Unearthed Arcana Unearthed Arcana and Necrotic Undead hunting.

[lowkey13]

*Deleted by user*

 

[MechaTarrasque]

I mentioned this in the cleric article thread last week, but a minor change to the fluff of both the Grave Cleric and the CoT Druid to be fate based, instead of death based, and the fluff and mechanics would match up. Not to mention a cleric who is supposed to keep those destined to be alive (at present) alive, and those destined to be dead (at present) still dead is logically a good servant for the death gods.

 

[DEFCON 1]

The issue here is that if you want to fluff these subclasses as taking on the undead in some form or fashion... you'd want at the very least to make their damage unnamed. So while it isn't the best tool for the job (which would be defining your damage as Radiant)... you at least aren't going even further in the wrong direction. Make the damage unnamed! Then you can take on undead just like every Ranger who claims them as a Favored Enemy-- their weapons aren't the best for hunting them, but at least they aren't hurting either.

Or better yet... if you want a neutral death subclass that deals Necrotic damage... just don't fluff it as having a desire to wipe out undead too. They can have any other number of thematic reasons to exist as a subclass... but hunting undead just wouldn't need to be one of them.

 

[Aldarc]

The issue here is that if you want to fluff these subclasses as taking on the undead in some form or fashion... you'd want at the very least to make their damage unnamed. So while it isn't the best tool for the job (which would be defining your damage as Radiant)... you at least aren't going even further in the wrong direction. Make the damage unnamed! Then you can take on undead just like every Ranger who claims them as a Favored Enemy-- their weapons aren't the best for hunting them, but at least they aren't hurting either.

Or better yet... if you want a neutral death subclass that deals Necrotic damage... just don't fluff it as having a desire to wipe out undead too. They can have any other number of thematic reasons to exist as a subclass... but hunting undead just wouldn't need to be one of them.

The Nature cleric gets their choice of whether the damage from their Divine Strike deals cold, fire, or lightning damage. If the Grave cleric straddles the gates of life and death, then why not let the Grave cleric decide whether their Divine Strike deals Radiant or Necrotic damage?

 

[Dualazi]

. . . So use Radiant, or Fire, or Force.
Its not as if Clerics or Druids have a dearth of options when it comes to fighting undead types just from their non-Deity-thematic, generic capabilities.


Given the sort of things that the FR in particular gods get up to, I'm not surprised that some of them are lousy minmaxers. If Kelemvor really wanted to become a guardian of the grave and the afterlife, he should have been a sun god.

yeah, I love picking a themed subclass and not actually being better at that theme! It's just the best.


Look, if I play a necromancer, I expect that I will be better than mages who are not necromancers at the creation and control of undead. Having that not be the case and being told "you can just cast Animate dead still, and RP as a necromancer" isn't a solution. Whether or not their whole point is undead slaying can be argued back and forth, but undead slaying is a facet of what death clerics are allegedly supposed to do according to the UA and they are bad at it. Either the domain/lore needs to change, or the mechanics need to.

 

[CapnZapp]

. . . So use Radiant, or Fire, or Force.
Its not as if Clerics or Druids have a dearth of options when it comes to fighting undead types just from their non-Deity-thematic, generic capabilities.

Given the sort of things that the FR in particular gods get up to, I'm not surprised that some of them are lousy minmaxers. If Kelemvor really wanted to become a guardian of the grave and the afterlife, he should have been a sun god.

Let's stop pretending.

If a subclass tells you you're an undead hunter, you assume you get abilities that make you a better undead hunter than other subclasses.

I appreciate the way you try to make sense out of these UAs, but you just. have. no. case.

Let me make a comparison - this is somewhat akin to Winter Witches getting only cold spells. Which are useless in the cold tundra.

Wasting UA space on that line of reasoning would be most unwelcome indeed, even if it's possible to make an argument that it "makes sense".

Now if you were to concede this, I would be willing to see your point. Assuming the final druid build gain powers to negate necrotic resistance and reduce immunity.

 

[Cap'n Kobold]

Let's stop pretending.

If a subclass tells you you're an undead hunter, you assume you get abilities that make you a better undead hunter than other subclasses.

You read the flavour text of those subclasses and all you understand from then is "Undead Hunter"?

I mean both archetypes do get benefits aimed specifically at combating undead, but you believe that all of them should be anti-undead-specific rather than some being based upon the other aspects of the archetypes?

Let me make a comparison - this is somewhat akin to Winter Witches getting only cold spells. Which are useless in the cold tundra.

Indeed. Their subclass only grants them powers linked to the source of their power. If they want to use non-winter-themed capabilities, they'll have to fall back on the more generic spells and abilities of their base class.

Now if you were to concede this, I would be willing to see your point. Assuming the final druid build gain powers to negate necrotic resistance and reduce immunity.

Don't the Druids of Twilight already get an increased benefit when using their special damage ability against undead?

 

[Sacrosanct]

Don't the Druids of Twilight already get an increased benefit when using their special damage ability against undead?

I don't think so, but they do gain resistance to undead attacks, so that would give them a benefit while fighting them.


As to the tone of this thread, and I do largely agree with your position of how the fluff is described (see my previous posts), I can also see the other side of the argument where people would like to see MORE class abilities that were focused on better fighting undead. That being said, the tone concerns me because it seems from a poster or two that if you don't agree with them, then you are lacking intellectually, either being unreasonable or illogical or you're being deliberately disingenuous for having the position you have. And that needs to end, IMO. This whole "if you don't agree with me then something is wrong with you" is toxic. Disagree with their position, but don't insult the other posters.

 

[Leatherhead]

This thread is not about min-maxing. This thread is akin to telling someone that using a fork to eat soup is a bad idea. It isn't saying you must use a spoon. You still have the option of sopping it up with bread, maybe chopsticks if it is particularly chunky or noodlely. But don't give me an olive fork to eat my tomato bisque, and then tell me it's OK because I can drink from the bowl.

Man, I could really go for some some soup right now.

 

[Leatherhead]

Radiant damage is no better than unnamed damage, unless fighting zombies. I may have missed something, but all I can recall finding when I looked at undead was the zombies undead fortitude ability being nullified when hit by radiant energy. None of them seem to be vulnerable to radiant damage.

There is one directly vulnerable to radiant, and three others that have a feature shut down while being hit with radiant. It's the best by a nose just because it has a handful of situations where it can be better than neutral damage types.