I do want to correct one thing you said regarding the Commander's Strike Maneuver that you are not correct about in this video (See Timestamp 22:55). You said "Instead of forgoing one of your Bonus Action, you are forgoing one of your attacks instead". That is not how Commander's Strike works. The body of the text on screen clearly states "You can forgo one of your attacks and a bonus action". If someone is just listening to the video, this presents a false image of the effect. Mechanically speaking, Commanding Rally is a strictly superior version of Commander's Strike since it isn't tied to your action and doesn't force you to give up an attack during your turn. Sorry for the petty nitpick but I felt it was a necessary correction to point out.
Yeah, Commander's Strike is mostly garbage on optimised builds. It's ok on non-optimised builds. Like...are you a fighter equipping a longsword and a shield, and you have a Rogue in the party? Then sure, Commander's Strike might be great for you! It's ok if you just want to make your party like you more. "My party's rogue likes it when I use commander's strike, we have more fun that way."--yeah, making other players at your table happy can be worth more than squeezing 5 extra damage out of your superiority die. But if we're being strictly optimal, let's say a battlemaster fighter with crossbow expert and sharpshooter...Commander's Strike is extremely niche at best. Like it can be competitive with precision attack, but the rogue needs to be either near level 20 in rogue (like 10d6 sneak attack), or have advantage on their reaction attack and have about 11 levels in rogue (6d6 sneak attack). Basically the rogue needs to be averaging about 31 damage with their reaction attack after accuracy (though do note that they get to add your superiority die to their damage if they hit, so remember to factor that into their damage). If playing for pure optimisation I probably would grab Commander's Strike if I was at a table with a mono-classed Bugbear Assassin Rogue or Elven Accuracy Assassin Rogue. If the fighter beats any of the bad guys on initiative, tell the rogue to shoot that bad guy while the rogue still has advantage from assassinate. Works even if the rogue rolls low on initiative (they can still take a reaction). This actually does become a decent damage gain at reasonable levels (starts to be a pretty solid use for maneuvers around 7 levels in rogue, and gets better from there). This is of course fairly niche though. For the most part you can just ignore Commander's Strike at optimised tables, cause you won't see a whole lot of mono-classed assassins.
Or Fey Wanderer, at least mechanically. Thematically, you don’t think of rangers this way, but this actually leads to some interesting backstory ideas.
I was about to say this. I could 100% see myself doing a Dragonborn Undeath Warlock 2/Conquest Paladin 18 with Knight of the Sword and Dragon Fear as a build. Sure, I lose power when I'm up against a Fear-Immune enemy. I'm still a Paladin, which means Smite isn't off the table
For Adept of the Red Robes, Magical Balance is pretty strong for people that use counterspell and dispel magic liberally. It basically eliminates the need to cast it with a spell slot higher than 3, with the exception of really high level spells.
@@BranHawk775In my opinion, instead of taking the feat we could just multiclass 2 lv into Star Druid, getting Starry Form. Choosing the Dragon option, we can automatically get a 10 on our concentration checks, Int and Wis checks, including the check from Telekinesis, Counterspell and Dispel Magic
Red Robes is also the strongest of the options for a martial and/or skill monkey character, since it's not reliant on spellcasting and has a lot of great spell choice options that don't rely on casting ability modifier.
Applies to initiative too. Would also be fun for a clockwork sorcerer, cancelling bad rolls before they get/choose to use trance of order. Would love to use this to grab enhance ability on a character. The feature kinda conflicts with the fluff though. It seems like it would be more appropriate for a group that specializes in divination.
For the Artificer+Holy Symbol thing, you could get around that restriction by dipping a second level of Artificer and Infusing your shield with a holy symbol on it, thus having your shield count as a focus for both artificer and cleric/paladin while still having your main hand free for a weapon etc
@@roxxdude1 yeah it's the matter of having the same item also be an artificer focus right? The infusion makes it an artificer focus (they must be holding tools or an infused item they can use as a focus instead in order to cast)
Precise strike seems interesting option for rogue though (especially with elven accuracy), if one dnd drops steady aim. It lets you sneak attack without sacrificing mobility or having the usual considerations for target selection. So, proficiency times per long rest, you can select the optimal target when you otherwise could not have, or get a sneak attack when you otherwise could not have. I think that's actually substantial. I wish it was a half feat instead of having a ribbon feature though.
Since it's a background feat, it really couldn't be a half feat. Seems like a solid contender against Tough for the best of the feats a Rogue could take (other choices being Skilled or Initiate of High Sorcery) in the campaign setting.
Rogues can take 'mage of high sorcery' background? Get the 1st level 'initiate of high sorcery' Feat and 4th level 'Adept of the Red Robes' feat in addition to Sentinel at 4th level. This gives full rogues access to Mirror Image/Sentinel reaction sneak attacks!!!
Artificer initiate from Tasha's caldron of everything also gives you a similar use where you can use the tool that you choose from that feet as a focus for any spell you cast with intelligence.
@@ferencfeher2647 But, if you're going to be fulfilling the thieves tools specialist role of the party anyway, might not be the worst thing to have on hand anyways. If not planning on making weapon attacks, could even go tools in one hand as a focus and shield in the other. ...Honestly, the most potentially frustrating part of Divinely Favored is that it's 4th level restricted, since it would otherwise have so much good backstory potential if able to obtain it at 1st level.
All of this is kinda moot because from 2nd level an Artificer can use an Infused Item as a focus instead of their tools. You wanna cast spells while holding a shield? Infuse it.
My point was that Chris said that this was the 1st time a feat was set up this way. I was pointing out that artificer initiate did it 1st not this feet from dragon Lance.
Honestly, having trouble buying new products after Spelljammer seriously disappointed me. I am interested in the Lunar sorcerer thematically, but unless one of my friends says they want to run a Dragonlance campaign, I think I'm going to sit this one out. Keeping an eye on DM's guild for future purchases. Great content as always
One thing I like about the Life Channel feature is that you apply the damage after the target fails its saving throw. It's really nice that you won't expend the hit dice for nothing if you're using a "save or suck" spell like Disintegrate. It's also just nice in general because you'll be doing the normal damage of the spell (instead of half if they succeeded) plus the extra damage from Life Channel which makes it feel more impressive.
The Knight Of feats don't have the prerequisite of belonging to a certain order because it is expected that knights move between orders as they become more experienced, and they take with them things that they learned in previous orders. This is explained in some text box in the book. If it had that prerequisite, then the character would not be able to use the feat once they joined a different order
For the Squire of Solomnia feat, it all but guarantees a hit for an Elf Rogue with Elven Accuracy. A rogue might still use BA for Steady Aim or a familiar's Help action, but the SoS feat frees up bonus action when needed. On your Double Phantom build, which relies on a mount, this feat could be pretty good.
Or if the rogue needs to kite away from an enemy that is chasing them down. Sometimes it comes down to either sacrificing advantage and therefore your sneak attack in order to stay mobile. This would let you run away AND get your sneak attack in the same turn. (And possibly bonus action dash to get some distance so that you can steady aim on the next turn)
Holy Cow, Life Channel is such a cool ability. Everything you said about it was spot on. I think if these feats were stand alone feats that you couldn't take for free with the backgrounds then they wouldn't be worth taking over other feats already available like Fey Touched, but them being free to access through the Dragonlance backgrounds makes them pretty awesome. I do wish the Martial feats were a little bit better than slightly reworked Battle Master Maneuvers, but Wizards of the Coast seems to be adamant about keeping the gap between Casters and Martials wide rather than trying to narrow it.
Armor of Agathys is my favorite 1st level spell to pick up as a Warlock, but it is unfortunate that its tied to alignment. I know there's a lot of tables out there that don't vibe with having evil pcs. I don't mind them personally as long as a player knows what they're doing and they're not just using their alignment as an excuse to be a dbag to other players at the table.
One way to help a table get over that is to reframe Good/Evil as Selfless/Selfish -- but I agree that it still requires a player with maturity and finesse to make it work in a party that's not all evil or intended for just a single session.
Its definitely more that "evil" is usually hard to pull off for new players so you get a lot of trainwreck sessions from people trying to overdo it. Real evil is slow, methodical, and requires you to sign several forms in triplicate you don't even understand.
i dont vibe with having alignment restrictions in the first place :D If you need a robe of archmagi, you will get one. Colors be damned. It will have the color of an oilspill.
I strongly believe in the importance of flavor is free for "setting specific content" (note this is the first time in 5e the designers have EVER explicitly stated that X feature CAN ONLY be used in X campaign). The reason I believe so strongly in it is 1.) It's just so dang easy to reflavor. You're telling me that Wildemount is the ONLY place a Wizard has EVER tried to mess with time and gravity, when we literally have Time Stop as a spell from the PHB? You're telling me Strixhaven is the ONLY magical university in the multiverse? You're telling me Ravnica is the ONLY place in the multiverse with a group of over-zealous knights? You're telling me that there's NO WAY that any other plane might have a family line blessed with storm powers (when there's literally a subclass based in lineage with storm powers?). To that I say phooey. 2.) It opens up so many more options for customization. I think it's very mechanically interesting with unique RP opportunities to play for example: a mark of shadow conquest paladin that acts stealthy and sneaky and uses the shadows to create fear effects. Or a dao Genielock that focuses on crystals and geometry and fractals with maybe the Quandrix background to potentially gain some more dimension warping spells that play along with that flavor especially since their genie Vessel is already in that backgrounds flavor. But that's just my opinion and I recognize that a lot of people are too concerned with "power creep" to even consider it.
It sounds like what WotC did here, was meant for Adventure's League more so than at tables. "Power Creep" isn't a concern since WotC has never tried to address it since the past few books.
I would say Adept of the Red Robes is actually a pretty good feat for martials tbh. If you have high enough attack modifiers, like having Archery Fighting Style, this feat basically allows you to have a guarantee hit like 3 times per long rest in most situations. Pretty good imo.
17:25 Hexblade warlock 2/ Abjuration wizard 2 with Armor of Agathys build. Cast Armor of Agathys with the highest slot, run into battle. Reduce damage, with the Protective Wards and regain your abjurers ward with Armor of Shadows invocation. 4 layers of hp.
ya using protective ward is more efficient for spell slots than recharging your arcane ward with normal slots (in case you weren't using armor of shadows). also, if you have AoA up, you might prefer using your reaction for protective ward instead of shield since a missed attack won't proc your damage.
@@Schmeethe88 i mean at level 4 it is 1, but Dragonlance campaign goes up to 12. Maybe AoA isnt a smartest use for 5the level slot- but the fun one for sure, especially with wards.
I think the best adept of the black robes might be a tempest cleric. A d8 for the cleric is fine and I think the hit die work with Destructive Wrath. You could do the scribes wizard thing too to deal max damage on a fireball ball changed to lightning. Imagine a 5th level scribes wizard multiclassed with tempest cleric would be able to deal 9x6(upcast fireball 4th level in lightning) + 5x6+2x8(hit die) = straight 100 damage fireball in an area of effect.
Adept of Red Robes may be a bit boring but it's yet another addition to the Div/Chron Halfling with Lucky and Bountiful Luck "I get to decide the die actually" fun
I can see the Life Channel feature of the Adept of the Black Robes feat beeing pretty useful on an Eldtrich Knight. Usually the fantasy of them casting blast spells and making weapon attacks is fun, but does not deliver as good because of their progression. Now they could just add hit dice to make up for their slower progression. Lets say the EK makes it to lvl 7 and uses 2 hit dice on a spelll ike Shatter or Rimes Binding Ice and the enemies fail their saving throw, that would increase the average damage from 3d8 = 13.5 to 3d8+ 2d10 = 24.5 That is still lower than a 3rd lvl Fireball with 8d6 = 28, but the increase is significant and when Eldtrich Strike comes up, you can combine it with your Action Surge to give disadvantage on saving throws against your spells. And when they finally get 3rd lvl spells at 13, they can cast Fireball for 8d6+3d10=44.5 damage. That is basically the equivalent of a Fireball upcast to 8 lvl for a 3rd Caster, using only a 3rd lvl slot and never getting more than 4th lvl spell slots. Of course that looks better than it really is, because you can only increase the damage on one target, but it is still nice I think.
Now a barbarian can take 'mage of high sorcery' background? Yes RAW. If so, is the 1st level 'initiate of high sorcery' and 4th level 'Adept of the Robes' feats in addition to the usual 1st (if variant human) &/or 4th level ASI/feat? Very well done & indepth as always, a cut above most D&D youtubers.
LIfe Channel seems optimal for a Cleric. Spirit Guardians is a great spell for this, and Clerics have D8 hit dice, which is as good as you can get for a full caster.
For Adept of the Red Robes I think you missed an incredible option for partial or non casters, Shadowblade!! It would be amazing on a Paladin or melee Ranger and allows a Eldritch Knight to get it at lvl4 rather than waiting till lvl 8. Decent on Rogue's too or even non-casting Fighters.
Adept of the White Robes is still great for me because I generally use >= 1 minute duration spells for control or support rather than nukes. So I tend to have at least half my spell slots unused at the end of the day, unless there was a counterspell battle. And with Mordenkainen's Monsters of the Multiverse, there are now lesser chances of counterspell battles. I'd still have to decide between Shield, Absorb Elements or Protective Ward, but there are certainly encounters where I can risk using the ward.
Anyone who would cast Healing Word would absolutely love White Robes. The die is upgraded compared to HW, it still gets your ability score modifier on top, and it is a reaction rather than a bonus action. This will even allow you to get around the pesky turn order wonkiness where the person you heal has had their turn being unconscious before your turn comes up. On a cleric, who can pick up Shield with the Initiate feat and has fewer reactions (apart from that newly acquired Qhield), this is a great feat.
One thing I feel I should point out is that Divinely Favored allows you to learn spells like Healing Word or Cure Wounds, so with a single 4th level feat the power of classes like Sorcerer, Warlock, and Wizard is increased significantly, at least as far as I see it. Cure Wounds has been a huge help in campaigns stretching up to about 8th or 9th level in my experience, so a Wizard who can get lower level slots back quickly with Arcane Recovery is gonna make great use of casting Cure Wounds between encounters
So, one cool thing that you mentioned but I felt deserves some more digging into when talking about the design space these feats take up is the fact that you get them for free with the free bonus feats at 1st and 4th level. I think this is just a really cool design space to consider as a lot of feats that get added through setting material or adventure specific stuff is usually pretty flavorful but I think struggle to justify themselves power wise when compared to your more standard feats. By carving out their own space as simply extra power but still giving them mechanical power, but with more limited competition, I think it's a neat way to add some mechanical ties and flavor to a world or setting. I'd love to see the concept of this used again in more games and might take it for my own home campaign of bonus feats that tie specifically to the world and the setting to get players more invested in that setting and these things their characters tie to. I think that would be a fun space to explore even beyond dragonlance.
I'm always on the lookout for interestingly open-ended wording in rules and features. More often lately I'm seeing things that *could* have interactions but that don't simply because there's no magic items or character options that quite line up. That's what I think of when I look at Life Channel from Adept of the Black Robes: it seems oddly precise that none of the magic items or subclass features I'm aware of in 5e let you maximize hit die rolls without specifying that you must be using them to regain hit points. Still, since this appears to get lumped under the spell damage in general, other forms of maximization should work by my reading, like Empowered Spell metamagic or Evocation Wizard's Overchannel ability. I think Life Channel is best for an Evoker since Wizard hit dice heal less and as a result other healing options go farther toward bringing a Wizard back to full HP.
I feel like if you are playing a character that is going to be incorporating a mount into your play style, that the mounting/dismounting cost is not going to be just a ribbon feature for them and could save them a 3 level cavalier dip/subclass selection if they had been considering it for gaining that as part of their toolkit.
But, realistically, if they're expecting combat, they should already be mounted. And, chances are, the mount's movement will make up for any movement expended to mount while in battle. For the most common scenario where that's happening, if you're knocked off your mount, half movement to get up out of prone and half to get back on the mount really isn't going to be effected by 5 feet to mount instead.
@@Shalakor I could see it coming up a lot and being really annoying in a longer term game. Poor stats for saving throws, mount gets frightened/other debilitating condition, you're left hoofing it at half speed towards the enemy; Blasted away from your mount and with the potential of landing prone; Racing towards your mount from a mount prohibitive environment, or pursuit into a mount prohibitive environment; etc. -All of these become heightened with difficult terrain or similar movement expending effects.
@@elliotbryant3459 Still feel like these kinds of things should only come up rarely enough that it's better both efficiency-wise and narratively for the negative circumstances to be a real hindrance when they do come up than to spend resources on being prepared for them if you don't have to. Like, as long as your DM isn't constantly singling you out, I feel like it's more interesting to have to figure out a work around on the spot the few times your preferred strategy does get countered than having an exact answer for every potential counter in your back pocket. Basically, if you can trust your DM to not find convoluted ways to kill off your mount at every turn in the first place, chances are you're not being separated from it on a regular basis either. There's a bit of baseline cooperation to be expected between a DM and a player focusing on mounted combat for their character, or any other playstyle, which is triply true if a campaign is surviving long-term.
@@Shalakor there's healthy dm-player relationships, but that's different from expecting significant dm fiat. When planning a character, I find it's more reliable to be prepared for foreseeable drawbacks than to expect significant support modifications for your abilities. And in it's current state, mounted combat has a *ton* of hindrances built into it, I can picture issues coming up all the time. Most mounts have less than +2 to wis saves and less than +3 to con saves. As mechanics stand, those mounts are going to be failing a ton of debilitating conditions. When any fear save starts showing up [which aren't that rare], it's like a 50% failure rate and increasing from there. All that said, I think having this as the only available prerequisite for the later martial feats was a poor decision. The caster background feat is essentially 3 different feat choices [significantly more if you account for spell combinations], whereas this is just these 2 things, with one being a ribbon ability *if* you have no particular interest and/or means of using a mount.
@@elliotbryant3459 True about the feat. It's too little and unfocused of a feature to build around, either unused or not enough for that playstyle on its own. Features that help you protect and coordinate with your mount are the priority for mounted combat.
I agree that, usually, mount-up is a weak feature. That said, I'm currently very aware of the benefit that mounting for less movement could grant. I'm playing in a party with a Moon Druid, and mounting/dismounting with only 5 feet would be useful, because the large/huge animals she turns into take up so much of the battlefield, so we could just slide over her giant snake body (or whatever) and get in range of the enemy.
4:55 Artificers can use their infusions as a spell casting focus. Meaning a shield, Weapon, wand, staff or anything that a wizard can also use as an arcane focus. I think this is more powerful with something like sword and board Eldritch Knight. Using their Holy Symbol on their shield or as a necklace to cast their spells where they normally wouldn't be able to.
We have actually seen something similar to the last sentence of divinely favored in the artificer initiate feat from tasha's. It let you use a tool as a spellcasting focus for any spell using intelligence.
To be honest they should have called it "Divine Touched", made it a half feat, and just rounded out the cycle they started with Fey Touched and Shadow Touched. Keep Augury as the second level spell to balance getting a 1st level abjuration or transmutation spell of your choice.
Good video! Once more, casters got more than martials which is bad. The only reason the martial feats aren't bad is because they are "free". The BA tax for KoC and KoR conflicts with BA feats like PAM and XBE and the frighten from KoS favors ranged characters, which at some point would like to MC in Battlemaster and would get the menacing maneuver anyway. Personally I would remove the BA from KoC and KoR (and add a requisite so that casters can't easily use it) and give a better effect to KoS, maybe a tauting (like duel) effect that would be new and help the melee characters (cause they never get any love).
I think you missed a really powerful use for Adept of the Black Robes: Paladin Smite spells. They can choose to pump a ton of extra damage into a Banishing Smite or something similar. Secondly, the Squire of Solomnia's Precise Strike feature is really good for Rogues who can now, on-demand, gain advantage and extra damage.
It looks like the classes that would be able to squeeze the most damage out of Life Channel from Adept of the Black Robes are Bards, Clerics, and Druids, since they are the full casters with the largest hit dice. While Paladins and Rangers can get up to 5d10 at high levels, and Wizards and Sorcerers can get up to 9d6, those 3 can get up to 9d8. Out of the 3, it's probably Clerics and/or Druids that come out on top, since while Bards have a lot of spells that require saves, the selection of ones that actually do damage are comparatively slim, so they'd need to supplement it with their Magical Secrets in order to keep up. EDIT: Warlocks would manage pretty well, as well, since while they get way fewer spell slots, they have the same hit die as Bard, Cleric, and Druid, and their spells are automatically upcast. So they'd have a bit more burst for spells that are level 5 or lower.
Here is something interesting if you choose one of the knight order feats as a Bonus Feat in a Dragonlance campaign you can pick another half feat so it's like you didn't lose out on a +2 to something or have two +1s. Very cool in my opinion. This is obviously at Level 4.
Thanks for reviewing the feats. You missed an important part of "Tools Required" for Articifer, that you can use any infused item you have as a focus as well, so if you have your armor infused with +1, its fair game as a focus. Also its amusing that the 2nd feature for Adept of the White Robes is best used on the stereotypically evil caster, warlock. Squire of Solamnia has to be bad, otherwise rogues could have fun with it, and if oneDnd's playtests are to be considered, rogues aren't allowed to have fun anymore.
knight of the rose is what the healer feat desires to be, a good amount of temp HP with a decent range and a bonus action activation, and is also a half-ASI? just wonderfull
I used to freaking love dragonlance. it was my setting of choice for years... but I was the only one in my group who even liked it. Beeg bummer. Like so many games I think I would love, Dragonlance is going on the "Never gonna get to play" shelf alongside Shadowrun and Starwars
squire of solomia is great for either riders (paladins, cavalier fighters, battle smith artificers, drake wardens, beast master rangers, etc.) and for characters that can benefit from the advantage such as rogues, paladins, characters with the GWM or sharpshooter feat, etc. specially when combined with the elven accuracy feat
It needs to be said red robe is SO POWERFUL it allows access to Immovable object from The cr book. This means you can take the spell that locks tarrasques in place.
If someone were playing that Armor of Agathys barbarian you made a while back in a Dragonlance campaign, they could take Divinely Favored at level 4 to be able to cast the spell a couple levels early, even if just once a day. Not amazingly powerful or anything, but kind of cool.
Dragonlance offers these feats for free as bonus feats, so even if they're not as good as others its still a power boost. If you're not going down one of these routes you can pick from a small list of other feats. Skilled or Tough at 1st level and Alert, Mobile, Sentinel or War Caster at 4th. My guess is they wanted to include the Knights and Wizards of this world as options and making them feats rather than subclasses opens them up to other classes. And bonus feats so taking them doesn't sacrifice normal builds.
23:00 well, unfortunately commander's strike takes both an attack and a bonus action, which really hurts. Even with a rogue on the party I struggle to find the time to use this ability
I can't help but feel we're getting a lot of very uninspired design from WotC lately. "Here's some spells" is their go-to; Also: "Here's the Lunar Sorcerer. They pick a moon whenever they feel like it. That gives them different spells. We name the features like moon phases, because moons, but mechanically there's nothing particular moonish about it, waxing and waning just sounds cool, I guess." It all feels a bit bland, like they've run out of ideas and offering little bundles of spells themed one way or another is all they're doing. I get why it's convenient as a designer to draw from the huge amount of D&D spells that are also conveniently tiered, but still...
Even with the prerequisite of another feat, the Adept of the Red Robes feat's Magical balance skill is just god levels of cheese at lower levels. Package that with Treantmonk's knowledge cleric / divination build and you get a monstrosity. The amount of times you could just go "yes this does happen", "No this does not happen" and "Well do elaborate on what I know / find / sense" would be silly. Especially with the amount of "most common/ important" proficiencies skill you can hoard with said build, taking that flat 10 and just adding the skill modifiers at level 4 you'd be looking at a +7. So 17 and whatever Guidance gives you from the d4. In combat sure with bless you'd average the same but the knowledge cleric divination wizard is not all about that jazz. They are there for the support, control and ability checks. As any proper God wizard does.
knight of the crown is great when you have a rogue or if you are a melee character that lacks ranged attack options but one of your party members has ranged options
In regards to what you mentioned about being locked out of options by alignment, I do not believe that is the case. In my opinion, Divinely Favored listed the alignment of the god that affected you, rather than the alignment of your character.
There's big potential for confusion around the 5 minute mark regarding an artificer's spellcasting. Artificers can treat their infused items as spellcasting foci for their spells. If you're not going more than one level into artificer you should be actively holding an infused focus, weapon, shield, or some combination of the three at any time past level 2. If you aren't you're probably doing something wrong or you're really leaning in to supporting the party with infusions.
I'm so happy that for the most part my table doesn't care about the spellcasting focus rules. You still need war caster to cast spells if you've got both hands full, but I'm not a big fan of the requirements there.
I think you may be overlooking that the martial feats provide you with more resources than the battlemaster feats. You essentially start with 2 uses that don't draw from a shared pool with other combat maneuvers, and this scales to 6. Even if the maneuvers are weaker I think you get more bang for your buck.
I can only imagine the level 1 background feats were purposely under tuned since they don't present the opportunity costs typical with feat selection. The high sorcery background is definitely superior to squire but it does potentially benefit martial characters more than full casters so I do think there're some interesting design choices going on here.
Question about Life Channel. The way I read it, it sounds like you must have and spend the exact number of hit dice equal to the spell's level. I think it would make more sense to be able to spend *up to* the spell's level worth of hit dice. Maybe that's what "can" in "you can expend" implies? What do you think? PS I also love the mechanics of this feat and the idea of using d8, d10, and d12 hit dice for this.
Spell casting focus, I would rule that you would still need the tools in hand because the feat says you can use blank while the class feature says you must use.(Time stamp 4:50)
My issue with the Life Channel (turning hitdice into damage), I think that is the exact opposite of where you want to go mechanically with defensive type powers. Anytime you start allowing defense to be converted into offense, you have the issue where a player can just blow their load on offense, but now becomes too squishy and just dies out. It also puts an unfair burden on the party, "sorry guys I'm completely out of hitdice, I need the cleric to just pump me with healing". Hitdice are meant for healing, that's their job. Combining them with offense mechanics is a dangerous precendent.
Benefit of the Squire of Solamnia feat: if you are a rogue (taking that background), then this could be another way to give yourself sneak attack if you wouldn't be able to get it any other way.
Good. I think alignment is a core part of D&D. People may disagree but I think that's because they associate "good" "evil" etc.. all with a subjective definition when they do have objective definitions. Alignment was always meant to tell you an overall ideological disposition of a creature or group of creatures based on many factors. For example, we typically think of psychopaths as evil, and for the most case, they are. Studies have shown that most psychopaths lack empathy and in MANY cases they lack empathy because they are born deficient in specific parts of their brain activity. Now, imagine if you had an entire race that lacked the brain chemistry to feel empathy. An entire race, if you will, of psychopaths. That's why I think alignment is necessary for DM's. It doesn't describe the outlier, it describes the standard. You can have a "good" bugbear, but that's the exception, not the rule.
I think the Martial Maneuver style feats could reset on a short rest and it wouldn't upset balance at all. Overall, just like magic initiate, the added spell casting is still vastly superior. Getting advantage one single attack is not gonna compare to bless!
Regarding the Artificer comment about having tools in hand when casting spells, later in that block there's "After you gain the Infuse Item feature at 2nd level, you can also use any item bearing one of your infusions as a spellcasting focus." Given that wording, I've read it as if I've enchanted something like my armor or shield with Enhance Defense, then I'm covered for casting spells. So I don't need that feat mentioned or such to get around it since it's not a factor anymore. I can't see how, if my infused armor counts as a focus, how would need it to occupy one of my hands to have it "in hand". Would I have to take it off? And if you read things like under the Armorer that says "You can use the arcane armor as a spellcasting focus for your artificer spells", I think these rules are for players not to have to deal with holding tools and such anymore, or otherwise that feature of the Armorer would be completely useless. Overall the juggling of tools in hand really isn't needed after second level, as long as you have a personal item infused like that. Another fun combo using the logic that an infused item is a focus is the 11th level spell storing item property. 1. Infused items are considered a spellcasting focus 2. Infuse a gem to be your Homunculus Servant, thus he is a focus. 3. With your Homunculus, now make it a spell storing item. (You can't infuse the same item twice, but all wording under spell storing item doesn't say you're "infusing" the item, so you shouldn't be tripping over that limit.) 4. Store something like Vortex Warp into your Homunculus 5. Now your Homunculus can "hold" itself to cast the spell as an action Int x2 times, and now with your bonus action you can have it take casting Vortex Warp as it's action, effectively making Vortex Warp a bonus action "casting" for you, just timed to go off right after your turn. And now you can now Vortex Warp yourself anywhere through it and your partner just flies over to you.
I'm actually a little bummed they took alignment stuff away from the High Sorcery mages entirely. That's such a thematic part of Krynn specifically, and the old UA way they did it with "not-opposite" rather than a strict requirement was pretty fair. I'd rather see the requirement in there, and have DMs choose to ignore it when it doesn't matter to the campaign.
@@user-xo1cj9ne7f Solinari was non-evil, Nuitari was non-good. That sort of "can't be the opposite" alignment restriction seems like a mostly fair way of incorporating theme without being suffocating.
I'd take Inspiring Leader every time over Knight of the Rose. It is out of combat but multiple allies and I have not run the numbers but I'm putting out 25 temp HP in my high level campaign right now - to each party member. Granted it is not in combat. Couldn't hurt to have both if you don't need your ASIs for anything else.
Protective ward is another way a barbarian can use spell slots while raging. Mix that on a totem moon druid? Not sure how useful it would be, but that's about all I can think of right now lol
TM never suffers from the UA effect. He didn’t read the Krynn UA and is thus not disappointed that they removed saving throws from Red Robes. *weeps in naïvete
I only read the UA but dont you get these feats for free at lvl 1 and lvl 4? This should significantly boost the score you gave them since they outright improve every character with no demerits. Getting free at will advantage on attacks is pretty good in my opinion and giving other people a second attack and a +1 in a stats again for free seems very good.
Can we stop a moment and look at the adept of the white robes Protective Ward, and compare it to the Psi Warrior's Protective Field. For most of a Psi Warrior's career he'll get a single 1d6 or 1d8, + intelligence modifier only, at the cost of a much more finite resource than spell slots. You can tell they really want to sell all of these new books, because all of them stink of extreme power creep. Good game design does not mean ever expanding power creep, and somewhere around the end of Tasha's development they completely forgot about that.
Rules lawyery question regarding the intent for hit dice and Life-Channel vis-à-vis the durable feat. So with durable feat [When you roll a Hit Die to regain hit points, the minimum number of hit points you regain from the _roll_ equals twice your Constitution], the designers have stated that the intention is that hit dice "rolls" already include the con mod for the purpose of establishing this minimum roll -so you don't get a minimum of 2xcon mod + con mod per die spent with the feat. Given that context for hit dice arithmetic [that con mod is a given in the roll of a hit dice roll], should we then presume, that your con mod gets added to every hit dice expended for Life-Channel, given that this ability is also using hit dice rolls for its terminology?
I think you are wrong about single target for AOE for the black robe feat. This does not use a reaction or action, so you can do it to multiple targets while spending hit dice for each. If you cast Spirit Guardians, every time someone fails a save you can spend hit dice to do extra damage. If your 18th level wizard casts a 3rd level fireball and 6 targets fail she can spend 3 hit dice on each of them and use all 18 of her hit dice to do an extra 3d6 to each one of them.
A black robed Eldritch Knight or Paladin can pick up Booming or Green Flame Blade and use Life Channel. I think you maybe mentioned it once. Keep in mind that these are bonus feats and even if not taking these feats every character gets a 1st a 4th lvl bonus feat from a select list.
I can see the Holy Symbol replacing the tools as a spellcasting focus for the artificer, but how does that include the extra material component that Artificer spells have?
it doesn't help them due to the weird tool required specification. They can use an infused item for their focus though, so it could ultimately have the same net effect if their holy symbol is on an infused shield, or what have you.
It does increase a spells damage for the purposes of leaching life, but it wouldn't work with vampiric touch since it's an attack roll as opposed to a saving throw. The initial casting of Enervation would work though.
Why not just a feat that gives you one 1st level spell and one 2nd level spell of your choice, one casting of each, and the ability to cast them with spell slots? I can't really think of a combo that breaks that.
I do want to correct one thing you said regarding the Commander's Strike Maneuver that you are not correct about in this video (See Timestamp 22:55). You said "Instead of forgoing one of your Bonus Action, you are forgoing one of your attacks instead". That is not how Commander's Strike works. The body of the text on screen clearly states "You can forgo one of your attacks and a bonus action". If someone is just listening to the video, this presents a false image of the effect.
Mechanically speaking, Commanding Rally is a strictly superior version of Commander's Strike since it isn't tied to your action and doesn't force you to give up an attack during your turn.
Sorry for the petty nitpick but I felt it was a necessary correction to point out.
You're right, I wasn't up to snuff on my understanding of commander's strike.
Using both an attack and bonus action is terrible cost
@@andrewnorth1471 Wholly Agreed. There is essentially zero reason to ever take Commander's Strike. It is a truly awful Maneuver.
@@andrewnorth1471 Don't forget about the reaction of the ally making the attack.
Yeah, Commander's Strike is mostly garbage on optimised builds.
It's ok on non-optimised builds. Like...are you a fighter equipping a longsword and a shield, and you have a Rogue in the party? Then sure, Commander's Strike might be great for you!
It's ok if you just want to make your party like you more. "My party's rogue likes it when I use commander's strike, we have more fun that way."--yeah, making other players at your table happy can be worth more than squeezing 5 extra damage out of your superiority die.
But if we're being strictly optimal, let's say a battlemaster fighter with crossbow expert and sharpshooter...Commander's Strike is extremely niche at best. Like it can be competitive with precision attack, but the rogue needs to be either near level 20 in rogue (like 10d6 sneak attack), or have advantage on their reaction attack and have about 11 levels in rogue (6d6 sneak attack). Basically the rogue needs to be averaging about 31 damage with their reaction attack after accuracy (though do note that they get to add your superiority die to their damage if they hit, so remember to factor that into their damage).
If playing for pure optimisation I probably would grab Commander's Strike if I was at a table with a mono-classed Bugbear Assassin Rogue or Elven Accuracy Assassin Rogue. If the fighter beats any of the bad guys on initiative, tell the rogue to shoot that bad guy while the rogue still has advantage from assassinate. Works even if the rogue rolls low on initiative (they can still take a reaction). This actually does become a decent damage gain at reasonable levels (starts to be a pretty solid use for maneuvers around 7 levels in rogue, and gets better from there).
This is of course fairly niche though. For the most part you can just ignore Commander's Strike at optimised tables, cause you won't see a whole lot of mono-classed assassins.
The Knight of the Sword feat just screams Conquest Paladin
Or Fey Wanderer, at least mechanically. Thematically, you don’t think of rangers this way, but this actually leads to some interesting backstory ideas.
I was about to say this. I could 100% see myself doing a Dragonborn Undeath Warlock 2/Conquest Paladin 18 with Knight of the Sword and Dragon Fear as a build. Sure, I lose power when I'm up against a Fear-Immune enemy. I'm still a Paladin, which means Smite isn't off the table
For Adept of the Red Robes, Magical Balance is pretty strong for people that use counterspell and dispel magic liberally. It basically eliminates the need to cast it with a spell slot higher than 3, with the exception of really high level spells.
Abjuration wizards eliminate that exception, pumping those spells to the moon. Future build maybe?
@@BranHawk775In my opinion, instead of taking the feat we could just multiclass 2 lv into Star Druid, getting Starry Form. Choosing the Dragon option, we can automatically get a 10 on our concentration checks, Int and Wis checks, including the check from Telekinesis, Counterspell and Dispel Magic
It's also nice if you have Guiding Bolt or Inflict Wounds, because you can make it automatically hit if you have already sussed out the enemy's AC.
Red Robes is also the strongest of the options for a martial and/or skill monkey character, since it's not reliant on spellcasting and has a lot of great spell choice options that don't rely on casting ability modifier.
Applies to initiative too. Would also be fun for a clockwork sorcerer, cancelling bad rolls before they get/choose to use trance of order. Would love to use this to grab enhance ability on a character. The feature kinda conflicts with the fluff though. It seems like it would be more appropriate for a group that specializes in divination.
For the Artificer+Holy Symbol thing, you could get around that restriction by dipping a second level of Artificer and Infusing your shield with a holy symbol on it, thus having your shield count as a focus for both artificer and cleric/paladin while still having your main hand free for a weapon etc
I'm pretty sure I'm the PHB they say you can just make your shield a holy symbol
@@roxxdude1 yeah it's the matter of having the same item also be an artificer focus right? The infusion makes it an artificer focus (they must be holding tools or an infused item they can use as a focus instead in order to cast)
I get the "Free Hand" thing for Focus... But... I'll buy a Component Pouch.
@@absolstoryoffiction6615 Then you still need a free hand to take spell components out of the pouch.
@@RokuroCarisu
True. But It's better than carrying every Focus per full/half Caster Class for Multiclass. Even with the Warcaster Feat.
Precise strike seems interesting option for rogue though (especially with elven accuracy), if one dnd drops steady aim. It lets you sneak attack without sacrificing mobility or having the usual considerations for target selection. So, proficiency times per long rest, you can select the optimal target when you otherwise could not have, or get a sneak attack when you otherwise could not have. I think that's actually substantial. I wish it was a half feat instead of having a ribbon feature though.
Since it's a background feat, it really couldn't be a half feat. Seems like a solid contender against Tough for the best of the feats a Rogue could take (other choices being Skilled or Initiate of High Sorcery) in the campaign setting.
@@thebitterfig9903 good point!
Rogues can take 'mage of high sorcery' background?
Get the 1st level 'initiate of high sorcery' Feat and 4th level 'Adept of the Red Robes' feat in addition to Sentinel at 4th level.
This gives full rogues access to Mirror Image/Sentinel reaction sneak attacks!!!
Artificer initiate from Tasha's caldron of everything also gives you a similar use where you can use the tool that you choose from that feet as a focus for any spell you cast with intelligence.
But that is worse since you have to have a tool in your hand. Being able to use a shield for your hand slot is a lot better
@@ferencfeher2647 But, if you're going to be fulfilling the thieves tools specialist role of the party anyway, might not be the worst thing to have on hand anyways. If not planning on making weapon attacks, could even go tools in one hand as a focus and shield in the other. ...Honestly, the most potentially frustrating part of Divinely Favored is that it's 4th level restricted, since it would otherwise have so much good backstory potential if able to obtain it at 1st level.
All of this is kinda moot because from 2nd level an Artificer can use an Infused Item as a focus instead of their tools. You wanna cast spells while holding a shield? Infuse it.
My point was that Chris said that this was the 1st time a feat was set up this way. I was pointing out that artificer initiate did it 1st not this feet from dragon Lance.
@@danboud8135 but then you lose out on spell slot progression, 1st level artificer gives full caster slots, 2nd level doesnt
Honestly, having trouble buying new products after Spelljammer seriously disappointed me. I am interested in the Lunar sorcerer thematically, but unless one of my friends says they want to run a Dragonlance campaign, I think I'm going to sit this one out. Keeping an eye on DM's guild for future purchases. Great content as always
Understandable. Spelljammer was really a letdown
One thing I like about the Life Channel feature is that you apply the damage after the target fails its saving throw. It's really nice that you won't expend the hit dice for nothing if you're using a "save or suck" spell like Disintegrate. It's also just nice in general because you'll be doing the normal damage of the spell (instead of half if they succeeded) plus the extra damage from Life Channel which makes it feel more impressive.
The Knight Of feats don't have the prerequisite of belonging to a certain order because it is expected that knights move between orders as they become more experienced, and they take with them things that they learned in previous orders. This is explained in some text box in the book. If it had that prerequisite, then the character would not be able to use the feat once they joined a different order
For the Squire of Solomnia feat, it all but guarantees a hit for an Elf Rogue with Elven Accuracy. A rogue might still use BA for Steady Aim or a familiar's Help action, but the SoS feat frees up bonus action when needed. On your Double Phantom build, which relies on a mount, this feat could be pretty good.
Or if the rogue needs to kite away from an enemy that is chasing them down. Sometimes it comes down to either sacrificing advantage and therefore your sneak attack in order to stay mobile. This would let you run away AND get your sneak attack in the same turn. (And possibly bonus action dash to get some distance so that you can steady aim on the next turn)
Holy Cow, Life Channel is such a cool ability. Everything you said about it was spot on. I think if these feats were stand alone feats that you couldn't take for free with the backgrounds then they wouldn't be worth taking over other feats already available like Fey Touched, but them being free to access through the Dragonlance backgrounds makes them pretty awesome. I do wish the Martial feats were a little bit better than slightly reworked Battle Master Maneuvers, but Wizards of the Coast seems to be adamant about keeping the gap between Casters and Martials wide rather than trying to narrow it.
Armor of Agathys is my favorite 1st level spell to pick up as a Warlock, but it is unfortunate that its tied to alignment. I know there's a lot of tables out there that don't vibe with having evil pcs. I don't mind them personally as long as a player knows what they're doing and they're not just using their alignment as an excuse to be a dbag to other players at the table.
One way to help a table get over that is to reframe Good/Evil as Selfless/Selfish -- but I agree that it still requires a player with maturity and finesse to make it work in a party that's not all evil or intended for just a single session.
The alignment requirements should refer to the patron/god not the character that is favoured by it
Its definitely more that "evil" is usually hard to pull off for new players so you get a lot of trainwreck sessions from people trying to overdo it. Real evil is slow, methodical, and requires you to sign several forms in triplicate you don't even understand.
i dont vibe with having alignment restrictions in the first place :D
If you need a robe of archmagi, you will get one. Colors be damned. It will have the color of an oilspill.
@@ChazTheYouthful the phrase I've heard is "stupid is not an alignment"
I strongly believe in the importance of flavor is free for "setting specific content" (note this is the first time in 5e the designers have EVER explicitly stated that X feature CAN ONLY be used in X campaign).
The reason I believe so strongly in it is 1.) It's just so dang easy to reflavor. You're telling me that Wildemount is the ONLY place a Wizard has EVER tried to mess with time and gravity, when we literally have Time Stop as a spell from the PHB? You're telling me Strixhaven is the ONLY magical university in the multiverse? You're telling me Ravnica is the ONLY place in the multiverse with a group of over-zealous knights? You're telling me that there's NO WAY that any other plane might have a family line blessed with storm powers (when there's literally a subclass based in lineage with storm powers?). To that I say phooey.
2.) It opens up so many more options for customization. I think it's very mechanically interesting with unique RP opportunities to play for example: a mark of shadow conquest paladin that acts stealthy and sneaky and uses the shadows to create fear effects. Or a dao Genielock that focuses on crystals and geometry and fractals with maybe the Quandrix background to potentially gain some more dimension warping spells that play along with that flavor especially since their genie Vessel is already in that backgrounds flavor.
But that's just my opinion and I recognize that a lot of people are too concerned with "power creep" to even consider it.
It sounds like what WotC did here, was meant for Adventure's League more so than at tables.
"Power Creep" isn't a concern since WotC has never tried to address it since the past few books.
7:30 Chris, I didn't know I could love your content more. Well played.
I would say Adept of the Red Robes is actually a pretty good feat for martials tbh. If you have high enough attack modifiers, like having Archery Fighting Style, this feat basically allows you to have a guarantee hit like 3 times per long rest in most situations. Pretty good imo.
Life channel would work very well on a moon druid, as it would allow you to expend your wildshape's hit die
17:25 Hexblade warlock 2/ Abjuration wizard 2 with Armor of Agathys build. Cast Armor of Agathys with the highest slot, run into battle. Reduce damage, with the Protective Wards and regain your abjurers ward with Armor of Shadows invocation. 4 layers of hp.
ya using protective ward is more efficient for spell slots than recharging your arcane ward with normal slots (in case you weren't using armor of shadows). also, if you have AoA up, you might prefer using your reaction for protective ward instead of shield since a missed attack won't proc your damage.
"with the highest slot"
So... 1?
@@Schmeethe88 i mean at level 4 it is 1, but Dragonlance campaign goes up to 12. Maybe AoA isnt a smartest use for 5the level slot- but the fun one for sure, especially with wards.
I think the best adept of the black robes might be a tempest cleric. A d8 for the cleric is fine and I think the hit die work with Destructive Wrath. You could do the scribes wizard thing too to deal max damage on a fireball ball changed to lightning. Imagine a 5th level scribes wizard multiclassed with tempest cleric would be able to deal 9x6(upcast fireball 4th level in lightning) + 5x6+2x8(hit die) = straight 100 damage fireball in an area of effect.
Adept of Red Robes may be a bit boring but it's yet another addition to the Div/Chron Halfling with Lucky and Bountiful Luck "I get to decide the die actually" fun
I can see the Life Channel feature of the Adept of the Black Robes feat beeing pretty useful on an Eldtrich Knight. Usually the fantasy of them casting blast spells and making weapon attacks is fun, but does not deliver as good because of their progression. Now they could just add hit dice to make up for their slower progression.
Lets say the EK makes it to lvl 7 and uses 2 hit dice on a spelll ike Shatter or Rimes Binding Ice and the enemies fail their saving throw, that would increase the average damage from 3d8 = 13.5 to 3d8+ 2d10 = 24.5 That is still lower than a 3rd lvl Fireball with 8d6 = 28, but the increase is significant and when Eldtrich Strike comes up, you can combine it with your Action Surge to give disadvantage on saving throws against your spells.
And when they finally get 3rd lvl spells at 13, they can cast Fireball for 8d6+3d10=44.5 damage. That is basically the equivalent of a Fireball upcast to 8 lvl for a 3rd Caster, using only a 3rd lvl slot and never getting more than 4th lvl spell slots. Of course that looks better than it really is, because you can only increase the damage on one target, but it is still nice I think.
Now a barbarian can take 'mage of high sorcery' background? Yes RAW.
If so, is the 1st level 'initiate of high sorcery' and 4th level 'Adept of the Robes' feats in addition to the usual 1st (if variant human) &/or 4th level ASI/feat?
Very well done & indepth as always, a cut above most D&D youtubers.
one note abt commander strike is that it uses up both one of your attacks and your bonus action
LIfe Channel seems optimal for a Cleric. Spirit Guardians is a great spell for this, and Clerics have D8 hit dice, which is as good as you can get for a full caster.
For Adept of the Red Robes I think you missed an incredible option for partial or non casters, Shadowblade!! It would be amazing on a Paladin or melee Ranger and allows a Eldritch Knight to get it at lvl4 rather than waiting till lvl 8. Decent on Rogue's too or even non-casting Fighters.
Adept of the White Robes is still great for me because I generally use >= 1 minute duration spells for control or support rather than nukes. So I tend to have at least half my spell slots unused at the end of the day, unless there was a counterspell battle. And with Mordenkainen's Monsters of the Multiverse, there are now lesser chances of counterspell battles. I'd still have to decide between Shield, Absorb Elements or Protective Ward, but there are certainly encounters where I can risk using the ward.
Anyone who would cast Healing Word would absolutely love White Robes. The die is upgraded compared to HW, it still gets your ability score modifier on top, and it is a reaction rather than a bonus action.
This will even allow you to get around the pesky turn order wonkiness where the person you heal has had their turn being unconscious before your turn comes up.
On a cleric, who can pick up Shield with the Initiate feat and has fewer reactions (apart from that newly acquired Qhield), this is a great feat.
Nice, was waiting for your take!
One thing I feel I should point out is that Divinely Favored allows you to learn spells like Healing Word or Cure Wounds, so with a single 4th level feat the power of classes like Sorcerer, Warlock, and Wizard is increased significantly, at least as far as I see it. Cure Wounds has been a huge help in campaigns stretching up to about 8th or 9th level in my experience, so a Wizard who can get lower level slots back quickly with Arcane Recovery is gonna make great use of casting Cure Wounds between encounters
So, one cool thing that you mentioned but I felt deserves some more digging into when talking about the design space these feats take up is the fact that you get them for free with the free bonus feats at 1st and 4th level. I think this is just a really cool design space to consider as a lot of feats that get added through setting material or adventure specific stuff is usually pretty flavorful but I think struggle to justify themselves power wise when compared to your more standard feats. By carving out their own space as simply extra power but still giving them mechanical power, but with more limited competition, I think it's a neat way to add some mechanical ties and flavor to a world or setting. I'd love to see the concept of this used again in more games and might take it for my own home campaign of bonus feats that tie specifically to the world and the setting to get players more invested in that setting and these things their characters tie to. I think that would be a fun space to explore even beyond dragonlance.
Life Channeling from Adept of the Black Robes plus a paladin's smite spells sounds like fun
I'm always on the lookout for interestingly open-ended wording in rules and features. More often lately I'm seeing things that *could* have interactions but that don't simply because there's no magic items or character options that quite line up.
That's what I think of when I look at Life Channel from Adept of the Black Robes: it seems oddly precise that none of the magic items or subclass features I'm aware of in 5e let you maximize hit die rolls without specifying that you must be using them to regain hit points.
Still, since this appears to get lumped under the spell damage in general, other forms of maximization should work by my reading, like Empowered Spell metamagic or Evocation Wizard's Overchannel ability.
I think Life Channel is best for an Evoker since Wizard hit dice heal less and as a result other healing options go farther toward bringing a Wizard back to full HP.
I feel like if you are playing a character that is going to be incorporating a mount into your play style, that the mounting/dismounting cost is not going to be just a ribbon feature for them and could save them a 3 level cavalier dip/subclass selection if they had been considering it for gaining that as part of their toolkit.
But, realistically, if they're expecting combat, they should already be mounted. And, chances are, the mount's movement will make up for any movement expended to mount while in battle. For the most common scenario where that's happening, if you're knocked off your mount, half movement to get up out of prone and half to get back on the mount really isn't going to be effected by 5 feet to mount instead.
@@Shalakor I could see it coming up a lot and being really annoying in a longer term game.
Poor stats for saving throws, mount gets frightened/other debilitating condition, you're left hoofing it at half speed towards the enemy; Blasted away from your mount and with the potential of landing prone; Racing towards your mount from a mount prohibitive environment, or pursuit into a mount prohibitive environment; etc. -All of these become heightened with difficult terrain or similar movement expending effects.
@@elliotbryant3459 Still feel like these kinds of things should only come up rarely enough that it's better both efficiency-wise and narratively for the negative circumstances to be a real hindrance when they do come up than to spend resources on being prepared for them if you don't have to. Like, as long as your DM isn't constantly singling you out, I feel like it's more interesting to have to figure out a work around on the spot the few times your preferred strategy does get countered than having an exact answer for every potential counter in your back pocket. Basically, if you can trust your DM to not find convoluted ways to kill off your mount at every turn in the first place, chances are you're not being separated from it on a regular basis either. There's a bit of baseline cooperation to be expected between a DM and a player focusing on mounted combat for their character, or any other playstyle, which is triply true if a campaign is surviving long-term.
@@Shalakor there's healthy dm-player relationships, but that's different from expecting significant dm fiat. When planning a character, I find it's more reliable to be prepared for foreseeable drawbacks than to expect significant support modifications for your abilities. And in it's current state, mounted combat has a *ton* of hindrances built into it, I can picture issues coming up all the time. Most mounts have less than +2 to wis saves and less than +3 to con saves. As mechanics stand, those mounts are going to be failing a ton of debilitating conditions. When any fear save starts showing up [which aren't that rare], it's like a 50% failure rate and increasing from there.
All that said, I think having this as the only available prerequisite for the later martial feats was a poor decision. The caster background feat is essentially 3 different feat choices [significantly more if you account for spell combinations], whereas this is just these 2 things, with one being a ribbon ability *if* you have no particular interest and/or means of using a mount.
@@elliotbryant3459 True about the feat. It's too little and unfocused of a feature to build around, either unused or not enough for that playstyle on its own. Features that help you protect and coordinate with your mount are the priority for mounted combat.
I agree that, usually, mount-up is a weak feature.
That said, I'm currently very aware of the benefit that mounting for less movement could grant.
I'm playing in a party with a Moon Druid, and mounting/dismounting with only 5 feet would be useful, because the large/huge animals she turns into take up so much of the battlefield, so we could just slide over her giant snake body (or whatever) and get in range of the enemy.
4:55 Artificers can use their infusions as a spell casting focus. Meaning a shield, Weapon, wand, staff or anything that a wizard can also use as an arcane focus. I think this is more powerful with something like sword and board Eldritch Knight. Using their Holy Symbol on their shield or as a necklace to cast their spells where they normally wouldn't be able to.
We have actually seen something similar to the last sentence of divinely favored in the artificer initiate feat from tasha's. It let you use a tool as a spellcasting focus for any spell using intelligence.
Divinely Favored really doesn’t feel like a 4th level feat.
To be honest they should have called it "Divine Touched", made it a half feat, and just rounded out the cycle they started with Fey Touched and Shadow Touched. Keep Augury as the second level spell to balance getting a 1st level abjuration or transmutation spell of your choice.
Good video! Once more, casters got more than martials which is bad. The only reason the martial feats aren't bad is because they are "free". The BA tax for KoC and KoR conflicts with BA feats like PAM and XBE and the frighten from KoS favors ranged characters, which at some point would like to MC in Battlemaster and would get the menacing maneuver anyway. Personally I would remove the BA from KoC and KoR (and add a requisite so that casters can't easily use it) and give a better effect to KoS, maybe a tauting (like duel) effect that would be new and help the melee characters (cause they never get any love).
I had to read this comment like I was interpreting hyerogliphics
Agreed tho
@@marmato9332Hahaha fair enough. I'm just lazy and didn't want to write everything.
I think you missed a really powerful use for Adept of the Black Robes: Paladin Smite spells. They can choose to pump a ton of extra damage into a Banishing Smite or something similar.
Secondly, the Squire of Solomnia's Precise Strike feature is really good for Rogues who can now, on-demand, gain advantage and extra damage.
It looks like the classes that would be able to squeeze the most damage out of Life Channel from Adept of the Black Robes are Bards, Clerics, and Druids, since they are the full casters with the largest hit dice. While Paladins and Rangers can get up to 5d10 at high levels, and Wizards and Sorcerers can get up to 9d6, those 3 can get up to 9d8.
Out of the 3, it's probably Clerics and/or Druids that come out on top, since while Bards have a lot of spells that require saves, the selection of ones that actually do damage are comparatively slim, so they'd need to supplement it with their Magical Secrets in order to keep up.
EDIT: Warlocks would manage pretty well, as well, since while they get way fewer spell slots, they have the same hit die as Bard, Cleric, and Druid, and their spells are automatically upcast. So they'd have a bit more burst for spells that are level 5 or lower.
imagine using the black robes feat to boost lightning dmg of the tempest
Here is something interesting if you choose one of the knight order feats as a Bonus Feat in a Dragonlance campaign you can pick another half feat so it's like you didn't lose out on a +2 to something or have two +1s. Very cool in my opinion.
This is obviously at Level 4.
Thanks for reviewing the feats. You missed an important part of "Tools Required" for Articifer, that you can use any infused item you have as a focus as well, so if you have your armor infused with +1, its fair game as a focus.
Also its amusing that the 2nd feature for Adept of the White Robes is best used on the stereotypically evil caster, warlock.
Squire of Solamnia has to be bad, otherwise rogues could have fun with it, and if oneDnd's playtests are to be considered, rogues aren't allowed to have fun anymore.
Rogues be Adept of Red Robes + Sentinel all at level 4 for 'Mirror Image + Sentinel' reaction sneak attacks
knight of the rose is what the healer feat desires to be, a good amount of temp HP with a decent range and a bonus action activation, and is also a half-ASI? just wonderfull
Good coverage. Thank you
I used to freaking love dragonlance. it was my setting of choice for years... but I was the only one in my group who even liked it. Beeg bummer. Like so many games I think I would love, Dragonlance is going on the "Never gonna get to play" shelf alongside Shadowrun and Starwars
squire of solomia is great for either riders (paladins, cavalier fighters, battle smith artificers, drake wardens, beast master rangers, etc.) and for characters that can benefit from the advantage such as rogues, paladins, characters with the GWM or sharpshooter feat, etc. specially when combined with the elven accuracy feat
My theory for why none of the feats are too crazy is that the player might very well have 4 feats at Lv4. More even if your race gave you one.
I enjoyed the thematic of the feats granting spell by school, and not by class list for something other than a 1st lv spell or a cantrip
It needs to be said red robe is SO POWERFUL it allows access to Immovable object from The cr book. This means you can take the spell that locks tarrasques in place.
I was thinking of the knight of the sword with Fey Wanderer. Possibly with a undead warlock dip for more frightened goodness.
If someone were playing that Armor of Agathys barbarian you made a while back in a Dragonlance campaign, they could take Divinely Favored at level 4 to be able to cast the spell a couple levels early, even if just once a day. Not amazingly powerful or anything, but kind of cool.
Dragonlance offers these feats for free as bonus feats, so even if they're not as good as others its still a power boost. If you're not going down one of these routes you can pick from a small list of other feats. Skilled or Tough at 1st level and Alert, Mobile, Sentinel or War Caster at 4th.
My guess is they wanted to include the Knights and Wizards of this world as options and making them feats rather than subclasses opens them up to other classes. And bonus feats so taking them doesn't sacrifice normal builds.
23:00 well, unfortunately commander's strike takes both an attack and a bonus action, which really hurts. Even with a rogue on the party I struggle to find the time to use this ability
Cause Fear: "Am I nothing to you?"
Treant, you're the best!
Using divinely favored to get Goodberry on a warlock or a life cleric sounds really good.
Just thought about the interaction between precise strike and Samurai fighters rapid strike, could be kinda cool
I can't help but feel we're getting a lot of very uninspired design from WotC lately. "Here's some spells" is their go-to; Also: "Here's the Lunar Sorcerer. They pick a moon whenever they feel like it. That gives them different spells. We name the features like moon phases, because moons, but mechanically there's nothing particular moonish about it, waxing and waning just sounds cool, I guess."
It all feels a bit bland, like they've run out of ideas and offering little bundles of spells themed one way or another is all they're doing. I get why it's convenient as a designer to draw from the huge amount of D&D spells that are also conveniently tiered, but still...
I get it, though I thought there were at least a couple cool ideas here.
Even with the prerequisite of another feat, the Adept of the Red Robes feat's Magical balance skill is just god levels of cheese at lower levels. Package that with Treantmonk's knowledge cleric / divination build and you get a monstrosity. The amount of times you could just go "yes this does happen", "No this does not happen" and "Well do elaborate on what I know / find / sense" would be silly. Especially with the amount of "most common/ important" proficiencies skill you can hoard with said build, taking that flat 10 and just adding the skill modifiers at level 4 you'd be looking at a +7. So 17 and whatever Guidance gives you from the d4.
In combat sure with bless you'd average the same but the knowledge cleric divination wizard is not all about that jazz. They are there for the support, control and ability checks. As any proper God wizard does.
I think the material component requirements for all spells is actually the Eberron version, Tasha's version does not actually state that anymore
knight of the crown is great when you have a rogue or if you are a melee character that lacks ranged attack options but one of your party members has ranged options
If you never take short rests, life channel is free damage.
In regards to what you mentioned about being locked out of options by alignment, I do not believe that is the case. In my opinion, Divinely Favored listed the alignment of the god that affected you, rather than the alignment of your character.
Life Channel mechanic for any future DARKSUN campaign.
There's big potential for confusion around the 5 minute mark regarding an artificer's spellcasting. Artificers can treat their infused items as spellcasting foci for their spells. If you're not going more than one level into artificer you should be actively holding an infused focus, weapon, shield, or some combination of the three at any time past level 2. If you aren't you're probably doing something wrong or you're really leaning in to supporting the party with infusions.
knight of the sword is amazing when you are a oath of conquest paladin
I'm so happy that for the most part my table doesn't care about the spellcasting focus rules. You still need war caster to cast spells if you've got both hands full, but I'm not a big fan of the requirements there.
I think you may be overlooking that the martial feats provide you with more resources than the battlemaster feats. You essentially start with 2 uses that don't draw from a shared pool with other combat maneuvers, and this scales to 6. Even if the maneuvers are weaker I think you get more bang for your buck.
I love how artificer initiate lost its last niche of use
I can only imagine the level 1 background feats were purposely under tuned since they don't present the opportunity costs typical with feat selection. The high sorcery background is definitely superior to squire but it does potentially benefit martial characters more than full casters so I do think there're some interesting design choices going on here.
Question about Life Channel. The way I read it, it sounds like you must have and spend the exact number of hit dice equal to the spell's level. I think it would make more sense to be able to spend *up to* the spell's level worth of hit dice. Maybe that's what "can" in "you can expend" implies? What do you think?
PS I also love the mechanics of this feat and the idea of using d8, d10, and d12 hit dice for this.
Spell casting focus, I would rule that you would still need the tools in hand because the feat says you can use blank while the class feature says you must use.(Time stamp 4:50)
My issue with the Life Channel (turning hitdice into damage), I think that is the exact opposite of where you want to go mechanically with defensive type powers. Anytime you start allowing defense to be converted into offense, you have the issue where a player can just blow their load on offense, but now becomes too squishy and just dies out. It also puts an unfair burden on the party, "sorry guys I'm completely out of hitdice, I need the cleric to just pump me with healing". Hitdice are meant for healing, that's their job. Combining them with offense mechanics is a dangerous precendent.
Something I did notice is while the Adept feats are mutually exclusive, the Knight feats are not.
In the future, I wonder If instead of balancing spells, feats, and backgrounds, they’ll just slap on “Prerequisite: Campaign Setting” on it.
Benefit of the Squire of Solamnia feat: if you are a rogue (taking that background), then this could be another way to give yourself sneak attack if you wouldn't be able to get it any other way.
Rogues be Adept of Red Robes + Sentinel all at level 4 for 'Mirror Image + Sentinel' reaction sneak attacks
Good. I think alignment is a core part of D&D. People may disagree but I think that's because they associate "good" "evil" etc.. all with a subjective definition when they do have objective definitions. Alignment was always meant to tell you an overall ideological disposition of a creature or group of creatures based on many factors. For example, we typically think of psychopaths as evil, and for the most case, they are. Studies have shown that most psychopaths lack empathy and in MANY cases they lack empathy because they are born deficient in specific parts of their brain activity. Now, imagine if you had an entire race that lacked the brain chemistry to feel empathy. An entire race, if you will, of psychopaths. That's why I think alignment is necessary for DM's. It doesn't describe the outlier, it describes the standard. You can have a "good" bugbear, but that's the exception, not the rule.
I think the Martial Maneuver style feats could reset on a short rest and it wouldn't upset balance at all. Overall, just like magic initiate, the added spell casting is still vastly superior. Getting advantage one single attack is not gonna compare to bless!
Regarding the Artificer comment about having tools in hand when casting spells, later in that block there's "After you gain the Infuse Item feature at 2nd level, you can also use any item bearing one of your infusions as a spellcasting focus." Given that wording, I've read it as if I've enchanted something like my armor or shield with Enhance Defense, then I'm covered for casting spells. So I don't need that feat mentioned or such to get around it since it's not a factor anymore. I can't see how, if my infused armor counts as a focus, how would need it to occupy one of my hands to have it "in hand". Would I have to take it off? And if you read things like under the Armorer that says "You can use the arcane armor as a spellcasting focus for your artificer spells", I think these rules are for players not to have to deal with holding tools and such anymore, or otherwise that feature of the Armorer would be completely useless. Overall the juggling of tools in hand really isn't needed after second level, as long as you have a personal item infused like that.
Another fun combo using the logic that an infused item is a focus is the 11th level spell storing item property.
1. Infused items are considered a spellcasting focus
2. Infuse a gem to be your Homunculus Servant, thus he is a focus.
3. With your Homunculus, now make it a spell storing item. (You can't infuse the same item twice, but all wording under spell storing item doesn't say you're "infusing" the item, so you shouldn't be tripping over that limit.)
4. Store something like Vortex Warp into your Homunculus
5. Now your Homunculus can "hold" itself to cast the spell as an action Int x2 times, and now with your bonus action you can have it take casting Vortex Warp as it's action, effectively making Vortex Warp a bonus action "casting" for you, just timed to go off right after your turn. And now you can now Vortex Warp yourself anywhere through it and your partner just flies over to you.
I'm actually a little bummed they took alignment stuff away from the High Sorcery mages entirely. That's such a thematic part of Krynn specifically, and the old UA way they did it with "not-opposite" rather than a strict requirement was pretty fair. I'd rather see the requirement in there, and have DMs choose to ignore it when it doesn't matter to the campaign.
I haven’t seen the UA. How did they handle alignment restrictions?
@@user-xo1cj9ne7f Solinari was non-evil, Nuitari was non-good. That sort of "can't be the opposite" alignment restriction seems like a mostly fair way of incorporating theme without being suffocating.
I'd take Inspiring Leader every time over Knight of the Rose. It is out of combat but multiple allies and I have not run the numbers but I'm putting out 25 temp HP in my high level campaign right now - to each party member.
Granted it is not in combat. Couldn't hurt to have both if you don't need your ASIs for anything else.
I personally don't think of multiclassing Barb with a caster as odd, it seems like a good way to make a Shaman!
Life channel would just be absolutely amazing with an upcasted moonbeam.
It surprised me that alignment was a mechanic of the feat depended on alignmemt.
I wish we had some modern dragonlance video games.
Protective ward is another way a barbarian can use spell slots while raging. Mix that on a totem moon druid? Not sure how useful it would be, but that's about all I can think of right now lol
TM never suffers from the UA effect. He didn’t read the Krynn UA and is thus not disappointed that they removed saving throws from Red Robes. *weeps in naïvete
It's also called "blissful ignorance" ;)
I only read the UA but dont you get these feats for free at lvl 1 and lvl 4? This should significantly boost the score you gave them since they outright improve every character with no demerits. Getting free at will advantage on attacks is pretty good in my opinion and giving other people a second attack and a +1 in a stats again for free seems very good.
Even if some of these feats aren't really powerful, or entirely new things, they are really flavorful.
Can we stop a moment and look at the adept of the white robes Protective Ward, and compare it to the Psi Warrior's Protective Field. For most of a Psi Warrior's career he'll get a single 1d6 or 1d8, + intelligence modifier only, at the cost of a much more finite resource than spell slots. You can tell they really want to sell all of these new books, because all of them stink of extreme power creep. Good game design does not mean ever expanding power creep, and somewhere around the end of Tasha's development they completely forgot about that.
Precise strike sounds useful for a rogue.
Damn, they removed the cantrips from UA. I wanted to play a redmage anyways and getting guidance was a huge nab on a straight wizard
Rules lawyery question regarding the intent for hit dice and Life-Channel vis-à-vis the durable feat.
So with durable feat [When you roll a Hit Die to regain hit points, the minimum number of hit points you regain from the _roll_ equals twice your Constitution], the designers have stated that the intention is that hit dice "rolls" already include the con mod for the purpose of establishing this minimum roll -so you don't get a minimum of 2xcon mod + con mod per die spent with the feat.
Given that context for hit dice arithmetic [that con mod is a given in the roll of a hit dice roll], should we then presume, that your con mod gets added to every hit dice expended for Life-Channel, given that this ability is also using hit dice rolls for its terminology?
I think as worded it would only impact how much you heal, not how much damage you inflict.
I think you are wrong about single target for AOE for the black robe feat. This does not use a reaction or action, so you can do it to multiple targets while spending hit dice for each. If you cast Spirit Guardians, every time someone fails a save you can spend hit dice to do extra damage. If your 18th level wizard casts a 3rd level fireball and 6 targets fail she can spend 3 hit dice on each of them and use all 18 of her hit dice to do an extra 3d6 to each one of them.
You should make some builds for these feats. Or dragonlance feats.
You know Life channel would be great on a paladin if it works with the smite spells.
Bringing back feat taxes for Dragonlance...
A black robed Eldritch Knight or Paladin can pick up Booming or Green Flame Blade and use Life Channel.
I think you maybe mentioned it once. Keep in mind that these are bonus feats and even if not taking these feats every character gets a 1st a 4th lvl bonus feat from a select list.
This need a creature to fail in a saving throw and you can use only use Hit Dice equal the level of the spells (and cantrips are 0th level spells)
Target needs to fail a saving throw sadly
Good points.
I can see the Holy Symbol replacing the tools as a spellcasting focus for the artificer, but how does that include the extra material component that Artificer spells have?
it doesn't help them due to the weird tool required specification. They can use an infused item for their focus though, so it could ultimately have the same net effect if their holy symbol is on an infused shield, or what have you.
Life channel on vampiric touch with a Necro wizard, you get the additional damage and half the healing back anyway? Or did I miss something?
It does increase a spells damage for the purposes of leaching life, but it wouldn't work with vampiric touch since it's an attack roll as opposed to a saving throw. The initial casting of Enervation would work though.
Why not just a feat that gives you one 1st level spell and one 2nd level spell of your choice, one casting of each, and the ability to cast them with spell slots? I can't really think of a combo that breaks that.