William Brandes Stoddard
patreon
UA 2025: Horror Subclasses Breakdown
🕑 Added 2025-05-19 03:23:09 +0000 UTCI haven’t written an UA breakdown in a hot minute—the last one was before the three core books of 2024-25 dropped!—but this drop sucked me back in. Part of this is to find out where the reading audience is these days. I’m sad to see that they’ve dropped bylines for UA articles; I liked knowing whose ideas I was reading.
Also, the very short turnaround on this feedback window is a travesty. I’m sure they have reasons, but since the first Artificer UA dropped during the Christmas holiday season, it has given the extremely strong impression that they don’t want much feedback, and none of it thoughtful.
Artificer: Reanimator
We’re doing horror subclasses here, like the title says, so a Victor Frankenstein artificer is very on-message. I do need to get a better handle on the most recent Artificer draft to understand what I’m seeing here.
· Reanimator Spells gives you a mix of Necromancy and Lightning spells, which is kind of a wild thematic combination, but it’s very on-message for this concept. I like what’s on offer here.
· Jolt to Life at level 3 turns your Spare the Dying into a healing spell that also splashes some Lightning damage around in a 10-foot Emanation, Int modifier times per Long Rest. This is nice to have, of course, but requires things to go badly in order to use it. It’s weird that it doesn’t synergize better with your Reanimated Companion—your Companion has on-death features and no Death Saves, so you can’t cast Spare the Dying on it at all, I guess?
o Since I haven’t been commenting on this in a constant stream of articles—the Design Team has pivoted back to uses based on ability modifiers rather than Proficiency Bonus. PB scaling rewards multiclassing; ability score scaling rewards only a very few multiclass pairings. (Getting multiple high ability scores is of course possible, but usually very expensive in Feats.)
· Reanimated Companion does that thing that I can’t stand in Artificer rules writing: it strips out all of the theme by having you just use a Magic action to create your minion in a space within 5 feet. It’s okay to not want to deal with a lot of detail, but there’s got to be some middle ground between “poof, companion!” and (some imagined extreme of requirement).
o I dunno, like the text of the previous Battle Smith’s Steel Defender feature: “At the end of a long rest, you can create a new steel defender if you have smith’s tools with you. If you already have a defender from this feature, the first one immediately perishes.”
o Anyway, the creature is Small for some reason (it can be increased to Medium or Large later, potentially) and is Undead rather than a Construct (have fun Turning the Artificer’s Companion, clerics!). You can make it use its Action to attack if you spend a Bonus Action (as usual for companion creatures), and it has a Death Burst that splashes some Necrotic damage and Lightning Absorption.
o Its 60-ft Blindsight and inability to communicate with you or actively choose targets is sort of amazing, in an aaaalmost useful way.
o So, overall, I think this feature comes close but doesn’t hit the mark.
· Strange Modifications improves your spellcasting through your companion: they can be the source space of your spells, and they let you add your Int modifier to one damage roll of each of your spells cast through it. It also gives your companion Extra Attack. This is a huge boost to both “sides” of this subclass’s gameplay loop—just like you’d want to see at level 5. No issues with this.
· Improved Reanimation at level 9 gives you three variations of companion, chosen when you create them:
o Bloated is Medium or Large, its attack pushes targets, and you add your Int modifier to its Death Burst damage. That’s pretty cool.
o Gaunt makes the companion a weird wall-crawling thing and much speedier, and it emanates the Frightened condition when creatures start their turn. That’s potentially a whole lot of additional saves slowing down play. The image of the Gaunt companion is good, but I’m not loving the mechanics.
o Moist (…gross) gains a Swim Speed, and creatures within 10 feet of it that damage it take a little Acid damage in return.
o Overall I think this feature is interesting and gets the job done, but I’d still rather see “Small or Medium” as a baseline size, and Bloated can make ‘em swole.
· Promethean Reanimation at level 15 does three things for you:
o Facilitated Revival halves the Material costs for Revivify and Raise Dead spells you cast. (By level 15, this is unlikely to matter much, but okay.)
o Improved Companion increases your companion’s Death Burst damage from 2d6 to 4d6 Necrotic, and that damage ignores Necrotic Resistance. An average of 14 damage at level 15 is pretty piddly.
o Life Transfer lets you kill your companion to restore your own Hit Points, as a Reaction. This hooks into its Death Burst feature nicely, though the number of Hit Points you regain—1 per Artificer level—is probably something you can accomplish better some other way at level 15.
The changes I’d want to see to this are very few, and are honestly things I could handle as about two lines of house rules if I had to. I think the aesthetic generally works and offers a character concept that will be popular with the players of my various groups.
Bard: College of Spirits
I had my own experience with spirits while in college, but I definitely didn’t gain any magical powers in the bargain. Maybe I did it wrong.
· Channeler combines Guiding Whispers and Spiritual Focus, while splitting off the “Starting at 6th level” portion of Spiritual Focus to live in the level 6 Empowered Channeling feature. We’re starting off sort of bland on feature names, in the interest of reducing column-inches (as far as I can guess).
· Spirits from Beyond replaces Tales from Beyond at level 3. All of the powers are changed to some degree, because of the shift from a tale to calling up a spirit right now. The action economy also makes the thing happen immediately, rather than asking you to also spend an action. I’m not sure what I think about the shift to the bard commanding a random spirit, but the action economy improvement is huge.
o The scaling function on this feature is still that you can’t get the highest-powered spirits until you have a larger Bardic Inspiration die, and even then it’s random. The higher-level features do get pretty impressive in damage output for their cost.
o You’ve got to be a fan of randomness to play this—there are plenty of ways to get an outcome that you have no particular use for, such as Frightened effects in encounters full of creatures immune to that.
o All that said, the feature is probably a good time.
· Empowered Channeling at level 6 cuts the spell-borrowing feature Spirit Session from the previous version and replaces it with something completely different. I liked the flavor of Spirit Session a lot, though in fairness it’s a lot of words to grant one additional spell known for a while. I already mentioned Power from Beyond that got moved from the level 3 feature; additionally you now get Spirit Guardians as a prepared spell can cast it for free once per Long Rest, and 1/Short or Long Rest, you can make it grant Half Cover to allies in its area.
o This trades off significant versatility for a more powerful, combat-centric effect. It’s fine, and it’s very strong in a Bard’s hands, as they’re a class that often doesn’t care about being in melee or at maximum range—so Spirit Guardians is ideal.
· Mystical Connection at level 14 reduces the randomness of Spirits from Beyond, letting you roll twice and use whichever one you prefer. The only change from the previous version is that there’s no handling for rolling doubles now, where that used to be the best outcome (that outcome is tucked into a roll of 12 now).
Overall, this is an improvement over the original released version. I think they could have kept Spirit Session as it was (there aren’t a ton of Divination or Necromancy spells to choose from), or otherwise hit some of the séance theme a lot harder. I think Mystical Connection isn’t as exciting as you want a level 14 feature to be, but Spirits from Beyond has a lightly hidden internal scaling mechanic that means you don’t need as much punch in your level 14 feature.
Cleric: Grave Domain
I think this has been a pretty popular subclass since it came out in XGTE, or at least I hear about it a lot.
· Circle of Mortality has changed a good bit. The free Spare the Dying is gone, replaced by Chill Touch in the Grave Domain Spells feature. You still get maximized healing spells and Channel Divinity healing when the target has 0 Hit Points, but now you also get a +1d4 damage kicker against Bloodied targets.
o I’m not wild about making them good at finishing off the wounded. That feels tonally weird to me. I dunno.
· Grave Domain Spells have changed a bit. The text of the UA says they’re gaining “versatility and combat-relevant spells,” but that’s not… true? Detect Evil and Good isn’t more combat-relevant or versatile than False Life (though really it’s here to replace the Eyes of the Grave feature), Dispel Evil and Good isn’t more combat-relevant or versatile than Death Ward, and Hold Monster might be more combat-relevant or versatile, but it’s sure as heck not more thematic than Antilife Shell. This is a sidegrade at best.
· Path to the Grave, also at level 3, gets rid of the Vulnerability mechanic (as better people than me have argued, WotC has made Vulnerability so strong that it pretty much can’t get used), and replaces it with a curse that imposes Disadvantage on the target’s attacks and saves, and you can expend the curse to add +1d8 + your Cleric level Necrotic or Radiant damage to one attack you or an ally hit the creature with.
o I don’t like the extended Disad on attacks and saves. Unless you’re sure that the damage is going to put that creature down, Disad on attacks and saves is so much better that it’s not much of a contest. More generally, I just don’t love long-duration Disad, because I’ve seen that reduce an enemy’s damage output to zero so many times (Protection from Evil and Good remains one of the most dominating spells in the game for its level). Monster stat blocks just don’t get a lot of ways to gain Advantage.
· Sentinel at Death’s Door at level 6 is now a Reaction to halve the damage of any attack that hits a Bloodied creature. It doesn’t care about crits specifically anymore, though a crit when the target is already Bloodied is what you care most about stopping. I’m fine with this change, except that it wants the Cleric to keep tabs on everyone in the party that is Bloodied. I’m saying it’s a slightly more complicated trigger for your Reaction that you’re listening for.
· Divine Reaper at level 17 (I still hate that 6 to 17 leap with no new subclass features) now does two things:
o Enhanced Necromancy lets you expend a Channel Divinity when you cast a Necromancy spell of level 5 or lower to target another creature. This doesn’t get you a cost-break on Material components. This is a great place to spend a spare Channel Divinity or two each adventuring day.
o Keeper of Souls is still about turning the thanergy bloom of a creature’s death (uh, go read the Locked Tomb series, I’ll wait) into healing for a creature of your choice, without any of that pesky flavor text to explain or characterize the feature. You know, characterization, such a waste, just cut all that crap. Instead of being based on the dying creature’s Hit Dice, which didn’t make a ton of sense because monster Hit Dice are an arbitrary number set to get the maximum Hit Points where you want them, it’s based on your Cleric level. You also can only use it 1/Short or Long Rest rather than 1/turn, so that’s a massive nerf. I think I’m surprised that it (still) doesn’t cost a Reaction.
The Grave domain is basically fine, I think? It’s a lot stronger on aggression and probably about the same on support, just because Sentinel at Death’s Door is (probably) going to get used so much more often—particularly in the 2025 MM and encounter-building environment, where you’re going to be Bloodied for at least a portion of a whole lot more fights.
Ranger: Hollow Warden
This is the second all-new subclass of the UA release, and it has a lot of Old Gods of Appalachia-meets-Fromsoft folkloric horror vibe. It’s arguably the Unseelie Court’s answer to the Seelie Court’s Oath of the Ancients Paladin. I think there’s something odd in D&D specifically about making the PC the source of the horror or a full participant in making things terrifying, rather than an investigator into the horror, caught in its throes. Are ve ze baddies?
· Hollow Warden Spells are the bonus Ranger spells known that we’d expect. Wrathful Smite is the closest thing to a surprise on this list. I think the theme here is “fey Lord of the Hunt”—pursuit, misdirection, Awakening allies.
· Wrath of the Wild hooks into Hunter’s Mark, in keeping with the 2024 Ranger redesign… which is a mark against it for me. That whole plan just leaves me cold. Anyway, this treats “having Hunter’s Mark going” as a broad source of buffs. Does that make any sense with Hunter’s Mark? Not really, no.
o Ancient Armor gives you an AC boost equal to your Wisdom modifier. So probably either +1 or +2 for 90% of all Rangers. Really hanging a lampshade on one of the fundamental problems of the Ranger class here, y’all.
o Unnerving Aura makes every enemy that starts within 10 feet of you roll a save; on a failure they lose either their action or their Bonus Action. It is real weird that there’s provision for creatures with immunity to Frightened here. I like that there’s flavor text, though. Oh, and this is going to slow down turns a lot—in my experience, even worse on VTTs than in-person games.
· Hungering Might… yeah no we are the baddies for sure. This feature lets you add your Wis modifier to Con saves (necessary—Rangers need Con saves real badly, but their Proficiency situation and their multiple-attribute-dependency situation combine to make that incredibly hard), and you regain Hit Points 1/turn when Wrath of the Wild is active, you’re Bloodied, and you hit a creature. I like the story there, but I do think that’s a lot of qualifying conditions.
o Whew, they are leaning into making Wisdom your best score like no other Ranger subclass, but not going far enough. Maybe we start calling this subclass “Thorn Whip? Thorn Whip? Thorn Whip? Three Thorn Whips” (with apologies to the late and legendary John Candy).
· Rot and Violence at level 11 gives two sub-features, both of which work only while Wrath of the Wild is active. Folks, making literally every part of this subclass other than Hollow Warden Spells depend on Hunter’s Mark being up is a really, really bad idea, not least of which is because several of those Hollow Warden spells are now competing for spell slots. How the hell are you going to use Spike Growth (a Concentration spell) when the only thing that matters in your life is Hunter’s Mark? At least Relentless Hunter gives you some help at level 13, but that is so late… you know what, this is getting off-topic with general Ranger design issues.
o Eerie Aura deals damage equal to your Ranger level (Necrotic, Poison, or Psychic) that ignores Resistance when a creature fails that Unnerving Aura save.
o Strangling Roots adds the Sap or Slow properties to a successful weapon attack you make. Never mind about that Thorn Whip thing, I guess.
· Ancient Endurance at level 15 grants you another two features. Honestly, I’m getting a little overwhelmed with how many features are actually two features. This is a lot more to manage.
o Persistent Hunt lets you burn a spell slot when you fall to 0 Hit Points and aren’t instantly killed to regain Hit Points equal to 5 x the slot level you expend (but the slot has to be level 4+, so it’s either 20 or 25 Hit Points). You’ve got to be running Hunter’s Mark when you drop to 0 Hit Points. Now, you lose Hunter’s Mark if you ever have the Incapacitated condition, but I guess that doesn’t happen? Like, you don’t have a moment of being Incapacitated.
o Timeless makes you immune to the Exhaustion condition. I don’t like player-side immunities, as you know if you’ve ever read any of my breakdowns. I hear you saying “but it’s level 15 and it doesn’t matter!” but if it doesn’t matter, then why have this feature? This is going to create an annoying outcome in monster or other encounter design.
Overall, I think the theme of this subclass is great, but the implementation is bad in exactly the same vein as the problems of the 2024 Ranger. Doubling down on total dependence on Hunter’s Mark makes so much of the Ranger spell list feel useless. Everything combat-relevant that takes Concentration can be written off, and that’s bad. It’s a bad play experience because your choices become less interesting, and it’s a bad design choice because there’s so much less space or interest in designing new Ranger spells.
Rogue: Phantom
That sounds like it should be a Splinter Cell title, doesn’t it?
I’ve said since TCOE came out that the Phantom is what everyone wants the Assassin to be, because it’s a creepy murder machine, and the fact that it’s a little mystical plays right into the mystique of assassins.
· Wails from the Grave still splashes half your Sneak Attack dice to a second target as Necrotic damage when you deal Sneak Attack damage. The difference is that now it’s based on your Dex modifier uses per Long Rest, rather than your Proficiency Bonus. I mentioned that design change earlier; here it is again. It means a bit more punch in the early game.
o I would like to suggest, though, that this feature could improve the entire Rogue gameplay dynamic by adding “and you regain one expended use when you finish a Short Rest.” Rogues need to get something from Short Rests, and it’s a design problem across the whole class that they don’t.
· Whispers of the Dead hasn’t changed. It’s a wildcard skill or tool proficiency that you can change 1/Long Rest. I like that there’s some flavor text!
· Tokens of the Departed at level 9 (that 3 to 9 jump will never not be rough) still provides soul trinkets that you can use for a few different things, but now you don’t need anything to die in order to get one. Two of them just materialize when you finish a Long Rest, though you can still regain them with a Reaction when something dies near you.
o I can live with that change if there’s something, literally any ritualistic action, that you have to perform, or if it can be presented as creepy in some way. D&D’s perspective is that it’s on the player and DM to bring some flavor and meaning to that, but this is one of the places where the tyranny of the column-inch stops D&D from improving. There’s never, not in fifty more years of D&D, going to be space for them to go subclass by subclass and explain how to add theme, tone, and depth with how you interpret and describe features like this. It’s DM advice about player-facing content, and that text doesn’t have a home.
o Death’s Knell is a free use of Wails from the Grave. As long as one thing dies every round, you can keep Wails rolling indefinitely.
o Life Essence is a passive bonus for having a soul trinket: Advantage on Death Saves and Con saves. (The faction that “Saving Throw” is capitalized for Death Saving Throws but not for Constitution saving throws is one of those weird things about the D&D style guide that matters in my work life, and I hate it.)
o Spirit Query lets you expend a trinket to cast Augury. Of course, you can’t keep using this feature in a day, because it gets more unreliable as you go. It’s a nice-to-have at best.
· Voice of Death at level 9 lets you cast Speak with Dead once per Short or Long Rest for free. This feels like patching an oversight in the original subclass. Do like.
· Ghost Walk at level 13 is unchanged in effect from its previous version. The presentation is a little more user-friendly (because most people are bad at larger text blocks). This is another way to expend soul trinkets, and one you’ll probably want to use a good bit.
· Death’s Little Helper Friend at level 17 gives you two features.
o Death’s Lament is unchanged, and it’s written in such a way that I’m less confident of my understanding than I should be. I think it’s saying you get half your Sneak Attack dice as additional damage to the first target, on top of your existing Sneak Attack damage, and deal that same half-your-Sneak Attack amount to the second target. That’s some really impressive burst damage to a single target, and helps the Phantom not feel wasted in the final rounds of an encounter or against solo opponents. (That’s the big drawback of this subclass at level 16 and below.)
o Draw of Death is another currency fixer for your soul tokens. If you have none when you roll Initiative, gain one. It’s fine, I’m not wild about it because it drains the narrative significance out of the soul tokens if they’re made from… nothing… rather than an actual, on-camera death.
Overall I think the Phantom is stylish and fun. I’ve criticized the link between mechanics and narrative a lot here, and I do think that part is significantly weaker than in TCOE. The goal is to make sure there’s never a hitch or problem to solve in dealing your expected damage. I think that’s a fundamental mistake in understanding roleplaying games as something different from other kinds of games. The narrative and your choices need to matter as much as possible; smoothing everything out so it doesn’t matter as much is the wrong way to go.
Sorcerer: Shadow Sorcery
Hey, this one I’ve seen at the table, pretty extensively! There’s a Shadow Sorcerer who plays intermittently in my Aurikesh campaign. It’s been interesting but not overwhelming so far, and creating Darkness is as often bad for the rest of the party as it is good. (I hope Shadow Sorcerer Quirks come back, those are great.)
· Eyes of the Dark gets a big boost: in addition to 120-ft Darkvision, you also get 10-ft Blindsight, and every area of Darkness you cast (not just ones you create with Sorcery Points, and not just ones you create with the Darkness spell) you can now see through.
o I’m concerned about adding Blindsight to anything at level 3. It feels like a cycle of one-upping Darkvision: now that Darkvision is so ubiquitous, Shadow Sorcerers need Super Ultra Darkvision to feel special. (See also, the Reanimator companion above.) My point is that super-senses add a lot of complications to DM descriptions, and published adventures historically do a terrible job of supporting super-senses of any kind in their boxed text.
· You used to also get Strength of the Grave at level 1. That got bumped up to level 18. That seems like a bit… much.
· Shadow Spells provides you with bonus prepared spells. The spells chosen here are all ones you’d expect, and ones that work pretty well. Of course, your subclass centers around casting Darkness a lot, so Hunger of Hadar gets a pass, but all of those other Concentration spells carry extra opportunity cost. It’s a deeply Concentration-forward list (but see the next feature).
· Spirits of Ill Omen at level 6 used to be Hound of Ill Omen, which had the benefit of being a very flavorful feature, though it had serious scaling problems. A dire wolf isn’t much at level 6 and it drops off sharply after that. The new feature gets rid of the Material component on Summon Undead, lets you cast it for free 1/Long Rest, and you can reduce the duration to 1 minute to remove the Concentration requirement.
o That’s nice to have, except that Summon Undead cast at its base slot level (which is what you get when you cast it for free) is only okay. Like all Summons, it scales very well with slot level—more Hit Points, more AC, more attacks per round, more damage per attack.
o It’s hard to say that Summon Undead—a spell that Warlocks and Wizards can also prepare—says as much about the Shadow Sorcerer as a unique summon of some kind would, or maybe a feature that added something to your summoned Undead. This feature is… fine. It does allow for more scaling, so you can spend spell slots to keep it relevant.
· Shadow Walk at level 14 gives you a Bonus Action teleport from shadow to shadow (Dim Light or Darkness to Dim Light or Darkness) with a 120-ft range. Unchanged from XGTE, and it needed no change.
· Umbral Form at level 18 has changed a good bit. The first use in a day is now free, and you only spend Sorcery Points to refresh it. It lasts for 1 minute at a time and gives you all three of the below.
o Incorporeal Movement is essentially the same. You roll the damage, but it averages out to the same.
o Shadow Resilience still grants Resistance to all damage types except Force and Radiant.
o Strength of the Grave gets a huge upgrade, which is good because it used to be a level 1 feature. Instead of working just once per Short or Long Rest, you can just keep using it to stay standing, and if you succeed, your Hit Points become 3 x your Sorcerer level (so 54 when you first gain this feature). Since it’s a Charisma save, if you’ve got some save-boosting items or allies (a Paladin, f’rex), you turn into a late-game zombie-tank (since you’re also resisting almost all damage). This is going to get real weird if it’s ever combined with damage-over-time features (for which the save is trivially easy) or Hit Point-sacrifice spells or magic items (where losing those last few hit points could wind up healing you an enormous amount). I have some concerns about how this feature plays out, is what I’m saying.
o Mathing that out a bit: You can probably figure out a way to get your Cha save bonus to at least +13 at level 18, so you’re hitting DC 21 Cha saves pretty reliably (not even taking reroll features or assistance from allies into account). Given your Resistance and the DC scaling, an attack that isn’t Force or Radiant has to deal 64 damage to set the DC to 21. 36 damage is your can’t-fail point – with a +13 Cha save, you succeed on a natural 1 and regain Hit Points. Are you sure about this math, y’all? This feature is real strong survivability. I mean, all of those Concentration spells are getting blown at that point, unless your Con is keeping up with your Cha.
Overall, the Shadow Sorcerer hasn’t changed that much, but I think they’ll really miss that early survivability boost. In the late game, they’re damn near unkillable, since even gaining Incapacitated wouldn’t turn off that feature. You’ve just got to be able to spend a Bonus Action and 6 Sorcery Points once every minute. Whew.
I’m not sure they have enough going on offensively. This is an extremely defense + mobility + perception-focused subclass, and Summon Undead probably isn’t enough help on giving them some punch.
Warlock: Hexblade Patron
This one hurts bad. I’ve been playing a githyanki Hexblade in my Tuesday night game, from level 1 to level 15 (currently). The changes to how the Warlock works have been minor, though I really don’t like how all of the passive Eldritch Invocations that were also rituals are gone and they just want you to cast the rituals now. Those were cool Invocations, and sometimes you just can’t spare 10 minutes for a ritual (or another Prepared Spell slot).
It needs to be said: the XGTE Hexblade was intentionally too good, because without Hexblade, the Pact of the Blade just wasn’t good enough.
· Hexblade Spells don’t cost you a Spell Known anymore, which is a mercy. Blur and Branding Smite are gone in favor of Arcane Vigor, Hex, and Magic Weapon. Blink and Elemental Weapon are gone in favor of Conjure Barrage and Dispel Magic. Phantasmal Killer was traded in for Freedom of Movement, and Banishing Smite and Cone of Cold are replaced with Animate Objects and Steel Wind Strike.
o It’s sort of a wash on theme, to me? Conjure Barrage is less of a tonal miss here than it is in the Ranger spell list. (Why are Rangers shooting a cloud of swords at you?) Steel Wind Strike covers a lot of the same conceptual territory as Conjure Barrage and makes more thematic sense, but in net effect it’s very similar to Cone of Cold that I also liked. Most of the old Hexblade spells weren’t worth picking for me, so all of these benefit from not costing me as much to take.
o But, ha ha, sorry Hexblades, the only thing you have any business casting is Hex.
· Hexblade Manifest gives you two features, functionally replacing Hexblade’s Curse and Hex Warrior. The loss of Hex Warrior the serious problem: some of its bits and bobs turned back up tin Pact of the Blade, but not all of them.
o Specifically, you’ve lost Medium Armor Training and Shield Training, and that’s a serious problem. See, Pact of the Blade picks up the part where you can use Cha for your weapon attacks with your pact weapon, great, love that. But if the game is going to tell you that you don’t need a ton of Strength or Dex and can focus on Cha, then… where’s your AC coming from? Studded leather, a +1 or +2 Dex modifier, and no shield? Buddy, that ain’t cuttin’ it, and Shield is writing checks your Pact Magic slots can’t cash.
o So your options are “have a really good Dex in addition to really good Cha… and decent to good Con” (multiple attribute dependency, a fundamental problem for Monks, Paladins, and Rangers) or spending a feat on Moderately Armored (which also boosts a stat you’re trying very hard not to care about).
o Hexblade’s Curse gives you free castings of Hex equal to your Cha modifier, and your Hex is obvious rather than secretive. I like the Sword of Damocles theme here, though.
o Hexblade’s Maneuvers picks up on the fact that Hexblades are weapon-primary combatants that don’t get Weapon Mastery at all, so they get 1/turn Maneuvers when you hit a target you Hexed: you can force a save that halves their Speed and denies Opportunity Attacks if they fail; you can force a save so that they take a little Necrotic damage the next time they attack someone other than you; or you can force Disad on their next save.
o Stymying Mark, aside from being unlovely to read, is the best of these by a long shot. It can’t be resisted and helps your allies’ spells land? Hell yeah. It can’t ever help your spells land unless you’re casting them as a Bonus Action. But none of the three are all that great, and the first two are going to be real bad about slowing down play.
· Life Stealer at level 6 is sharing a theme with the Lifedrinker Invocation. Since you’re going to have both, that’s a lot of busy work resulting from your attacks. This replaces Accursed Specter, which is a lot to manage but I’ve had fun with it.
o Hungering Hex heals you for 1d8 + Cha modifier each time your Hex target drops to 0 Hit Points. Once you have two or more attacks, you could Bonus Action between them to move your Hex and potentially get this twice in the same turn. It’s certainly a lot of survivability, though considering everything above about your defensive problems, not enough.
o Inevitable Blade gives you the effect of Cleave (the Weapon Mastery) 1/turn against your Hex target, but it’s Necrotic damage based on your Cha modifier.
· Armor of Hexes at level 10 was incredibly hard to use well in its original version. I’ve never had it work as my Hexblade, because I can’t force the enemy to attack me and my Hexblade’s Curse is so often already spent. In the new version, it’s a Reaction to reduce damage that your Hex target deals to you, 2d8 + Cha, Cha modifier uses per Long Rest.
o This one feature I’ll admit is a pure improvement. It’s not permission to spend a Reaction that is 50% likely not to work.
· Masterful Hex replaces Master of Hexes at level 14, because the benefit of Master of Hexes is an intrinsic part of the Hex spell. The new version does three things for you. (I’m reminded of feedback that I gave a friend on his subclass design, in 2017 or so. I told him he had too many subclass features that were a cluster of small features. I’m sorry, bud, apparently you were about eight years ahead of the game. I still think it makes design incredibly fiddly and a lot harder to manage, though.)
o Accursed Critical gives you the crit-on-19 effect against your Hex targets. In 15 levels of playing my Hexblade, I have literally never rolled a natural 19 against my Hexblade’s Curse target. You’d think it would happen once, just to spite me! But no. So this feature should be good, but don’t expect too much and you won’t be disappointed.
o Infectious Hex splashes 1d6 Necrotic damage on a creature within 30 feet of the target of one of your Hexblade’s Maneuvers. At level 14, 1d6 Necrotic damage to something other than your main target is making essentially no difference to a fight. I anticipate it feeling like busywork for the DM.
o Resilient Hex prevents damage from breaking your Concentration on Hex. You needed this feature about ten levels earlier.
So… every single feature that isn’t Hexblade Spells does nothing if you don’t have a Hexed target. This assigns all of the Hunter’s Mark problems to the Warlock. Man, I do not like this at all. My Hexblade has not bothered to learn Hex, while this version of the subclass turns every attack into a whole conversation of splashed damage, damage-on-miss, healing, and Maneuver. I expect this to be a burden to play. It would work really well in an MMO, something D&D (famously) is not.
Warlock: Undead Patron
First there was the Undying Patron, then the UA Undead Patron, then the official Undead Patron, now we’re back to the UA Undead Patron… Anyway, this is selling a lich, vampire, death knight, or whatever as a patron, and I like the concept (…might be a harder lift to play as a heroic PC, I dunno).
· Form of Dread is unchanged: still grants Temp HP and lets you attempt to Frighten one target per turn. 1-minute duration on the Form of Dread, Cha modifier uses per Long Rest.
o Notably, you still have some subclass features that do things when you aren’t in your Form of Dread and, potentially, have none remaining. It’s weird to me that there’s not a late-game currency fixer for your Form of Dread or “regain one expended use of this feature when you finish a Short Rest” or whatever. Not that Warlocks don’t get enough back on Short Rests, of course!
· Undead Spells are tweaked a bit, but generally pretty similar.
· Grave Touched at level 6 still does what it did before, ending the need to eat, drink, breathe or sleep, and allowing you to change a spell’s damage type to Necrotic 1/turn while you’re in your Form of Dread. Additionally, Necrotic damage you deal now ignores Resistance.
o I’m fine with this feature. If you’re going to be 200% dependent on dealing Necrotic damage, at least have an answer for all the creatures that have Resistance to it.
· Necrotic Husk at level 10 gives you two features:
o Necrotic Resilience is Necrotic Resistance all the time, and Immunity while you’re in your Form of Dread. Waiting until level 10 for Resistance feels weird for this subclass (unchanged from the TCOE version, to be clear), and this is still more Immunity than I want to see.
o Unholy Resuscitation causes you to explode in Necrotic energy with a 30-ft radius when you would fall to 0 Hit Points. You instead have… well, either 40 or 50 Hit Points, probably, and gain a level of Exhaustion. Instead of taking 1d4 Long Rests to refresh, which I liked because it was a lasting cost for doing something cool, this now comes back on a Short or Long Rest. (The Exhaustion is more of a problem.)
o I like Unholy Resuscitation’s visual and effect generally. I think if you’re using it as often as possible, um, probably your party isn’t doing very well, because it isn’t good enough to go out of your way to trigger it more often. I still think that in the late game there are going to be encounters where all of the enemies lean way too hard on Necrotic damage, and all of the tension will instantly flow out of the encounter because la la la, I’m just immune.
· Superior Dread at level 14 replaces the complicated but powerful Spirit Projection with a much less complicated series of upgrades to your Form of Dread.
o Flight gives you a Fly Speed equal to your Speed.
o Profane Casting removes all components except expensive or consumed components from Conjuration and Necromancy spells you cast. This is incredible in corner cases but doesn’t matter most of the time.
o Vitality Siphon heals you a little (Cha modifier) when you deal Necrotic damage, 1/turn. It’s fine. This and Unholy Resuscitation together don’t come close to the survivability benefits of a late-game Shadow Sorcerer.
Other than the Immunity bit that I think is still not a great idea, I like this okay. I think the Frightened effect from Form of Dread probably doesn’t stay interesting over the course of a campaign and winds up tedious or neglected (citation: Laudna in Critical Role Season 3, who uses it but not, as I recall, terribly consistently), but your Form gradually gets enough other stuff that it stays interesting as the engine of your playstyle.
Conclusion
Most of this UA release was good, but the part I personally care about most is the biggest miss. I hope you’re making plans to fill out UA feedback, as (if you’re like me) you might not have done in a while, even if you’re a dedicated D&D fan.
