Arcana Unleashed Breakdown, Part Three

Welcome back to my series on Arcana Unearthed! Today we’re wrapping up subclasses, then moving into Backgrounds and Feats. If you’ve missed the other posts up to this point, check the links below.

Part One | Part Two | Part Three

Transmuter

The 5.0 School of Transmutation looks like a lot of fun and a great theme, but Critical Role’s Caleb Widogast is as much as I’ve seen the subclass played. (I thought Liam did amazing things with it.)

Transmutation Savant—look, if you’ve read any of the previous posts in this series or just the 5.5 PH, you know how this works. Transmutation is one of the schools that has plenty of spells at every level, other that level 8, where Control Weather and Iron Body are the full extent of official spells.
Transmuter’s Stone moved from level 6 to level 3. The effects are mostly unchanged, except that proficiency with Constitution saving throws is now always-on rather than one of your choices, you can use the Stone as a spellcasting focus, Poison was added to the list of damage types you could gain Resistance to, and if you have Darkvision already, the Darkvision option increases your vision range by 60 ft.
- Great changes all around, no complaints. This makes low-level Transmuters a lot more interesting – Minor Alchemy at level 2 in the 5.0 version is incredible if you have an idea for it but that’s by no means guaranteed to come up even once an adventure.
Wondrous Alteration at level 3 makes a valiant effort at getting Alter Self to be good. This is not a natural state of affairs for Alter Self. You get one free casting per Long Rest, and each of its options improves a bit:
- Aquatic Adaptation also grants Dashing as a Bonus Action while you’re underwater.
- Change Appearance grants Advantage on your Cha (Deception) checks.
- Natural Weapons increases your Unarmed Strike damage to 2d6 and gives you Advantage on Con saves to maintain Concentration (to go on top of proficiency with those saves).
- In the balance… these still aren’t a great use of your time! Dashing underwater mostly only matters in combat, and you’re in too much risk of losing Concentration and drowning. Charisma isn’t likely to be a great stat for you and Deception isn’t a class skill for Wizards, so the modifier you’re rolling with Advantage is probably still terrible. Wow, 2d6 melee damage + your Int modifier… but no Extra Attack? It’s struggling to keep up with every damaging cantrip while putting you in a lot more danger to use.
Empowered Transmutation at level 6 increases the effective slot level of your Transmutation spells that don’t make an attack roll or force a saving throw—basically all of the utility effects—Int modifier times per day. This is a nice efficiency improvement across the life of the character.
Potent Stone is an all-new feature at level 10 gives you two new Transmuter’s Stone passive benefits, and you can have a second benefit active at a time. The new benefits are Mighty Build (Advantage on Strength saving throws and the Powerful Build trait) and Tremorsense (to a range of 30 feet). The first one is nice to have, I guess (you’re a Wizard, Advantage will only take you so far), while the second is incredible.
Shapeshifter, still at level 10, still adds Polymorph to your spellbook and lets you cast it for free once per Long Rest. Now, instead of being less powerful than baseline Polymorph, it’s substantially stronger: you retain more of your inherent features, and you can still cast Transmutation spells without a costly or consumed Material component. Not overpowered, just solidly more useful.
Master Transmuter at level 14 is mostly similar to the 5.0 version, but you can save your Transmuter’s Stone by spending a level 7+ spell slot, Major Transformation affects a lot more material, Panacea heals less damage but purges more conditions, and Restore Youth only affects apparent age rather than physical age—though with no lower limit on apparent age, that’s not amazingly helpful.
- I think the level 7+ spell slot option is an improvement, and Panacea is delivering on its meaning more completely, but the changes to Restore Youth are not particularly better or worse and neither version acknowledges that any creature has a lifespan greatly different from a human’s.

Overall, I think the Transmuter (5.5) is meaningfully more appealing than the School of Transmutation (5.0), by giving you a more reliably useful level 3 feature. I’ve said a zillion times that if your gameplay loop doesn’t come online by level 3, the subclass doesn’t work, and the School of Transmutation is certainly an offender there.

Backgrounds

I have a lot of problems with the baseline Backgrounds of 5.5e, and the odds are good that you know all of them without trying hard: there’s just not much there, the Ability Score Increase makes unwelcome choices about which classes benefit from each Background, and the feats wind up being the main distinguishing feature. I do understand not wanting to keep writing Traits, Ideals, Bonds, and Flaws, but the 5.5 PH Backgrounds strip out too much distinctiveness and offer very close to no roleplaying suggestions. (I remain delighted with how Neon Odyssey approaches this, though of course I am biased.)

The new Backgrounds of Arcana Unleashed offer a lot more conceptual meaning (or baggage, depending on your point of view). Nine of them tie the character to a faction described later in the book, while the tenth is a Familiar Trainer. Seven of the new Origin Feats start with the word Arcane, which… I understand how we got here but that does less than nothing to help me keep them straight in my mind. I’m covering the Origin Feats in the Feats section, just to keep things straight.

Agent of the Ninth Quill makes you a burglar of magical stuff. It appeals to Bards, Rogues (especially Arcane Tricksters), Sorcerers, Warlocks, and Wizards. Maybe some Artificers.

Bejeweled Conclave Spy makes you a magical diplomat. It appeals to Bards, Druids(?), Monks(?), Rangers(?), Rogues, Sorcerers, and Warlocks. Maybe some Clerics or Paladins. Oh, and it’s great for Worlds Beyond Number’s Witch class.

Cosmic Dawn Experiment makes you a magical mutant, voluntary or otherwise. It appeals to Barbarians, Fighters, Monks, Paladins, Rangers, Rogues… anyone who cares about both a Strength or Dex attack stat and Constitution. The flavor text talks a lot about “strange anatomy” in ways the mechanics aren’t really going to deliver.

Covenant of the Grave Recruit makes you a necro… interested person. Well, okay, it pretty much makes you a goth. I have a hard time understanding why it gets Strength as one of its ability scores and not Dex (scalpel cuts) or Con (study of medicine). Its other two ability scores are Intelligence and Wisdom, and fairly few characters actively need any two of those.

Crucible Storm Chaser makes you an Action! Magic-Scientist, rather than one with any respect for personal safety. Bad decisions ahoy! It’s for Evokers that need to pretend they’re doing this with academic rigor and not just a love of explosions.

Familiar Trainer is, of course, the Ash Ketchum Background. It’s pretty good for Druids, Monks, Rangers, and Wizards. Con, Int, and Wis are otherwise an indifferent set of options.

Horizon Weaver Initiate is the Conjuration-flavored one, centered on wanderlust. Dex, Con, and Wisdom make it great for Clerics, Druids (thank goodness), Monks, Rangers (good lord, I’d hope so), and Rogues, with some interest for weapon-using Bards.

Phantasmic Circus Trouper is a perfect fit with an NPC group in a 4e game I’m playing in, but never mind that. It’s an Illusion-and-performance Background, and offers Dexterity, Constitution, and Charisma. So not, you know, Intelligence to be useful to a wizard. I’m sorry, for campaigns where you’re using the 15/14/13/12/10/8 array, there’s no world where starting with a 15 Int so that you can have a better Dex, Con, or Cha feels like a good bargain for the class that Illusionists come from.

Seer Apprentice is really any kind of oracle-in-training, though the text assumes you’re connected to the Seers of Sea and Sky. (Notably, not an extant group in any published setting, since it was invented for this book. Connecting it to Candlekeep, Oghma, or Savras the All-Seeing in FR would be my go-tos.) Anyway, its stat adjustments are to Int, Wis, and Cha, so at least all of the spellcasters are covered for once.

Ward of the Sheltering Hands means you grew up as probably-an-orphan in the care of an organization, and now you fight crime, or something to that effect. Con, Wisdom, and Charisma make Paladins a reasonably good pitch (please find a decent Strength bonus somewhere, though), as well as Clerics, Monks, and Druids. Bards, Sorcerers, and Warlocks will of course be fine.

Thematically, these Backgrounds probably want to be the entirety of the options for a campaign. A Strixhaven campaign, for example. They have strong narratives that could carry a lot of a campaign. A committed DM could get there with any Background, but I think your average DM would be less inclined to do that for a generic Background than a specific one. Mechanically, I think all of these are only arguably better than saying “screw it, we don’t care and we don’t think you care either.”

Origin Feats

There are 29 new feats, of which 10 are Origin Feats.

Arcane Artist gives you Minor Illusion and Inspiring Magic: 1/Long Rest, you give one ally Heroic Inspiration. I hope you get really good at keeping your descriptions fresh—at most tables, that’s going to get skipped, with just “okay I give you Heroic Inspiration, let’s move on.” It’s a wasted opportunity to show imagination and care.

Arcane Eloquence gives you Vicious Mockery and Smooth Talker: +1d4 to your Deception, Intimidation, or Persuasion checks. It’s fine. If you’re noticing a lot of specific cantrip + minor feature, uh, yep, that’s the deal for most of the Origin Feats. If you then notice that it makes all of these Backgrounds less appealing for characters that aren’t going to get decent-to-good spellcasting stats, you get the bonus prize.

Arcane Infiltratorgives you Friends, and Cunning Diversion lets you use the Dodge action as a Bonus Action, PB times per Long Rest. It needs some kind of additional help in the player’s or DM’s narrative to “make sense,” but I know most tables don’t engage on that level.

I’ve been listening to a lot of Critical Role Campaign 4, Worlds Beyond Number, and Dimension20—one of my big takeaways is that caring about those little bits of narrative setup do a lot more to elevate the scene and deliver characterization than they get credit for. Nuance, it’s what for dinner.

Arcane Omens gives you Guidance, of course, and Helpful Premonition: +1d4 to a save that you or an ally fails, PB uses per Long Rest. Hey, at least that’s really easy to roleplay in its entirety.

Arcane Overload gives you Fire Bolt and +PB to one damage roll of one Evocation spell per Long Rest. Bad news (IMO anyway): the wording of Magic Missile hasn’t changed to indicate that the damage of each dart would be rolled separately, so the benefit of this feat is much better for Magic Missile than for any other effect. All because of a ruling JCraw made 273 years ago. At least it only applies once.

Arcane Safeguard gives you the Resistance cantrip and you can cast it as a Bonus Action PB times per Long Rest. Also, your Help action grants Temp HP equal to your Proficiency Bonus. One of the more impressive Origin Feats, in that it both grants a cantrip and makes that cantrip much better in your hands.

Arcane Undertaker gives you one necromantic Cleric or Wizard cantrip of your choice. Technically there are four options, but Toll the Dead is the one I expect most people to take. Knowledge from the Dead gives you +1d4 to Intelligence (History) and Wisdom (Medicine) checks, and Understanding of Death gives you Heroic Inspiration 1/Long Rest when you use Help to stabilize a creature with 0 Hit Points. That intersects weirdly with the fact that most NPCs are dead at 0 Hit Points (if PCs strike to kill) or unconscious but not dying (if PCs are nonlethal about it), so this only works on NPCs with the DM’s specific consent. Here again, if you’re not going to put some roleplaying energy into your character feeling inspired or your character gaining information from the dead, this loses all of its interest to me.

Familiar Friend gives you the Find Familiar spell, which you can cast for free 1/Long Rest. Fortified Familiar gives your familiar a ton of additional Hit Points; it’s weird to see this alongside the anemic Hit Points of the pet-based subclasses in the book. Helpful Friend puts a limit of PB uses per Long Rest on “your familiar takes the Help action to give you Advantage” that so many DMs have treated as always-on. Great example of a “new feature” functionally creating a new restriction instead.

On another level, this is wild to see because this one Origin Feat calls back to the Specialties of D&D Next so strongly. For those who haven’t read those playtest packets, which I have to assume is a lot of you, you didn’t pick feats every four levels or whatever: you chose a Specialty, which progressed automatically every four levels or whatever. Essentially they were feat chains that you were locked into, but as a result they could do strong thematic stuff that didn’t have anything in the world to do with your class. The resemblance that I feel here is that there was one that gave any character a familiar and made it a meaningful component of gameplay.

Portal Jumper gives you Resistance to Necrotic, Psychic, or Radiant damage. The feat wants you to pick when you gain it, but I’d strongly suggest being open to respends here so that players don’t need to plan out their class and subclass progression to avoid doubling up and wasting a benefit. Additionally, you gain a 15-ft teleport that you can use by spending 15 feet of movement, PB uses per Long Rest. What’s interesting about that, as a teleport, is that it can’t ever get you out of a Grapple or the Restrained condition, because you can’t spend 15 ft of movement when your Speed is 0. Good luck!

Transmuted Anatomy gives you +5 Speed and Resilient Anatomy: you have Advantage on saves against Polymorph and other forms of involuntary shape-shifting, and PB times per Long Rest, you can add +1d4 to a failed Con save. This is a light-touch way to sell “magically mutated;” considering the vastness of that potential concept, this is a well-contained way to handle it.

General Feats

I’m trying to imagine how hard it must have been in OCS to start out as “Second Lieutenant Feats.”

Abjuration Adept is the first of our eight school-specific Adept feats. They all require level 4+ and the Spellcasting or Pact Magic features, and they give you a level 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5 spell of the feat’s school that is always prepared and a thematically appropriate feature. For Wizards in particular, there could be a sense that you’re dipping a toe in a second school’s subclass, or super-specializing in your own school. For everyone else, it can be a way to gain access to spells not otherwise on your class list: a Cleric might want Abjuration Adept for access to Shield, while a Sorcerer, Warlock, or Wizard might want it for Lesser Restoration and Mass Cure Wounds.

Abjuration Adept’s additional feature is Protective Ward, which is a lite version of the Abjurer class feature: when you cast an Abjuration spell, you can give one creature Temp HP equal to twice the level of the spell slot.

I’m not sure I like the Adept feats. If there’s any remaining value in class spell lists, and D&D seems to think there is, the Adept feats blur those lines all the way up to level 5 spells.

Conjuration Adept commits the sin of giving you 5.5e Conjure spells, which I dislike for how they work categorically. Summon spells got introduced, so Conjure spells couldn’t do that, and now they’re just zones that don’t really deliver on their narrative statement. It also gives you Persistent Conjuration, which adds another stat (whatever stat you increase with this feat) to your Concentration saves when you’re maintaining Conjuration spells. I do think that narrow, conditional bonus is going to get forgotten a lot more often than not.

Divination Adept offers Mind Spike, Scrying… and then some extremely niche spells. (Divination can be good if the DM is invested in it. Clairvoyance, maybe not.) Prescient Intervention lets you impose Advantage on Disadvantage on any D20 Test you can see within 60 feet, 1/Long Rest and refreshing whenever you use a spell slot to cast a Divination spell. As with any Reaction to modify a D20 Test, most users won’t remember they have this option until the result is an outcome they don’t like, which is functionally a reroll rather than Advantage/Disadvantage. This is why 5.5 Heroic Inspiration fits well with the flow of player thought and Lucky very much does not.

Elemental Familiar lets you boost any one ability score rather than narrowing it down at all (probably more general feats should do this, because ever getting to the situation of losing your ability score point because you failed to plan your build is just miserable. The solution for the table is obvious but I think it’s a constant danger of tripping up new players and DMs. Anyway.

This specifically builds on the Familiar Friend feat, which seriously limits its draw. I’m sure I don’t see why this should be part of a feat tree rather than working for anyone that has a familiar. (It’s also not the only feat that works this way; stick with me.) The familiar aligns with one energy type, chosen from Acid, Cold, Fire, Lightning, or Thunder, gaining Resistance to that type. It can also release an Energy Burst of that damage type, costing your Bonus Action; it deals 2d4 damage of that type in a 5-ft radius, and knocks down Medium or smaller creatures. I’m hard-pressed to see how this isn’t incredibly overpowered, since there’s no uses-per-whatever limit. (Obviously some classes and subclasses are much more dependent on Bonus Actions than others, so the value of that action cost varies widely.)

Enchantment Adept makes all of your Enchantment spells Subtle (no V, S, M components unless the component is costly or consumed), which opens up a ton of nasty tricks in social scenes. Whether those are Fun or Too Much is going to vary by table and how often they solve complex encounters anticlimactically. The other odd thing about this feat is that it has two level 2 spells, one of which you don’t get until you have level 3 slots: Enthrall and Hold Person. Enchantment has very few level 3 spells, two of them found in this book, and for whatever reason they didn’t decide to slot in Inflict Doubt there even though it would have fit well.

Evocation Adept is a way for classes other than Sorcerer and Wizard (and some subclasses) to get access to Fireball. Yes, there are other spells; yes, they’re even good ones. But only Fireball and Lightning Bolt are intentionally overpowered for their level in 5e. Fueled Evocation is an extreme version of my earlier point about adding damage to Magic Missile; here in particular it’s very important that you treat its darts as separate rolls, because getting to add two of your Hit Dice to its damage roll otherwise takes it from (slot level + 2) x (1d4 + 1) to (slot level + 2) x (1d4 + 2dX + 1). Also, weird for this feat to be better for Artificers, Bards, Clerics, Druids, Paladins, Rangers, and Warlocks than Sorcerers and Wizards.

Illusion Adept makes your Illusion spells subtle and imposes Disadvantage on Investigation checks to recognize them as illusions. The Illusion spells it gives you are, as normal for Illusions, great if you have a cool idea, and otherwise you’re almost never going to use them. Making them subtle does mean a lot of plausible deniability, like passing off your Silent Images and Major Images as ghosts.

Magic Connoisseur (there’s a word I have to check every time I spell it) requires the Magic Initiate feat and gives you a new level 1 and level 2 spell, and you can cast each for free once per Long Rest, or with your spell slots. You can also change these spells when you gain a level. I don’t object to this existing and letting you functionally multiclass-dip with feats, but it’s very much a feat tree situation.

Necromancy Adept is fairly straightforward (Raise Dead is a nice surprise). Life Manipulation gives you a self-heal from your Hit Dice when you cast a Necromancy spell with a spell slot. It goes especially well with Life Transference.

Otherworldly Familiar is another branch of that Familiar Friend feat tree. Your familiar gains Resistance to one of Necrotic, Poison, Psychic, Radiant, or Thunder (Thunder seems odd to me, but whatever), and it can Phase Walk, passing through solid objects as if they were Difficult Terrain, shunting harmlessly to a nearby space if it ends its turn in an object. I anticipate immediate questions about whether objects your familiar carries can phase with it (my answer is no, please do not circumvent locked chests and all other forms of security at no further cost).

Soothing Familiar is another Familiar Friend feat, and it gives your familiar an aura that improves dice rolls for healing: rolls of 1 or 2 on the die become 3 in a 5-foot radius. That’s nice to have and all, but I have a hard time believing that’s on an even footing with Elemental or Otherworldly Familiar.

Spell Resistant gives its ability score bonus only to either Dex or Con, grants Resistance to one of Necrotic, Psychic, Radiant, or Thunder, and lets you add 1d6 to a failed save against a spell or magical effect, PB times per Long Rest. Potent but about right, to me.

Almost there. Two more pages of feats.

Spell Subterfuge lets you duck and cover (Dash and Hide) after you cast a spell with a spell slot, and you can use this a number of times per Long Rest equal to your modifier in the ability score you increased (needs a “minimum 1” parenthetical). You’ll have noticed that a lot of feats require that you cast a spell with a spell slot; this is on one hand to block off Cantrips, but it also blocks off spells for free such as from other feats or subclass features, and spells cast from magic items, like Spell Scrolls or Staffs of Power.

Additionally, when you’re hidden, casting a spell with a Verbal component or making a spell attack doesn’t reveal you if you end your turn behind Three-Quarters or better Cover. I have some doubts about this one, because there’s an uncertain time where you’ve cast your spell (which would reveal you under normal circumstances), you still have movement left and use it in a way that provokes an Opportunity Attack, and then you end your turn behind sufficient Cover (and because of the feat, you were never revealed). This is something D&D design would much rather avoid.

Transmutation Adept offers some classic Transmutation spells; also I’m very glad that Jump is worth using in 5.5 the way it most sincerely was not in 5.0. Magical Augmentation boosts your Speed for the turn, whenever you cast a Transmutation spell, by 5 ft per slot level. Basically fine.

Warlike Familiar is, of course, another Familiar Friend feat. You gain Battle Familiar and can cast it for free 1/Long Rest to make your lil friendo a Lorge Terrifying Friendo. Also, the extra Hit Points from Familiar Friend really pay off here, because of how Battle Familiar works. The familiar also gains Intercept Attack, which is functionally a Parry for a creature within 5 feet of it (add your PB to the AC of the creature it’s protecting).

Fighting Style Feats

Arcane Warrior gives you two Wizard cantrips, using Int, Wis, or Cha as your casting stat. I think Thunderclap (or Sword Burst, if you’re okay with spells that haven’t formally come into 5.5e yet)is a better pick than either Mage Hand or Ray of Frost: if you have the Hit Points and AC to get into the thick of the fight, Thunderclap is obviously going to kick out a lot more damage.

Epic Boon Feats

Finally, three epic boon feats.

Boon of Erupting Spellpower. In addition to the ability score boost, you also treat all rolls of 1 or 2 on your spells’ damage dice as a 3, and creatures that take damage become Prone. You can use this benefit 1/Short or Long Rest, which is a welcome limit on an otherwise unbelievably powerful effect.

Boon of Magic School Mastery lets you pick one school, and you gain one level 1 spell of that school that is now free for you all day, and one spell of up to level 7 that you can cast without expending a spell slot once a day. If you keep going past level 20 enough to get multiple Epic Boons (this is not common), you can gain this feat in multiple schools. Mercy.

Boon of the Iron Mind changes your rules for Concentration. You no longer lose Concentration from taking damage or from the Incapacitated condition (including the Paralyzed and Stunned conditions, but not Petrified or Unconscious).

And that brings us to the end of Chapter One. I like some of what’s here, but for a good bit of it I think there’s significant power creep all over again. It’s also weird to see a whole familiar-focused feat tree, because it would become a much bigger part of your playstyle and turn-by-turn actions than most 2-3 interrelated feats. (An exception for Great Weapon Master + Polearm Master + Sentinel, but they’re a much-discussed problem.) It sneaks a heaping helping of Pokémon into D&D, without any of the gotta-catch-‘em-all dynamic.

I said it before and I’ll repeat it here: thus far, this book is at its best if everyone in the party is playing some kind of spellcaster and the plot is centered on magical factions. The more Barbarians, Fighters, Monks, or Rogues you have in the party, the more they’ll feel left out of the cool new options.

Next time, I’ll start in on the book’s 33 new or updated spells.

Brandes Stoddard

Harbinger of Doom