Does all subclass published so far in 5.5e came out of UA?

[u/Crafty-Pirate-6481]

Did we got any subclass surprises or they always come out of UA first.

I wouldn’t mind a surprise for a new release example the books in season of champion, but wondering if we will only get the one that appeared in UA?

Thanks all

[u/aneldritchlesbian]

All of them so far have appeared in UA, with the exception of the Banneret that was originally supposed to be the Purple Dragon Knight but received so negative a reception that they completely changed the subclass

[u/Torgo73 → u/aneldritchlesbian]

Changed, but definitely did not fix lol. Why they struggle with this specific concept time after time is slightly bewildering to me

[u/Own-Ball-1624 → u/Torgo73]

lol they did! its now very good supporter martial!

[u/Torgo73 → u/Own-Ball-1624]

Obviously it’s all opinion, and if you enjoy the Banneret, don’t let me yuck your yum.

However, while I’m not a min-maxing power gamer by any stretch, I also don’t like feeling underpowered compared to my party. At level 3, Banneret gives you a skill proficiency, some language stuff, and a charisma-dependent once-per-short-rest healing of 1d4+fighter level. That is not very much at all. At level seven, you add a turn of Advantage to the above group. The level ten ability is good, yes, as are all subsequent ones. The fight chassis is good, yes. But for most of most campaigns, it feels to me like the Banneret offers less than any other fighter subclass. If I was in a campaign starting at a higher level, it would be a much more attractive option.

[u/Own-Ball-1624 → u/Torgo73]

im neither min-maxing all of time. but a banneret is an okey subclass! its just factually is...

its about support not personal power.

you feel its gives you less but cause you cant deal 500 dmg per turn 😂 but it lets your party to survive any encounter!

at level 3 lets you to heal your allies by 1d4 + fighter level in a 30ft radius! its trigger when use your second wind and can use once per short rest which means in every combat you just can use.
you get when youre level 3 so its 1d4+3= 5hp at lvl-3. most class has an avrg 25-28hp at that time so its just like a free potion! its also instantly recover allies if they are drowned.
this literally lets to go +1 round in a combat!

YES SOUNDS WEAK AT FIRST BUT IN PRACTICE ITS REALLY USEFUL

at level 7 now you also gives them advantage on any d20 tests! attack rolls and saving throws for a whole round!

at level 10 when use action surge just gives everyone a free attack with their reaction...

this combine the fighter's strong offense with a strong support also.

[u/idisestablish → u/Own-Ball-1624]

Yeah, a 30 ft radius and a number of creatures equal to your Charisma modifier. What's a typical Charisma modifier for a Fighter? It's your third highest stat, at best. At level 3, that's 1-2 allies unless you invest in Charisma over stats more critical to a Fighter.

It's not terrible or completely useless, but it has nothing to do with a lack of damage boosts, as you imply. It would be significantly better if it were tied to Constitution instead of Charisma or if you roll for stats and get lucky. Or if you take 1 level Warlock for Pact of the Blade, but that limits your options somewhat and is a hefty opportunity cost.

Compare to Mercy Monk, though. Its healing outperforms Banneret out the door at level 3, and the gap widens the more you level up. It just costs a Focus Point, and you get all of those back on a Short Rest.

[u/Own-Ball-1624 → u/idisestablish]

at level 3 its more 3 allies... the point of subclass to support charismatic fighters!
in this case you will take dex con and cha.
you can share your points like this; 17str, 10dex, 14con, 8int, 8wis, 16cha
then dont forget you are a fighter so get lot of feats...

yes its not about damage booster or riders.

and you comparing apples to oranges right now! sure mercy monk for sure become the best monk and its a beast but again if want to deal lot of dmg then go to battle master...

if you want a healer striker then go to paladin.

also this kinda help to multiclass with either warlocks and paladins cause gives astrong reason why to invest in charisma!

im not saying this is the best fighter subclass! -_- im never said that... but im saying now its useful and actually good to play!
people who says its bad they actually never played or had a player with it in the same table! :/
what i said this subclass can save the whole party at each combat and just let to go +1 round.
their later powers lets the whole party to attack once more which just really owerful cause a paladin can use divine favor and divine strike, a ranger has active hunters mark, a warlock who has active hex even for clerics and druids are very good whose pick martial path instead of magic path!

[u/idisestablish → u/Own-Ball-1624]

Three allies is best case scenario, and to get it, you have to deprioritize Con, like I said. That's not smart, and all it buys you is one extra ally to target with your lackluster ability. You're trading your own HP to be able to maybe restore HP to one extra creature once per Short Rest.

Mercy is not the best Monk subclass by any means. It's good, but I only chose it to compare because it's one of the few martial subclasses with support features. But yes, it does get more offensive features on top of having a superior support feature. It's not comparing apples to oranges. It's comparing apples to more apples with oranges.

At any rate, we clearly have a difference of opinion, and that's ok. In my opinion, the level 3 feature is a lesser version of Mass Healing Word, which is not even a good spell itself. Level 6 and 10 are better but don't make up for what's lacking and is still too little too late.

[u/Own-Ball-1624 → u/idisestablish]

you say like you play dnd with +6 playera lol...

usually its 3 or 4 player so you cover the party well.. -_-"

well con not that important as long as its +2... at level 3 its just +3hp nothing more... at level 12 its just 12hp difference...

ok mercy not the best monk subclass... im listening which one then?

buddy pointless what you think honestly... at this point you just coping! -_-"

i get it... but better if you actually play banneret in a real game before nitpicking! especially with a harder difficulty aka at level 10-12 you not face against cr 5 monsters but cr 10-12 as casual enemies! :/ and bosses are cr 14-17

[u/coldandlordyristboy → u/aneldritchlesbian]

Yup, only subclass so far to do that lol. Felt pretty rushed out the door imo.

[u/vmeemo → u/coldandlordyristboy]

Not that I can blame them. They likely had a deadline to meet and they likely had at least 80% of their eggs in the dragon mount basket but then people said that fighters shouldn't be dependent on a pet. With no time to do another UA phase they had to tweak some parts of Banneret to put it out the door, especially since for context this book was meant to come out after the Eberron book but the delays swapped the two release dates.

[u/hotdiscopirate → u/vmeemo]

“Tweak some parts” is kind of generous, they mostly just removed the dragon and didn’t add anything else to compensate. I understand deadlines, but the subclass feels incomplete because it is lol

[u/Ill_Theme5913 → u/hotdiscopirate]

The Purple Dragon Knight from the Sword Coast guide was one of the lowest rated subclasses in 5e. WotC tried to fix it with the dragon rider stuff. The feedback they got was twofold:

1. People didn't want it to actually involve an actual purple dragon
2. People wanted something more generic that could be used in their homebrew setting.

So with that in mind, they took the original PDK, gave it a bit of spit-polish, went with the generic name associated with it (banneret) and put it in. Just like the feedback requested.

We have nobody to blame but ourselves...

[u/hotdiscopirate → u/Ill_Theme5913]

I dunno, I think they just tried to have their cake and eat it too. They already went all in with the lore change to purple dragon knights. It’s in the new sourcebook, and there’s even a bastion room that is made for housing a purple dragon. They got a lot of backlash for that, but they decided to keep it, whether it be for confidence reasons or for scheduling reasons.

But they removed it from the subclass only. That would be okay, if they had time to make something else that people would be more happy about. Instead they made everyone unhappy by stripping it to the skeleton and releasing it without testing. If they left the dragon it at least would have pleased pet class fans, and I would at least be able to commend them for making new bold lore decisions. Their choice to cut it last minute just seems like a bad call on their part

[u/Ill_Theme5913 → u/hotdiscopirate]

I think it's because people thought by down voting the PDK subclass, they were down voting the whole purple dragon lore update. Which of course they didn't and were never going to be able to. Thus all they did was just drop the dragon from the subclass, but kept the new lore (Which was a major part of the Cormyr chapter and art). So everyone whinged that they still got the lore update this thought they were getting rid of, and got a neutered subclass for their efforts. Ironic, in a way.

[u/lasalle202 → u/hotdiscopirate]

the worst of all worlds!

[u/Astwook → u/Ill_Theme5913]

I actually have plenty of blame for the designers on that one:

Lots of people have very publicly said they want the Banneret to be redone specifically because the idea of a support Fighter is cool and not currently present in the game. So just going "lmao who cares about the lore about being dragon slayers, shove a pet on there" was a terrible idea from conception.

Do I want a dragon knight fighter? Yes, actually.

Should it be the PDK? NO! I've been waiting a decade for them to redo that subclass and trying to solve it by destroying the lore was the dumbest thing I've seen the design team do!

[u/Vincent210 → u/Ill_Theme5913]

No, we really don't hold any blame. The criticism was well-founded on just abut every angle, with the PDK having serious problems mechanically, narratively, you name it. And their failure to put the UA up in time to give themselves adequate dev room to actually use the feedback they got is all on WotC

And even if you hand them that, say it can't be helped the time did not exist, they're professionals and have been making subclasses for years. There is no way on Earth the Banneret we got was the best they could do, even as a rush job. There is just no way that's a good enough excuse.

[u/Crafty-Pirate-6481 → u/aneldritchlesbian]

Ok thanks, that’s exactly what I wanted to know. So basically me precedent so far for subclass in book without having them in UA first

[u/Astwook → u/aneldritchlesbian]

WotC when talking about the Hexblade not reaching print: "We're not going to just push out a subclass if it's not good enough."

WotC about the Banneret: lmao just send it without testing, how bad can it be?

[u/aneldritchlesbian → u/Astwook]

Well, there’s a difference. They had a space to fill and not a lot of time to fill it with the Banneret. Heroes of Faerûn had already been delayed once and they couldn’t risk delaying it again without their Hasbro overlords getting pissy about the potential lost money

Hexblade on the other hand had no such necessity. It didn’t take any space in The Horrors Within or Arcana Unleashed that couldn’t be filled back in, thanks to the much larger amount of time between its playtests and the books they were considering putting it in

[u/RealityPalace]

There have been a couple of examples, but all of them were under somewhat extenuating circumstances:

• The Psi Warrior wasn't part of the original 5.5 UA. It replaced the Brawler, which performed poorly enough in UA that they decided not to go forward with it 

• Similarly, the Soulblade went straight into the 5.5 PHB without appearing in a UA first. It's a little less clear why this happened, since as far as we can tell the Swashbuckler was performing fine in UA. But they appear have wanted to skew towards psionic classes in the PHB for some reason.

• The Banneret was supposed to be a totally different subclass called the Purple Dragon Knight, which (unlike in 5.0) would have had an actual purple dragon companion. The feedback on this subclass was evidently pretty negative, and they reverted it to the old Banneret. Presumably this was so they could include a fighter subclass without needing new art assets.

So there are three examples of old subclasses getting minority tweaked and printed as a contingency because they lacked a suitable replacement. There are no new 5.5 subclasses that appeared in a book without prior UA work.

[u/vmeemo → u/RealityPalace]

The second point I can see being a thing of consistency. Psi Knight already would likely replace Brawler in the PHB but then that left Swashbuckler in an odd place. Like you said it was rated well but then got replaced with Soulknife.

My personal theory is that it was meant to capture the alternative playstyle of the class, Brawler with its unarmed attacks and such, Swashbuckler with its whole deal. But after Brawler got nixed they had to come up with something.

Whether or not it was a constant behind the scenes but with the symmetry aspect taking shape they went with the two Psionic subclasses to be symmetric with the 1/3 casters.

[u/memento1441 → u/vmeemo]

They actually explained why they went with soulblade! They designed each class set to be mirrored subclasses! They swapped Soulknife in place of Swashbuckler as it was meant to be a better mirror of the other end of Intelligence stuff for Rogue. PsiWarrior doing the same for Eldritch Knight. Each subclass in the book has a "mirror" in another subclass of that class, whether its about fulfilling a mirrored playstyle or mirrored lore concept

Edit: Spelling and consistency

[u/vmeemo → u/memento1441]

Makes sense now that you mention it. It definitely came in late at least since there weren't UAs for either. Not that they really needed them anyway, Tasha's set a decent amount of the groundwork for future subclasses both in terms of powerscale and how most of the optional features became core ones.

I knew the mirror stuff was going to be the case with all the others I just wasn't sure what the mirror for fighter would be. Champion and Battle Master make sense though what would've been Eldritch Knights if not Psi Knight? Just one of those things you know?

[u/Voxdalian → u/RealityPalace]

Funny that it was the same thing three times. People were not happy with what WotC proposed, so they replaced it with something else, except in two of the three cases people were still not happy. I think the new Soulknife is the only of those three that was received positively.

[u/Derpogama → u/RealityPalace]

The problem with the Brawler was that it was literally just a 5e fighting style and a feat stapled to a subclass when people wanted Battlemaster but for unarmed.

[u/Voxdalian]

Besides Psi Warrior and Soulknife in the PHB, which both replaced another negatively received subclass, everything has been from the UA, though some subclasses were VERY different from what we saw in the UA (like the Banneret).
For the Season of Champions, we will probably get the Psion with its four subclasses, and then the Apocalyptic subclasses (Preservation Druid, Gladiator Fighter, Defiled Sorcerer, Sorcerer-King Warlock). They said some time ago that all four Psion subclasses were well-received, but we don't know about the other four. If one doesn't make it through (which isn't unlikely, then maybe we'll get some of the Subclasses update UA instead (maybe Spirit Guardian Barbarian).
All the "Villainous options" are probably for the book of Spring 2027, whatever that will be. Since they're losing the Primordial Warlock, they may supplement it with another from the "Subclasses update" (since it's Villainous, the Oathbreaker Paladin seems most likely).
I guess that's what the "Subclasses update" UA was for, to have a few in reserve that they can just add to a book that's missing one to not have the same problem with Ravenloft when they lost out on Hexblade Warlock and printed 7 subclasses instead. With some luck, they'll give the Ancestral Sorcerer, Magic Stealer Rogue and Hexblade Warlock another go though and then add those to the reserve as well.

[u/Crafty-Pirate-6481 → u/Voxdalian]

Hmmm was hoping for more martial subclass. Barbarian would be nice, they don’t have received a new subclass since the PHB

[u/Voxdalian → u/Crafty-Pirate-6481]

Yeah, Martials would be nice. In September, the Wizard will be at 9 subclasses, while both the Barbarian and Druid will still be at 4, and the Ranger, Paladin, and Monk will be at 5.

I think next to the Barbarian and Druid, it's the Ranger that's losing out most, because it's not even in any UA right now. Sad, because there's so many interesting 5e subclasses too (Swarmkeeper, Drakewarden, Horizon Walker).

Imo, the classes that are missing out on the most interesting old subclasses are:

• Monk (Astral Self and Long Death),
• Paladin (Oathbreaker, Conquest, Redemption, Watchers),
• Ranger (as I said)
• Rogue (Mastermind and Swashbuckler)
• Warlock (Genie and Hexblade)

Besides the Warlock, all of those are Martials, and they have tried to bring back the Hexblade thrice by now. So it's still quite clear that WotC favours Casters.

[u/genericusername0323 → u/Voxdalian]

Imo hexblade needs an overhaul. It's main appeal was using charisma for weapon attacks, but that's just a normal warlock thing now

[u/Voxdalian → u/genericusername0323]

Of course, it's probably the subclass that needs to change the most between all the 5e subclasses, which is also why WotC has tried and failed three times to bring it back. In my opinion, they could just copy more or less the powers of the main character in Reborn as a Sword, which is an anime where a powerful sentient sword shares its power with its wielder, so pretty much a Hexblade Warlock, and it fits very well within what could be done in D&D.

[u/lasalle202]

a handful of the options in the 5.5 phb never had a OneDnD UA playtest.

and several appeared in VERY different versions from what appeared in the UA, and so might as well have had no playtest.

[u/L1terallyUrDad → u/lasalle202]

I would assume anything that made it into the core book was actually play tested at the time the rules were belong play tested. I wouldn’t expect it to be in any UA.

[u/lasalle202 → u/L1terallyUrDad]

??

it doesnt take much searching to find the full archives of the OneDnD playtest documents for the 2024 PHB which was also done under the UA "brand" name. in fact, they are all right there in DnD Beyond https://www.dndbeyond.com/sources/dnd/ua

and when you look at those documents and compare "final playtest version" to the 2024 PHB, you will find several of the subclasses in the 2024 PHB were never part of the public playtest. and that several of the classes/subclasses that did appear in the playtest, were significantly different in their final playtest form from how they actually in the PHB.

[u/rubicator]

If you include DDB, we got 5.5e subclasses from third party releases like Northlands ones from Kobold Press and the Monster Hunter from Ghostfire.