 Howdy how's it going? My name's Davy Chappie, and today it's time to get back on the old Unearthed Arcana horse, because we're gonna be talking about the UA that dropped in December of 2018. As always, keep in mind that a lot of this is just my opinion, so if your views don't happen to line up with mine, feel free to playtest your games however you want. But, with that out of the way, let's begin. So this month's UA is about sidekicks, which I actually found really interesting, in that it covers those NPCs that you meet and bond with on your journeys, but can't take along with you because they're only CR 1 eighth, and anything tougher than an animated shrub will be enough to bring them down. But now, with this new playtest material, you have the chance to take on that NPC as your own protege, teaching them the ways of combat and helping them in your never-ending quest to bring justice to Gotham City. The way it works is that you take an NPC that has a CR of 1 or lower and happens to be best buddies with you, and they essentially rank up to level 1 in one of three new NPC classes designed specifically for adventurers that dwelled just beyond the spotlight. These three classes are the Warrior, the Expert, and the Spellcaster, and from the moment the NPC joins the party, they gain their first level on the class and then level up whenever you do. Their hit points, proficiencies, and ability score improvements are all determined by their class, just like with any normal character, and as they level up, they gain new abilities that harken back to one of the primary classes. The first one, Warrior, primarily acts as a fighter, specifically the Champion, with the second wind, indomitable, extra attacks, additional ability score improvements, and the champions, improved slash superior criticals, all landing on the same slots that the normal fighter does. Where the class branches off is in its Danger Sense, which is ripped from the Barbarian, Improved Defense, which increases the Warrior's AC by 1, and Battle Readiness, which gives advantage on initiative roles. Not gonna lie, this is pretty much the most bog standard you could get with a fighty boy, but who am I to complain about an NPC role? The next sidekick class is named the Expert, which is hilarious to me because the class looks like they just threw in as many random choose-your-own-adventure type abilities as they could. This class borrows from two main classes from its abilities. From the Row, you've got Expertise, Cunning Action, Evasion, Reliable Talent, and Stroke of Luck, and from the Bard, you get Jack of All Trades and a modified form of Bardic Inspiration called Inspiring Help, which works with one of the Expert's unique abilities known as Helpful, in that when you use the Helpful ability to give help as a bonus action, you also give that person the classic 1d6 additional role, which eventually gets boosted to 2d6. Their other original ability is called Sharp Mind, which gives the Expert proficiency in any one mental saving throw. After that, it looks like they just gave up and gave them abilities score improvements every two levels after 8, which is equal parts hilarious and actually a really interesting idea, since I've always wondered what a character would look like if they just got beefed up with every hit in the book. The final mini-class had the least amount of effort given to its name, and it is the Spellcaster class. The Spellcaster chooses which of the main spellclass in classes to learn from, be it Bard, Cleric, Druid, Sorcerer, Warlock, or especially the Wizard. They get that class's spell list, they gain levels the same way as anycaster, and they get the Wizard's magical recovery and signature spells, as well as the evocation school's potent cantrip and empowered spells, along with their own focused spellcasting feature, which gives them advantage on concentration saves. Also, they get their last ability score improvement at 18th level for some reason, which angers me to an unreasonable degree. There's not much to say about the Spellcaster class, it works exactly as you would expect it to, and hilariously, by trying to make a basic mage, Wizards has accidentally created a better generalist wizard than any of their previous attempts. Now, when you peel back the curtain a little bit, you begin to realize that what we actually got this month was just three half-baked non-classes comprised almost entirely of abilities that we've already seen before, with the mechanics of turning an NPC into a PC just being level up, ya dummy, meaning the same effect can be achieved with literally every class subclass option in the game. But the secret of this UA comes in looking beyond the stats and into what they represent. Even if these classes don't work for some DMs as sidekicks, they would totally be baller for creating arch enemy slash nemesis characters using the leveling system instead of the CR stat blocks, especially since you wouldn't have to worry at all about class archetypes, just choose the level to match your targeted PC, and boom, instant rival, no money down. And the expert class for what it's worth is probably the closest thing that we're ever going to get to a dedicated, supportive slash non-combat of class choice, and that's something that I will praise just out of principle. All in all, this UA tries to help push DMs down the path of turning NPCs into helpful allies, and while it may not be a big head-turner, it'll be there for those groups that want Donald the Villager to join the party. But that'll about do it. I hope you enjoyed this video, leave a like and comment if you did, subscribe if you want to be a cool dude, and maybe support me on Patreon so that I can slowly make my entire life revolve around D&D. Also if you want to stay up to date on all of your DAV news, I keep a link to my social media in the description below. But yeah, Davie out.