 Howdy how's it going? My name's Davy Chappie and it's a new year for love, life, and criticizing the heck out of somebody else's hard work. 2020 has brought us a new Unearthed Arcana, apparently the first of many, and we're gonna talk about it. So, if you haven't read the article yet, I highly suggest you look it up on the D&D website because I'm not about to bore you with statistical word vomit. If you're interested in that, I actually went over the whole Unearthed Arcana on my last Twitch stream, cord slash Davy Chappie. You should check it out. I play games and answer your burning questions every Tuesday and Saturday. Anyway, as always, keep in mind that a lot of this is just my opinion, so if you feel like my new year's resolution should have been to shut the hell up, tough shit. But with that out of the way, let's begin. So the first UA of 2020 has brought us subclasses for the barbarian, the monk, the paladin, and the warlock. A group of classes that have nothing to do with each other pass the fact that all of them need more lovin'. So good on you wizards. These subclasses come in the form of the path of the beast barbarian, the way of mercy monk, the oath of the watchers paladin, and the noble genie warlock. Starting off with the barbarian, the path of the beast represents a furry whose immediate family was made up of also furries, and now this barbarian is destined to carry on the family pride. As a path of the beast, you'll become more tuned with your wild side when you rage, granting you a more beast-like appearance, giving you natural weapons, increasing your terrain traveling ability, infecting people with psychic rabies, and eventually causing your anger to grow so great and all-encompassing that you grant all your allies access to your reckless attack feature, which is absolutely terrifying. As a theme, I'm not super impressed by the beast man that they're going with, because let's be honest, animalistic barbarians is like the most overdone thing ever. But as a mechanical subclass, it seems nice. The healing on the natural bite weapon is a little annoying because barbarians have most of the damage that comes their way, so healing for 3, 4, and 5 is effectively healing for 6, 8, and 10 every turn, but it lowers the damage die from a d10 or a d12 to a d8, so I think it balances itself out. Other than that, it's a pretty bog standard barbarian that's ready to take on any furry con that it gets its hands on. Speaking of hands, the way of mercy monk holds the power of life and death in its open, outstretched palms, and depending on how much they like you, they're able to bitch slap you with healing or just with dead. The way of mercy monks can usually be seen sporting plain cloaks and weird voodoo masks, which marks a first for Wizards of the Coast trying to tell me how to dress. It's my body, I'll do what I want. When you take up the way of mercy, you learn how to use the tools of the trade, you can backhand people to either heal them or hurt them harder, you can rip some major ass to poison people around you, and you can hit somebody in just the right spot to induce a near-death state for a minimum of 17 days during which that person is effectively immortal for no reason. That last ability is super dumb because it doesn't specify any creatures that are immune to it, and there's no limit to how many times an enemy can get hit by that attack before they eventually fail a save. Under no circumstances at all can there be an ability in the game that lets the player walk up to the boss, karate chop their neck, and then spend 17 days thinking about what they're gonna do with the body before it wakes up. What I think the skill means is that enemies that are immune to paralyzed are also immune to this attack, but that's just speculation, the skill is poorly worded. Besides that, the hand of healing is cool, but being able to heal with flurry of blows at no extra cost is dumb, and I'm not sure why the way of mercy has so many straight up hostile abilities. Overall, the subclass is having some real balancing issues, and it needs to spend more time reflecting on itself to figure out what it wants in life. So I've been going pretty hard on these subclasses, but now I want to talk about the one that has me hyped like no other. The Oath of the Watchers Paladin is the coolest thing in the world, dude. It is a nightly order of brothers and sisters that has sworn itself to protect the material realm from those extra planar warriors that would see harm done onto it. They are the space TSA, but they actually do something. It don't matter what you are. Demon, get back in the abyss. Elemental, be a fridge or be nothing. Faye? No way. These guys are the best. And their skills keep up. Their channel divinity acts as either a turn extra planar creature, or they can steal their allies' minds from mental attacks for a minute. Their orability raises the initiative of their allies so that Faye don't even get a turn before they get royally stomped on. They can rebuke magic casters, like Faye. And their final ability turns them into the ultimate avatar of extra planar defense. You can see, fight, and banish all extra planar beings around you for the glory of the material realm, and then laugh in the faces of the ones that are next. Truly, this is the gods work. Don't touch this class at all. It's perfect and I love it. My only regret is that I already played a Paladin all the way up to level 20 in a year long campaign, so I'm gonna have to really push myself to play another one, because this subclass is just too cool. And finally, the weirdest and yet somehow most mechanically interesting subclass to come out of the first new UA is the Noble Genie. These types of warlocks are so in touch with their patron's vibe that they can carry around a small object, be it a lamp, an urn, a ring, a shoebox, the Aladdin 2004 special edition DVD case, that connects straight to the genie's pocket dimension, proving that when it comes to warlocks, you'll never have a friend like me. This vessel is the crux of the subclass's power, with the main gimmick being that the genie warlocks can shoot out a tether that'll connect with another member of the party, granting both sides abilities and effectively turning the tethered party member into that warlocks genie, which is pretty crazy. While affixed to this tether, you both are protected from an element, you can swap places when one of you is hit by an attack to let the other person take it. You can hit somebody with a cutscene that'll banish them to your genie's court where they'll spend time being chastised for not being robin williams. And your final ability calls out to your genie for aid, getting them to either heal you, hinder an enemy, or cast the legend lore spell on an object. The best part about that last ability is that you can get it back if you offer up a tithe of 500 gold, showing us that magical fantasy world or not, rich people get an easier time. Overall, while I like the paladin more, I do think that the noble genie has more interesting abilities. That swap out skill is cool as hell. And I've had players in my games that wanted to be more connected to each other in a mechanical sense, and what's more of a connection than shooting out ginges and keeping it hanging there for an uncomfortably long time. This article has been full of largely balanced classes, and while I'm still wary for the next article, my guard is never down, I do hope that this becomes the new normal so that we can all play our favorite subclasses without feeling like a bunch of munchkins. Buuuut that'll about do it. I hope you enjoyed this video, leave a like, comment, subscribe, ring the bell, join my discord, join my twitch, and maybe support me on patreon so that I can lower the amount of end credits that I have to give at the end of all these videos. But yeah, dabby out.