 I just want to say real quick that I have recently moved into new place, so I am using this video as a test for my audio. Howdy how's it going? My name's Davy Chappy, and with the new year comes a new Unearthed Arcana, signaling the return of the playtest material that we all know and love. In keeping with the spirit of this year, January's UA brings the option to play as creatures cursed by damned fate, forced to live in wretched half-life as either a damn pier, a hexblood, or a reborn. It also takes a new approach to character creation, as far as your biology is concerned. As always, keep in mind that the majority of this is just my opinion, so if you feel like playing as a hexblood, hexblade is just edgy enough to feed that black veiled high, feel free to play your games however you want. But with that out of the way, let's begin. So the new Unearthed Arcana is titled Gothic Lineages, which is an interesting title because it could have just been called Gothic Races if it weren't for some new changes to how races are handled in this UA, and presumably will be handled in the future. Namely, future races will be retitled to lineages, and it will be assumed that instead of getting racial bonus to your ability scores that are set to specific stats, you'll just be allowed to put a plus one and a plus two into whatever you want, and then call it a day. Personally, I'm of two minds about this. On the one hand, it helps me grasp a better feel for a race, or I suppose a lineage, if I can look at the stat bonuses because they tell me the background that a typical member of the lineage comes from. On the other hand, as soon as Tasha's cauldron came out and said that I could just put the scores wherever, that was it for me. There was no going back from that level of flexibility. I got to play a goblin with a bonus of strength named Grexer the Flexor. I guess the point that I'm making is that it'd be cool to still have the racial ability scores with an addendum next to them that says, You can completely ignore this. It's like alignment. It helps you not think too hard. As for the races themselves, each one comes with a dark vision and two unique lineage features, plus the brand new feature of being two different creature types at once. The idea of playing a different creature type than the humanoid was first flirted with in Theros, but this is the first time the lineage has been able to be both, with the idea being that any status effect or rule that would apply to either type would also apply to that particular character, such as a humanoid undead combo still getting healed by cure wounds due to their humanoid side. The first of these hybrids is the most well-known gothic hybrid of them all, the Dampyr, a vampire slash human crossbreed that was either cursed, born, or blessed to be an abomination, weaker than even the vampire spawn, and yet still so close to their true nature. Unlike a typical vampire, you don't have any of the sanguinary weaknesses, although you still do feel the urge to drain creatures for nourishment from some source, such as traditional blood, esoteric humors, or life energy. As for stats, Dampyr are classified as both human and undead, and in addition to having a movement speed of 35, they gain a spider climb-like ability, giving them a hands-free climbing speed by level 3, and they get a natural weapon in the form of, you guessed it, plastic vampire things. The 1d4 damage is literally the lowest you can go, but what I like about this natural weapon is that despite its damage, you actually still have a reason to use it, since you gain advantage on bites if you're below half health, and you can either heal for the damage dealt, or otherwise add the d4 to your next ability check or attack roll, giving you a weird amount of versatility with what is normally a useless feature, like you can restrain someone and then you can keep biting them until you're fully healed, or you can bite an ally just before performing an important task. A lot of kinky neck shit going on here. Also, it scales off of Khan for some reason. That's not a bad thing, I was just surprised. The next lineage on our trio of edginess is my least favorite, and if you're sure off of I, you might know why. The hex blood is a creature that is tied inescapably to the realm of hags, having perhaps been a child born out of a deal made with a hag by a baron mother and father, or a child could have been spun entirely out of a hag's magic, either to be a servant or, in the worst case, to one day become a hag itself. As if to prove just how many hexes it has in its blood, the main feature is that it can cast both hex and disguise self as charisma spells once per long rest, and if it has spell slots for some reason, it can cast using those too. I really like this new trend of allowing you to cast innate spells through spell slots as well. They did it with some of Tasha's feeds and it just made me feel like I was getting my money's worth out of taking these options. The other feature of the hex blood lets you pull out a piece of yourself, be it a tooth, toenail, hair, dead skin flakes, any part of you that you're not going to miss, and you can give it to somebody as a gift that they will definitely appreciate. And while that poor victim is holding your rotting nail fungus, you can speak telepathically to them, and you can focus your divination power to see and hear from it as if it were there, although this turns the trinket into dust afterwards. This feature disgusts me, and I don't care if it fits really well with the idea of being a hag, I don't want to have to describe pulling someone's nails out for a scene. Finally, the last of the lock, shotgun barrels is a bit on the safe side as far as weird and inventive ideas go, as the reborn lineage is just that. Some shmuck who is dead is now no longer dead. Unlike the other two, you can actually choose whether you want to be an undead or a construct as well as a humanoid, and your status as a person who used to be alive means that the previously un-undead version of you probably had some skills, skills that you can tap into and amount of times equal to your proficiency bonus to add a d6 to an ability check. You also gain the typical undead-itudes, like resistance against poisonous effects, you don't need to eat, drink, or breathe, and almost like an elf you can spend 4 hours planking to be just as well rested as a normal human that doesn't go to bed at 4am like I do. Of the three, this lineage is the most basic, and it makes me realize just how far 5e has come since the beginning. Five years ago, I would have thought that this was baller, but it's a new decade and it'll take more than dunking on poison damage to impress me. Overall, I liked the direction that this playtest is going, although it's gonna take some time to get used to calling them lineages. It's just, it's just harder to say. Lineages. Too many syllables. My head's too small for that kind of vernacular. Maybe we can call them breeds. Hey, what breed of human are you? Nope, that's not it. We'll workshop it. Jeremy will come through for me. He always does. But that'll about do it. I hope you enjoyed this video. Be sure to do all the things you normally do. Check out my social media in the description. I've been doing some sea shanty TikToks, and maybe support me on Patreon so that I can forward to do more of them. But yeah, Davie out.