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.

Pistols and Muskets are in the PHB, But Who Can Really Use Them?

 Perhaps thanks to the iconic original World of Warcraft cinematic, which begins with a Dwarf Hunter and his pet bear, carrying a big old blunderbuss, I've always liked having firearms in my heroic fantasy settings, despite being a pretty anti-gun person in the real world. I was happy, then to see the 2024 PHB include the "renaissance-era" firearms that had appeared in the 2014 Dungeon Master's Guide. These weapons are the most balanced against others, using a single damage die as opposed to two for the modern guns and three (or six) for the futuristic ones. While they have higher dice than the classic crossbows and bows, there are some limiting factors on them, probably the most notable being their very short normal range - pistols have a 30 foot normal range and muskets are just a little better with 40. They also have the loading property.

Both pistols and muskets are considered martial weapons, which also places some limitations on who is likely to use them. You can, of course, still attack with a weapon you don't have proficiency in, but losing that PB to your attack roll can be a big problem, and wipes out the damage benefit from the higher die almost certainly.

Among the classes that tend to have martial weapon proficiency, most of them also have the extra attack feature. That's a good thing, but this runs into conflict with the Loading property, which allows you to make only one attack with such a weapon per action, bonus action, or reaction (the latter being less likely than doing so as your action, but still possible), regardless of how many attacks you'd normally be able to make.

And given how Extra Attack is a core feature to help martial classes do their full damage potential, this is really damning.

Now, Crossbows also have the loading property, but for that we have the Crossbow Expert feat, which allows you to ignore that property among other things.

If we are, as I will be at my table, allowing players to use old character options that weren't reprinted, our problems kind of end here, as you can pick up the Gunner feat from Tasha's Cauldron of Everything, which, among other things, lets us ignore the loading property for firearms.

But, if we're at a table where only the options in the new PHB (and subsequent books) are allowed, we run into a big problem: the classes most likely to be able to use a Firearm will be better-off if they take a different kind of ranged weapon. Two Longbow attacks for 1d8+3 are better than a single Musket attack for 1d12+3 (15 overall versus 9.5).

So, what we need is a character who can use martial weapons, but only gets one weapon attack with their attack action.

And here, I think the answer is, perhaps unexpectedly: Clerics and Druids.

Clerics and Druids have a lot of parallels in their design. Each has a choice they can make at 1st level that allows them to gain a higher tier of armor training (medium to heavy for clerics and light to medium for druids) as well as martial weapon proficiency.

Rather than getting anything like Extra Attack, though, they can get Blessed Strikes or Primal Strikes, respectively, which adds 1d8 (and later 2d8) of magical damage when they hit with weapon attacks.

A Cleric with a Musket at level 7 with a +3 to Dexterity (admittedly a little high, +2 might be more to be expected) would deal 1d12+1d8+3 damage on a hit, for an average of 14 damage, compared to using something like Toll the Dead, which could do 2d12 damage. Granted, if they went the Potent Spellcasting route, it would be doing 2d12+4, perhaps, which does beat the musket for 15 damage.

The Druid is in a similar situation, though I don't think they have any d12 cantrips.

In an ideal situation, though, if you can pick up Magic Initiate: Wizard and take True Strike, it'll keep better pace with your spells. If using True Strike with a Musket as a Protector Cleric or Warden Druid, then you're looking at 1d12+1d8+1d6+4 on a hit (and using, effectively, your spell attack modifier) or 18.5 average damage, compared to 2d8+4, or 13, from a Starry Wisp if you're going the Potent Spellcasting route instead.

Strangely, there's no feat in the 2024 PHB that allows you to gain weapon proficiencies, so Rogues, who might be the most obvious firearms users, are shut out.

Once again, a ton of these issues get solved if we allow pre-2024 content. The Artificer's Repeating Shot infusion removes the Loading property (and effectively removes the ammunition property) and would thus be great for them if they're a Battle Smith or could make them work perfectly for other martial characters. Again, the Gunner feat also fixes this.

But, if we're strictly only using new options, your best bet is going to be either a preacher or a hippie with a gun.

Approaching Alan Wake II's Anniversary and Anticipating The Lake House

 Some time this month, we'll be getting Alan Wake II's second DLC, The Lake House, which will ultimately put the capstone on what we get out of the game.

It's funny, playing games with such replayability or merely a huge demand on your time, like World of Warcraft or Elden Ring, I still find that this game I spent maybe a total of 40 hours in to be one of my favorite gaming experiences.

I just love the utter insanity of the story it tells, the strange meta-narratives, the deep mysteries (which I'll admit might largely be mystery boxes with nothing inside) and the audacity of its creation (I mean, there's literally a 20-minute art film you might just miss if you walk out of the movie theater too eagerly).

The game was compelling, but not in the way that makes me necessarily want to play through it again and again. A big part of what makes a game replayable, I think, is how you can try to do things differently. But the story to Alan Wake II is singular (well, double, given the Final Draft). And ultimately, that's fine - because even if I'm not booting the game up every chance I get, it nevertheless swirls around in my brain constantly.

Halloween is my favorite holiday, and every October, I sort of feel an anxious desire to make sure that I honor the spookiness in some way - which can be a challenge as I'm an utter lightweight when it comes to horror movies (one of these days I'm going to watch past the first episode of Midnight Mass, I swear).

I'm really eager to play the new DLC, though I'm also trying to temper my expectations. Night Springs was fun, but boy did I go through it quickly, I think finishing the whole thing in an afternoon and the next morning, with big breaks in between episodes.

At the very least I assume the Lake House will be just one story with one protagonist (though who that will be remains to be seen,) which might make it feel more substantial.

But I guess especially after the absurdly enormous Shadow of the Erdtree (still haven't attempted Radahn following the nerfs) I need to recall that this isn't going to be as substantial as a whole other game. (Seriously, Shadow of the Erdtree would be, on its own, probably the biggest FromSoft game ever if it weren't for the existing main game of Elden Ring).

I am eager, however, to see what kind of tantalizing mysteries are introduced here - generally, the expectation is that just as Control's AWE expansion teased Alan Wake II, the Lake House will probably tease Control 2.

Then I'm curious just to see if the gameplay is shaken up in any serious way - Night Springs gave you more resources than you could ever spend, turning the Survival Horror game into more of an action shooter (or some approximation thereof). The trailer for the Lake House sure looks more horror-oriented, but we'll see.

Anyway, I'm just happy to get into this.

Dual Wielding vs Great Weapon Master for Fighters (and maybe Barbarians and Revisiting Paladins)

 The Nick weapon mastery property is a bit of a game changer, and a big part of that changed game is that it will allow you to stack off-hand hits with the extra attack granted by the Dual Wielder feat.

Since the 2024 PHB has come out, I've been champing at the bit to try out a few new character builds - among others, I've made multiple versions of my old dragonborn Eldritch Knight, and while I'd love to be able to customize my ability score bonuses from the Sage background (I'll take Intelligence, but I really need a +2 for my Strength, unless I want to go back and do a crazy Shillelagh build, but then I'd need to take the Guide background, which doesn't boost Intelligence either, so... Essentially, until we get customizable backgrounds or just giving origin feats of the player's choice with old backgrounds, you're going to be a little stuck except perhaps if you play a human) for now I might just pick up a similar old background like the Cloistered Scholar so I can have my freedom of boosts.

Anyway, while dual-wielding has become a lot better, the Great Weapon Master feat has also become a lot better. While the boost to damage is lower (it's now your PB, rather than a flat 10) the massive upside here is that you no longer take a -5 penalty to your hit. Now, as long as the attack is part of the attack action (and this is something I got wrong with my earlier look at it when talking paladins) you just get to add your proficiency bonus to the damage.

And, according to some hypothetical ranges of AC, in basically all cases except against targets with extraordinarily low ACs like Zombies or Gelatinous Cubes, the fact that you're not taking a penalty to your hits makes you ultimately deal more damage (and you hit more often, which frankly just feels better).

The question, though, that I had, was how it compares to dual wielding.

For a Fighter, my initial guess is that it'll do better. The reason for this is that, while classes like Barbarians and Paladins (and Rogues, but they're not likely to be wielding heavy weapons unless they somehow get proficiency in longbows or heavy crossbows) tend to add damage to their attacks, while Fighters tend to get more damage simply by doing more attacks.

In other words, bonuses like Rage and Radiant Strikes really benefit a lot from getting additional attacks, while Fighters' level 11 feature is an additional attack. And again at level 20 (though essentially we can say that the number of attacks per attack action a Fighter has for the most levels is 3).

So, here's what we're looking at:

Dual Wielders - using two light weapons (presumably d6 weapons if we're not pulling Shillelagh shenanigans) we get effectively five attacks per turn by level 11, unless we need our bonus action for something. Three primary attacks with our attack action, and then we get our Nick attack with a scimitar (I think that's the only d6 light weapon with Nick?) still as part of the action, and then finally our dual wielder feat attack with our bonus action. If we take the Two Weapon Fighting Style feat, we're adding Strength (or potentially Dexterity, as Scimitars and Shortswords are also finesse weapons) to the Nick attack, but not to the attack granted by Dual Wielder.

Now, the math gets way more complicated thanks to the Shortsword's (or Handaxe's) Vex property. There are a lot of ways to get advantage on attacks, so I'm tempted to be lazy here and just ignore it and go for potential damage rather than looking at hits and crits.

If we assume a +5 to Strength by level 11 (which might not be such a safe assumption given all the half-feats - still, we could start off with a 17 in Strength, boost it to 18 with Dual Wielder and then grab two other feats that boost Strength at levels 6 and 8 - the only reason I'd feel skeptical is if we wanted to get War Caster on an Eldritch Knight) we're looking at 4 attacks that hit for 1d6+5 (we're also not assuming we get any magic weapons) and then one more attack that deals 1d6 flat.

This brings the potential damage to 5d6+20, or about 37.5 damage per turn.

With Great Weapon Master, again, we're only relying on a single feat here, and can have the same Strength progression. Aesthetically, I love the Maul, but I also think that the Greatsword's Graze mastery could be really, really good (always be damaging). Still, the math starts to get a bit hairy, and I'm lazy. So we'll talk just potential damage. You could also take a Greataxe of course, but I think this might be more appealing to a Paladin or Barbarian, because I think you do get to add bonus damage to the cleave attack, the only thing you're not adding being your Strength. Of course, it's also a bit situational.

The math here is relatively simple: our Maul or Greatsword hits for 2d6+5 (our Strength)+4(our proficiency bonus at this level). So, 2d6+9, or an average of 16 damage per hit. With three attacks, that's 48 damage.

I think my instinct was right.

I really think you can't ignore the power of adding your proficiency bonus to your damage - something that is fully multiplied thanks to your third attack.

Essentially, if Dual Wielding and Great Weapon Master are balanced against each other assuming you have two attacks per action (which is true for Paladins, Barbarians, Rangers, and Monks - as well as Fighters at levels 5-10) our third attack upsets this balance. (Indeed, if we rewind to level 10, we're essentially subtracting 1d6+5 from the dual wielder, for a total of 29 damage, versus subtracting a full 16 from the GWM, for a total of 32 - still better, but closer.)

Getting magic weapons can shift things toward the Dual Wielder - it becomes another one of these bonuses multiplied by the extra attacks. But assuming that if the dual-wielder gets a pair of +1 weapons, we should also assume the GWM gets a +1 weapon as well, meaning that we're just adding the bonus a number of times equal to the difference in number of attacks to see the difference in damage potential - which is two. Even with +3 weapons, the Dual Wielder's total is only going up by 6 compared to the Great Weapon Master, when the GWM was already 10.5 damage ahead.

Now:

How does layering Polearm Master on top of that look?

What we gain from Polearm Master is a bonus action attack that deals 1d4+5. Unfortunately, and unlike my post about paladins, because this is a bonus action, you don't get to add that proficiency bonus to this damage, so it really does sit at 1d4+5 (though if you have a +1 polearm, it should confer this bonus to both the regular attacks and the Pole Strike.

And, you know, we get reach if we're using a Lance, Glaive, Halberd, or Pike. (And thankfully Lances now only get the good part of their special properties).

What we give up is a bit of damage from downgrading from 2d6 to 1d10.

Our level 11 Fighter who took Polearm Master as one of those feats at level 6 or 8 and who is fighting with any of those 1d10 polearms will be doing 1d10+5, then an additional 4 for GWM, so 1d10+9 for each of these hits, or 14.5, which then comes to 43.5, and then slap on that 1d4+5 (which averages to 7.5) and we're looking at 51 damage.

So it definitely looks worth it to downgrade our damage dice for that additional attack, though again, it costs a bonus action - the pure GWM will only have to worry about using their bonus action for their Hew attack, leaving their bonus action free on many if not most turns. That said, it's only 3 points ahead of not getting that attack at all.

And I think it should be obvious that GWM is still contributing more damage here than PAM - to look at what this would be if you only had Polearm Master, just subtract 12 from the PAM's total damage potential, putting it closer to the Dual Wielding set-up.

Also, as a minor note: GWM is the only version of these for which Action Surge is truly multiplicative - Dual Wielder and Polearm Master both use a bonus action, which doesn't get replicated by action surge.

So, my recommendation if you want to really push your damage as a Fighter is to go with Great Weapon Master as soon as you can pick it up, and then possibly Polearm Master if you want to push things further (nicely, these can both boost Strength).

Ok, now let's look at Barbarians.

Barbarians don't really get a clear damage boost feature at level 11 like Paladins and Fighters do (Brutal Strikes does come online at 9, but it's fairly weapon-agnostic given that you can only use it once a turn and its damage dice don't care what you're swinging).

The big, key thing here is that they will get a +3 bonus to damage thanks to their Rage (and I think Barbarians are very unlikely to run out of Rages now).

Here, my instincts are pointing toward Dual Wielding probably being the way to go. A Handaxe or Shortsword in one hand and a Scimitar in the other will let us take advantage of Nick. That said, we don't actually get Fighting Styles, meaning outside of going to old sources for Fighting Initiate or the like, we're going to have to lose that 5 on our off-hand attacks. We will still get our +3 Rage damage bonus, though.

So, with the Dual Wielder feat, we're going to be making two fully-functional attacks with our action, each dealing 1d6+5+3, or 11.5. Then, our Nick attack will do 1d6+3, or 6.5.

Now, here we do hit a bit of a jam - we can't make the Dual Wielder attack on our first turn, because we need our bonus action to rage. We're only 1d6+3 damage on that turn, but depending on how long combat goes, it might not be totally fair for us to assume that we'll get plenty of turns after that with our full complement of attacks.

On the other hand, Rage now lasts 10 minutes, and if we're in a combat-to-combat situation, we might still be raging from a previous encounter (or from Rage-stealthing to sneak up on these fools).

So, screw it, we'll assume you're already raging.

Thus, it becomes pretty simple - two attacks that deal 1d6+8 and two that deal 1d6+3. So, 4d6+22, which comes to 36 average damage.

With GWM, we're looking at just two attacks that are hitting for 2d6 (or 1d12, in which case we'd have to dock it a single damage point over the two attacks) +8. That's 15 damage per hit, for a total average of 30. Actually at this point quite a bit behind our dual-wielder (doing 5/6 of its damage).

Now, if we use Polearm Master alone, we're looking at two hits for 1d10+8, or 13.5, doubled to 27, and then our Pole Strike is hitting for 1d4+8, or 10.5, putting us at 37.5.

Fascinating! So, in this case, the Barbarian's best damage comes with Polearm Master.

If we're worried about going into combat without raging, we'll need to subtract the bonus action attacks from the DW and PAM builds on the first turn, pushing their first turn (and only that, most likely) down to 29.5 and 27, respectively.

Now, I suspect that a combined PAM and GWM build will be our best by a long shot.

Here, we're looking at two attacks for now 1d10+12 (5 from Strength, 3 from Rage, 4 from GWM) each for 17.5, combined to make 35 damage (only one behind our dual-wielder when they're already raging) and then getting to add that same 10.5 once we're raging as a bonus action, for a total of 45.5.

My Bugbear World Tree Barbarian with the insane reach on his attacks is looking better and better.

Again, there are nuances here that I'm 100% breezing past. The constant advantage granted by Vex (and once you get to level 13, you're basically always going to have advantage between Vex and Studied Attacks) might really make a difference. On the other hand, Graze from Greatswords and Glaives might actually wind up adding more damage (especially against foes with high ACs).

Given the lack of nuance here, I think we can actually use the Barbarian as a model for the Paladin - instead of a rage bonus we're adding our 1d8 Radiant Strike damage - which on average is actually better than the Barbarian's bonus. Paladins can also take a Fighting Style, and while Great Weapon Fighting is actually pretty much useless (2d6 goes from an average of 7 to an average of 8 - worse than when it just you re-roll 1s and 2s, which got you an already-pitiful 8.33) the Two-Weapon Fighting Style feat actually adds a decently hefty chunk of damage - basically 5 at this level.

So, if we're adding 1.5 to each attack (as 1d8 is 4.5 on average and that's 1.5 higher than the flat rage bonus of 3 - and we're not even touching on the fact that it can crit) and also adding 5 to the Nick attack (the Dual Wielder attack doesn't benefit from this fighting style) we're essentially getting 6 extra damage from Radiant Strikes and 5 from the TWF feat, so the Paladin's dual-wielder damage is 47 (before we get into potential additional boosts like the excellent Divine Favor - which we might genuinely have to consider if DW still comes up short of GWM).

In the case of our pure GWM character, we're just adding that 1.5 to two attacks, so we're only really looking at 3 more than the Barbarian, so 33.

A pure PAM build will add 1.5 three times, or 4.5, which puts us at 42.

Finally, a combined PAM and GWM build will give us 1.5 three times, but is otherwise the same as the Barbarian, so we get 49.5. Ah-ha! We've finally outpaced the dual-wielder.

But, what about if we add Divine Favor?

This just adds 1d4 per attack. Our dual-wielder is only making one more attack per turn than our GWM/PAM, so the difference just comes to 2.5.

And wouldn't you freaking know it? That's precisely the difference between our Dual Wilder and our GWM/PAM before accounting for Divine Favor (because both are reliant on a bonus action for their full damage, they'll both be held back slightly on the first turn - the dualwielder loses 1d6+1d8 damage on turn 1 compared to the GWMPAM (or "Gwimpam") losing 1d4+1d8+5, meaning dual-wielders have a slight edge here.

    So, what's my takeaway here?

Well, first we've got to acknowledge again that some masteries might really make a huge difference while others might not - Cleave is awesome if there are two enemies next to one another, but does nothing if there aren't. Vex could be enormous, but if you're, say, a Vengeance Paladin, you might have advantage already thanks to Vow of Enmity.

There are also other, non-damage things to consider. Reach weapons have the very helpful advantage of not forcing you to get into melee with foes with a normal melee range. If you're persnickity about things like somatic components, using a single two-handed weapon might be better than dual-wielding, as one of your hands will be free when you're not in the middle of attacking (though the new rules on drawing and stowing weapons might make this less of an issue).

And then there's which weapons you actually find. In the Curse of Strahd game I played in a few years ago, I'd been intending to go Polearm Master with my Paladin at first, but then we got a +2 Greatsword and I was the only one who could reasonably use it, so instead I took Great Weapon Master at level 8 (very shortly before the campaign kind of fell apart).

As a DM, I'd generally try to ensure that if someone took a feat for a particular weapon type, I'd try to ensure that there were such weapons to acquire (I'm really hoping we get more non-sword magic weapons, because it feels like 90% of the magic weapons in the 2014 DMG are swords). But if someone is running a published adventure strictly by the book, it might be easier to take some of these feats than others.

Ok, How Much Can We Pull With Conjure Minor Elementals?

 The "Conjure" spells from the Player's Handbook were mostly changed to be more table-friendly. Now, if you want to put another creature on the battlefield to fight alongside you, you're mostly going to be using the updated versions of the "Summon" spells from Tasha's (which did get a few minor tweaks). The Conjure spells, which used to send players digging through the Monster Manual (or, for those who knew the overpowered options, might have you summon a bunch of Pixies who could then polymorph the party into T-Rexes).

It's certainly an open question of whether these are nerfs or buffs. The Gruul Storm Sorcerer in my Ravnica game decided not to convert to the new system in large part because it would lose him the ability to summon a number of creatures he's used as mounts (I think Summon Dragon is, unlike Summon Draconic Spirit, not actually available to Sorcerers).

But the spell causing a big controversy is Conjure Minor Elementals - a spell that appears to be so powerful that there are some who assume it will get errata to reduce its power.

Here's how it works:

As an action, you conjure a kind of swarm of elemental spirits that swirl around you in a 15-foot emanation. The emanation is difficult terrain for your enemies, but the biggest deal here is that when you hit with an attack against an enemy within that emanation, you deal an extra 2d8 damage (of various elemental damage types, your choice). And I think it lasts a minute.

This is, I think, at base level relatively fair, but where it blows up is in its scaling: the spell is 4th level, but every level above 4, you add 2d8 to the damage.

Meaning that, upcast to only 6th level (which is, fair enough, a very limited spell slot) you're looking at 6d8 extra damage on every hit.

It's insanely powerful, but if we assume that it doesn't get banned by many tables, what is the build that can best take advantage of it?

As I see it, there are two ways we can push its damage up - more attacks and upcasting.

Now, Eldritch Knight Fighters can take this spell at level 17, when they get their 4th level spells. Their scaling here, though, only gets one more attack in at level 20, meaning on a straight-class build, we're getting a potential extra 8d8 per turn. We could, of course, Action Surge to double that, getting us 16d8 on a subsequent turn (though I think I'd be more tempted to action surge on the turn I cast it to make use of the damage immediately and also minimize the chance I drop concentration on it before I get some benefit from it.

The Fighter does also get another advantage here: if we have a dual-wield build (which I will say I like less for a Fighter than a Paladin, Ranger, or Paladin because the additional attacks Fighters get benefit more from something like Great Weapon Master) with the Dual Wielder feat and an off-hand weapon with Nick (the latter being, in my mind, basically a prerequisite for the former) we could make 5 attacks with our action and a 6th with our bonus action at level 20. Thus, that 2d8 becomes 12d8 (or 54 on average). If we were going GWM instead, we'd be getting only 8d8, but also 24 additional damage, for an average of 60.

But let's think of other possibilities.

Again, part of the spell's power is its upcasting. Pure EKs will never have the spell slots to cast it at higher levels.

The next obvious option would be the Valor Bard. As a martial subclass for a pure caster class, they'll get a bit of the best of both worlds.

In the Bard's case, we'll assume they are leaning heavily into the martial side of things, and will have picked up the Weapon Master feat along with the Dual Wielder feat to allow them to fight with something like a Shortsword and Scimitar, and make two attacks with the Shortsword and one with the Scimitar with an action, and then a second hit with the Scimitar as a bonus action.

That means four attacks per turn, but we'll absolutely need to make it through a turn concentrating on the spell before we can do it (with the exception, I guess, of opportunity attacks or other reaction attacks).

So, after at turn of set-up, we can potentially get four attacks for a total of 8d8 damage out of the spell when cast at its base level (which Bards will get way earlier... but not at level 7, but rather at level 10, when we get Magical Secrets, as this isn't inherently a Bard spell).

So, this falls behind the EK, but we're also at a way lower level. But what about upcasting?

Essentially, this just becomes a progression every two levels - 8d8 becomes 16d8 if we cast it with a 5th level slot, then 24d8 with a 6th level slot - by the time we're in tier 4, with a 9th level slot, we're looking at 12d8 per hit, giving us 48d8, or 216 damage in a single turn.

And here, the question of upcasting versus getting more attacks obviously favors upcasting.

Now, lest you think I've forgotten them, we should also mention the Bladesinger Wizard, who seems like a potential option in all of this. Bladesinger will of course get this earlier than the Bard, and contrary to my assumptions, it does not appear that there is any restriction on dual-wielding (though you could run into some issues regarding having a hand free for somatic or material components, but I think War Caster is likely to be part of your build here.)

But what about multiclassing?

Fighters' Extra Attack feature doesn't become any better than other classes' until level 11, which means our spell progression will still be rather slow. An EK adds a third of their Fighter level rounded down to their total spellcaster level, meaning if we put 11 levels into the class, we are getting only 3 caster levels (we could do one extra level and pick up an additional feat and get 4 caster levels out of it).

Still, if we multiclassed with a Bladesinger (we could also do so with a Valor Bard, but it might be beneficial for all our spells to work with the same stat) by level 20, we could have either Fighter 11/Wizard 9 (giving us a total of 12 caster levels, allowing for 6th level spells) or Fighter 12/Wizard 8 (which also gives us 12 caster levels - we won't be able to cast 5th level Wizard spells, but if we're really just focusing on upcasting this, we should be ok - this will also leave us with 6 feats compared with 5).

So, at level 20, we'd be able to get three attacks in and cast the spell at 6th level. With Nick and Dual-Wielder (both pretty easy to get thanks to our Fighter levels) we're talking really 5 attacks in a turn (and it can even be the turn we cast the spell thanks to Action Surge). At 6th level that's 6d8 per attack and thus we're looking at 30d8 potential damage from the spell (135 damage).

Thus, I think it's still technically better to go with a pure caster all the way, but I will say that there's a benefit to this multiclass build: because our first level is Fighter, we have Con save proficiency. And we're picking up War Caster anyway to be able to cast spells while holding our weapons. Losing concentration on this spell would be pretty devastating, so it might be worth taking the hit to your damage.

That said, if we are really talking about maximizing damage, it does seem that going pure caster is better than getting more attacks from a Fighter - at least in terms of maximizing the damage of this spell.

2024 Update Test Drive Impressions

 Tonight, after being away for a month, I was able to get three of my regular D&D players, with the intention of testing out updated builds for their existing 17th-level characters.

We had an Artillerist Artificer, an Ancestral Guardian Barbarian, and a Storm Sorcerer.

Ultimately, it was really only the Barbarian who changed much - the Artificer, of course, didn't get an update in the new rules, and my Sorcerer player decided he didn't really want to convert the character, so stuck with his existing version.

To have a little extra fun, I sent them against the previewed update of the Ancient Green Dragon.

These are characters who, over a 4+ year campaign, have acquired a lot of powerful magic items - the Artificer, who has both the equivalent of a Tome of Clear Thought and an Ioun Stone of Mastery, and, thanks to Spell Sniper and Elemental Adept now giving a point of Intelligence each (or other mental stats, but obviously for this character it was Int) freed up a spot for Skill Expert, which they then put into Arcana, giving them a +20.

In other words, three characters was plenty against this CR 22 monster.

The dragon was fun to play - though it might have been nice to have some means of escaping once surrounded and flanked - they burned their penultimate turn just disengaging and running, but couldn't outrun the Barbarian (who has a modified Sword of Zariel, essentially).

The real highlight, of course, was the Barbarian and his use of Brutal Strikes, which turned out to be really effective - at a +14 to hit with his attacks, losing the advantage from Reckless Attack wasn't too bad (I also ruled that other sources of advantage still worked, which seems fair, but also meant that once he was flanking, my dragon was in a tough spot).

The downside, I think, is that converting a high-level character means a lot of catch-up. We spent about half the session just building the Artificer and Barbarian in D&D Beyond (neither player had been using it before).

And there can be a lot to keep track of, between weapon mastery effects like Sap and the various debuffs from Brutal Strikes - though I imagine as we become more familiar with these, it'll go smoother.

Ultimately, what I really want to do is start a campaign from level 1 with these new rules, but I felt and feel it is important to let players get their hands on the new stuff and try it out.

I'm a little sad that the Sorcerer is not sold on the new version of various spells - he cited Conjure Animals and Counterspell as big sore points (personally, I hate the old Counterspell and actually proposed something nearly identical to the new version, but if we get more monsters like the Ancient Green Dragon who can both cast a spell and do other things on their turn, I'm actually less worried about the old version). It would have been nice to see how things like Innate Sorcery might have affected the fight.

Of course, this is only some of my players.

My rule will be that no one is forced to convert, which does mean I'll have to deal with multiple versions of certain spells and features, but it doesn't seem fair to force anyone into playing a character that's not the same as the one they had before (I've already had to deal with the Volo's and Monsters of the Multiverse versions of the Goblin, and it hasn't been too much of a problem).

I'm very eager to try out the new rules as a player, too. For now that's likely to mean just converting existing characters, but damn if I don't want to play the new version of the Monk.

Also, boss monsters, especially at high levels, aren't ever going to feel like the kind of threat they should be without a dungeon leading up to them full of resource-draining challenges. I'll take the fact that I bloodied the Barbarian as a win.