- [interviewer] You have a
couple of new sub-classes. One of them is for the Rogue. We've not seen a new
Unearthed Arcana for the Rogue for awhile now, can you tell
me a little bit about this? - This Rogue is a Rogue
who surprises themselves because one day, or perhaps one night, they have a sudden realization, and in game terms this
realization happens at the third level when
they take the sub-class. They realize, they've been dead before. And this Rogue is called The Revived, and they are a character who
has to grapple with the fact that they have lived at
least one life before, perhaps multiple lives, and
for some reason they are alive again and are imbued
with certain deathly powers. And so this is a very kind of spooky Rogue who gets to at certain
levels learn how to speak to the dead, at high level
they can leap through the ethereal plane. They also, very early on, gain
the ability whenever they use their cunning action class
feature to launch out bolts of the grave, an
aquatic energy that deals their sneak attack damage. So they actually a way
of dealing their sneak attack damage other than
the traditional ways of dealing sneak attack damage, although they of course
can still use those ways. So there are a number of neat, sort of spooky things going on here. This Rogue is also hard to kill, they have advantage on
their death saving throws, And if they do get close to death and
then are brought back. So if they have zero hit points
then they're brought back to one or more hit points
so they're stabilized. They also can actually change
their personality traits. So every character in the game has, you know their idea, their
bond, their flaw, et cetera. Well when this Rogue comes
to after being knocked down to zero, they might have
remembered one of their past lives and their personality can shift
slightly as they incorporate one of those past lives into themselves. They also can draw on proficiencies
from their past lives, and they can change
these actually over time. And also one of the neat
things is when they speak with the dead, they can also
draw capabilities from either that dead spirit or from
one of their own past lives. They're not quite sure
where these capabilities are coming from. So it is a Rogue that not only has these neat deathly abilities, but also has this personal journey to try to figure out why
were they brought back. What is their mission? Are they going to come back
a number of other times? So there is this neat story
built in for the character inside this sub-class. It was a concept I had. I'd said I want us to explore this. Ben Pettrisor then took
the ball and ran with it, he brought back to me the
ideas he had for realizing the story concept. And it actually came together quite well. I mean as soon as we had that seed of you just realize one day you've been, you've died before and you've come back. And that those past lives
could ripple into the present in various ways. The sub-class actually came
together pretty quickly. Just because it's such
a rich story concept and a fun one to explore in
the Rogue because Rogues, when you think of assassins and others, already have this relationship with death. But often it's the Rogue
who's dealing the death. So we thought it would be
fun to flip that around and it'd be well this Rogue
has had death dealt to them, and they're back. But they're not undead, i mean they have certain
qualities that are reminiscent of the undead. A person might think well are these Rogues actually revenants? Well, they're not. Their story is similar
to a revenant in that they have come back. But they've come back alive. And so rather than being a servant of the powers of undeath, they instead are imbued with
the powers of death itself. So they're actually
more of a natural force rather than the unnatural
force that is undeath. - [Interviewer] And this was your idea? - Yeah this was an idea I brought
cause often what happened, at least with this recent
group of Unearthed Arcana, different people on the
team will come with ideas. I then gather them up and say
all right here's the basically the parade of sub-classes
I would like to see sprinkling in ones that I personally want and this was one of the ones
that I brought to the team and said all right I'd
like to see this revenant like Rogue added to the mix. We could also explore, and in
D&D have explored this concept before in other ways. For instance in fourth edition we had a playable race, the Deva which is sort
of related to the Aasimar in that they're these celestial beings, but the Deva specifically
had access to past lives. The fun thing about exploring
this story in a class rather than in a race is
you can actually grow. Races tend to be you know, here's what you get at the
beginning, and that's it. We've introduced, like in
Xanathar's Guide To Everything the racial feats they
give you a way to deepen your connection to your species. But for the most part, growth in D&D is expressed through class. And that was one of the reasons
why I wanted us to explore this concept in the Rogue
because then we could go deeper. Culminating again with the
ability to leap through the ethereal plane, and even leap to a place
that you can't see. Normally with our short
range teleportation, as opposed to you're
teleporting to the other side of a planet kind of teleportation, you're usually required
to see where you're going. But this Rogue can just leap
and see where they end up. There's a risk, they might
take force damage if they manifest inside a wall or
in another creature's space. But we wanted this because
this is a kind of ability that a number of ghostly characters, rather monsters have in the game. So we thought this is
appropriate for this Rogue and I think the Rogue
is going to be able to trigger all sorts of
trouble with this ability. But they're gonna have
to be careful because the Rogue is going to be
tempted to just you know, oh I'm gonna leap through that wall, well the Rogue is then,
might leap into a room filled with foes who they have
to face all by themself. So it could be dangerous.
