Dungeons and Dragons has borrowed plenty of ideas from MMOs over the years, particularly the way that character classes are specialized around certain combat niches like DPS and Tank. The mechanics for the new Primordial Warlock feel like they're pulling from a different MMO inspiration - it's a control-focused spellcaster with a toolset ripped straight from a raid boss.
WotC released it as part of a new Unearthed Arcana playtest document on Friday, which added three new 'villainous' subclasses. The Primordial Patron allows a D&D Warlock to be pledged to an incredibly potent elemental spirit, such as one of the Elemental Evils themselves. When you hop onto the subclass at level three you'll pick from an Air, Earth, Fire, or Water spirit to be your patron, and can switch at every level.
The Pact Spell list has some shared 'Primordial' spells, and then separate mini-lists for each of the four elements. The Air list gives you freedom of movement, with spells like - well, Freedom of Movement; Earth has a lot of non-damage based battlefield control like Entangle and Wall of Stone; Fire has all the classics (Fireball!); and Water will make you sad unless you're in a campaign set near the sea, or at least a really big lake.
The defining subclass feature is the Elemental Node. Lore wise, this is a portal to the Elemental plane of your patron - but mechanics wise, this is one of those AoEs that MMO bosses summon on the floor of the arena that burn (or freeze, or electrocute) anyone that steps in them. At level three it's a five foot radius sphere of elemental magic you can summon within 60 feet as a Magic action, and which you can move around the battle on later turns by spending Bonus actions. It lasts for a minute and doesn't require concentration (it's not a spell, it's a hole in reality).
If the node gets summoned on top of an enemy, if they move into it, or end their turn in it, or it moves over them, they have to pass a Dexterity saving throw or take D6 damage, half damage on a save. Unlike the extremely broken aura spells from the start of the edition, there's a clause that says enemies only have to make this save once per turn, so there's no way to hop the zone backwards and forwards to trigger repeated spells.
As your Primordial Warlock levels up you get to pull extra tricks with their Node. From level six you can teleport into it as a bonus action, add your Charisma bonus to your AC while you're within it, and the node gains an extra damage die. At level 10 you get resistance to your patron's element, which improves to Immunity when you're inside the node; and the node itself swells out to a 10 foot radius.
At level 14 the node changes again and gains the ability to suck enemies in, forcing enemies within 30 feet of the node to pass a Strength save or be pulled 15 feet towards it whenever you expend a Pact Magic spell slot while standing inside it. At this level the node also gains another damage die, and can remain in place for an hour.
And in what feels like a real Raid Boss phase two, while standing in the node you can cast Planar Ally without expending a spell slot (though it seems that you still have to pay for the elemental's services). After pulling this trick it takes 2D4 long rests before your patron is willing to listen to another plea.
There are a couple of new Eldritch Invocations, too. Elemental Transmutation lets you pick an elemental damage type, and count any other elemental damage you deal as that damage type. You don't get any bonuses for using spells from your chosen element unless you take another upgrade like the feat Elemental Adept, but you can use this to swap to a different Elemental Patron for its spell list, and then have a choice of two damage types to circumvent enemy resistances.
It also shores up the other subclass-specific Invocation, Elemental Overflow: whenever you cast a spell of a chosen element, for one round any creature that hits you from within five feet suffers D4 damage of that elemental type.
So this is a character that chases enemies around the arena with a persistent AoE effect - teleports into that AoE to become resistant to damage - summons a chunky mob when the fight starts to go long - and has a spell list packed with AoEs, control effects, and direct damage. Sure feels like a raid boss to me.
What do you think? Is this something you want to pick up? Or does your DM not put enough mobs into fights to make all this battlefield control useful at all? Let us know in the Wargamer Discord community!