 Howdy how's it going? My name's DavyChappy, and I've always had a habit of shying away from Homebrew. The concept of looking into somebody else's attempt at making a thing for Dungeons & Dragons, always left me with suspicion that they were a power gamer, trying to sneak in a magic item that would give them Dodd, the immovable codrod. So my answer to Homebrew has always been a flat no. But over the years, as I've gotten more used to 5E and more normalized to how the rules work, I feel like I've gotten better at picking apart the nifty from the shifty when it comes to player-created content. Especially after reviewing endless amounts of UA's, where I realize that the only thing separating a professional game designer from a normal nerd in a basement is one shappy boy, and a thousand other playtesters. So one might be inclined to perk up their ears when they hear that our patron deity of Dungeon Dice Monsters has been hard at work making their own personal Homebrew within the realm of D&D Beyond, this time in the form of two subclasses based on characters from everyone's beloved critical role, especially since their previous works have gotten so much attention in the past. But if you've watched my Blood Hunter guides, then you know that just because Matthew Mercedes made it, doesn't mean that it's part of a balanced diet. So today, I'm going to be going over both of these new subclasses and see if you should add them to your own adventures in Exandria, or Wild Mountain. I know they came from Wild Mountain, Exandria just had better alliteration, okay? As always, keep in mind that the majority of this is just my opinion, so if you feel like it's unacceptable that I'm 50 episodes behind on Critical Role, these episodes are long, man. Give me a highlight reel or something. And real quick, I'd like to give a brief shout-out to my new patrons this month. Hits are a homo, Philip Martin, Aubrey Bell, Chris Clark, Mara, Billop, Kariah Didwin, TGB, Gonk the Gourmet, and N- What in the world is that? Nittanylare, Dryden Mason. Thank you all so much for pledging to my Patreon. Please, I'm begging you, get easy your names. But with that out of the way, let's begin. So the oath of the open sea is the obligatory fish subclass that, now that I think about it, not a lot of other classes have done. I mean, there's the Storm Sorcerer and the Weather Boy Barbarian, but no one else actually has a water level archetype, weird. In any case, the oath of the open seas was created as a story reward for the sexy Hexblade Ford, and that's about as far as I know about it because, like I said before, I'm very behind on my Critical Role, no spoilers. But as far as mechanics go, the oath of the open sea calls out to all adventurers to travel freely, seek mystery, and be the best goddamn pirate you can be. When you take the oath, you get two channel divinity options, one that surrounds you in a dense fog that only you and your allies can easily see through, and another that fuels your attacks with the fury of the wave to knock them back and deal bonus damage. Once you reach level 7, you gain an aura that prevents you from being grappled, restrained, or from taking movement and attack penalties while underwater. The wording is a little wonky, but I'm going to assume that they're meant to be separate things because being immune to grapples only while underwater is lame. Past that, you can use your reaction to slap people with waves when they enter or exit your melee range, and your final ability transforms you into Errol Flynn himself, taking on the soul of every great pirate lord and granting you a climbing speed equal to your movement, advantage on athletic checks, advantage against lone enemies, the dodge action as a bonus action, and advantage against everything dexterity. Swashbuckler, eat your heart out. So most of the features in the subclass are fun. You can knock people away like a wave, and they take damage if they hit something like a wave. The aura of non-grappleness is cool, and I don't think anybody else can do that for free. Stormy Waters knocks people over if they run away, so it basically forces them to stay in melee with you, and Mythic Swashbuckler seems powerful, albeit less powerful than other level 20 paladin superforms. The whole subclass feels like it enjoys messing around with who it's allowed to move and where, and that harkens towards being pushed and pulled around in a storm that you can't exactly grab onto until it to stay put. Unfortunately, the feature that ruins it all is the Marine Layer Channel Divinity, which creates a fog around you for 20 feet that heavily obscures the area unless you're in the eye of the storm, i.e. 5 feet, and then it's lightly obscured. I have to assume that Matt didn't playtest this and also doesn't fully grasp what effects these things do, since obscured isn't something that happens super often, but it's total insanity once you break it down. Lightly obscured, mechanically, is just a minor nuisance. You get disadvantage on perception checks to see things, no problem there. But heavily obscured treats you as blinded within the area, meaning that you fail checks requiring sight, you get disadvantage against attacking anything, and everything gets advantage against attacking you, which means that the paladin, plus anything hanging out next to it, gets free advantage against any enemy in the fog, and while they're in the fog, enemies get disadvantage on them for 10 minutes, and it follows the paladin around, so an enemy's only option is to jump next to the paladin and then get beat up by all the party members, drop an AoE down if they have one, or run away from the big murder ball of murder and get picked off by the ranged party members who are in the eye of the storm and so don't need to worry about blindness. This is one of those abilities that is so intensely strong that you have to build your entire encounter around its inclusion, and the paladin gets this at level 3. This thing would be powerful at level 20, but the Oath of the Open Sea gets it at practically the start of the game, and nothing can dispel it. Yes, it's a little annoying if the paladin moves and then the other party members are in a weird spot because of it, but they could just wander back into it and be fine, or the paladin could stay where it is and let the ranged people handle it. Yeah, that's boring, but so are constant AoE enemies with blindsends, so there's really no way out of this besides changing it so that it ends early if somebody in it attacks, or making the whole thing lightly obscured instead of heavily. Foolish Aquaman. Anyway, moving on from my ranty rant, the other subclasses presented by our Lord in DM is an update to the Way of the Cobalt Soul, and since I haven't actually read the Cobalt Soul stat block yet, this is basically a totally new archetype for me. The idea is that of a secretive order of monks who took the phrase, knowledge is power to heart, sculpting a form of martial arts that lets them peer into a person's mind through the act of violence, gaining an increased understanding of their target like a therapist who punches you and then asks, how does that make you feel? When you study the Way of the Cobalt Soul, you gain the power to learn some of your opponent's stats when you hit a flurry of blows on them, those stats being their vulnerability, resistances, and immunities, and you can hit them as a reaction whenever they miss you. From there, your passion for knowledge learns you a new language and new proficiencies over multiple levels. You can force your opponent into speaking only the truth for what I assumed to be 10 minutes because once again the formatting of the ability is jank. You can spend a key point to turn your reaction into a free second action, and your final ability lets you use your flurry of blows and three key points to weaken your foe, giving them vulnerability to the next attack of a certain type that hits them. As a concept, I love this subclass. I'd say I'm partial to Boe, but honestly, I love all characters on Critical Role, and it does help that I've seen the concept role played in the show, so I know what I'm getting into. The whole idea of wise monks who are kickass because they've just studied anatomy so they know where to hit to make it hurt the hardest is awesome, and while I go back and forth on whether knowing literally all of an enemy's vulnerabilities and resistances is too much, I usually end up on the side of, it's not gonna come up much anyway, and when it does, the DM would just let them know about it if it was important, so why not just let the monk have it? Other than that, the reaction punch is a great way to show off studying your enemy. The multitude of knowledges over time help you feel like you're studying and learning things instead of just starting the game with what you know, and that's it. The turning your reaction into a second ability is great, but who-boys are gonna drain your key points, and the three key points ability by 17th level is going to be really explosive. Think about it, 17th level Paladin dropping a Supra Smite, 17th level Rogue dropping all the D6's in the Fife Dumb, 17th level Any Spellcaster dropping any high-level damaging spell. It's great, I really love everything about the subclass. Overall, whether you watch Critical Role or not, these are fun subclasses that are available for free on D&D Beyond, and could give your own game some revitalization just a few weeks before Tasha's comes out and changes the whole world of what 5e's all about. So, as long as you get rid of that crazy misdability, you and or your friends can make a Critical Role clone both in personality and mechanics, and then it will really be your turn to roll. Buuuut that'll about do it! I hope you enjoyed this video, be sure to leave a like, comment, subscribe, ring the bell, and maybe support me on Patreon so that I can afford to take a week off and binge watch episodes 50 to 100 something of Critical Role. But yeah, Dabby out.