sleep, its usually by other game or monster mechanics and for those i feel 10 level System is more appropriate
Not a fan of the weapon juggling. in my opinion, it feels like a circus sideshow and isn't fit for most character styles. Wizards just can't make characters who adventure and fight for a living feasible in a fantasy setting.
I like it because it's micromanagy, but I completely understand that it's a turnoff for many people in moth mechanics and thematics. I think that it probably came about as an attempt to fix both two-weapon fighting and thrown weapons, but they're changing the properties now, so they may axe the equipping and unequipping weapons section, or at least make it considerably less powerful.
17:39 how is he getting 3 feats at level 5?
Good catch. Second fighting style has to come from somewhere.
Every background gives a 1st level feat in one D&D
Humans also get a bonus 1st level feat
Then take a feat at 4th level
@@Kingdomkey123678 Although, none of the 3 feats mentioned are first level feats
You have a feat on first level, then on 4th, and again on 5th. They moved the 6th level feat down to 5th.
@@Mr_Maiq_The_Liar
One D&D human fighter gets
2 feats are 1st
1 at 4th
And one at 5th
So for the build in the video it goes
1st level: Bonus fighting style
4th level Polearm master
5th level great weapon master
I like the 6 stages of exhaustion. But I think it will go (also, I recognise that the 6 stages needed to also infleunce spellcasters)
My main issue with the 6 stages was how random the effects were. It wasn't intuitive. The 10 stages were much easier to understand for a beginner, and so I think that even though it was less thematic, it was better.
@@the_twig131 I completely agree with this. This is why I (unfortunately :) ) think the 6 stages will inevitably go and the 10 stages of penalties will remain.
Maybe the 10 stages should be just 6 stages. Giving a -5 ft speed on top of the -1 penalty to rolls and saves... and then at 6 stages your speed would be 0. and one more (stage 7) would kill you.
I do like the idea of weapon mastery. It quit intrasting. Could use a bit more of them and some need work on but is a good steep
Yeah, I think it's really good. Flex is the big one that needs cleaning up, that is just not even close, and I think Topple needs a bit of straightening up to make it more fluid, rather than requiring a save on every single hit.
@@the_twig131 ya. Maybe add your pro. To damage or if you use 2 hands add double your str mod instead. Topple could be useing a bonus action maybe to do it.
Gotta tell you, this weapon juggling non-sense, is one of the reasons why im gonna play pathfinder over D&D whenever i get the opportunity.
Oh, well... 2:05, 6 stages IS better.
I prefer the 6 stages of exhaustion. The new system makes it too messy to keep track of, especially it a pc uses an ability recklessly and adds up the number.
Soon a pc will have a 6 to 8 in exhaustion and be in extreme cold or heat before realizing they have to rest for a tenday just to recover. Or encourage a party to continue without a long rest because a penalty of 1 is nothing and they’ll recover the during the next long rest. To keep a player from forgetting or cheating, it’s one more thing the DM has to track for every single player at the table.
The 6 levels of exhaustion pack more weight and a pc will make sure to rest.
Honestly, I don't get that at all. In 6 stage, you have to write down a number, refer to a table, and that table then tells you that you arbitrarily have disadvantage on ability checks and your speed is halved. In 10 stage, you write down a number, and then every time you roll a d20 or tell the DM your DC you subtract that number. You don't get to Exhaustion 8 without realising. -8 on every roll is absolutely punishing. That turns a 60% chance to hit into a 20% chance. The 16 you just rolled is now an 8. You will notice.
In both cases the player could 'cheat' by not halving their speed or by not subtracting the number. If you don't trust your players, you have to keep track no matter what system you use. If you don't trust your players though, I'd seriously question why you're allowing them to play like that.