DMG 2024 First Impressions, and What I'm Sad to See Missing, and Getting into the Weeds on Encounter Building Math

 The Dungeon Master's Guide is now available on D&D Beyond at least for Master Tier subscribers (I upgraded to share the new PHB with my Ravnica campaign players).

The DMG was an important resource in 2014, but always felt more like a reference book than something that you'd really need to bring with you to your sessions. Does the 2024 version change this?

Short answer: No. But that's not a bad thing.

As many have already said, the new DMG is structured far better than the 2014 one.

The 2014 DMG begins with how to build a campaign setting. As someone who loves creating fictional worlds, and for whom that is honestly a big fraction of my desire to DM, this felt tailored especially to me.

But the crazy thing about that book was that it didn't really, you know, teach you how to DM a game of D&D. That's not really fair, but it didn't start by sitting you down and explaining how your role would work and what kind of effort you would want to put in.

2024 fixes that. It starts off, right off the bat, walking you through, step-by-step, what you'll need to do as a DM. It even addresses some of the above-table social issues you might encounter, including - blessedly - an explicit rejection of the tired justification players have for toxic behavior: "it's what my character would do."

Now, am I going to be returning to this book over and over as I play?

As I see it, the core things a DM needs the DMG for is encounter-building guidance, treasure/magic items lists, and homebrew guidance.

Here is the thing I am sad to report: I've been waiting nine years for a new "quick monster stats" table that allows monsters to have an AC of more than 19. It's insane to me that they allow this to continue all the way up to CR 30 in the 2014 DMG. So, one of the first things I looked for was an updated table.

There is none. Not even just the old table.

Instead, there is guidance on how to alter existing stat blocks, but nothing (unless I somehow overlooked it) about building your own monsters from scratch, which, frankly, is one of my favorite things to do as a DM.

Indeed, much of the content of the DMG is pretty much the same. A handful of brand-new magic items were added (the special items used by the characters from the '80s cartoon show) and a few items from Xanathar's and Tasha's were also inducted into the DMG, including a lot of common magic items. Also, Monks rejoice once again - the Wraps of Unarmed Mastery are fully in the core rulebooks now, so you will be able to keep up in gear-progression with your fellow martials.

The encounter-building system is far less overcautious than it was in 2014. My very first encounter I ever ran was just two kobolds and a non-hostile octopus, and my three-player party killed both kobolds before they could act - because the math in the DMG said that I couldn't do anymore. In this one, a moderate encounter for three level 1 players would have enough XP for 9 kobolds (or a thug and five kobolds, which is probably the array I'd use if I were doing that campaign now).

To compare, and to check my math from nine years ago, the 2014 guide gave a x1.5 multiplier to the XP each monster counted for with only two monsters in the encounter, and a x2 multiplier for 3-6 monsters. Which is freaking insane. Thus, at two kobolds, we're talking 50 xp a piece. In the 2014 guide, for a moderate encounter, each player brings 50 xp to the budget, so for our three, our budget is only 150. Then, because we have two kobolds, we are already at that budget with just the two of them.

So, to recap: first off, the XP budget for each party member is just plain higher than it was. But also, by removing the "Encounter Multipliers" part of the system, we're no longer pushed for individual big, high-CR monsters (which, in my experience, almost never make for a satisfying encounter) and can instead spread the fight out amongst a larger group of weaker monsters (which, especially at lower levels, makes for much more interesting fights).

Now:

How does this compare with other encounter-building systems? Xanathar's Guide to Everything and MCDM's Flee, Mortals! both have systems that I've used for my encounters.

Let's see how each of them would approach a planned encounter I have for probably the next session of my current campaign (depending on how much roleplay goes down).

I usually have six players active, and tend to adjust encounters if players can't make it or if some of our other players find they can play. They're all level 17 (they also are utterly decked in powerful magic items, but I tend to just let them be powerful and don't account for those in most cases - they've earned it).

Let's skip the 2014 system because it's kind of crap.

I used Flee, Mortals! to build the encounter as I have it now, which uses three Athar Nulls (CR 5) and 9 Transcendent Order Instincts (CR 3).

Flee Mortals gives us a CR budget per party member based on level and difficulty. This is meant to be an easy encounter (in fact, the people are actually innocent civilians being puppetted remotely by an Ilithid hivemind, so part of the challenge, potentially, is recognizing they're not actually enemies). So, from FM!, we get a CR budget of 7 per player. 7x6 is 42, meaning if we put three Nulls in there (so we're at 15) we have 27 "CR" left, which we can use to "buy" 9 Instincts.

The Xanathar's system is essentially a series of ratios of how many of a certain CR creature is appropriate for a character of each level. This worked far better than the 2014 DMG version, but I do think it could get you to make encounters with far more low-CR monsters than you potentially should be using. By this system, the ratio of 17th-level character to CR 3 creature is 1:4, meaning we can have 4 Instincts for every player in the party. The ratio for CR 5 is 1:2.

Thus, by this system, if we want to preserve the rough ratio of creatures, we're likely talking 4 Nulls and 16 Instincts - clearly a much tougher fight than the FM version (notably, Xanathar's didn't have any "difficulty sliders." But FM only adds 1/2 a CR to the "Standard" CR budget-per-player, meaning we'd only be adding 3 to our CR budget, so just a single extra Instinct to change it from an Easy to Standard encounter - arguably, this shows a flaw in FM's system, where the distinction between difficulties isn't as wide as it maybe should be).

So, let's try the new system:

In the 2024 DMG, we're back to using XP budgets rather than CR budgets, but the amounts have increased. For a "low" difficulty encounter, each 17th level character should be adding 4500 xp to our pool. So, our total budget for the encounter is 27,000.

Nulls (and all CR 5 creatures) are worth 1,800 xp. Instincts (and all CR 3 creatures) are worth 700. So, our FM-derived group has a total XP of 11700. Significantly less than what the new DMG calls for. For our Xanathar's-derived group, we're talking 18400 - still less than what this calls for. Holy crap.

At this point, because these CR 3 Instincts don't feel like they'll be all that effective against my superheroic-powered characters, I'm curious to see what it would look like if we upgraded them from Instincts to Transcendent Order Conduits, which are CR 8 (3,900 XP). We might flip the ratio as well, given that the Conduits are tougher than the Nulls. So, we bump the Nulls up to, say, 5 on the board. That's 9000xp, leaving us 18,000 left. We could then have 4 Conduits (15,600,) which leaves us 2,400 xp in our budget. I'd be willing to tip this a little beyond a low-difficulty fight by adding two Nulls to the mix, which means adding 3,600 xp to this, for a total encounter of 7 Nulls and 4 Condutis (so 11 adversaries, which feels reasonable for a 6-player party) and going slightly over budget at 28200 xp.

So, this is interesting: at least in this case, the new DMG seems to have the meanest encounter-building math I've seen in 5E. Player characters are for sure becoming more powerful with the new PHB, but I'm also curious to see if the monsters are also becoming significantly more powerful, and whether this will all make the game a lot more deadly.

In terms of ease of use, CR-based systems are certainly easier. But because CR and XP don't scale directly with one another, it'll always be an interesting question as to which is a better reflection of actual difficulty. The Xanathar's system was skewed because simply going for a monster that was one CR lower (meaning likely just slightly lower hit chance, if even any difference, and barely any difference in damage done) would suddenly allow you to bring, say, two of them instead of one.

So, honestly, XP-based encounter building is probably better - it will just mean math with bigger numbers.

I'm eager to test this out - I don't want to utterly bludgeon the party (and I might make some adjustments to the homebrewed boss monster at the end of that day of adventuring to make it not quite as brutally mean, in case the party is seriously drained by the time they can fight it) but I do want to make them fear me... er, I mean, the monsters within the story.

Control 2's Symbol: An Airlock?

 I had a dog named Becky when I was nine years old. Barely a year after we got her, she ran out of the house and into the street and was hit by a car. She got out through the basement door, which my dad had left open because he was doing some work down there. He hadn't expected her to be able to get into the basement, because the interior door to the stairs down there, in the kitchen, was typically closed. It was no one's fault.

Looking back, I wish we had done a better job disciplining her. She was still pretty young, not yet two years old. Losing her, especially given that I'd lost my first cat Choco, also to a car, when I was three, actually left us too traumatized to get any other pets when I was growing up. Only after I moved in with my current roommates did I live with another pet, a cat, and since then we adopted two stray kittens who were born outside of our building (both of whom are quite big adults now).

Anyway, when we had Becky, we were usually very careful with her and had a system to prevent exactly the sort of thing that ultimately happened to her. In my childhood home, where my Dad still lives after my Mom died, both the front and back doors have what we call "mud rooms," with an inner door leading into the house and and outer door that goes outside. If we weren't taking Becky with us (such as when my sister and I were going off to school) we'd make sure that we sealed the "airlock" by getting into the mud room and closing the inner door, ensuring that Becky was still inside, before we'd open the outer door.

But this is about Control 2.

Spoilers for Control, as well as Alan Wake II (mostly the Lake House expansion)

The Lake House's Implications for Control 2

 I just beat the second and final DLC for Alan Wake II (sadly I found I needed to downgrade to the lowest difficulty on the final boss - I don't mind scrounging for resources between fights, but I'm terrible at doing it during a fight). The Lake House takes place within the eponymous FBC facility that was built to monitor Cauldron Lake after the 2010 AWE in Bright Falls (aka the events of the first Alan Wake game).

Naturally, given the presence of the FBC, there are some big ties into Control, and some things that portend what we might be dealing with in the next Control game (not counting FBC Firebreak).

Let's talk about all of that past the spoiler cut:

Stepping into the Lake House

 I'm deliberately pacing myself because I don't know when I'll next be able to experience a new bit of Remedy atmosphere. 

Spoilers for The Lake House, and I guess Alan Wake 1, II, and Control while we're at it.

What Firebreak Might Mean for Control 2

 Today, Remedy hit us with not only a second trailer for The Lake House DLC for Alan Wake II (a "launch trailer" despite the fact that it comes out on Tuesday) as well as the trailer for their squad-based cooperative first-person shooter, FBC Firebreak.

I... I don't know if I'll actually be playing it, because I don't have a ton of patience for multiplayer games (yes, I realize this blog started off as a World of Warcraft-exclusive one, but that's kind of the exception that proves the rule).

However, what we have gathered from the trailer has some interesting implications.

The game seems to put you in the shoes of a new FBC unit called Firebreak, which appears to be tasked with clearing out the Hiss from the Oldest House.

Control, notably, doesn't end with the Hiss fully stamped out. While the original source of the crisis is cut off now that the Slide Projector has been turned off, the Hiss is insidious and infectious - all the passive Hiss agents floating above most areas in the game are still amplifying the signal, potentially infecting anyone not wearing an HRA, or who aren't Jesse.

This, of course, allows the game to live on past all the actual missions to let you max out your skills and tie up any side quests. It's how I was able to continually just wander around looking for Hiss to fight and experience the supremely satisfying action the game has (though I'd have preferred a NG+, or even just a second save file so I could play the thing from the start again without losing my existing file. Seriously, this is 2024 and consoles have big hard drives. We shouldn't have to worry about limited save files in this day and age).

However, the very premise of Firebreak, I think, tells us something pretty concrete about Control 2: We're going to get out of the Oldest House and we're going to be fighting something other than the Hiss.

Jesse is a superhero at this point, but given the Hiss capacity to infect new hosts (and possibly even resurrect itself) it's clear that she just can't be in enough places at once to actually sterilize the Oldest House on her own.

But, if we're getting a whole game dedicated to that task, I think that leaves Control 2 in a position to move past it.

And I think that's really fitting: Alan Wake's two games are both primarily focused on taking down the Taken, because they're both dealing with the insidious Dark Presence. Indeed, half of Alan Wake II has us facing the Fadeouts/Shadows, which are related but separate.

But the whole idea of Control is that the Hiss might be one of the most dangerous phenomena the FBC has had to deal with, but it's far from the only one. Even in the original game, we get The Mold - a fully separate infection bleeding into the Oldest House through a different Threshold.

The sites we see in the Firebreak trailer are familiar - the region in Executive where the Post-It Note altered item seems to have started actually killing people, or the Black Rock Quarry. Certainly, this saves Remedy some time and effort on conceptualizing parts of the Oldest House, but I wonder if this is also a way for us to get one last good luck at the setting before Jesse goes elsewhere to investigate what is happening beyond.

Sure, the concept art we've seen appears to be just outside of the Oldest House, but honestly, I'd be pretty happy simply for the opportunity to step outdoors (though I'd love to go to Ordinary).

The Hiss worked very well as the primary antagonists for the first game, but I think Control promises way more, and I hope Firebreak gives us the chance to move past them.

Slaying a God and The Future of Elden Ring

 I finally sat down to defeat Promised Consort Radahn, after the boss was nerfed in a patch I think a few weeks ago. I hadn't played any Elden Ring since returning from my month of helping take care of my newborn nephew, and so there was something a little strange about coming back in and finally taking down this final final boss of Elden Ring.

Elden Ring is currently, and I suspect will continue to be, among my favorite video games ever made. It feels like a kind of apotheosis of the formula FromSoft has been working on since Demon's Souls back in 2009. The lore feels open-ended in a way that Dark Souls never did to me, and the gameplay feels like the perfect blend of punishing and challenging Soulsborne combat and the lifeline of always having some other place to go if you're hitting a wall.

Shadow of the Erdtree is the most enormous DLC I've ever seen, unless you count something like a World of Warcraft expansion. I'm pretty sure that The Land of Shadows dwarfs all previous Soulsborne games in terms of the size of its map and I think the number of bosses you can fight.

My experience on my first playthrough of the DLC was surprise at the seeming ease - my Strength/Faith dual-wielding greatsword build managed to one-shot most of its bosses, and other than Messmer and Radahn, I think no other boss took more than two attempts.

Taking characters with other builds in, on the other hand, I've found that I must have either had some beginner's luck, or that build was just super-powerful (it's also the one that I beat Radahn with today, after having tried to switch over to the Euporia - I imagine that with Miquella riding his back he's probably highly resistant to Holy damage, so the fire from Blasphemous Blade might have been more effective).

Despite being so impressed during my first playthrough of the DLC (though I'm sore at the fact that I accidentally killed one of the Forager Brood and thus screwed up a minor quest line) I don't know that I've felt the same immediate urge to run through the whole thing on other characters. I did take a number of them in and have gotten a few bosses into the DLC (indeed, my original Intelligence character at this stage I think has already taken down Metyr).

But I guess there's something also a little sad about getting to the end of it all.

I don't know if From intends to ever make a sequel to Elden Ring. The world has such enormous potential, sure, but I also got the impression from Dark Souls III that they might kind of dislike the very notion of sequels - they can, and I expect will, continue to make games of this general structure. But I also think they might prefer creating worlds with totally new history and characters.

Would an Elden Ring sequel take the Dark Souls route and place us in some far-flung future of the Lands Between that has cycled through a number of other gods? Even within this first game, there's a sense of an enormous amount of history (Tarnished Archaeologist, one of several YouTube channels focused on From games that I watch, identifies the various historical "strata" of its world, which is fascinating if you can handle the dry, academic tone it takes - which, as the son of a college professor, and who grew up watching a bunch of PBS documentaries, I'm fine with).

As with any of these games, we're left with some ambiguity: we get the "God Slain" post-boss toast, which we get after defeating the Elden Beast (not, I think, after defeating Malenia, despite her having theoretically achieved apotheosis in the middle of our fight). So, is Miquella actually fully gone?

He's a fascinating character - it seems that before he "divested himself" of everything that he carried with him, he might have genuinely been a good person. But I think the real damning act was shedding his St. Trina persona... or body co-habitant (man do I go back and forth on whether Marika and Radagon were originally separate people. Miquella and Trina certainly are by the time we get to the Land of Shadow, but did Trina "bud" off of him, or was she a lover grafted onto him that he later cut out?) Regardless, when you're a god of kindness and compassion, maybe removing your own love - whether that be in the sense of "the object of my love" or, as I take it, "my capacity for love" is... you know, not a great call?

And yet, perhaps there's some inevitability to all of this. Maybe this was, in fact, necessary for him to achieve godhood. And maybe apotheosis was the ultimate solution he felt he had no other choice but to pursue.

I'm reminded of Dune, in which, as we follow the story of Paul Atreides, reluctantly but still following through on becoming a messianic religious figure while he conquers the known universe, every step along the way, he seems convinced that it's the only possible path for him to take that doesn't lead to the extinction of the human race. But is it? Or is that the opinion of a megalomaniac that lusts for power.

Certainly in this day and age, we're living in an era in which giant egos wield immense power. And especially people who see themselves as iconoclasts and rebels despite the fact that they're among the richest, most powerful people in the world already, undertake grand projects to remake the world, claiming that they are shaking the foundations of society in order to save it.

Was Miquella ever really a good guy? Or was his "kindness" always just a strategy to achieve power?

Considering the state of Ephael, and the state of Castle Sol, does he just abandon the plans that don't work out? Does Kind Miquella still actually give a shit about bringing Godwyn back from his state of soulless undeath? Does he still give a shit about curing Malenia's Scarlet Rot? Maybe he thinks that once he is a god he will be able to fix all these problems that frustrated him as an Empyrean.

I guess we'll never know, though. He tells us, as a "would-be lord of a bygone age" (not sure if that's the exact quote, but it's the gist) to stand aside for his glorious future.

But I'm ushering in the Age of Stars, baby. Ranni and I are actually bringing about real change. A thousand-year voyage into fear, doubt, and loneliness. It ain't going to be easy, but it's going to be real.

The Arathi and the Legacy of Lothar

 For nearly twenty years of World of Warcraft, the lands of humanity within its setting have seemed fairly defined.

As we learned in Wrath of the Lich King, humans, in a process similar to Dwarves and Gnomes, began as Titanforged constructs, created (probably) by the Titans upon their arrival at Azeroth as part of the vast army of beings meant to defeat and contain the Old Gods and bring down the Black Empire. According to Chronicle, elaborating on an idea introduced in Wrath, the Curse of Flesh was essentially introduced to the creation forges in Ulduar that led to these constructs gradually mutating into fleshy beings - Earthen became Dwarves, Mechagnomes became Gnomes, and the Vrykul turned into... non-metallic Vrykul.

Weirdly, the process for humans in particular seemed to be a two-step one, as not only were there flesh-cursed Vrykul, but at some point later on, the Vrykul started having stunted, small children. King Ymiron, who ruled over the Vrykul of Northrend, wished to have these children culled, but there was an exodus of Vrykul following Keeper Tyr, fleeing the madness and corruption of Keeper Loken, and this was an opportunity for those with human children to save their offspring, ultimately settling in what would come to be called Tirisfal Glades - named as such because it was where Tyr fell to a C'thraxxi monster of the Black Empire.

The human tribes there eventually unified in order to survive against the aggressions of the Amani Trolls to the north, ultimately forming the Arathi Empire, centered in the Arathi Highlands, and spreading across much of the Lordaeron subcontinent. Eventually, that Empire would fall, with seven human kingdoms splitting form one another - Lordaeron, Gilneas, Alterac, Dalaran, Kul Tiras, Stromgarde (this one being the remaining vestige in the Empire's old heartlands) and Stormwind, far to the south.

This leaves us with an interesting question:

What the absolute hell is this Arathi Empire that has sent its expedition to Hallowfall?

It's not that humans have never been seen elsewhere - the Wastewander Bandits in Tanaris and Uldum seem to have been established in Kalimdor possibly before the Third War.

But there's very little indication of where the "Arathi" we encounter in Khaz Algar are actually from.

What there is an implication of, though, is that they might be bad news.

While the Arathi that we encounter in Hallowfall are generally friendly, there are a few little red flags that pop up here and there.

I'll admit, as someone who is very skeptical of organized religion (I have no problem with people having religious beliefs, mind you, but the institutions of religion are prone to corruption and can have a coercive influence on their societies) the zeal of the Arathi makes me a little nervous.

But while I get the impression that anyone in the Empire is expected to be a devout worshipper of the Light, I actually think that there might be more of a racial angle here (not to say that religious zealotry and racism never go hand-in-hand). In the level-cap optional sidequests in Hallowfall, where Faerin Lothar teaches you and Anduin an Arathi board game, she expresses surprise that Anduin is friends with a dragon. Anduin says he'd like to come visit her empire some day, and she says that she's not sure that all the diverse races of the Alliance (and I guess Horde) would be welcome there.

To be sure, the Arathi appear to have a lot of half-elves among them, and many, including Faerin, have signs of some elvish ancestry. But this might be the exception that proves the rule - high elves were considered an acceptable part of the largely human society, to the exclusion of all else, which, honestly, kind of describes the era of the original Arathi Empire, when the only other peoples they were typically interacting with were Trolls (I don't know when humans first made contact with dwarves and gnomes).

We also get another line during the other level-cap side quest there, when you go to have dinner at General Steelstrike's daughter's house. Among the many memories and accolades they display, there's one commendation for Steelstrike's part in putting down an uprising somewhere in the empire.

Now, sure, uprising could be a number of things - our fight against the Defias in Vanilla could be seen as an uprising (though that story is also somewhat nuanced - Van Cleef's methods were questionable, but his grievances were pretty freaking legitimate). So I'm not saying that this necessarily means it was a brutal crackdown on a group of benevolent freedom fights.

But... it kind of seems like it probably was.

Let's also just consider the terminology we're using: it's the Arathi Empire, and it's led by an Emperor.

There's an odd nuance to the connotation of the word "Emperor" in the English language. We tend to like Kings and Queens more than we like Emperors. Emperor, I think, harkens back to the era of Rome, which, in the middle ages, when modern nation states like England were taking form, was looked back on as a period of corruption and depravity - a pre-Christian world that fell because of its moral failings. Emperors, thus, are seen as tyrants, while Kings (and Queens) are seen as righteous, benevolent rulers. Even during the height of the British Empire (which, to be fair, was called an Empire,) the sovereign of said Empire was referred to as King (or Queen - for some reason the UK's ruling queens tend to have very long reigns, though after QE2 we're probably not going to see one for a very long time). It's not as if the British Empire was actually benevolent - talk to anyone in about a quarter of the world whose country is still recovering from British colonialism (the US being a weird case because the dominant culture is one descended from the colonists rather than the indigenous people) and the British were every bit the evil empire you might imagine. But in terms of self-image, it painted itself in this preferable form.

Oddly, there's an exception to this when it comes to East Asia. What we've translated as Emperor in those places tends to be actually seen more the way that European kings are. Hence why Shaohao of Pandaria, whose culture is clearly inspired by China's, can be a fully benevolent Emperor while this Arathi one is almost certainly going to be a villain.

Now, let's talk about Faerin.

Faerin Lothar has alluded to her family - she stowed away on the Hallowfall expedition as a child, in part because she felt that her family didn't think much of her. But what her family actually does remains unknown.

But that name, though.

Anduin Lothar was the great hero of Stormwind, the original leader of the Alliance forces. He was also a surrogate father to Varian Wrynn after King Llane was assassinated. Anduin Lothar was, essentially, supposed to be the absolute most awesome human who ever lived, and whose death at the hands of Orgrim Doomhammer actually rallied the Alliance to rout the Horde at the end of the Second War.

What's interesting, though, is that Lothar is said to have been the last descendent of the original Arathi kings. Also, if the movie is to be considered canon, he was literally Varian's uncle on his mother's side, meaning that Anduin Wrynn is also descended from the Arathi Kings.

All indications seemed to show that Anduin Lothar was the last of his line - he didn't have any children himself. But now, suddenly, we've got a new Lothar.

A name associated with the Arathi Kings. And a woman with that name who is from the mysterious Arathi Empire.

I think Faerin Lothar is the heir to the Imperial Throne of the Arathi Empire. I think she's a princess. And I think her dad (or I guess mom - things aren't necessarily patriarchal) is the Emperor.

This is super long-term story foreshadowing, as I suspect we won't be going to the Arathi Empire until the whole Worldsoul Saga is wrapped up (meaning I'm going to be in my mid-40s) but let me slap this prediction down here so that in 6 years or whatever I can point to it:

I think we're going to go to the Arathi Empire (possibly on that continent hinted at during Dragonflight). We're going to discover the Empire is a brutal regime, despite having very good people living under it and even serving the empire.

And we're going to have to depose the Emperor and put Faerin on the throne.