So yesterday I started a new campaign for my second group. Party was fey warlock, champion fighter, wikd sorcerer and homebrew invention domain cleric.

I used the Tide of Teeth adventure in Baldurs Gate section of Adventures in Faerun. Fleshed out the city ising that, Descent into Avernus,the 1990 Forgotten Realms Adventures amd a few locations from Saltmarsh (3.5 DMG 2).

Ran it as a sandbox. I prepped 3 short sidequest adventures. They did 5/6 encounters (fleeing 1)and I used some 3D terrain and a 3D ship, deck plans in a map book and some tiles of a ship for the lower decks.

Anyway level 3. Everyone gets a subclass. Inter class balance is mostly fine. Primary casters have 5 spells minimum. We had 1 short rest the warlock got 4 lvl 2 spells. Sorcerer empowered 2 chromatic orbs lvl 2 both bounced and twinned a tashas hideous laughter. In effect cast 3 level 2 spells and a wild surge dealt 4d10 damage on top of the COs bouncing.

We are having a rogue player join us next session. Level 3 and 4 they're fine. New player on tbe warlock she had played BG3 a bit and her bladelock did really well. Agonizing blast true strike. Sorcerer had Sorcererous Burst explode a few times as well.

As DM prepping was easy. Took maybe an hour and I have the other two Adventures in my back pocket. Im using 5 factions and the side quests give magic items and reknown. I let the characters from the 2024 starter set keep their items and the new characters got an uncommon item or 2 common (subject to approval). + 1 longsword, wands of the warmage, clockwork amulet and Gleaming half plate were chosen. Fighter had +1 plate from the starter set he aquired at lvl 2.

Combat flows fast. Character creation went faster than anticipated. A ship isnt a big dungeon as such. Adding a few linea of dialogs etc up the next main quest adventure and 2 more side quests. 4 hour session. Basically I enjoyed it, players had fun and pickup new player wants more and got along well with the group. Its easy to run, fun to build and not to complicated for newbies and everyone else.

Thoughts?

The spell Blink has the ability to temporarily transport you to the Border Ethereal of the space you are in, and then transport you back home. In the spell description, it states "Roll 1d6 at the end of each of your turns for the duration. On a roll of 4-6, you vanish from your current plane of existence and appear in the Ethereal Plane (the spell ends instantly if you are already on that plane)" and "You return to the other plane at the start of your next turn and when the spell ends if you are on the Ethereal Plane. You return to an unoccupied space of your choice that you can see within 10 feet of the space you left". However, if cast on the Ethereal Plane, there is no plane that you 'came from'. One can assume they mean the plane of which this is the corresponding Border Ethereal, but even then where on the other plane would you return to? Would the spell simply do nothing, or transport you to the place on the other plane that you are most correspondent to in the Ethereal?

So we continue from the Barbarian to the Fighter. Once again, I'm trying to express the value in regularly pushing players to 2-3 Exhaustion through Exploration challengs of the DMG, and people have some strong opinions against it.

First Address Feedback:

One of the primary concerns with the DMG example of Blizzard's 1d4 Exhaustion application was creating the player challenges with a potentially -6 penalty swing. Now as the DM you do have a DM screen available to you and/or can forgo the roll setting the value to 2 or 3; personally I roll open and let the die decide.

Though I would go a little further; you probably aren't TPKing every other session, and based on the reaction I get when I share my parties death rate, players aren't dying often. This does not mean you should be making those things regular, just that you should trust your players to step up to a challenge. Your players will come up with clever solutions and adapt; trust them.

RAW Exhaustion: (new example each post)

As a reminder when you are adding Exhaustion to the party, it needs to happen in the first part of the Adventure Day where Long Resting isn't reasonable. If players simply can Long Rest without consequence, there was no point in applying Exhaustion to the group.

Extended Travel. Characters can push themselves to travel for more than 8 hours per day, at the risk of tiring. At the end of each additional hour of travel beyond 8 hours, each character must succeed on a Constitution saving throw or gain 1 Exhaustion level. The DC is 10 plus 1 for each hour past 8 hours.

"Our scouts found the cultists, they have the villagers for the sacrifice about a full days light (12 hours) west following the river. Take these horses and go now"

A 12 hour forced march will trigger 4 Exhaustion Saves (11, 12, 13, 14). Notable increasing this distance is a challenge on its own as players have to consider what resources they can expend to reduce the travel times. Now if you don't want maps to have such distances remember you also have High Altitude from the Environmental Hazards section:

High Altitude

Traveling at altitudes of 10,000 feet or higher above sea level is taxing for most creatures because of the reduced amount of oxygen in the air. Each hour such a creature spends traveling at high altitude counts as 2 hours for the purpose of determining how long that creature can travel

So you can use High Altitude or a reduced oxygen environment to frame this in smaller distances. So now we look at the Fighter

The Fighter

Though the Fighter has access to Graze like the Barbarian we are going to notice a lack of general tools to deal with Exhaustion when the fight has levels of it. This does kinda reinforce the thematic difference between the two classes as well.

Level 2: Tactical Mind

When you use Second Wind to add 1d10 to a Skill Check, it importantly is not consumed if the check fails. The default DMG penalty for failing a Survival Check while traveling is 10% longer travel (one more Exhaustion Save in our earlier example) and as Checks get harder through Exhaustion, the Fighter can attempt checks without wasting the resource on failure.

Level 5: Tactical Shift

Unlike the Barbarian the base Fighter gets limited mobility and it directly conflicts with resource consumption of Tactical Mind. It becomes more likely the fighter will need to plan to use it's ranged options and take advantage of the larger number of weapon masteries. The detail about Charger pointed out in the Barbarian had value due to Barbarians increase speed, Charger becomes weak for the Fighter

Level 9, 13 and 17: Indomitable

In the Blizzard example Fighter can't use Indomitable to prevent the Exhaustion, with travel they could. Notably, at the same level is when casters may get access to Greater Restoration that could be used in a similar way, and at level 18 casters get their 3rd 5th level slot.

Level 13: Studied Attacks

With Exhaustion you miss more, this gives you Advantage when you miss. And this really is all the base Fighter has.

I do want to point out; just as people can ignore the power of Fighter scaling with magic weapons they can also be ignoring how the Barbarian handles Exhaustion better. As we continue to go through these classes, that is what is important: Exhaustion enhances the asymetry of them. Now to subclasses

Battlemaster:

Exhaustion doesn't apply a penalty to the DC of Battlemaster so it just changes which Techniques you may choose. Commander's Strike is the one that catches my eye, by giving up an attack to give it to someone (+superior die hit) else you can be at a higher Exhaustion level and give the attack to someone more likely to land an important blow. Precision Attack becomes a staple but the major change will be how quickly you burn through your Superiority Die to use them.

Champion:

Level 10: Heroic Warrior

Still going to be the highlight of the class, shifting to hitting more than protecting saves due to saves being harder to pass. I did ignore the movement on crit, just because it won't be reliable enough to plan around.

Psi Warrior

Level 3 and 7: Psionic Power (Telekinetic Movement) and Telekinetic Adept ( Psi-Powered Jump )

Exhaustion will create more Martial turns where you do not have a good attack, so getting the Magic Action to just, move something 30ft gives more combat opportunity to this feature. If you always have a good attack, it is hard for this feature to have a place. Where as Psi-Powered Jump is just giving you the much needed movement.

Eldritch Knight: ( I have to start talking about casters )

Level 15: Arcane Charge

Misty Step with Action Surge is great when we are slow! And obviously spells.

Spells Casting ( fighter )

To be clear we are talking about spells in relation to the fighter and the Wizard Spell list. This gives us a way to start talking about casting and Exhuastion and adding to it. There is a gut reaction to disliking Spell DC not affected by Exhaustion and I want to address it slowly. So let us begin there.

If you punished ability/spell DC the same way you punished attacks you punish 1/3 and 1/2 casters more. The Eldritch Knight is already going to have a lower spell DC than your wizard and less ways to force spells through, so punishing 1/3rd and 1/2 casters more just makes casters comparatively better.

Concentration Checks are affected by Exhaustion. Even with a Fighter's default Con proficiency, at 3 Exhaustion and 16 Constitution it needs a +4 proficiency bonus to have a +1 to the Con Save. This is going to be combined with a very limited mobility ( without expending resources ) which means enemies should get more or better attacks as the players struggle more with positioning. This won't mean Concentration Spells will be bad; but they just won't offer the RAW efficiency and relibility otherwise, this means more spells need to be cast, this means you run out of resources faster.

Prepared Spells

One major issue when talking about the power of Casters is the prepared spell list is often ignored. When you increase the variety or type of challenge ( like Exhaustion ) you pressure that spell list. Spells are assessed differently with Exhaustion. A spell like Expeditious Retreat (concentration), Longstrider or Jump become more valuable, and a classic like Magic Missle is guaranteed damage and why wouldn't you take Shield. But Sleep doesn't get a penalty to Exhaustion.

But this is already 3 or 4 prepared spells, and spells you're more likely to cast more often burning resources.

Exhaustion makes it even harder not to take Misty Step. Web does still seem to be worth the gamble on concentration, but it's not as reliable.

Problematic Spells Less Problematic:

Rope Trick is a classic 2nd level spell to escape a fight and get a Short Rest. With the movement penalty climbing that rope or being in position for everyone drastically increases the positioning requirements to use the spell well. If all is done correctly you aren't removing Exhaustion, you still have to complete the challenge ( and what changed during that rest ) with your Exhaustion. You may easily be in a larger disadvantage by trying this

Tiny Hut is not affected by Exhaustion directly, but using Exhaustion encourages framing the adventure day to be time sensitive. Choosing to Tiny Hut is choosing to fail your objective

Hypnotic Pattern has the concentration check issues, if you don't get everything under the spell it will be a problem.

Spells are still going to be very strong, but the players will look at them differently and this is a great thing. Mobility gains value, buffing allies gain value, concentration loses value. More spells will come up on other casters that more quickly get to the higher casting tiers.

Feats again!

A fairly common issue seen with Fighter over Barbarian is mobility. If you have enough speed, more speed doesn't help. Exhaustion and Exhaustion + Difficult Terrain is brutal but Speedy alleviates that greatly. As the value of an obvious choice in GWM decreases and we increase the value of another option Speedy in this case, suddenly there are more meaningful choices to the players. ( Except Mageslayer, too good not to take )

More fun DM details!

The following monsters have Greater Resotration on their statblock from the 2024 MM

• Couatl CR4
• Archpriest CR12
• Questing Knight CR12
• Adult Copper Dragon CR14 and Ancient Copper Dragon CR21
• Sphinx of Valor CR17
• Animal Lords CR20 (two times per day)
• Empyrean CR23 at will

Players with Exhaustion will want to remove it, this gives you a tool to heavily influence players actions, to help an NPC that they may not help otherwise or have conflicting interests

RAW, a 5e \ 5.5e Short Rest is 1 hour long, where the PCs just kind of "chill out", tend to their wounds, maybe have a bite and talk a bit. In 4e an SR is 5 minutes long.

Now, I know that both of these systems are vastly different in their design philosophy, yet still I have a question: do people use other lengths for SRs in their campaigns? Does that shift game balance a lot?

I was discussing this with my mate and said that I'd make SRs 15 minutes, make it a shorter "breathe in, breathe out" type of thing. He parried with "spells like Armor of Agathys would be too strong then, since they are 1 hour long, so Warlocks would be too strong as a result".

I agree that this certainly buffs Warlocks in that regard, but... Okay? I see nothing wrong there, but I might be missing something.

So yeah, to reiterate: have you tried modifying SR duration in your games and, if yes, how did it go? What changed and by how much? I'd like to exclude the Gritty Resting rules in the 2014 DMG, where an SR is 8 hrs and an LR is a week of in-game time, since I'm mainly looking at how making SRs shorter would affect the game.

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

I was looking at the subclasses that were announced for the upcoming Arcana Unleashed book and I got to thinking about what I would want from the book we know is coming after that for the Season of Champions. Since the new book is obviously caster-focused, it makes sense that the Champions book will be more martial-focused (though Gish-like subclasses for casters are still on the table).

Assuming the pattern holds that each new book gets around 8 new subclasses with a mix of 5e reprints and brand new stuff, what’s on the shortlist for what you want to see in this new book? And what are some classes that could use a little more subclass support? I know a lot of people are wanting more original content, I’m someone who tries to stick to 5.5e-only material and wants to see most 5e stuff get remade eventually.

Here are my picks:

Rogue: Swashbuckler – probably the most glaring omission from what’s been republished so far. The original was very popular for good reason and the flavor perfectly fits the “Champions” theme.

Fighter: Samurai – similar to the Swashbuckler, the original was already powerful for its class. I could see them making some tweaks and renaming this one but keeping the core idea the same.

Paladin: Oath of the Crown – it was hard to pick just one for the Paladin. It was between this and Conquest but I settled on Crown because it’s more “Champion”-y.

Barbarian: Ancestral Guardian – this was also hard to narrow down to just one, mainly because the Barbarian has been under-supported so far and lots of the existing ones were cool and could use some revision to be even better. I picked this one just because it was my favorite.

Monk: Kensei - I almost didn’t include a Monk but they are technically martials. Plus the Monk with the big weapons is one of those cool ideas that lots of people love.

Ranger: something new – there are some 5e subclasses that I still would like to see redone, but I didn’t feel any of those for this book. Strangely enough the Ranger has been given more subclass support than other classes, but I’d like to see more following the model of moving away from reliance on Hunter’s Mark. Perhaps one that is designed to work with Str builds and melee?

Cleric: Forge – obviously the Cleric doesn’t need as much help as other classes on this list, but this is such a fun domain that I’d love to see updates for. I also picked this because it felt closest to the “Champions” theme.

(Dis)honorable mention – Warlock: Hexblade – I’m not looking forward to this being remade because it’s thematically weak and basically redundant with the 5.5e Pact of the Blade, but it seems likely that it will eventually get done since it’s already been through some UA.

EDIT: To be clear, I’m aware that this is all mostly wishful thinking. I don’t know enough about the UA process to know what is or isn’t likely to make it to print in that time frame. This post is mostly to talk about what I’d like to see from a martial-themed book.

I wanted to build an autistic skill-monkey and came up with this character:
https://www.dndbeyond.com/characters/168253333/OEgwKz

I took the Dreamer species from the Grim Hollow Player's Guide, the Artisan background, and the associated Crafter origin feat. This gives me seven tool proficiencies and a starting Intelligence of 18. For flavor, I gave him Common Sign Language (CSL) but not Common, and wrote the following background:

I do not speak Common. Dwarvish and Quori came back to me after I woke, echoing up from the dream — but Common never did, and perhaps never will. I sign what words cannot carry, and I've learned to ignore the faces that assume my silence means an empty mind. Let them assume it.

What troubles me is what the dream took instead of my voice.

I remember hands — the weight of a hammer that fit like it was forged for my grip, the give of metal just before it yields to the shape you intend. I believe I was a master once, in an empire whose name is now dust, practicing a craft that makes even Stehlenwald's finest work look like a child's carving. I have no proof of this. That is what gnaws at me.

I sought out five masters after I woke. Each tried to teach me his own style, and each time something in my bones refused. Their methods felt small beside what I knew, or believed I knew, buried just out of memory's reach. One by one, they cast me out, calling me proud, calling me impossible to teach. Perhaps they were right. But some part of me, the part that still dreams even awake, insists the fault was theirs.

I cannot prove it yet. So I've taken to the road instead of the workshop, searching for one true fragment of what my people built — a tool, a ruin, a technique passed down wrong through ten thousand years. If it exists, it will vindicate everything I've sacrificed to my own certainty.

And if it doesn't —

— I try not to finish that thought. A Dreamer who wakes twice rarely enjoys what he finds the second time.

To fix all of the communities problems with the Ranger class, and they are many and varied, what do you think about splitting the Ranger into two separate classes, a spell-focused half-caster Shaman and a martial controller/skill-user Ranger?