PHB '24: What Races and Classes Will We See?

 In two years, WotC will be releasing a new set of core rulebooks. They have not said explicitly if this is going to be D&D 6th Edition, though it would fall on both the 50th anniversary of D&D and the 10th of 5th Edition, making it a good symbolic time for something big and new. That said, 5E at this point is a fairly potent brand, so I wouldn't be shocked to see them try to downplay the idea of its being a new edition. Likewise, they've said that these books will be "backwards compatible" with previous 5th Edition releases.

We are seeing some books effectively rendered obsolete - Volo's Guide to Monsters and Mordenkainen's Tome of Foes are listed as "Discontinued" on D&D Beyond due to the fact that their update in the form of Mordenkainen Presents: Monsters of the Multiverse contains all the same monsters with revised stat blocks (both books have a fair amount of lore within them, but I suspect that much of that lore is actually due for a revision as well - such as the idea that not all Drow are Lolth-worshipping cultists).

At a fundamental level, I think there are a few questions to be asked about the mechanics of D&D. There are ideas that were introduced in 5th edition that those of who started with that edition kind of take for granted. The proficiency bonus, for instance, is a very useful catch-all to indicate greater skill with certain things. Given the way we've seen subclasses and racial features lean in further to use the proficiency bonus (including things like the number of times you can use an ability per day) I think that's likely to stay.

But rather than get into a full nitty-gritty idea of what fundamental mechanics will remain the same or be changed, I thought I'd look at the major character choices - primarily Classes and Races (Backgrounds I think might get a bit of a rework, so I'll save that for later).

Races:

As someone who started with 5th Edition, the races in the Player's Handbook seem like the obvious go-to options. At this point, anyone who has played the edition will likely think of Humans, Elves, Dwarves, Halflings, Gnomes, Tieflings, Dragonborn, Half-Orcs, and Half-Elves as inextricable from the game, even if we have some options (like Tieflings) that were introduced long after D&D was first introduced.

The first question here is how much room there is for races in the book. If I had my druthers, every race featured in Monsters of the Multiverse would be presented as an option in the core rulebooks (I'd also like Warforged to join them, though I understand that WotC seems hesitant to make these a setting-agnostic race).

One thing I think we're likely to see changed is the elimination of subraces - in Monsters of the Multiverse, the subraces of PHB races like Duergar, Eladrin, and Deep Gnomes were turned into independent races that simply share the "dwarf," "elf," and "gnome" tags as part of their creature type. This might have been done simply to account for the fact that they were not going to be publishing the baseline dwarf, elf, or gnome in the book. But they also did this with the Genasi and the Gith, simply putting all their features in each category.

Much of what once defined races and subraces was their ability score improvements, so I think we might see some races revisited to give them a little more substance.

Of all the non-PHB races that seem to see a lot of republication, I think Goblins stand a strong chance of being made an option in the new Player's Handbook. As one of the ubiquitous presences in D&D, Goblins have, like a lot of "monstrous" races, seen a revisitation, rehabilitating them as peoples worthy of dignity who are not all evil. If you asked me to guess what race could be bumped up to a core, PHB race, that's probably at the top of my list.

That said, I also think Orcs are a pretty strong candidate as well. Another staple of the fantasy genre, and likewise a classically "evil" race (in Lord of the Rings Orcs and Goblins are just two names for the same people) that, in more recent media, have been somewhat rehabilitated as complex people with free will, and whose historical conflicts with the "good" races might be seen as less a good-vs-evil conflict and more one bearing resemblance to the complex and ethically thorny conflicts we see in the real world.

Personally, I'd like to see more representation of mixed-race characters. In the 5E PHB, we have the Half-Elf and Half-Orc. The question, though, is how exactly to handle this kind of mixed ancestry. These half-X races, for one thing, imply that the other half is human. How does one represent a person who has a dwarf and an elf for parents? Or someone who is half-Halfling and half-Gnome?

This, of course, runs into the complex issues of trying to turn ancestry into a game mechanic.

Indeed, I'm tempted to, actually, just get rid of the "half-" races entirely and find some other way to incorporate mixed ancestry. I believe Pathfinder 2nd Edition makes being a half-Orc something like a feat that you can take when you make a character of another race. Not being familiar with Pathfinder's rules, I don't know how well this works. But I think it would be great to have a system in which we could reflect the broader diversity of mixed ancestries.

At the very least, I think that you could add the Monsters of the Multiverse version of the Orc, which has actually become far more flexible in terms of the kind of classes it can play (Aggressive now lets you simply dash as a bonus action a limited number of times, and you get the Half-Orc's relentless endurance).

In terms of the Dragonborn, I think that the updated Metallic and Chromatic Dragonborn races from Fizban's Treasury of Dragons seems like the obvious thing to transform these for the new edition. The question, then, is whether Gem Dragons are going to be thrown into the mix. While there are five core Gem Dragon types just like there are five metallic and chromatic options, my sense is that gem dragons, and thus perhaps gem dragonborn, are rarer. Perhaps those remain in the supplementary materials.

Lastly, I could maybe see the addition of Aasimar as a kind of counter-balance to Tieflings. I still think that Goblins and Orcs probably deserve a spot in the PHB more - one could argue they even deserve the spot more than Tieflings or Dragonborn, given that the PHB seems like it should include the really tried-and-true fantasy tropes.

Classes:

Given that Classes are the most carefully curated element of the game, I suspect that WotC will be very conservative with these. And indeed, if these new core rulebooks are meant to be backwards compatible with 5th Edition books, it seems you couldn't really drop any of the existing classes.

Over all of 5th Edition, we only got one fully new class that made it to publication, the Artificer. (Guys, remember how insane the Mystic was?)

I've made this argument several times already, but I think it bears repeating here: If the Artificer is printed in the Player's Handbook, it will open the door for the publication of additional subclasses in future supplements.

Indeed, the very concept of subclass has, I think, made adding new "classes" to the game far easier than it was in previous editions. With the strong "chassis" of, say, the Paladin class, you don't need to reinvent the wheel to come up with something new.

Some classes will want to see a bit of tinkering - I've written before about how I think that the Tasha revisions to the Ranger were mostly good, but the Favored Foe feature needs to be better. I also think that we could see the Fighter in general incorporate Maneuvers and Superiority Dice, which might mean a redesign or just elimination of the Battle Master subclass (given that, in essence, every Fighter would be one).

I know a lot of old classes, like the Avenger, were simply made into subclasses of existing ones (the Avenger became Oath of Vengeance for Paladins) so I don't know to what extent we can get a lot from plumbing the depths of older editions.

As I've said before, I'd hope that each class gets at least three subclasses to choose from, meaning we should shore up options for Barbarians, Bards, Druids, Rangers, and Sorcerers. Off the top of my head, I'd suggest putting Zealot, Eloquence, Shepherd, Gloomstalker, and Storm as the third options. While there are some subclasses from the PHB I'd be tempted to prune (Circle of the Land... does anyone play that one?) I sort of hope they'll instead receive fun redesigns that bring them in line with the mechanical quality that we've seen with more recent subclasses.

I think this is also a great opportunity to rebalance some aspects of various classes. Giving the effects of the Hexblade's Hex Warrior feature to anyone who picks Pact of the Blade, for instance, would be great. I'd also maybe remove the Bear Totem's resistance to everything to bring it more in line with other Barbarians.

    Overall, I think my suggestions have been pretty conservative. For all I know, WotC is planning for a much bigger revamp. I'm also holding out a fool's hope that the reason Warforged were not included in Monsters of the Multiverse is that they're going to be in the PHB.

We're still a little ways out from Spelljammer: Adventures in Space, and the other books we can expect to come out in the remainder of 2022 and the books that haven't even been announced yet for 2023.

Calculating the CR of the Summon Spell Creatures

 In the Player's Handbook, most of the spells where you conjure creatures to fight for you (or raise them from the dead if you're using necromancy) have you pick out (or have your DM pick out) creatures from the Monster Manual.

This, as it turns out, is a real pain in the ass. (I mean, to each their own, but I find it grinds the game to a halt). Thus, the "Summon X" spells introduced in Tasha's Cauldron of Everything, along with Summon Draconic Spirit in Fizban's Treasury of Dragons, which follows a similar formula, are a great alternative if you want to be able to summon creatures but have a more consistent and reliable thing to throw into the mix.

One of the things I like about these spells is that they scale up quite nicely when you cast them at higher levels. Each attack does more damage as you upcast the spell, and every two levels, they get another attack. They range from the 2nd level Summon Beast to the 6th level Summon Fiend.

Most earlier conjuration spells grab you a creature of a certain Challenge Rating from within a particular creature type. So, what I figured I'd do is get a sense of the challenge rating that a summoned creature would have if they were a standalone monster.

We might then use this as a point of comparison with other conjuration spells to find their relative values.

Now, there are a lot of these spells, so I'm going to limit what we're looking at.

In this case, I'm going to actually start with the highest-level summoning spell, because there are some reasonable spells to compare it to: How, then, fares the Fiend?

Summon Fiend can give you a Devil, a Demon, or a Yugoloth. These determine the fiend's hit points, their movement speeds and styles, and a few other features, along with the damage of their attacks.

We should also make a few assumptions about the character casting these, because this will have an impact on their power.

For the sake of argument, we're going to assume we have a level 11 Warlock with a +5 to Charisma and a +1 Rod of the Pact Keeper. This means that the warlock, and its summoned fiend, will have a +10 to hit.

Summon Greater Demon is a 4th level spell, so if upcast to 6 (to match it with Summon Fiend,) you can get a CR 7 demon. Thus, we'd love to get a fiendish minion that comes out to about Challenge Rating 7 (though if slightly lower the spell still might be better given that you're at no risk of losing control of the fiend). Likewise, Infernal Calling is a 5th level spell, upcast to 6th level would give us a CR 7 devil, though again, Summon Fiend is safer and more reliable, so if we're a little under, it still might be ok.

All right, now we have to choose a fiend. In general I'd probably typically summon a devil, because their flight and ranged attacks (that deal fire damage) would be quite useful for pure damage dealing. However, the devil also has the least HP of all the options. The Yugoloth has the most HP, but their melee-only attacks deal less damage and are non-magical slashing.

I think, then, to calculate this, we're going to use the demon's stats, which is the middle on HP but then does nearly as much damage as the devil, only in this case it's necrotic, which is the least likely to be resisted.

So, let's look at our statistics:

Defensively, the fiend has an AC of 18 with its natural armor when cast at 6th level (12 plus the spell's level). The demon has an HP of 50. Now, with an expected challenge rating of 7, the presence of fire resistance would boost its effective HP by 50%, though its immunity to poison damage should give it a full 100% bonus. Poison is not unheard of among foes that players face, nor is fire. I think it would be overkill to combine these EHP bonuses, but I think that fire is a little more common, so I'm going to kind of average it out and say we've got a 75% HP bonus, which means that the demon effectively has an HP of 87.

Our DCR, then, is a bit wonky. The HP level is only in the CR 2 range (just barely over the minimum) while the AC if in the 13-16 range. Given that the HP is only one over the minimum for CR 2, we're going to count the AC as being in the 13 range, and thus we get a DCR of around 7 or 8. Actually not bad - the AC helps a lot.

Now, we look at the OCR.

The attack bonus is, of course, borrowing from the player, and as we established, that's +11 to hit. That actually puts it in the range of CR 21 to CR 23.

The demon's bite attack deals 1d12+3+the spell's level in necrotic damage. At base level, that's 1d12+9, which comes out to about 15.5 damage on average. The number of attacks the fiend makes is half the spell's level (rounded down,) and thus is 3 attacks. So, it's doing a total of about 46.5 necrotic damage each turn. That puts its damage per round pretty solidly in the CR 7 range - maybe slightly on the lower end of it.

Thus, we'll say CR 21 is what represents its attack bonus. Averaged with its CR 7 damage output, we get an OCR of 14.

Thus, even conservatively, our Fiendish Spirit is the equivalent of a CR 10 or 11.

And given how there's no worry of the fiend turning on you, you've got to say this spell seems way better than those others.

Now, I'd originally intended to do a bunch of the other spells, but that was a lot.

Alchemist Deep Dive

 I've only been able to play one up to level 2 so far (with the exception of a couple of one-shots at higher levels,) but conceptually, I love the Artificer as a class. I think it both brings something genuinely new to the game (well, it did when it was released years ago) and I also think that it just has a very satisfying design.

Generally, there's a kind of technological bent to the class. While you can definitely remove that element in most cases through re-skinning (I like the idea of a Goliath Armorer who carves runes into armor made of stone) most interpretations of the class suggest a somewhat less pre-industrial aesthetic that some consider core to the fantasy genre (I, for what it's worth, think that post-industrial stuff in fantasy is super cool, what with the Dark Tower being such an influence on my tastes).

Of the four extant subclasses, though, the one that fits the most easily into a fully Medieval/Renaissance world is, I would say, the Alchemist. Alchemy is, of course, the pre-scientific antecedent to chemistry, though with a lot of these pre-scientific pseduo-sciences, there was a lot of philosophy and really creative ideas that had little to nothing to do with any observable phenomena (again, at the heart of science is empiricism).

On top of that, alchemy has a whole aesthetic to it. D&D is filled with all manner of bubbling potions, the rather obviously named "alchemist's fire" (which I assume is meant to be like Greek Fire in a setting with no Greece) and the very sort of magical phenomena that alchemists assumed existed but could also be understood.

So, while the other three subclasses lean a little more into a kind of industrial technology aesthetic by default - artillerists seeming to use cannons (albeit magical ones,) battle-smiths having essentially robotic battle-pets, and armorers having essentially mech-armor (like a certain superhero whose debut movie launched the MCU) - alchemists can very comfortably live in the old-timey worlds that many if not most D&D fans prefer or at least expect.

So great! What's the problem?

Well, the problem is that I don't... really like the Alchemist as a subclass.

That might be unfair. I think there are some very cool ideas at work, but I want to dig deep into the subclass and see what feels off and brainstorm how to improve it.

First things first, every subclass gets a tool proficiency (or gets a different one if they already have the one listed,) and this one's really damn obvious. Artificers get a lot of really interesting encouragement to flavor their spellcasting, and I think an alchemist in particular is almost certainly casting spells by lobbing around bottles of caustic fluids or paper packets of explosive powder, using their alchemy supplies to cast spells. No problem here, A+.

Each subclass for artificers gets specialist spells like a cleric's domain spells - always prepared and not counting against your prepared spell count.

There are two sort of themes running through the alchemist in this case: we have healing (or at least life-preservation) and various damaging spells you could easily imagine being caused by some kind of caustic, corrosive, or flammable fluid.

Healing Word, Mass Healing Word, Death Ward, and Raise Dead all fall into that healing side of things. Ray of Sickness, Flaming Sphere, Melf's Acid Arrow, Blight, and Cloudkill fall into the latter. Gaseous form suggests perhaps some kind of special potion (a potion of gaseous form, for example) that still plays into the liquids, gasses, and vapors theme.

Now, on a mechanical level, this (and other features) seem to suggest an alchemist should be able to play as a healer. I think that makes a ton of sense thematically. The question is whether they can keep up mechanically. Essentially: if your party has only an alchemist as a healer, is that going to be sufficient? We won't be able to answer that question until we get through all the features.

Still, this is a pretty solid mix of good spells.

Now, we get to the Experimental Elixir. Once per long rest, you can produce an experimental elixir, and you get to make two for free at level 6 and three for free at level 15. The elixir takes an action to consume. You can also expend a spell slot to make additional flasks of the elixir.

Notably, your free elixirs have randomized effects from a d6 table, but if you spend a spell slot to produce one, you get to choose the effect.

1 is a healing elixir - 2d4+Int healing to the person who drinks it. This actually does wind up being a little better (marginally) than a 1st level cure wounds, though doing so in combat will require one action to create it and one to administer it (or for the person who takes it to drink it).

2, Swiftness, grants the imbiber 10 extra feet of walking speed for 1 hour. Notably, this is the same effect as the Longstrider spell, though again, one action to produce and one to use.

3 is Resilience, granting +1 to the target's AC for 10 minutes. I don't think there's any equivalent spell here. It's a bit of a less powerful shield of faith, which artificers don't typically get. On one hand, no concentration required, but on the other hand, it's half as effective.

4 is Boldness, which lets the drinker add a d4 to each attack roll or saving throw they make for the next minute. This is a single-target bless, another non-artificer spell. The one minute duration, though, does mean you'll likely have to use it after combat has already started unless you get the drop on your foes.

5 is flight, which gives the drinker a 10-ft flying speed for 10 minutes. Fly, the spell, this is not. But it can be useful in exploration, such as having someone fly up a vertical shaft and tie a rope for the rest of the party to climb up.

6 is transformation, which explicitly calls out the Alter Self spell, lasting 10 minutes.

So, that's a lot to unpack. Ultimately, you get effects that are similar to 1st and 2nd level spells, though usually with shorter durations. I wonder if the best way to think about this is with the free elixir per day, or if it's better to think of this as a further subclass spell list - you can make elixirs with your spell slots and choose the effects, handing them out at the beginning of the day (or making more as needed).

Generally speaking, the 3rd level feature that each subclass really becomes central to the way the subclass works. The artillerist gets their Eldritch Cannons, the Armorer gets their Magic Armor. The Battle Smith gets their Steel Defender, which you could argue is not precisely central to the subclass, (perhaps just getting to attack with pretty much any weapon using intelligence is) but it's a big deal.

The big question I have about this feature is how this stacks up with those other features. These have much less obvious combat applications (not necessarily because of what they do, but rather the fussiness of how much of your action economy you're spending on them). On the other hand, it's potentially a lot of utility, and rewards an alchemist who plans ahead.

    At level 5, you get Alchemical Savant, which lets you add your Intelligence modifier (a minimum of +1) to one roll of any spell you cast using your alchemy supplies that deals acid, fire, necrotic, or poison damage, or which restores hit points.

Here, again, we have that theme of certain damage types being favored, which I really like. Things do get a bit thorny when you consider the specifics of how spellcasting focuses are used - artificers, as I understand it (in fact I think the sentence that specifies this isn't even grammatically correct) always need a spellcasting focus to cast any spell, not just those with material components. But another odd thing is that the infusion, enhanced arcane focus, technically requires that you infuse a wand, staff, or rod. Rules as written, you can't use that on your Alchemy Supplies. As a DM, I think that's utterly ridiculous (while an artificer can use any item they've infused as a spellcasting focus, this alchemist feature specifically requires that you use alchemy supplies to get the bonus).

In effect, you get something similar to what an Evocation Wizard gets, though Alchemists don't get Magic Missile (and this feature doesn't work with force damage anyway) so you don't get to pull that sneaky "technically you only roll a single d4 for Magic Missile and all the missiles do that +1, so with my +5 intelligence they all get the +5 bonus" shenanigans.

Still, this helps boost the power of your spells, admittedly by at most 5 (unless you have one of those books that can boost your intelligence beyond 20). Compared with the Artillerist's Arcane Firearm, which boosts all spell's damage by a single d8, this is pretty close, though you don't get to crit with this damage bonus. It's ultimately a pretty comparable bonus, though.

Artificers have a tiny number of healing spells, but, as alchemists, we're getting a few more. Particularly when you look at something like Mass Healing Word, this provides a pretty substantial boost.

I suspect that part of the reason that Alchemists and Artillerists get these damage bonuses on spells is to help with the fact that, as half-casters, they need to be more conservative with their spell slots, and rely on cantrips more. It's not quite at Warlock levels (who get to utterly super-charge Eldritch Blast) but if you think about it, with +5 intelligence, you're adding essentially something between a d8 and a d10 that just isn't doubled on a crit. On your Cloudkill's first damage roll, that might not amount to a whole lot, but if you're shooting an acid splash out at level 8, 2d6 is 7 damage, while 2d6+5 is 12, which is nearly doubling it.

At level 9, we get Restorative Reagents. This has two effects.

The first gives anyone who drinks your experimental elixir 2d6+ your intelligence modiier worth of temporary hit points (minimum of 1). Now, temp hit points can be valuable or not depending on how freely available they are in your party. If you have a Twilight Cleric, this might get overwritten immediately.

However, again, I think that the more I look at Experimental Elixir, the more I think you're supposed to lean into spending spell slots to pick specific options. If you've just had a big fight and your Rogue is sitting at about a quarter of their max HP, popping off a 2d4+5 heal that then also gives them a 2d6+5 shield on top of that could be a huge boost to their survivability (effectively 22 hit points for a 1st level spell slot - compare to a cure wounds that would do 1d8+10, or about 14.5).

The other half of this feature is that you can now cast lesser restoration for free and without preparing the spell if you use alchemist supplies (and why wouldn't you?) as your focus. You get to do this a number of times equal to your Intelligence modifier per long rest, so likely 5 casts per day.

Lesser restoration is one of those spells that can feel really crucial some days and totally worthless others. This lets you conserve spell slots and actually cast this more often than a Cleric might want to - it's a 2nd level spell, meaning that after the third one, other casters are going to have to spend higher level slots to cast it.

I think the first half - the temp hit points - are going to come into play more often, assuming you actually use your experimental elixirs, but this second half could be really clutch.

Lastly, at level 15, you get Chemical Mastery. Here, you gain resistance to acid and poison damage and are immune to the poisoned condition.

So, full immunity to the poisoned condition is something Monks get, so there's precedence here. Resistance to poison damage is fairly common. Acid resistance, on the other hand, is quite rare. Outside of temporary resistance gained from spells like absorb elements, I think only Water Genasi (the new version) and Copper/Black Dragonborn have resistance among playable races. Acid is a bit like thunder damage, as one of those somewhat rarer elemental damage types that far fewer monsters resist (though Yugoloths are fully immune - Gehenna must have a very caustic atmosphere).

Additionally you can cast Greater Restoration and Heal once each for free and without needing to prepare the spell (which you wouldn't ever be able to with Heal if you had this many levels in Artificer) per long rest.

So, this is kind of interesting, because it breaks you into higher-level spells than you'd normally have access to. Greater Restoration is an artificer spell, but as a 5th level spell, you'd typically need to be level 17 to get it - this gives it to you two levels early. Notably, as well, this feature lets you cast it without the costly diamond dust. Heal, though, is a 6th level spell, and thus is beyond the reach of half-casters in all other circumstances (you couldn't even multiclass with enough levels in Cleric to cast this - even if you had 6th level slots by going, say, 16 levels of Artificer and 3 levels of Cleric, you'd only be able to cast Cleric spells of a base of 2nd level or lower). And Heal is a really powerful spell - one that can take a character who is in really terrible shape and get them back to into fighting form.

    I think the question here, then, is what the alchemist is really meant to be for your party.

See, the Artillerist is a fantastic damage-dealer (we have one in the game I run). Battle-Smiths and Armorers can both be really powerful tanks. Can an Alchemist serve as your party's healer?

I still find myself not entirely sure. On one hand, having spells like Healing Word and Mass Healing Word make them quite capable of popping people back up. But the sort of big, sustained healing that a Cleric or Druid can do, I think an Alchemist is going to have a hard time replicating that.

Damage-wise, when compared to the Artillerist, they have similar features to boost their damage output, but Alchemists have nothing resembling the Artillerist's Eldritch Cannons, which ultimately wind up doing more damage than the Artillerist's own cantrips. Furthermore, an artillerist's subclass spells include heavy hitters like scorching ray, cone of cold, and fireball.

You could certainly argue that the alchemist's role is less that of damage or healing, but more one of general utility. And certainly, the experimental elixir gives you a kind of grab-bag of tools to help the party with various tasks.

The artificer already is a pretty strong utility class, between its infusions and the general vibe of its class spell list.

So, I feel kind of torn. I think that something needs to be improved, but I don't know precisely what it is. Partially, I'd love for Alchemists to be healers who are comparable in power to Clerics (generally, I'd like to see more classes viable as a party's primary healer) while another part really likes the idea of alchemists being the ultimate "I've got an elixir for that" subclass.

Honestly, I think one of the biggest drawbacks (and something that makes it a little hard for me to evaluate the subclass) is that players are terrible about using consumables. Getting potions as magical item rewards can be frustrating because you generally don't want to use them on some trivial fight, and you wind up waiting to use them only to find that you've just forgotten you even had them.

The fact that the Experimental Elixir expires if you finish a long rest does, I think, help with this a bit - you can't hoard these. I might want to revisit the design of the various effects, perhaps boosting them slightly so that an alchemist feels confident and comfortable spending spell slots on making elixirs rather than casting their spells.

Psychologically, I think that the way that the elixir is presented is as a randomized feature like Wild Magic Surge. The name Experimental Elixir really pushes that idea of unexpected effects. And frankly, especially when it's mostly there for utility, random utility effects are basically worthless unless you just happen to get the perfect thing in the moment.

So it might just be a matter of rewording and renaming the feature - maybe even getting rid of the random element (though I know some would be sad to lose it) - in order to make it clear that this is the "utility" artificer.

Ideally, when faced with various challenges in some dungeon environment, the alchemist should be mixing up elixirs and having just the right thing to help with the situation.

Mathing Out 5e Dual Wielding

 For whatever reason, I've never been a big fan of dual-wielding when I could be using a massive two-handed weapon. In World of Warcraft, Enhancement Shamans briefly used such big weapons during vanilla, but with the release of Burning Crusade and for the last 15 years, they've dual-wielded one-handed weapons.

In D&D 5th Edition, dual-wielding can be a decent option, but it runs into some pitfalls.

Here are the rules on dual-wielding, or, as D&D calls it, two-weapon fighting:

You can only do this if the weapons in both hands have the Light property. Then, if you take the attack action with the weapon in your main hand, you can make a single attack with the weapon in your off hand as a bonus action. This attack does not add your Strength (or Dexterity) modifier to the damage.

Ok, so let's take a look at this:

Say you're a dual-wielder and you pick scimitars as your weapons of choice. You have one in each hand, and a +3 to Dexterity (scimitars being finesse weapons, and this feeling like a kind of dexterous fighting style - though you could easily do this with handaxes if you're a strength-based character. You could also go for shortswords if you prefer piercing damage, and a few other kinds of weapons if you are ok with a lower damage die).

We're going to assume for the sake of argument that you are playing a martial class that gets the Extra Attack feature at level 5. Dual-wielding actually works quite well for Rogues, largely because most of their damage comes from Sneak Attack, but we're going to set them aside. So, we'll be talking about Fighters, Paladins, Barbarians, Rangers, and some Artificers and Bards (Monks I'm going to leave out because they essentially get to "dual-wield" their weapon and their unarmed strikes).

For a level 1 Ranger or Paladin, dual-wielding actually works pretty well at 1st level. If you figure that a paladin could be wielding a maul or greatsword, which does 2d6 + their Strength modifier (+3 in our hypothetical,) dual-wielding actually gives them the same - 1d6+3 for the main hand and 1d6 for the off hand.

Fighters, who get a Fighting Style at level 1, could pick up two-weapon fighting, which allows you to add your modifier to the damage of an off-hand strike. Thus, a Fighter who was specced into this could do 1d6+3 and then another 1d6+3, giving an average of 13 damage. Compare that same fighter going for Great Weapon Fighting and a Maul, and they're doing an average of 8.333 + 3, or 11.333.

Barbarians don't get fighting styles, but they do get Rage. At level 1, their Rage bonus is +2 to damage, and so while they're adding +5 to a main hand attack, they're still adding 2 to that off-hand strike. Thus, they can do effectively 2d6 +7, which comes out to about 14 damage per turn... but only after the first turn.

See, the big downside is that this costs more than just your action to attack - you also need your bonus action.

Rangers can pick up two-weapon fighting, and it looks pretty similar to the Fighter. Indeed, they don't get great weapon fighting, so it seems the expectation is that they will go with two-weapon fighting if they plan to be in melee.

Paladins don't actually get access to this fighting style. When we get to higher levels, though, you might actually be encouraged to try it nonetheless.

As we get to higher levels, this starts to compete with other features. A Ranger with Hunter's Mark will need to use their bonus action to place and then move their Hunter's Mark (or Favored Foe, though I think that is the one alternate rule from Tasha's that doesn't really live up to what it should be).

The other place this starts to break down is at level 5, when we get Extra Attack. This does allow us to make another main hand attack, but we're still only making one off-hand attack.

    Before we continue, though, here's something you might not know: You can actually make your two attacks with different weapons, one in each hand. There's nothing that prevents you from holding two heavier weapons and fighting with them (though you can't attack with two-handed weapons when you're only holding them in one hand). But you can't then make the bonus action attack.

That aside, let's look at things at level 5.

With a Fighter, the Great Weapon fighting style simply doubles its potential damage at level 5. We can assume a +4 to Strength or Dex at this point. So our great weapon guy is doing 8.333+4, all time 2. So, we get 16.667+8, giving us about 24.667 damage per round. Dual-wielding, we get (1d6+4)x3. That comes out to an average of 22.5 - a little behind.

The Ranger is probably not using a two-handed weapon (at least one that's not a ranged weapon). Their dual-wield damage is the same as the Fighter's. However, a feature like Hunter's Mark benefits greatly from getting multiple attacks. While they can't pull this off on the first turn (where they're doing a mere 4d6+8 if they hit with both attacks - which still comes out to 22) on subsequent turns if the target's still around, you would get 6d6+12, or 33 - not bad.

Our Paladin is going to fall pretty fall behind, their main hand attacks doing a total of 2d6+8 (so about 15) and then just 1d6 on the off-hand, adding 3.5 damage, for 18.5 total. Again, if they go for a two-hander and great weapon fighting, like the Fighter, they get 24.667, which is quite a bit more.

Barbarians at this level are doing 2d6+12 with the two main hand attacks, or about 19, and then 1d6+2 with the off hand, or about 5.5, giving us about 24.5. Compare that with a maul and you'll get 4d6+12, which is 26. Better, but honestly not super far ahead. However, again, like the Ranger, we need a turn to get Rage going (though unlike the Ranger, we don't have to switch the damage bonus to a new target with subsequent bonus actions).

Let's jump to tier 3, aka level 11. Our Strength/Dexterity is now up to +5, and we'll imagine we've gotten +1 weapons by now.

At this point, the Fighter has three attacks as part of the attack action. As such, the single off hand attack gets further devalued. With Great Weapon fighting and a maul, 3 attacks, +5 strength, and +1 weapons, we're looking at 6d6+18, and with the fighting style, that comes out to 25+18, or 43 damage per round. Dual-wielding, we're now at 3d6+18 for main attacks, or 28.5 for our main hand, and 1d6+6 for our off-hand, which is about 9.5, giving us 38 damage per round.

The Ranger at this point actually might benefit less from dual-wielding because there's a good chance they're using concentration for something else. Summon Fey, for instance, will out-damage Hunter's Mark (and also require no bonus action to send after other targets). If we assume they are still using Hunter's Mark, though, we basically just add two damage per attack thanks to their +5 to Dex and the +1 weapons, so we're up to 39 - still good, but other classes are catching up. By contrast, for example, Summon Fey would leave our normal attacks at just (1d6+6)x3, or 28.5, and then 2d6+6 from the fey spirit cast at 3rd level, which is on average 13 damage, giving us a total of 41.5 damage per round.

Now, here's where things get kind of interesting for the Paladin. Officially, Great Weapon Fighting only applies its bonus to the weapon damage, and not things like Divine Smite or the confusingly named Improved Divine Smite. So, our GWF Paladin is doing 2d6+1d8+6 damage with each attack, the 2d6 getting the Great Weapon Fighting bonus. This means we've got 8.333+4.5+6, or a total of 18.833 damage per hit, and thus 37.667 damage total. Now, if we dual-wield, things start to get kind of interesting. Each hit is now adding 1d8: so our two main hand attacks are 1d6+1d8+6, which comes to about 14. Two attacks means 28 damage, and then our off-hand is going to do 1d6+1d8+1, or about 9. Thus, dual-wielding we get 37, which is just barely below our two-hander style. You could make the argument that, because Paladins are always fishing or crits to use Divine Smite, having one more attack per round could make that a lot more likely (two attacks give you about 9.75% to crit, while a third will make that nearly 14%).

In fact, we can then make this a bit crazier with the Paladin if we take a look at the spell Spirit Shroud. This adds 1d8 radiant, necrotic, or cold damage to anything you hit with an attack within 10 feet of you. Again, you've got to spend a bonus action activating it, but this adds a total of 3d8 damage to your dual-wielding situation - about 13.5, versus just 9 if you're using a two-hander. So, two-hander goes to 46.667 while dual-wielding goes to 50.5. Dang.

Now, Barbarians are going to get a +3 Rage bonus now. With a Maul, we're looking at two attacks that do 2d6+5(strength)+3(rage)+1(weapon). So, each attack does about 16 damage, so our total damage is 36 - slightly behind, but not by a huge amount. Dual-wielding, though, we're now looking at two attacks that do 1d6+9, for a total of 25 damage, and then an off hand that does 1d6+1+3, or 7.5, for a total of 32.5.

Where this does get a little complicated (and beyond the math that I really want to get into) is that the Barbarian also gets Brutal Critical at these levels, which lets you add more dice when you get a critical hit. While it's not until very high levels that this winds up making a Greataxe better than a Maul or Greatsword, the odd upshot is that basically, for a Barbarian, having fewer dice per weapon is better. A At level 9, for instance, a Maul critting becomes 5d6, while a Greataxe becomes 3d12 - in other words, 17.5 versus 19.5.

While I haven't calculated it here, I believe that, by having each attack represented by a single die (plus modifiers,) dual-wielding I believe makes Brutal Critical more helpful than simply swinging a maul or greatsword.

Essentially, the key with dual-wielding as it works is that it's best for classes that have extra things that happen when they land hits. A fighter, for example, is already about making tons of attacks, so a single extra one is really not that big a deal. But for classes like the Paladin and Barbarian, who, at higher levels, can add a lot of damage to each hit, it starts to look a lot more appealing.

I would say, though, that the fighting style itself is not necessarily the be-all end-all of whether you should consider dual-wielding. The paladin doesn't have access to it, but winds up doing insane damage (admittedly with a relatively high-level spell). The fighting style is only ever going to add 5 damage per round. And if you really want it, you could take the Fighting Initiate feat to get it anyway (though paladins are going to probably want to max out strength, constitution, and charisma).

Another feat of note if you're considering this weapon load-out is, of course, Dual-Wielder. This does a few things: first, it allows you to dual-wield weapons that are not light - so you could have two longswords or warhammers. It also lets you draw them as a single item interaction... something that I think most DMs would let you do anyway. Lastly, while using those two weapons, you get +1 to AC, which is actually a pretty nice compromise to make up for not using a shield. Getting non-light weapons is still going to probably limit you to 1d8 weapons, meaning on average you're only adding about 3 damage per round (3.5 versus 4.5 average rolls). However, it also means that if your party comes across magic weapons, you'll have more options.

Broad Strokes: What We Can Imagine in 5.5/6th Edition

 They could just make it sixth edition.

Apparently some previous editions were close enough to one another that it was not impossible to convert a character from one to the other. The 2024 core rulebooks are said to be backwards-compatible with all 5th edition products, which would seem to suggest we'll be getting more of a rebalancing than a significant shift in the rules systems.

Indeed, Monsters of the Multiverse is something of a revision of Volo's Guide to Monsters and Mordenkainen's Tome of Foes. This did make significant changes to some monster stat blocks and player races, but the changes were still very much within the framework of a familiar system. With just a little explanation about how ability score increases are no longer determined by race, a time-traveler could hand that book to someone in 2014 who had just gotten the brand new 5th edition core rulebooks and they'd have no trouble running stuff with those monsters.

Now, I did buy Monsters of the Multiverse. I use a free online database tool for running my games (I'm not sure it's totally legally kosher, but it's been around long enough that I have to believe WotC would have had them shut down if it were a problem), but I still like to have the physical books (partially as a collector, partially out of fear of digital erasure, and partially out of an ethical sense that I should pay for the content I use). And so I will almost certainly get the new core rulebooks even if the changes are simple revisions, and not major redesigns.

This post is not a wishlist, but is based instead on hints that I think we've gotten from recent D&D releases.

    Backgrounds:

Backgrounds are technically one of the big decisions you make when you create a new character, but next to race and class, their impact is pretty minor. In most cases, they boil down to two skill proficiencies, some languages or tools, and a backstory writing prompt.

However, starting with Guildmaster's Guide to Ravnica, WotC started playing around with the idea of making a background a more significant choice. Granted, if you weren't a spellcaster, the "guild spells" in that were pretty irrelevant, but it did expand things a bit.

More recently, the backgrounds detailed in the Heroes of Krynn unearthed arcana go a lot farther - granting free feats at level 1. This gives that background a pretty big impact on the character's actual power and capabilities.

Backgrounds always had background features, but they very rarely actually come into play, and are more of an opportunity for RP than a significant character ability. I suspect that backgrounds might get a bit more important.

    Feats:

Feats are technically an optional rule. But I don't know of any tables where they're not allowed. I think that the initial design for 5E was to make sure that new players didn't get bogged down in the complexities that feats provide.

But I think that the 5th edition design is also one that allows players to ignore feats and still have a powerful character. My artificer, for instance, did get one feat for being a variant human, but will likely simply spend his first two ASIs maxing out his intelligence and his last three maxing his constitution (assuming that campaign ever really starts playing regularly).

WotC is clearly playing around with more complexity with feats - giving some level prerequisites and some having other feat prerequisites. Given that you're giving up ASIs to get feats, they need to be quite powerful to justify themselves... unless they change the rules and allow you to get feats and ASIs.

Both recent UAs - Heroes of Krynn and Giant Options - have had feats like these. I wonder if we're going to see them enshrined and more commonly.

    Gold:

Way back in the day, gold was XP. The gold you earned was how you determined if you leveled up. The original vision for D&D was one of mercenaries out to make money, rather than altruistically saving the world. Indeed, you can see how characters of all sorts of alignments (including evil) make a bit more sense when the it's more about some rough people trying to plunder treasure from deep dungeons.

These days, though, there's not a ton of guidance on what to do with gold after a certain threshold.

Essentially, once your Paladins, Fighters, and/or Clerics (or Armorer Artificers) have gotten their expensive plate armor, more gold is not all that useful in a mechanical sense.

Yes, the players can spend gold on stuff that doesn't increase their player power, but I think with the exception of wizards who need gold to copy spells (though the cost here scales linearly while gold acquisition as per the DMG I think is more exponential - 50 gold to copy a first level spell at level 2 is a lot more expensive than 450 gold to copy a 9th level spell at level 18) and I suppose anyone who favors spells with costly material components (also wizards, though this can include clerics, druids, and such,) in general you hit a point where your character doesn't really need more money. If I play a Soulknife Rogue, once I have Studded Leather - something I can probably get before I even get high enough level to pick a subclass - I really don't have much to spend it on.

Now, perhaps magic items are the way. Plenty of campaigns have players spend money to buy magic items, but the guidance in the rules is pretty vague on this. I actually accidentally allowed my party's fighter/paladin to buy a set of mithral plate armor for cheaper than normal plate given that the price range in Xanathar's Guide to Everything based on its rarity allowed it to go for less than 1500g.

I do understand why you might not want to make it so explicit - if you want to run a game with a relatively low number of magic items, you don't want players saying "hey, I should be able to get this for 3000 gold!"

Again, I find myself comparing this with Starfinder, where everything has a cost (in Credits rather than gold, because sci-fi) and players are expected to constantly be going to the store to upgrade their weapons and armor.

I don't know that we need a system quite so explicit in its pricing, but I think it would be cool to have more clear options for gold expenditures. Perhaps it would be good to have more details on what a party's headquarters could have in it - not just "you have a keep" but "you have a keep, and here are things you can do in that keep and spend to install there that have these explicit gameplay benefits."

    Legendary Actions versus Multiple Reactions:

If you took a look at the "Vecna the Archlich" stat block in the recent Vecna Dossier, despite being the most powerful, legendary archlich in D&D lore, Vecna does not actually have legendary actions. Instead, he gets three reactions per round (one per turn).

What I find interesting is that it's pretty difficult to gauge his actual power level because of this - normally, a lich's meat-and-potatoes legendary action is the ability to cast a cantrip, so you basically get three additional ray of frost casts per round - which amounts to a total of 12d8 damage if they all hit, which is not nothing.

Vecna pumps out a lot of damage on his turn, but the thing that makes these really nasty is that he can go a pretty long way to shutting down the party's spellcasters.

In a way, I think that extra reactions might be more powerful than legendary actions, as they're much more flexible as to the timing. And while Vecna's "legendary reactions" are both truly reactive - a counterspell and a defensive teleport - you could imagine giving other legendary monsters more straightforward attacks that they can make as reactions.

Now, is this a blanket change or just new "technology?" After all, the Monstrous Compendium Volume 1 gave us the Nightmare Beast, which has traditional legendary actions, as well as the Eldritch Lich, whose Far Realm Step is a bit more like Vecna's Fell Rebuke (though still limited to one per round). Perhaps on a case-by-case basis we'll see more traditional legendary actions or these new multi-reactions.

    Short Rest vs Long Rest:

One thing we've seen a lot of in new features is that we're getting a lot more thing recharging on long rests, rather than short rests, but with more charges.

The most straightforward example being the Dragonborn's breath weapon. In the PHB, you get this once per short rest. But in Fizban's, which gave us the revised Metallic, Chromatic, and Gem dragonborn, you now get a number of uses of your breath weapon equal to your proficiency bonus per long rest.

If you figure you get typically one short rest per day, that means that it's about even in tier 1, and then just gets better as you get to higher levels (unless you take lots of short rests).

A lot of classes are also pretty focused on short rests - Fighters, Monks, and especially Warlocks are big fans of short rests, typically regaining their resources on short rests. This allows them to be a little less conservative with their class resources if they're in a situation where the party can stop for a bit in the middle of the day.

Now, I could imagine simply doubling things like ki points or charges on action surge (or superiority dice) but making them recharge on a long rest. However, as I see it, kind of the whole thing with warlocks is the weird way their spell slots work.

Granted, when they start getting into the high-level spells, it's a bit more like other spellcasters. Indeed, you could argue that what really makes Warlocks Warlocks is their eldritch invocations - the heavy customization that they can use to make up for not having the extensive spell slots that, say, a Wizard has (Eldiritch Blast on its own is only a little better than Fire Bolt - basically just because it's force instead of fire damage - but invocations like Agonizing Blast, Repelling Blast, Lance of Lethargy, etc. make it much more powerful).

Fully getting rid of the short rest would be a pretty radical change. Even if you're not a class that gets resources back on a short rest, the ability to heal up after a tough fight or other kind of encounter that left you banged up is a pretty important tool for players, and it saves the healer(s) resources - if the Ranger can get healed up to full using hit dice, the Cleric won't need to burn a couple spell slots on cure wounds.

Still, if we got something like Healing Surges from 4th edition or some other feature that let players heal themselves up, while also giving those short rest classes more resources to work with, perhaps we'll see short rests going the way of the dodo.

    Still Two Years Out:

All of this speculation is, ultimately, a bit early. There are still several 5th edition books that are slated for release, and two years before we're going to get the new core books.

Likewise, the ideas that we're seeing WotC put out here are experiments, and depending on how they work out, they could either decide they work well and can be more prevalent in the game, or they might find that the ideas don't totally work out and either walk them back or revise them (see the way that they've adjusted how alignment on stat blocks works).

At this point we have a good sense of what's coming this year, but there's all of 2023 to see before we get to the year the new core rulebooks come out.

Vecna the Archlich

 All right, so!

Remember how, in the previous post, I made a new Lich statblock to reflect the changes to how spellcasters are being written these days? Well, WotC just released "The Vecna Dossier," which provides a stat block for Vecna prior to his betrayal by Kas (hence, this Vecna has both eyes and both hands). It's a CR 26 stat block.

The supplement is free on D&D Beyond.

Let's dive in!

First off, I think it's important to note that Vecna's Undying feature is not quite like a typical Lich's one, in that he does not require a phylactery to rejuvenate. So no, there is no way you can kill Vecna permanently. However, rather than 1d10 days, Vecna requires 1d100 years, meaning that your party can likely at least put off his vengeance long enough to die of old age (well, unless you're a long-lived race or druid).

So, from the top:

Vecna gets an AC of 18 - a nice one-point bump over the standard Lich. He also has 272 average hit points, which is just over twice as much as a standard Lich. I'd still say that 272 hit points is a bit low for a CR 26 monster, but there will be some other features that stretch that 272 out quite a bit. (Though, as always, I think they need to nerf Chill Touch).

Vecna's stats are also high - he has 22 Intelligence and 24 Wisdom. The latter is a little surprising only in how it's higher than intelligence. He also has a little more strength and a little more constitution. This is, after all, the most powerful Lich in D&D, so it makes sense his stats are a bit higher.

Vecna gets 5 legendary resistances per day, rather than the typical 3. We're going to get into Legendary status when we talk about Legendary Actions, or the lack thereof, or rather, perhaps a preview of how they're being changed.

As expected, Vecna's spellcasting trait is just one of his actions, with a fair number of solid spells at will - for example, he can cast lightning bolt all day, as well as animate dead as an action. A few spells are more limited, like dimension door, dominate monster, or invisibility.

But his main bread-and-butter multiattack is a four-part combo.

First is Flight of the Damned, which is a recharge ability, so only one in three turns. This is a 120-foot cone where he basically shoots ghosts at people. There's a DC 22 Con save (save for half) that deals 8d8 necrotic damage and frightens those who fail the save for 1 minute (they get to repeat the save at the end of their turns). There's no 24-hour immunity to this, so having a 10+ level paladin will be very helpful.

Next is Rotten Fate. This is basically a Finger of Death-like ability. One target makes a Con save (again, DC 22) and takes 8d8+60 damage on a failure, or half as much on a success. This is really the "cannon" part of the tempered-glass cannon Vecna is, as, even with successful saves, a reliable 48 damage each round.

Finally, Vecna has two Afterthought attacks, which is a magical dagger that deals only moderate damage, but the real horror of it is that the target keeps taking necrotic damage on their turns, and while they're affected, they cannot regain hit points. They need to succeed on a DC 20 Con save after they take the damage-over-time damage on their turn to end the effect.

So, the picture I think we've got here is some truly nasty damage output, though Vecna has to get into melee range to fully terrorize the party. With 272 hit points, even with an 18 AC, you wouldn't expect him to last very long.

That's where the bonus action comes in. As a bonus action, he can teleport up to 30 feet, and anyone within 15 feet of his destination takes 3d6 psychic damage. If anyone takes that damage, Vecna then regains 80 hit points.

Now, a party ready to face a CR 26 monster is not going to have much trouble doing 80 hit points a round, but that's still going to significantly slow the rate at which the party can take him down. You know, unless they use Chill Touch. (Seriously, WotC, nerf Chill Touch).

Now, we get to the Reactions. I don't know if this portends what we're going to be seeing moving forward with legendary creatures, or what. Vecna, shockingly, does not have any legendary actions. Instead, he can take 3 reactions per round, though only one per turn (which sounds very similar to legendary actions).

The reactions here are Dread Counterspell and Fell Rebuke.

Dread Counterspell is essentially a 4th level counterspell that also does 3d6 psychic damage to the person casting the countered spell. The fact that this is not, technically, a spell means that, technically, the party can't counter this counterspell, though I don't know how I'd rule that in play.

Fell Rebuke lets Vecna deal 3d6 necrotic damage to someone that hits him with an attack (melee, ranged, weapon, spell - any attack) and then, importantly, Vecna teleports 30 feet away.

We saw something like this with the Eldritch Lich, but I think this could potentially give Vecna a very powerful survival ability. If used twice in a round, you could force melee characters to use their full movement to get to him, and then only get one attack in. Potenitally, this could significantly reduce the amount of damage that melee characters can deal to him, again extending his survivability.

Still, the lack of legendary actions makes me wonder how Vecna would really do against a full party. I would definitely recommend giving him some minions - Necromancer Wizards would be on-brand. I also run a game with a large party, so this might be a lot scarier to a party of like, 4 players, than one that has 6-7 on a given night like mine.

I have a lich that my party will eventually face (though likely when they're a lot higher-level, and they're already 14). I'd been intending to use my rebuilt Lich as detailed in the previous post, but I am somewhat tempted to try this one. They will have to face the lich multiple times (his phylactery was taken to another plane - the first fight will be, unbeknownst to the party, something of an experiment to see if lichdom can allow him to circumvent the Mending and allow a non-planeswalker to travel from Ravnica to New Phyrexia.)

Rebuilding the Lich

 The Lich. It's arguably the most influential iconic monster from D&D. While people will recognize Beholders and Mind Flayers, Liches have just become fully part of the canon of fantasy tropes.

Liches are simultaneously monsters - they're rotting, undead corpses that are happy to kill you - while also being intelligent, eve brilliant. The Lich is the kind of quintessential Big Bad of a D&D campaign. And their ability to come back again and again if you kill them means that they're sort of safe for a Dungeon Master to use because the Lich is only fully dead and gone when the DM allows the party to find their phylactery and also find the proper way to destroy it.

Liches are generally portrayed as wizards, or sometimes sorcerers, who have undergone this transformation willingly in order to become harder to kill and to be able to stick around long enough to see longterm plans accomplished.

Now, because of that nature, the 5th Edition monster manual version of the lich leans heavily on spellcasting as its primary capabilities. While I encourage any DM who feels comfortable running monsters that have full player-like spellcasting capabilities, I, for one, find that style of monster a real pain to run. The newer versions of spellcasting monsters and NPCs as seen in Monsters of the Multiverse presents a model we could use going forward. Here, spellcasters are given magical abilities that take the place of most offensive spellcasting, while they retain some actual "as found in the PHB" spells to retain their utility.

One thing that these new stat blocks have done is give creatures more accurate challenge ratings.

So, my approach here will be to try to get a version of the Lich that retains its magical capabilities and thematic elements while providing a clear set of actions to live up to its challenge rating and fearsome reputation.

I'll be using the DMG's guidance on creating a monster and the stats by challenge rating.

The goal here is to make a version of the Lich that lives up to the expectations the Monster Manual sets, but is easier to run and reflects its CR accurately.

When figuring out a monster's challenge rating, we break this down into two things: Offensive Challenge Rating (OCR) and Defensive Challenge Rating (DCR) and find the average of them to get our final result.

A lich has a variable challenge rating base on lair actions, but we're going to set those aside and just assume that the same change will happen when those lair actions are back in.

Our goal is a CR of 21.

    DCR:

DCR should be easier for us to figure out, because I'm going to aim to change as little as possible.

A lich has, on average, 135 hit points. This is actually very, very low for a monster of that CR. Now, the presence of damage immunities or resistances will effectively raise this. But given that we're aiming for a CR of 21, those elements are not going to have as significant an impact as they would at, say, CR 2. Because we're at a 17+ CR, the presence of immunities (to poison and bludgeoning, piercing, and slashing damage from nonmagical attacks) only raises the effective HP of the lich to about 169.

169 is the effective HP of a CR 7 monster.

The lich also has an AC of 17. It is here that I will note that the monster statistics by challenge rating table for some reason does not show any ACs over 19 - it has everything from CR 17 to CR 30 listed as having an AC of 19 - but because we're below that oddity, we can now place AC 17 as somewhere in the CR 10-12 range. 169 is near the middle of the CR 7 range, so we'll pick CR 11 as the one we're getting from AC.

Thus, we find that the DCR for the lich is about 9.

So, what does that imply for the OCR we're going to need? Well, technically, it means we cannot actually reach our intended CR because to get a total CR of 21, we'd need to have an OCR of 33 - which goes off the chart.

Even if we want our Lich to be something of a glass cannon, we need to make it a bit beefier to live in that CR 21 range.

How far we go is a judgment call. I do think our lich should be more effective at offense than defense - they are a wizard, after all - but they're also a big bad that should be able to stay on the battlefield long enough to unleash some pain. So, let's instead shoot for a DCR of 16. This way, we can get an OCR of 26 and still hit that average of CR 21.

And I think the way I want to do this is just boosting the lich's HP. We'll leave the AC the same, reflecting that they're not heavily armored.

So, if our AC is giving us 10-12 DCR, then we'll want to hit an HP DCR of 20-22. Let's just stick to the middle on both. So, if we want the HP of a CR 21 creature (which, hey, this actually is) we need its effective HP (EHP, if you don't mind more abbreviations) to be somewhere in the 401-445 range. Again, let's shoot for the middle. We'll go for an EHP of around 420. We can now divide by 1.25 because of its immunities, giving us an actual HP of 336. Now that's something that could survive a round or two of combat!

Ok, we can then reverse-engineer the lich's hit dice. A lich has a +3 to constitution and a d8 hit die (as it's a medium creature) so we divide 336 by 7.5 (4.5 being the average roll of a d8 and then +3) and we get 44.8. So we'll bump it up to 45 and say that the lich's health is actually 337 (45d8 + 135).

And now we have a DCR of 16.

    OCR:

The OCR goal we have, now that we have a DCR of 16, is 26.

With the OCR, things are going to have to get a little creative. A lich shouldn't just be tossing out spell attacks that do necrotic damage - even if those will hit very hard.

Still, we should get a baseline of how much damage the lich should be doing per round.

And in this case, I'm going to fully toss out their spell list - only bringing things back when we get to utility and perhaps the odd AoE (though I want to have a built-in proprietary AoE ability as well).

With an intelligence modifier of +5 and a proficiency bonus of +7, the Lich's spell attack modifier is +12 and their spell save DC is 20.

The table in the DMG suggests that an attack bonus of +12 puts you in the 24-26 range of CRs. A DC of 20 is listed as 21-23. My general thought is that a lich will probably be more devastating with abilities that have a save DC than with their attacks, so we're going to weigh things a bit more toward the latter (I will note that with DCs that hit or exceed 20, you start to have some effects that players might not be able to succeed on even with a natural 20, so this does feel like a bit more significant of a threshold. Tip your Paladin and their aura of protection, guys).

Ok, so, if we take the middle of that DC 20 range, we're at an OCR of 22. To push that, then, to an OCR of 26, we need to hit CR 30 in terms of damage output per round (I should note that this "output per round" assumes full damage potential if everything hits and all saving throws are failed).

To hit CR 30 on damage output, we want to be putting out 303-320 damage per round.

Which is, you know, a lot.

In fact, if we maybe take a step back and think instead to base the Lich's OCR on their attack bonus, we could actually look instead at the damage output listed at CR 26 - maybe aim for the top of it to allow for the top CR that a +12 to hit allows. This brings the damage output we need down to around 248.

Which is still, you know, a lot. But hey, this is a lich we're talking about!

Ok, so first, we should look at single-target, which is the simplest way to calculate this.

Most casters in Monsters of the Multiverse (especially all the wizard stat blocks) have some kind of "Arcane Burst" attack, and typically make three with a multiattack.

Three such attacks would require each to do about 83 damage. But if we, instead, have the Lich make five attacks (which feels like the kind of epic terror such a legendary creature should be able to perform) we can have each do about 50 damage.

Another possibility is to have fewer single-target attacks and then some AoE ability.

This is going to complicate things, but I think we can manage it, and I think it'll make for something particularly scary.

So, AoE abilities are tricky - obviously they're a lot more effective if you hit more targets. We're going to assume that the lich can hit two targets consistently with an AoE ability.

Ok, so now let's assume that the Lich has three Arcane Burst-like attacks that each hit for 50 damage. We'll call it Necrotic Burst: +12 to hit, one target, deals 9d10 necrotic damage on a hit. That gives us 150 damage each round. But then, as part of the same Multiattack, they use something that's really devastating to the group.

I'm really tempted to make this a sort of "force lightning" ability similar to the Emperor in Return of the Jedi. It's a 60-foot cone (same size as Cone of Cold, which is enormous) and requires creatures within to make a DC 20 Dexterity saving throw. On a failure, they take 15d12 (which is an average of around 98) lightning damage. And then, they can save for half.

Ah, but that's actually overtuned - we need to lower the damage to account for the ability to hit multiple targets. So, instead, let's make it about half as much. 14d6 gives us an average of 49 damage.

Now, this is a decent start. We have a monster that is just pouring out a ton of damage.

But we might want to instead add some effects to these default abilities. The current Monster Manual lich has Paralyzing Touch as a melee spell attack. This only does 10 cold damage, but requires a DC 18 Con save or the target gets paralyzed for a minute (interesting that it's not the same DC as the spells - like it's charisma based or something). While the damage of this ability is nearly negligible, paralyzation is one of the nastiest conditions in the game.

Here's where the guidance in the DMG is a little less precise. For one thing, paralyzation is terrible regardless of the encounter, but it's especially bad if you have some hard-hitting minion. If our lich has a death knight minion, the auto-crits from being paralyzed are going to be a whole lot worse than if the lich is on its own (while the general advice for liches is to always give them lots of minions, I want a version that can be a threat on its own as well).

Now, any attack that hits a paralyzed target from within 5 feet is a crit - not just weapon attacks. Thus, if our lich uses an Arcane Burst-like attack (which can be a ranged or melee spell attack, so no disadvantage) as their bread and butter on a paralyzed foe, they can still be really devastating.

So, then, let's say we work in that paralyzing touch attack from the original stat block as well.

This seems like an ability that should only come in once per round - indeed, in the original stat block, it takes the Lich's full action, though they can also use it with two legendary actions. We are, though, buffing their damage output. So, I want this to be part of the multiattack.

Because our Necrotic Burst and Crackling Cone abilities as currently balanced fulfill the damage we needed to hit the lich's OCR, we're going to need to reduce either the damage they deal or the number of attacks, or both.

I'll say that because a paralyzed target might take about twice their normal damage, we should count this attack as doubling the other attacks (though not the saving throw-based crackling cone).

So, first off, let's lower the number of Necrotic Bursts they make to two - this will make the Multiattack do two Necrotic Bursts, one Crackling Cone, and one Paralyzing Touch.

Crackling Cone, which I'm leaving unchanged, takes up 98 damage of our 248 damage "budget," leaving us with 150.

Paralyzing touch deals 10 damage (3d6,) on its own, so we can lower that remaining budget to 140.

But, we're also going to count the paralyzation effect as, essentially, doubling the remaining attacks. This obviously won't play out every time in combat, but you could imagine a round where the lich paralyzes the unlucky fighter and then bursts them twice and hits them with a cone of lightning. So, we thus divide the 140 damage left to us by four, giving us 35 damage per attack (on the logic that this will frequently be doubled to 75 damage per attack).

35, conveniently, can be achieved with a roll of 10d6. That is, however, a lot of dice to roll, admittedly only twice per round, but given that we're expecting it to crit often, which would require 20d6, let's try bigger dice. 6d12 gives us an average of 39, and given that sometimes this will be at range or otherwise not able to take advantage of the paralyze effect, we'll skew up slightly.

The ability to paralyze a target (potentially for multiple rounds) each turn is pretty scary. We're also going to allow for the Necrotic Burst to be a legendary action.

In terms of spells, we want to keep most of their utility stuff, and perhaps keep one or two scary damage spells in case the DM wants to switch things up.

Liches can, of course, be friendly (even if evil) NPCs, so we'll hold on to stuff they can use to help the party.

So, let's get a mockup of our updated Lich statblock!

DAN'S UPDATED LICH

Medium undead, Any Evil Alignment

Armor Class 17 (natural armor)

Hit Points 337 (45d8+135)

Speed 30 ft.

STR 11 (+0) DEX 16 (+3) CON 16 (+3) INT 20 (+5) WIS 14 (+2) CHA 16 (+3)

Saving Throws Con +10, Int +12, Wis +9

Skills: Arcana +19, History +12, Insight +9, Perception +9

Damage Resistances: cold, lightning, necrotic

Damage Immunities: poison; bludgeoning, piercing, and slashing from nonmagical attacks.

Condition Immunities: charmed, exhaustion, frightened, paralyzed, poisoned

Senses: truesight 120 ft., passive Perception 19

Languages Common plus up to five other languages

Challenge 21 (33,000 xp) or 22 (41,000 xp) when encounter in lair.

Proficiency Bonus +7

Legendary Resistance (3/day). If the lich fails a saving throw, it can choose to succeed instead.

Rejuvenation. If it has a phylactery, a destroyed lich gains a new body in 1d10 days, regaining all its hit points and becoming active gain. The new body appears within 5 feet of the phylactery.

Turn Resistance. The lich has advantage on saving throws against any effect that turns undead.

Actions:

Multiattack. The lich makes two necrotic burst attacks, then uses crackling cone and can use paralyzing touch.

Necrotic Burst. Melee or Ranged Spell Attack. +12 to hit, reach 5 ft. or range 120 ft., one creature. Hit: 39 (6d12) necrotic damage.

Crackling Cone. The lich sends out a crackling burst of shadowy lightning in a 60-foot cone. Each creature within the cone must make a DC 20 Dexterity saving throw. On a failure, the creature takes 49 (14d6) lightning damage, or half as much on a success.

Paralyzing Touch. Melee Spell Attack: +12 to hit, reach 5 ft., one creature. Hit: 10 (3d6) cold damage. The target must succeed on a DC 18 Constitution saving throw or be paralyzed for 1 minute. The target can repeat the saving throw at the end of each of its turns, ending the effect on itself on a success.

Spellcasting. The lich casts one of the following spells, using Intelligence as its spellcasting ability (spell save DC 20, +12 to hit with spells).

At will: animate dead, detect thoughts, detect magic, mage hand, magic missile

3/day: fireball, dimension door, globe of invulnerability, mirror image, scrying

1/day: dominate monster, plane shift, power word kill, power word stun

Obviously, the spells might require some tweaking - I like giving them at-will Animate Dead, though I advise any DMs to let liches have any number of undead minion without needing to cast some spell to summon them.

The legendary actions are the same except that they get Necrotic Burst instead of a cantrip. And the lair actions are the same except the one where they regain a spell slot - we'll need to come up with something else for that. Perhaps instead they get advantage on an attack? Not sure.

Anyway, my hope is that this revised lich still feels like it would be the kind of diabolical and versatile threat that it should be, but be a lot easier to run in combat.

It's still two years until we get the 50th anniversary core rulebooks, and I'm sure we're going to see some changes to how the lich is built. This is basically my approximation of what we can expect.

The (New) Earth Genasi and Blade Ward

 Ever since I think even before Disney's Aladdin (though definitely a lot more since then) I've always loved genies as a mythological creature. In fact, the original myths about them are arguably one of the first instances of a "fantasy race." In some Islamic traditions, the djinn (singular is djinni - don't get it confused with Latin linguistic patterns) were created like humanity by God, but while we were made of earth, they were made of fire. Like humans, djinn have free will and can be good or evil.

D&D makes genies into, instead, a somewhat humanoid-like type of elemental with great magical power. Genasi, most traditionally, are one of the several half-races - I believe that the official story for a genasi is that they have one genie parent and one humanoid (typically human,) though there are also settings where genasi are simply people who are touched by elemental energies (this being the case in Exandria, for instance).

Genasi were introduced to 5th Edition in the Elemental Evil Player's Companion and were published in the Princes of the Apocalypse adventure book - one subrace for each of the four elements (and thus, presumably, having a parent or ancestor of each of the four kinds of elemental genies). Mechanically, they were... underwhelming.

Actually, honestly, I think they were given a bad wrap, but there is a perception in D&D that any race that doesn't have darkvision kind of needs something cool to justify itself. Of the four, only Fire Genasi had darkvision. Their racial ability score bonuses also weighted Constitution heavily, with a +2 for that and +1 in a different one based on the subrace. And again, I actually think that's not bad - indeed, every class likes to have high constitution, so in a lot of ways they're more flexible than, say, a Tiefling's default +2 to Charisma and +1 to Intelligence - a combination that no class can take full advantage of.

Still, it's hard to argue that the Monsters of the Multiverse update wasn't a huge buff to the race as a whole.

In a lot of ways, the races were balanced a little better. Obviously, ability score bonuses aren't based on your race anymore, so you can now easily play an Air Genasi Wizard or Fire Genasi Fighter without "wasting" your ability score bonuses.

But one thing we saw was a sort of refinement of the various features - a big one being the spellcasting granted to genasi. Like a lot of playable races, racial spellcasting has been changed to A: let you use Intelligence, Wisdom, or Charisma as your spellcasting ability and B: letting you cast those spells multiple times if you have spell slots to spend on them. This has made them a lot more appealing to spellcasting classes, who can simply work the racial spells into their overall spellcasting capabilities (my Triton, for instance, can now simply think of Fog Cloud and Gust of Wind as spells he always has prepared, rather than odd one-off uses that have a lower save DC).

So, now Fire Genasi have Produce Flame, Air Genasi have Shocking Grasp, and Water Genasi have Acid Splash. Also, fire genasi have resistance to fire damage, air genasi to lightning damage, and water genasi to acid damage.

And then there's Earth Genasi.

These are sort of the odd ducks. Rather than a damage cantrip and a damage resistance, Earth Genasi learn Blade Ward - one of those cantrips that usually seems like a trap for new players, but is basically only ever useful for a Lich casting it as a legendary action or perhaps an Eldritch Knight using it and then making their War Magic bonus action attack if they really need to reduce incoming damage.

But, Earth Genasi have a special way to use it - they can cast Blade Ward as a bonus action a number of times equal to their proficiency bonus per long rest.

And Blade Ward as a bonus action is significantly better than Blade Ward as an action.

To be clear, Blade Ward is a cantrip that gives you resistance to bludgeoning, piercing, and slashing damage from weapon attacks (including magical weapons) for one round. Normally, it's pretty worthless as you just wind up doing nothing and taking less damage for a round, when you could have, you know, attacked or done something to bring the fight to an end (the surest way to avoid damage is to have all the bad guys dead).

But, if you're able to do this and then also your action, this can potentially be pretty strong.

It's really, I think, a question of how valuable those limited bonus action uses of it are (you can cast it as much as you like as an action).

First off, a bonus action isn't the same as no action. Some classes really need to use their bonus actions every round, like an Artillerist or Battle Smith artificer, Beast Master or Drakewarden Ranger, pretty much all Rogues, etc. That said, if you play a class that usually has a free bonus action - say, a Fighter who doesn't dual-wield - you can weave this in pretty easily.

Also, while I think the look and feel of an Earth Genasi lends itself well to the hulking Barbarian, this feature is not only redundant with Rage, but also impossible to use (you can't cast spells, even racial ones, while raging). That said, if you're worried about running out of Rages in a long dungeon crawl, this could be a sort of back-up to get you through fights you expect to only last a round or two while you save Rage for the big ones.

Indeed, even if Blade Ward is a profoundly situational cantrip in most scenarios, there's a pretty decent chance you aren't going to be using those damaging cantrips too often with the other genasi. For example, I've always wanted to play an Air Genasi monk (I played a wood elf version of that character because Adventurer's League still had its PHB+1 rule,) and with his powerful unarmed strikes, he's probably not going to waste his action on Shocking Grasp (at his level, 3d8, which comes to about 13.5 damage, is not going to match two attacks for 1d8+5, which is about 9.5 each, and then allows for another attack or even two with a ki point).

So, I think there's a bit of a knee-jerk reaction when seeing Blade Ward, one of the most infamous "trap" cantrips (True Strike being arguably the worst of them,) but even if it's pretty limited (especially at lower levels,) this actually might be quite good.