yeah welcome back to how to be a better i'm your host justin lewis here

with my cohort tanner wayland

guys

say hello tanner

hey i hope you guys are all doing great because i am

and today we are actually streaming this to you tube for for a change so

we'll see how that goes but the whole point of how to be a better

dem is to together learn how to craft better stories for you and us and

our players as dim sessions of d and d excuse me we don't know that

one dandy is getting ever closer and obviously the newest installment of under our cane

material has just been released well just just like a couple o weeks ago but

it's been released by o the coast for us to play test so today we're

going to give you the fact of what was released as well as some of

our opinions about those facts but before we dive in let me mention to you

to stick around to the end of today's show because we're going to tell you

how to enter the give away that is starting as the release of this podcast

episode so thursday the twenty seventh and i promise you you won't want to miss

it so stick around but tanner let's get into today's topic which is unearthed our

canadtoo expert classes

perfect yeah and some of you might be wondering what is an expert class

oh

so this is one of the big

oh

changes that they're actually doing for classes in general they're kind of grouping them in

a way that you haven't really seen before because i think mentally we had this

idea of like of classes being like oh you have your spell casters you know

you got your more

oh

faith is based kind of people you know

yeah

but now they're actually like full on making them different class groups just to tell

you what those are

oh

you have the experts which is what released now and that includes bards rangers rogues

and i believe they also said artificer is going to be in that

orrect

but but it's kind of like an extra not cork i don't know if they

can consider them core classes anymore but

uh

it's kind of like an extra class so they didn't really go into that this

time

m

and then other ones majors would be sorcerer warlock

ye

wizard priests

yeah

would be cleric dreed paladin and warriors would be barbarian fighter monk um and like

they'll they each have kind of like different you know focuses and one of the

big reasons they're doing this is so that they can have different like feet lists

and essentially the feats are kind of broken up by group and you so you

have some that are non grouped feats but the majority of them will be like

oh it's an expert feat and so if you're whether you're barred ranger or row

you kind of just have a shared list like that i don't know what do

you think about that change justin

i think it's interesting and i'd be interested to see if on the road

oh

they they add to that list so there you know the experts majors priests fighters

but i'd be interested to see if as a community we can come up with

other sections not sections but like

groupings

classification

yeah

groupings

classifications

no a i don't know but those do definitely seem fairly complete it were but

i like it and i do like how they are focusing a lot more on

feats

oh

allowing you to make a more versatile character and really expand the building of your

character

yeah exactly and i find that like a lot of what they're doing um it

kind of goes towards their stream lining efforts and making it easier like i've noticed

that a lot of the changes have been that way right like when they and

i hear that they're already considering changing but when they simplified

yeah

natural ones and at twenties to being like oh regardless of if it's a skill

or ability check or anything like that you automatically ceed or lose even though that

wasn't the case you can tell that that's like them trying to simplify it and

same when they changed the spell you know the spell kind of categories

yeah

how they went with oh what was it was arcane divine primal and

hm

and that's like also obviously them trying to make it less complicated so you don't

have like your own classes like list but rather

yeah

you've got oh your class pulls from this category or whatever right i think some

people are going to like it like it's great frankly and we talk about this

all the time you know podcast it's great for new people um it kind of

breaks down that barrier to entry of knowledge at least but i think for other

people who are pretty familiar and they're looking for m or depth i'm cautious to

say if everybody is going to accept it you know

yea i will say one thing that's kind of nice is compared to other editions

five has probably been put on line more so it's a lot more available

yeah totally

so if no you have your standard player who's played five and excuse me

m

and prefers that method they can just revert back to having spell lists for individual

classes and treated like that and even group those spells under the divine primal and

arcane groupings and kind of expand it for their own game play but new players

can just rely on what they're doing now so i do think they're making it

more complex and simplifying it at the same time

yeah

well i guess they're simplifying it but allowing for more complexity and not specialization of

personal izeaiation personalization good heavens

you're good yeah and so with that i mean essentially the bulk of this unearthed

arcana

okay

was pretty much like clay breakdowns right like they had

m

they had the bard like how you create it the different you know they've got

it's basically most everything you need to create a bard and just a reminder for

anybody like this is a play test they're still changing

m

things and so when they have these lists of you know spells feats things like

that what they're really hoping is if we find it's unbalanced or just kind of

sucks and it's boring then we got to say something and they have a survey

right there on d and d beyond for you to do that

for sure and i do think that's really cool and i actually haven't tried playing

any of the unearthed arcana any of my tools yet

yeah

m something i want to do in the future but i kind of want to

wait till a little bit more is released to like do that

yeah

but one thing that surprised me well i guess let's just go through the bardic

class and talk about some of the changes that i noticed obviously we did it's

everything

yeah

but this is what we did notice so first bardic

ah

inspiration has changed a lot in my opinion so now you can actually use it

as a reaction to m heal one of your party members and the way the

reason why i'm thinking this is big is because bards can kind of be the

thing standing between a character and death

m

if now they go to zero hit point then the part is like i'd like

to use my reaction to heal them across the room or whatever i don't know

i don't think that's exactly how you can do it but essentially that's what i'm

in visioning it as you know oh

yeah yeah i think that in regard to bar

oh

in regards to bart sorry

yeah

i have something that some people have been pointing out online is how bart inspiration

has changed and personally i think it's for the better in some ways um it's

no longer used as a bonus action instead it's a reaction so basically

m m

if

yeah

creature is going to fail an attack roll ability check or saving throw or whatever

or what they call a d twenty test nowadays

m

basic you can just use as a reaction be like extra you know roll it

five on that role right which

hm

i think is kind of nice it just makes it feel a little bit more

impactful

yeah

and i can totally see where they're trying to use this because they're trying to

make it so you don't waste a bar of inspiration on someone who who may

forget about it may not use um because they're just hitting their roles anyway they

don't really need that extra you know four or five that you gave them

yeah

this way it's like oh kind of a last ditch effort save them and i

think it gives you a lot more power in influencing the combat you know

yeah one other thing i noticed in kind of in conjunction to the bard inspiration

is that bards now have healing spells that are always prepared essentially and this is

kind of crazy to make before know clerics were primarily the healers you know but

now a lot more classes are being healing capable i guess and with the pushes

towards the inspiration the push is towards the healing it feels like wizards of the

coast is kind of wanting bards to be more supportive and more versatile you know

yeah

you can have a bar that does lots of damage but also a bar that

heals which i find

yeah

interesting

one if i had one issue with how they group it i feel like the

like the groupings don't necessarily make as much sense as in you that especially with

bards because it's like if you call a bard an expert so to say when

a bard has usually been kind of an all rounder i would say you know

hm

like they have they've got s but there you know they're mostly support but then

you can also do some weird things with them and make them more kind of

crafty and stuff like that i don't know it feels a little bit weird lumping

yeah

them in with with

oh

with a rogue frankly you

yeah

know

ah

um yeah

be honest the reason why they did that or at least the reason why they're

in the expert group is because the bard the rogue and the ranger all have

the expert tis feature which basically gives them the ability to add their proficiency to

specific skills or i think it's double their proficiency to skills that are proficient in

okay

like a couple of them and like like you i do find that really interesting

because she like the bard would definitely be more i mean they're not a warrior

a priest or a page so i guess like

hm

maybe they put it in expert because what else do we put it in you

know

yeah exactly and in a big like i've seen a lot of comments on some

of the things that they've done when they're introducing these class classes and everything uh

apparently like they've really done a lot in terms of conditions like

oh

like they just let's take the rogue for example apparently when it comes to like

hiding you know typically

oh

you do like you'd like do a stealth roll all that kind of stuff now

hidden is like an actual condition that you kind

m

of have to do something to get applied to your character you know almost like

sick or something else you

yeah

know uh yeah i just i think that's just kind of it's funny these little

changes that you're seeing

yeah be honest if i can talk about that that makes me so happy because

like if there's conditions then there's also requisites for those conditions you know

yeah

like you can't be grappled unless something is grappling you something has its arms around

you you can't move and things like that right

yeah

so the reason why i'm happy about the hidden part is because my wife plays

a rogue and she often as most rogues do like oh i use my cunning

action to hide on my bonus action and you're like you're in the middle of

a room that's empty like how are you going to hide

yah

or like well i want to and you're like okay roll for it and they

roll like a twenty five and you're like well i don't know how but you

hid

oh

in an empty room full

you

of people

just lay down on the ground and nobody

yeah

saw you i guess

became part of the floor board and anyway so i'm

yeah

kind of hoping that you know i'll be able to clear up some of that

nonsensical hiding like good heavens

yeah i feel like people who and honestly there's a lot of people that make

rogues very annoying for

hm

a d m right because they're just very effective in the right hands i think

there's going to be some people who are going to be mad about that because

it feels a little bit like nerving

yeah

but but hey you know don't knock it until you have ay tested it i

guess

yeah

but

yeah

other than that i mean they've just made so many like little changes here and

there like i don't even it's like hard to wrap my head around like there's

like jumping

it

is an action and i'm like how's how's jumping in action

yep

uh yeah it's very it's very funny to me that they like made a specific

action because i feel like most people just kind of like oh my movement

yeah

i jump as part of me you know

be wonders if maybe like a lot of people have written into them or like

message them saying like hey what do you do for this you know and they

try and they tried and quatified that

yeah

tried to codify that a lot more you know

yeah

m

absolutely and i think a lot of other games are getting more not a lot

of game but like some other games specifically i'm thinking of pathfinder second edition they

he

added a jumping like action essentially

yeah

um but they have the benefit of like oh like you have essentially three actions

so like in a in a turn and that could be like actions or movement

and stuff this one i'm just kind of curious to how people will feel if

like jumping is like kind of a waste of a movement like i wonder you

know because it is

yeah

like it is more of a risk reward kind of thing right anyway

yeah

sorry sure

i mean hopefully that helps d

yeah

ms kind of set up dynamic combat situations where you're fighting

oh

but you know the odds are stacked

yeah

against you so

oh

kind of the idea is to fight long enough to escape you know

yeah

and there's a rickety bridge and it

yeah

breaks and you have to jump you know like i'm hoping situations like that can

be made more and more often because sometimes combat gets tedious and allowing your characters

to yeah try things like that you know jumping into a building from ground floor

and kind of getting a better vantage point i think it just hopefully opens up

more creativity

yeah i think it will and i think that's the key here and i'm really

hoping that a lot of these changes still you know because they're clarifying things you

know they're seeing where

yeah

they had holes before

ah

and i'm hoping that they are able to solidify certain things while not removing the

chance for players to get creative you know

yeah

and even if they do i mean there's always the rule fun you can

yeah

always change something in your own personal game right

a

so

part of me wonders

go ahead

just real quick part of me wonders like these two unearth arcana like sections have

been pretty pretty long i'm kind of wondering like how long is the players handbook

gonna be because like if they keep doing this like it's not supposed to be

released till twenty twenty four and i don't know like that's a long time with

lots of arcana you know

yeah yeah it's it's going to be a lot but i think it will be

good in the end because this is the next big edition right they're doing a

lot more play testing they did with five and and i've always

yah

been i've always believed that as much as feedback is painful for creators and i'm

certain that they're probably like why does everybody have a problem with this we thought

hard on it but

h

but in the end

m

it's going to be better for everybody with

yeah

these comments but so in regards to the ranger real quick you were pretty excited

excited about something or you were you excited

yeah

or did you have an issue with it i forget

to be honest i'm excited i do like the ranger class it is one that

i've seen played a couple of times at my own tables and it's always like

of tedious for the people like it's not as powerful as they want or it's

just you know it's just kind of weak

yeah

but in this play test material they made it so you don't have to concentrate

on hunters mark witch is pretty powerful because basically once you have hunters mark on

something you can pretty much always find it until you kill it or the duration

ends and and you get that at first level so like that's i guess you

know there's lots of mimes about eldridge blast being like the only thing warlocks do

i can foresee in the future hunters mark kind of replacing that for rangers so

people doing names about locks to eldrich blast rangers do hunters mark you know and

that's it um i think it's i think it's a cool idea one other thing

that rangers also can do now is cast cure wounds which very interesting because again

wounds was spell that was kind of limited to the select few now rangers can

do it which better or worse it's it's cool but we'll see how it goes

yeah it should be very interesting frankly rangers kind of needed an overhaul in some

yeah

ways so i think it was smart that they've made some big changes there you

know

yeah

um but one thing that i thought was interesting

oh

and i think we talked about this earlier but rangers and it's uh they now

do prepared spell list very similar to wizards where it's like hey you're not like

m

just getting to do you don't just have a few spes expells you have access

to like all the spells like for your level right but you have to prepare

them for the day and if you prepare

yeah

the wrong ones then sops to be you but

yeah

but it gives you more options to prepare if you do know what to prepare

for that's that's kind of cool

yeah and it makes sense because like bards you'd think that a bard would be

travelling with books or something too reference brander i'll be honest i'm kind of curious

as to why they did that for rangers because narratively speaking a ranger you know

they're traveling they should be traveling light i wouldn't imagine them to have like a

big old spell book or something like that

yeah

maybe they're you know they are primal spells so maybe get it from the land

or something like that through communion or i don't

yeah

know

yeah i think there's that i also think that and with us talking about how

ranger kind of felt like a more boring glass like

oh

i think that them with prepared spells it just gives someone a lot more flexibility

to play their own style you know

yeah

since they get access to so many more spells at their level right

yeah

and so i'm like honestly i think that's good especially with expert classes because it

makes sense that the whole idea of an expert classes is an abundance of skills

right

yeah

and so it makes sense that the two spell casters have an abundance of options

even if they have to

m

be more expert about how which ones they choose right

that makes that does make a lot of sense but yeah like you said i'm

really glad they overhauled the range of class because too many times people are like

oh i want to be like erigorn then they're more like sad stand for erigon

that can't really do much you're

i know

just like oh i feel so bad for you poor poor player

yeah

but

go ahead

unless you had anything else about the ranger i was going to talk a little

bit about the rogue

i mean just final things on the ranger favorite train is gone which frankly was

kind of useless in my opinion

yeah

so ding dong the witch is dead not

yeah

ally it wasn't quite which level but

yeah

but it was just useless and so in my mind i think that was just

a good you know cutting off the superfluous fat so to speak

m

um but yeah that was the last thing go ahead

i love it kind of the thing that stuck out to me is the sub

class they revealed for the rogue included i guess it's just a thief one to

me it sounds a whole lot more like indiana jones because like you can do

a lot more about like moving things and you can use items that usually you

wouldn't be able to and it seems very much like treasure hunter treasure finder very

versatile in that way but just my opinion i've been watching a lot of expedition

unknown so that's probably where my mind is anyways

hm yeah yeah i think that which i'd always hope that's the case because they've

only really talked about like a sub class per thing this

hm

time right um

yeah

but you the sub classes is where each gaming experience really changes and so i'm

glad that the thief has kind of seen a lot of that re working i

think it's

yeah

frankly i think they're going to need to re work the the rogue a little

bit you know

yeah

from this play test because they're there get some some changes that's for sure you

know

one thing this just kind of reminded me of it just all the classes in

general that i think is a big change so previously there was a level twenty

upgrade i guess that you get when you get to level twenty with

hm

this they've actually said that all level twenties from five are now something you get

at level eighteen then at level twenty you get what's called an epic boon which

is basically like a feat but like super powered there's there's a whole list of

them at the very bottom um

yeah

one is like i can't remember wat it's called but it's like epic boon of

like hitting or something like that and

uh

basically between

uh

like every short rest you can choose to just hit every like if you miss

one's a short rest you know once in between short rest a long rest which

to me is like crazy but like

oh

i think that's really cool

wait a second so once every short rest you can just choose to hit someone

so like let's say you've just had your short rest to go into combat you

swing and you miss and you use your epic boon and instead of missing you

just hit

yah amazing

then you can't use that until the next short rest or long rest or something

like that

m

but i mean by that point you're like fighting galactis you know like

yeah

planets swallowing things so he was for

i know i'm just looking through i just get reminded every once a while i've

played so few like crazy high level campaigns

right

especially with out like twenty at the level like uh

oh

spells but like some of these twenty of the level spells are like just incredible

kind of nuts yeah

yeah like like i do love all of the ones that just say true resurrection

i'm like

yes

so there's

yeah

a false resurrection i

lo

know there is like there is

yeah

one that's it only lasts for like twenty four hours or something but like

yeah

i think it's funny that added were true there

seriously

ah seriously it's also funny that they have a power word heal

i love

i've

that

got to look that one up because i've never looked it up but i was

just looking at the list on i was like because i know

oh

a lot of others are words that seem a lot more like helpful but

oh

i'm like i'm guessing power at heal is just straight up

oh

make them healthy completely but it's funny

right

as a level nine spell and like i mean that's cool but like yeah like

i'd rather do

he

a sunami or storm of vengeance or something you know

right so this is this is what power word heal says a wave of healing

energy washes over a creature you touch the target regains all its head points if

the creature is charmed frightened paralyze or stun the condition ends if the creature is

prone it can use its reaction stand up the spell has no effect on under

construct so bad news for un dead and war forged

dang dang so close so close to being a good thing um

that's got to be like a level eight thing because that doesn't seem like a

level nine thing

totally yeah but otherwise what kind of are there any other kind of final things

you want to talk

ye

about with some of the changes because a lot of it's nittygrity we're not

yeah

we're not going to be able to get into all of it because each class

has like some some small things we've tried to talk about some of the bigger

like things that

sure

they have been done but there's a lot of small things guys and and it

just it gets a little overwhelming you know

yeah i mean the only thing i would say is like if you haven't taken

the chance go to d d beyond and get on the cone for free just

downloadit read read through it and you know play test yourself because that's really the

best way you're going to know what's changed up what hasn't what you like and

what you don't there is a whole list of feeds and i saw most of

them are very similar or exact copies of what was in five

hm

but again i imagine that dandy on comes out with a whole lot more feet

and backgrounds for sure

yeah yeah i think i am interested in seeing

yeah

how they tweak these further because

oh

one thing that i just thought of was how the play test kind of two

roles i think that we and the second one we're not aware of as much

but the first role is like hey they spent all this time thinking up these

ideas and they want our feedback i think the bigger one is the second one

because you're going to have a lot of people providing feedback and also giving suggestions

and there's like so many smart like very creative people playing d and d

hm

and they're going to give wonderful suggestions for each of these classes about like you

know we probably will ive and see some new feats frankly i won't be

yeah

surprised that are just like cool period um and we're certainly going to see some

more balancing that i would say is probably led by the players um

agreed

and their feedback but

i

yeah

really like that

yeah

to add to that you know like we all watch like dimensioned twenty critical role

you know all the famous dungeon masters and such you listener i want you to

think about this the best dungeon master the world is probably unknown to everyone in

the world but like their table because

true

you know just chances are they are you know there's someone out there better than

matt mercer you know brandon what's his last name

uh

dimension twenty

yeah it's it's

shoot

brandon

brandon anyways him

yeah

you know

yes i know brandon

mind blank but but there's chances are there's bound to be someone out there better

than them that will never know of because they just don't want to be out

in public but they're just and hopefully that should encourage because maybe that person could

be you maybe that person is you

hm

it has to be someone said why not you so if i know there's lots

of listeners out there who have not actually dungeon mastered this is your call to

repentance if you're listening to this podcast you should be at least preparing for your

first session and you have no excuses because you have some unearhdrcana for free that

you can just go download and get in in play you know

yeah yeah exactly so so get out there everybody um and definitely you know download

i take a look a simple way if you're confused about how to get involved

with this play test what i would say is this one is a lot more

approachable than the other one

hm

to actually like play test and not just read because this one you can actually

take these three classes and like one of your players you know if any of

your players are really into this i would frankly encourage them to be like he

feel free to use the new the new rogues kind of temple it essentially and

we can you know see how it works right

agreed um that's all i have to say about that anything else tanna

no i think i think that's good let's we got some announcements right yeah

yes sir listener before we close to day's episode like i said at the beginning

we have awesome announcement so as i said today well as of the the release

of this podcast episode so thursday the twenty seventh we are doing a give away

those of you who on on you tube are probably a little bit a couple

o days ahead you got kind of a head start but lucky enough to have

been able to join with dungeon alchemist for this gave to give away a free

downloadkey to their map making software on steam i personally used this software for all

of my online one shots and actually started using it to help make the maps

or at least kind of the floor lay out plan for my dungeons in my

personal campaign and let me tell you it makes making dungeons a lot easier because

as i say start with a map and then you can just fill in room

by room it's in the dungeon and like i said we have one download key

which means one winter and the give away is going to go from the twenty

seventh until the next podcast episode sode from thursday to thursday where we're going to

announce the winner and here are the rules for the give away there are mul

but ways to enter and you can do all of them and a couple of

them more than once well actually just one of them more than once so the

first way to enter to the give away is follow how to be a better

dmpodcast on stagram for one entry and yes if you already follow that counts so

that's one entry follow how to be a better dmpodcast on instagram number two for

two entries into the give away subscribe to the podcast or podcast and then dmsascreenshot

showing that you have subscribed and that's for two intrigues number

oh

three is five entries for five big entries into the give away you have to

subscribe to dungeon alchemist on youtube and then d m s a screen shot showing

that you've subscribed to that channel the number four is every friend you tag on

any of our giveaway related instagram posts that equals one entry tag so if you

tag fifteen friends that's fifteen entries and we're going to have all of these rules

in the bow of our instagram so if you forget these check that out or

listen to this episode again but yeah those are the rules for our give away

and again i really love dungeon alchemist and they're just really cool like a month

ago they came out with new features where you could actually import like your many

that you made from hero forge into the software and kind of use it as

a token when you play online which i think is a super cool it on

but anyways

yeah

ahead

i just think that it's it's great because i don't know if you guys feel

similarly but sometimes i feel so constrained by the by the maps i can find

especially where i do a lot of game ng um on roll twenty h i

kind of need something on line that i can actually put in um and there's

a lot of wonderful options out there but what i like about a dungeon alchemist

is that you can create something so you can create a great encounter and then

have a map to match that instead of having to find a map and and

like kind of change our encounter based on that right it just gives you more

freedom that way

agreed and i'd highly encourage all of you to check out dungeon alchemist during this

week end after because you know they're just really awesome so if you do go

to better dungeon master dot com slash dungeon dash alchemist and that will take you

right to the website so you can see what they're all about but we're super

happy to be able to do this give away and you know it never really

would have happened without your support so we just wanted to say thank you for

joining the podcast shots and everything else that we do you guys really are the

magic of how to be a better dam actually wanted to give a couple of

shout outs to rodrigo steve and brandon two of those we're on our one shot

last week but you guys filled out our feedback survey and that feedback has been

super helpful we encourage all the rest of you to go to better engine master

dot com slash feedback and fill out the survey but we'll be back next week

with another awesome show and winner of the give away but until then let's go