Sorting Out Critical Role's Campaign Four (At the End of the First Convergence)

 Critical Role's 4th Campaign is a big departure in many ways: it's not set on Exandria (with no suggestion that these even take place in the same universe - the mention of a magic item being the equivalent of a Vestige of Divergence was misconstrued by a lot of fans,) it's got a different Dungeon Master, there are several more players, and there are separate "tables" for different groups of characters on different arcs.

Indeed, as we found at the end of this first "convergence," in which the entire "party" came together, the tables aren't going to have fixed memberships, with some Schemers heading out as Seekers and some Soliders staying behind.

I'm going to get into some heavy spoilers here, so I'll do a cut, but I'm more interested in the broader speculation about what's coming down the line more than necessarily going over every shocking plot twist.

Anyway, spoilers ahead.

Revisiting the Summon Spells of 5.5

 Tasha's Cauldron of Everything introduced some of my favorite spells in 5E. While there had been plenty of "Conjure X" spells, which pulled (usually multiple) creatures from the Monster Manual out and put them into battle (sometimes with really insane consequences, like allowing you to summon 8 Pixies that can each cast Polymorph once a day) these spells created a consistent, single, powerful minion that used your spell attack modifier.

And each works the same way - getting a number of attacks equal to half the spell's level rounded down (the lowest-level one of them is the 2nd level spell Summon Beast, so no issues with having zero attacks) and getting a damage boost on the attacks' damage for the spell's level.

The consistency does let you, to a large extent, pick your favorite for thematic reasons. A classic Merlin-style Wizard might go for Summon Elemental or Summon Construct, while a darker spellcaster might go Summon Undead or Summon Fiend.

Wizards and I want to say Warlocks gain access to the most options here, but Artificers, Bards, Druids, Clerics, Paladins and Rangers get some as well (Sorcerer subclasses often get one, but the base class, I believe, doesn't get any).

5.5 saw the old Conjure spells significantly changed to be more like ongoing spell effects (including the insanely powerful Conjure Minor Elementals,) with an intent to make these the primary "I put more creatures onto the battlefield" spells. Now, there are actually a handful of additional spells that can do things like this. Giant Insect is actually essentially another one of these spells. In contrast, though, Animate Dead and Create Undead are much more like their 5.0 versions - the real distinction being that the monsters don't despawn when the spell ends; you just lose control of them.

One spell from 5.0 didn't make the transition to 5.5, and while it should work just fine, I'm going to leave it out in our comparison here. Summon Shadowspawn is actually very conceptually cool, and I love having non-undead monsters for the Shadowfell. Eh, maybe we'll cover it at the end of this.

I'm going to compare the various summoned spirits by three primary criteria: damage output, survivability, and utility.

To make a fair comparison, we'll consider these when cast at 6th level, which is the highest base level for any of them (Summon Fiend). Notably, Warlocks don't actually get to cast any but Summon Fiend at 6th level because of how Pact Magic works (they can pick up Summon Fiend as their 6th level Mystic Arcanum, though they also can't upcast it to 8th level). Naturally, Artificers, Paladins, and Rangers can't cast these at 6th level (unless they multiclass with a pure spellcaster) but every spell should be available to at least one pure spellcaster.

Thus, each will get three attacks, and we'll total the damage output along those lines. Now, there's a subtle nuance - some creatures use a higher damage die, which means that crits will be a little more powerful even if they have the same average damage as another, though this is a pretty subtle difference.

A summoned spirit's AC and HP tend to scale with their spell level, and again, we'll list the 6th level version. Damage can also vary on the form that the summoned spirit takes, so we'll list each version.

    Giant Insect:

While not called "Summon Giant Insect," as mentioned before, this effectively works just like one of these spells, with two major differences: first, it has no material component, meaning that you don't need to buy the (actually pretty costly) components that the rest of these need. However, it only lasts 10 minutes, meaning you might not be able to get quite as much use out of it.

Damage: 1d6+9+1d4, or 15 (mix of piercing and poison) per hit, so 45 total. Alternatively, 1d10+9, or 14.5 (bludgeoning), so 43.5 total.

Defensive: AC 17, HP 50

Utility: The insect in Spider form (yes, I know, it's an arachnid - the spell should be Giant Bug) can reduce a creature's movement speed to 0 on a hit, and this attack is even ranged. In Centipede form, it can attempt to poison a nearby target as a bonus action. Wasp form can fly.

    Summon Aberration: (Warlock, Wizard)

Damage: 1d10+9 (slashing), or 14.5, for 43.5 total, or 1d8+9 (psychic), or 13.5, for 40.5 total. (Potentially 2d6, or 7, AoE psychic damage)

Defensive: AC 17, HP 60

Utility: Slaad has regeneration and also prevents healing with its slashing attack. Beholderkin can fly with hover and has ranged attacks. Mind Flayer has AoE aura (save for none, can do friendly fire).

    Summon Beast: (Druid, Ranger)

Damage: 1d8+10 (piercing), or 14.5, for 43.5 total.

Defensive: AC 17, HP 40 (air) or 50 (land or water)

Utility: Land has a climb speed, water has a swim speed, air has a 60 foot fly speed. Air has flyby, Water has Water Breathing (not amphibious) and Land and Water have Pack Tactics.

    Summon Celestial: (Cleric, Paladin)

Damage: 1d10+9 (radiant) or 14.5, for 43.5 total, or 2d6+8 (radiant) or 15, for 45 total.

Defensive: AC 17, or 19 (defender), HP 60

Utility: Radiant resistance, 40 foot fly speed. Has a 1/day healing touch for 2d8+6 (15 average). Defender grants 1d10 temp HP to itself or a nearby friend on hit with its attack.

    Summon Construct: (Artificer, Wizard)

Damage: 1d8+10 (bludgeoning) or 14.5, for 43.5 total.

Defensive: AC 19, HP 70

Utility: Resistant to poison, does 1d10 damage to attackers or grapplers (Metal), slows and prevent opportunity attacks to nearby creatures (can hit friends) on a failed wisdom save (Stone) or gets reaction attacks or free movement as a reaction when taking damage (Clay)

    Summon Dragon: (Wizard)

Damage: 1d6+10 (piercing) or 13.5, for 40.5, plus AoE cone for 2d6 (7) of draconic elemental damage.

Defensive: AC 20, HP 60

Utility: Swim speed, 60 foot fly speed, resistance to Acid, Cold, Fire, Lightning, and Poison damage, Blindsight, shares one of its resistances with you (chosen at summoning).

    Summon Elemental: (Druid, Ranger, Wizard)

Damage: 1d10+10 (bludgeoning, cold, lightning, or fire, depending on element,) or 15.5, for 46.5 total.

Defensive: AC 17 HP 70

Utility: 40 foot speed, with Burrow (Earth) Fly with hover (Air) and Swim (Water). Amorphous Form (Air, Fire, Water). Immunity to fire damage (Fire) or resistance to Lighting and Thunder (Air), Acid (Water) or Piercing and Slashing (Earth). Full immunity to poison.

    Summon Fey: (Druid, Ranger, Warlock, Wizard)

Damage: 2d6+9 (Force) or 16, for 48 total.

Defensive: AC 18, HP 60

Utility: Fly speed, immune to charmed, bonus action with 30-foot teleport and secondary effects: spirit gains advantage on next attack (Fuming,) charms a nearby creature on failed wisdom save, both you and fey spirit charm the target (Mirthful) or creates 10-foot cube of magical darkness (Tricksy).

    Summon Fiend: (Warlock, Wizard)

Damage: 1d12+9 (necrotic) or 15.5, for 46.5 total, or 1d8+9 (slashing) or 13.5 for 40.5 total, or 2d6+9 (fire) or 16, for 48 total.

Defensive: AC 18, HP 50 (demon,) 40 (devil,) or 60 (yugoloth)

Utility: 40 foot movement speed, climb speed (demon) or 60 foot fly speed (devil). Yugoloth teleports 30 feet with each attack. Magic Resistance and resistance to fire. Devil has devil's sight. Demon explodes when reduced to 0 HP, doing 2d10 fire (11 average) in a 10-foot emanation (dex save for half). (Can cause friendly fire). Devil's attacks are ranged.

    Summon Undead: (Warlock, Wizard)

Damage: 1d8+9 (necrotic) or 13.5, for 40.5, or 2d4+9 (necrotic) for 14, or 42, or 1d6+9 (slashing) or 12.5 for 37.5.

Defensive: AC 17, HP 60 (ghostly or putrid) or 50 (skeletal)

Utility: Ghostly gets 40 foot fly speed with hover. Immunity to necrotic and poison damage. Ghostly has incorporeal passage. Putrid has emanation that poisons on a failed con save, and attacks that paralyze a poisoned target. Skeletal has ranged attacks. Ghostly frightens on hit.

    Conclusions and Results:

In terms of damage output, the Devil version of Summon Fiend and the Fey spirit both wind up doing the most. The devil can fly and its attacks are ranged, allowing it to stay out of the melee, though the Fey's force damage will basically always do it to whatever you're attacking.

Defenses are fairly consistent, though the dragon gets the highest AC of them all, with runners-up being the Guardian form of the Celestial and the Construct. For HP, the Elemental is the big winner, and is the only one that scales up 15 HP per spell slot, rather than 10.

For utility, this is a lot harder to evaluate, and depends on your situation. The Undead Spirit has some very powerful utility (especially if you have other ways of getting a target poisoned).

I think it's notable that the Aberration, Fiend, and Undead all have ranged options, which can be very good if you want to just use them as a distant turret. Of these, the Aberration and Fiend can also fly, which allows them to not only be distant but truly out of reach of many monsters.

Another potential thing to consider is size: the Celestial, Dragon, and Fiend are all Large, which means you could ride on them, and the former two have fly speeds while the latter has one form with a fly speed. Technically they go after your turn in combat, but if your DM is cool, they might let you have the spirit act simultaneously with you to function as a kind of uncontrolled-controlled mount. (Oh, also the Giant Insect, lest I forget.)

All this being said, though, I really think you can pretty confidently pick whichever of these you think seems most in-theme with your character. Even the ones that don't do quite as much damage, like Summon Beast, are still nearly doing as much when upcast.

Bladesinger (Using One Spell Slot, for Damage at Least) vs Wyvern

 The Bladesinger and the Eldritch Knight are two sides of the same coin - one is the Fighter who gets a bit of wizardry and the other is a Wizard who becomes a martial class. While I love my EK dearly (and I'm champing at the bit for a chance to play one again - ideally bringing my old character Jax back because our party was ostensibly temporarily in the Nine Hells but the campaign fell apart before we could get out, and I don't love that as a fate for him) I'll also say that I'm almost certain a Bladesinger is the more powerful option, simply because Wizards are, well, super-powerful.

Now, part of that power is that you don't actually have to use all that martial stuff. Literally any Wizard of high-enough level could get their hands on Conjure Minor Elementals and Scorching Ray and do just absurd amounts of damage, scaling remarkably well each time you get access to higher-level spell slots (you could even multiclass to Sorcerer if you have enough Charisma to get Innate Sorcery because your spell slot progression will continue even if you can't pick higher-level spells).

The math is real easy for that - at 10th level, you have 5th level spell slots, so you'd just cast CME at 5th level on turn 1, and then for the rest of combat, get within 15 feet of your targets and burn your other high-level slots on Scorching Ray (maybe reserving your 5th level to recast if you lose concentration). If you have a +9 to hit with your spells, you'll land it on a 5 or higher against a wyvern. That's (3d8+2d6)x5 if you're doing a 4th level Scorching Ray. Each one lands for 20.5, and so if you've got an 80% chance to hit, and then 5% chance to crit, each one's landing for 20.5x85%, or 17.425, so a 4th level spell slot gets you freaking 87 damage per turn.

Even when we account for the first turn requiring set-up, that's still an average of 43.5 per turn in a two-round combat, and it jumps up to 58 over three turns, making it far better than any of these other builds (though the Eldritch Knight, pulling off far more shenanigans, does comparable stuff, and that was even with the Staff-and-Board build, meaning that a Great Weapon Master build would probably do better.

Yes, CME is kind of a busted spell, and even with its nerf in errata, it's still among the most powerful in the game when used like this. (Scorching Ray is fine, but surely wasn't designed with the assumption you'd be adding damage to each attack).

But what if we wanted something more sustainable?

Here's the limitation we'll set: we are not going to use more than one spell slot. We're going to make use of our Bladesong to make melee attacks.

In other words, we're going to pick some decent concentration spell and then go to town.

Let's start building:

    Stats:

Funny story: when I rolled stats on the Wizard I've now been playing almost five years, I was tempted to go Bladesinger, because I rolled so well, starting with an 18 in Int, +3 to Con, and +2 to Dex. But I had already come up with a story that very firmly made him an Order of Scribes Wizard (he was an apprentice archivist at the Cobalt Soul in Port Damali, and during the campaign he's been made an Expositor).

The new Bladesinger, though, is a little less stat-dependent, due in large part to the fact that your Bladesong now allows you to use Intelligence for your attacks.

Having decent Dexterity is still not a bad thing - it'll still increase your AC, and indeed, given that you can no longer wear any armor, rather than getting access to Light Armor, so that Dex is going to be slightly more precious. That said, Bladesong will also give you AC equal to your Intelligence modifier - we still benefit from Dex, but as long as we're decent, we can focus our attention on just boosting Int as far as it will go (indeed, we also get that for Concentration saves, meaning we're truly Int all the way).

    Gear:

The interesting thing is that while the SCAG/Tasha's Bladesinger would pretty much always go rapier, as it's the highest-damage finesse weapon, you actually have a lot of freedom now - you can go with a Warhammer, even, as long as you're not wielding it in its Versatile mode. Basically, a d8 weapon is going to be our assumption, but whether it's a Longsword, Rapier, Flail, Harpoon, or whatever is kind of irrelevant. We don't get Weapon Mastery, so it's really up to you (and up to what magic weapons your DM is handing out). Now, you could pick some alternatives. If you get Polearm Master, a Quarterstaff or Spear are both solid options. And if you want a little bit of reach, you can take a Whip, which does step you down two damage dice, but the reach can be great if you want to attack outside of the reach of most creatures.

And no armor, so that's simple.

    Feats:

I'd be tempted to grab some martial feats - Polearm Master would actually work great if we wanted to fight with a Spear or Quarterstaff (the Pole Strike making up for the lower damage die) but I also think we need to race to a 20 Int here. As such, what I might do is just grab War Caster at level 4 (assuming we've gotten a 17 Int from our background) and then just ASI at 8 to ensure we're capped on it. That actually leaves us with the freedom to pursue non-Int General Feats at levels 12 and 16 if we get to those levels without guilt.

For Origins Feats, of course, I tend to ignore these. Savage Attacker could boost us slightly, but I generally don't find it worth it, and would prefer Lucky, Tough, or Alert.

    Spells:

While we're not spending more than one spell slot, we will be using a Cantrip, which we can wave into our Multiattack. The cantrips will of course be either Green-Flame Blade or Booming Blade, the former if there's an opportunity for cleave (or we're fighting something that is vulnerable to fire or otherwise harmed more by it like a Troll) and the latter in single-target situations.

Now, what of our concentration spell?

Well, CME is still a very solid choice. At 5th level, we'd be adding 3d8 damage to each of our attacks, which could mean 6d8 total. If that's what we're getting, are there any spells that can beat it?

Wizards have a lot of spells, so this is a challenging question. We're going to ignore spells that hinder a specific foe, as we'd prefer to just have all this active to attack as many targets as we like, even if we're assuming we're just hitting a Wyvern in a white room. We also don't want one that uses our action, as we want to take advantage of our Extra Attack, so nothing like Dragon's Breath.

Haste would net us an extra attack each turn, but our attacks themselves don't actually deal a ton of damage. We're doing like 1d8+5 per attack, so 9.5 versus the 3d8 we'd be getting from CME, or 13.5, or really 6d8 or 27 given two attacks. Now, if we had something like a Vicious Weapon, this would start to look more appealing, but even then it would only give us one extra attack that deals 1d8+2d6+5, or 16.5, which still isn't matching that.

(EDIT: It occurred to me re-reading this post that, technically, given that we can get the Attack Action as one of our hasted actions, we might be able to "replace" that one attack with a use of Booming Blade - essentially, this attack action would be an "Extra Attack" of 1. That's up for DMs to maybe rule on. This would bump the damage to an extra 2d8+5 rather than 1d8+5, so it comes to an average of 14. This still doesn't beat CME, though, because across two attacks, we're still getting nearly, but not quite, twice as much damage.)

What about Summon Spells? One among this category that I think has gotten a buff thanks to the fact that fewer monsters have resistance/immunity to nonmagical kinetic damage is Summon Elemental. While there's not as much utility to them as something like an Undead spirit, they hit hard. If we cast this at 4th level, we get two attacks from them for 1d10+8, which winds up being 13.5 damage, and that means that we're actually doing about as much with them as we would with CME at 5th level (it's slightly less because their crits don't hit as hard). Some other advantages in this specific situation are that an Earth Elemental is resistant to piercing and slashing damage, and they're all immune to poison, which makes it harder for the Wyvern to actually kill them.

And you know what, CME gets used so much. This is more fun. Summon Elemental it is! (And this leaves us a nice 5th level slot if we need it later on.)

Actually, before we move on, I wanted to mention a fun one that my best friend's Bard sometimes uses in our Ravnica game - Yolande's Regal Presence. This lets you knock back foes and make them prone if they enter an emanation around you, or if your emanation enters their space. It deals 4d6 psychic damage on a failed wisdom save, or half as much as a success. The reason I'd consider this is to take advantage of Booming Blade, similar to what we did with the Eldritch Knight's use of the Push mastery. But the sequence here isn't quite right - we'd need to bounce them and then run up to them to take advantage if we knocked them prone.

    Gameplan:

Pretty simple: if possible, we have the Elemental up (we're going Earth - while it'd be good to have a flying one to chase the Wyvern down, those lesser dragons are so fast that our Elemental wouldn't be able to catch up anyway, so it doesn't really matter). If not, we spend our first turn casting that. Then, as a bonus action, we activate our Bladesong. It honestly might not be a terrible idea for the Earth Elemental to try to grapple the Wyvern just to keep it in place, though your DM might be very strict about whether Extra Attack and Multiattack are the same thing, and if they can use one attack to grapple and a second to make a Slam.

The Elemental makes its attacks and then, turn two, we step in and start attacking as well.

And that's about it. I'll be honest, I'm not predicting this to do amazing damage, but we'll see. This is a resource-conservative build - we know we can go hog wild on them and do insane damage when we want, but this is for serious dungeon crawling.

    Mathing It Out:

Both we and our Elemental have a +9 to hit, which means an 80% hit chance.

The Elemental hits for 1d10+8, or 13.5, and an extra 5.5 on a crit. That's 10.8 plus .275, so 11.075 per attack. That then becomes 22.15 with two attacks.

Turn two, we're going to make two attacks, but the first is Booming Blade (or Green-Flame Blade).

Thus, this one is going to hit for 2d8+5, or 14, adding 9 on a crit, so 14x80% is 11.2 and 9x5% is .45, so we get 11.65 damage here.

Then, our second attack is just a normal attack for 1d8+5, so 9.5 on a hit and adding 4.5 on a crit. 9.5x80% is 7.6 and 4.5x5% is .225, so we get 7.825, or 7.83 to round off.

Thus, by turn two, we get a total of 41.63, or rounded off to 41.6.

And you know what, I think that's actually pretty damned respectable. It's not blowing the socks off of our other builds, but this is doing it all with a single spell slot that isn't even our highest-level slot.

There are also some nice defensive benefits here:

The Earth Elemental, for one, is going to be resistant or immune to all of the damage the Wyvern puts out. The Wyvern's most deadly attack is its tail stinger, but the Earth Elemental will take only 5 damage on average from it (when it normally does 35 total).

As for us, if we assume a +2 to Dex, we can cast Mage Armor, which, along with Bladesong, will put our AC at 20. Then, the Shield spell can push that to 25. Get our hands on some Bracers of Defense, and you're matching my super-tanky Eldritch Knight. Then, if we managed a +3 to Con, we'll get a +8 to concentration saves. On top of this, if we do get hit anyway, Song of Defense will allow us to spend spell slots to prevent 5 damage per spell level, which also means lowering the concentration save DC by 10 per spell level (of course still a minimum of 10). In other words, if we took the full burst of an Ancient Green Dragon's breath weapon (for other dragons we'd just use Absorb Elements,) which does 77 damage on average, we could expend a 5th level spell slot to drop that by 25. The 32 remaining damage would call for a concentration save with a DC of 16, which we would get on an 8 or higher, but with advantage, that 65% chance becomes an 87.75% chance to maintain concentration (our elemental would be fine). I mean, for sure if it was an ancient dragon and we were level 10, we'd want to spend our turn getting the hell out of there as quickly as we could, but still. Not bad.

Vengeance Paladin vs Wyvern

 Yeah, I'm in a bit of a thing here.

Also, fair warning: it's another Great Weapon Master build. Generally, I've always liked the aesthetic of wielding a big-old weapon (classically a hammer with a head the size of one's torso - which I realize is not remotely what real warhammers look like because you wouldn't be able to lift it. But this is fantasy!)

The Paladin arguably got nerfed in the 5.5 update, but even still, it remains among the best classes in the game. It doesn't hurt that the class also has spellcasting, of course.

And in this case, this is a build that I basically did play in a Curse of Strahd game. That was 5.0, of course, but the subclass and weapon loadout are the same. I hit so hard that some of the challenges that were meant to be extremely deadly wound up being surmountable - we beat the Shambling Mound in the Death House at level 2 (we were, admittedly, on the larger size of parties, with at that point a Barbarian, Grave Cleric, ranged Fighter, and Fighter/Warlock multiclass along with me).

Funnily enough, my Paladin had rolled stats, and while I started off with an 18 in Strength and 16s in both Con and Cha, I had a 7 in Dexterity. So, she was always last in initiative and got a nickname of "the finisher" because she tended to get crit-smites once everyone else had had a turn. Multiple times I got a -1 on Initiative.

Anyway, for our build we'll assume Point Buy and basically try to start with a 17 in Strength and 16 in Charisma - while it'd be nice to get +3 to Con, I think that the Charisma is going to help us more overall, and we have a d10 hit die, so in terms of HP, it's as good as a d8 character with +3 to Con.

    Feats:

So, Paladins are a bit MAD (multi-ability dependent) and so I think we're going to just get the one juicy feat here.

Now, I think you could make a solid argument for Polearm Master, as when we get to level 11 (though this is a level 10 build) you get to add a d8 to that. The thing is, Paladins are now pretty bonus-action dependent, and while getting the Hew attack is great, Great Weapon Master's primary benefit is the ability to add our proficiency bonus to our damage during our attack aciton, which is kind of a big deal. Pole Strike is going to be dropped if we want to crit-smite or if we need a bonus action for something like Lay on Hands. There is, for sure, a world where you grab Polearm Master and maybe Sentinel to get more attacks in, but I think we've got to go simple and straightforward here.

So, at level 8, we'll just cap Strength, and then in a hypothetical level 12/16, we'll be able to take things like Inspiring Leader and another Cha-boosting feat like War Caster.

    Subclass and Spells:

We're going Vengeance. The main benefit we get here is Vow of Enmity, which allows us to use Channel Divinity when we take the attack action (no additional action required) to get advantage on attacks against our target. We can also swap it to a new target if our target goes down.

While level 7's Relentless Avenger doesn't really come into play much, we do also get a pretty exciting spell - albeit a risky one - Haste. Haste is a great spell that carries a big risk: if you lose concentration, you're incapacitated and have a speed of zero until the end of your next turn. That is a real risk. If you have an Artificer who can craft a Mind Sharpener (or your DM just gives you one) this would be a really good investment. Also, if you can manage to get Magic Initiate: Wizard, picking up the Shield spell would be very nice (though I don't know if there are any official backgrounds that grant that feat and also boost Strength and Charisma - Genie Touched grants Dex and Cha, which could work great for a Dex-based dual-wielding Oath of Genies Paladin, but that's not what we're doing right now).

If we want to play it a big safer, we could do something like Crusader's Mantle, though this prevents us from attacking on our first turn. Divine Favor doesn't even take concentration, so there's no fear of losing it. Indeed, I might cast this alongside Haste - normally, in order for Divine Favor to become worth more than a simple Divine Smite, you need to hit 4 times. That'll be more likely to happen if you're making more attacks per turn. Vengeance also gets Hunter's Mark, but I think Divine Favor is usually going to be a better option, as you're only dropping 1 damage to no longer worry about concentration or target-switching.

    Game Plan:

So, here's what we're going to do: we'll start off on turn one casting Haste. Because we've used a spell slot, we can't cast Divine Favor this turn. However, with our extra hasted action, we can take the Attack Action and thus activate Vow of Enmity. We can only make one attack with this, though. If we've got Plate Armor, our AC is now 20, and we should have a +5 to Con saves for concentration.

Next, we make our single attack.

If this attack crits, we smite. While the Hew attack would hit for 2d6+5, or 14 (if it hits), a crit Divine Smite would hit for 4d8, or 18. HOWEVER: we can only do this with our once-per-day free Divine Smite, as we, again, can't cast a spell with a spell slot twice in a turn. If we've already done that, Hew away.

On our second turn, we'll use a bonus action to cast Divine Favor. This will prevent us from Smiting both because it's a leveled spell and also because we used our bonus action. However, it means that we'll be able to add 1d4 to the three attacks we make this turn.

And then, turn three onward, we can hold our bonus action for smites.

Note that we have some options here: a smite crit is incredible, but if we need to conserve some spell slots, we can just default to Hew. Generally, I think unless our first attack is a crit, I'm going to hold off on smites. But if we get to our second attack and it's just a normal hit, a good option would be to do a 2nd (or 3rd, but those are very precious) level Searing Smite, as this does more damage overall than a Divine Smite when upcast, because its scaling is basically 2d6 rather than 1d8 (divine smite does better on crits, though).

In other words, the actual damage output is going to be a little ambiguous, as there are situational things to consider here.

    Mathing it Out:

Turn one: this is when we just cast haste. With Vow of Enmity, we've got advantage, and so our attack should hit for 2d6+9 (5 from Strength, 4 from GWM). We have Graze, so we'll ignore the 5 for now and add it at the end. So, 2d6+4, with a +9 to hit. Against a Wyvern, we hit on a 5 or higher, so that's an 80% chance to hit, or 96% with advantage, and a 9.75% chance to crit for an extra 7. 2d6+4 is 11 average, so 11x96% is 10.56 and 7x9.75% is .6825, so we're doing about 11.2, and then we add in the guaranteed 5 from Strength to give us 16.2 damage on this turn. Not great, but we're ramping up.

Turn two, we now get to make three attacks. We'll start off casting Divine Favor, adding 1d4 to each of these attacks. I believe I can just calculate this separately, as our chance to hit hasn't changed, so we can figure out what this would add on each attack. With a 96% hit chance and a 9.75% crit chance, we can take that 2.5 and multiply it by 105.75%, giving us roughly 2.6. Thus, each attack is now doing not 16.2, but 18.8. And now, we're making three of these attacks (unlike the bonus action Hew attack, we do get to add the GWM proficiency bonus damage to our Hasted attack, as it's still technically the Attack Action). Thus, we're now doing 56.4 damage on turn two. Bit of a ramp-up, no?

Ok, now, let's talk about what we do on turn three.

Now that we have our bonus action free to do other things, as I see it, we have a couple options:

If we crit, we can either Divine Smite or do our Hew attack. Hew is a little better now, as it's got that extra d4. But it's still only doing 2d6+1d4+5, or 14.5. A divine smite on a crit would be 4d8 at 1st level, which is already 18, but it's also guaranteed - that 14.5 is slightly less because of the chance to miss.

We'll hold off on doing anything with a bonus action until we know whether we crit on either attack. So, if we crit on the first one, we'll gladly smite. Thus, it's a simple question of whether we crit on any of our three attacks. With a 9.75% chance to crit, that means a 90.25% chance we don't crit. But across three attacks, that's cubed, so we get more like a 74% chance we don't crit, and thus a 26% chance we do crit. The damage is very consistent if we divine smite on a crit.

Now, we can also adjust what level we're smiting at. But for our purposes, I'll just say it's a base level. So, 4d8 is an average of 18, and thus we can say that this adds 18x26%, or about 4.7 damage.

What if we don't crit, though?

I think I'd try for a 2nd level Searing Smite, which would do 2d6 immediately and then another 2d6 on the Wyvern's turn.

Well, first off, there's a 74% chance that that's there's no crit. But then, we also need to ensure that we actually hit on the last attack, which is a 96% chance (technically 9.75% of that is the crit chance. I think this is covered by the reduction to only 74% of the time, but I could be wrong. I also think it'll be nearly negligible.) So, we're going to 2nd level Searing Smite 74%x96% of the time, or about 71% of the time. Our Searing Smite will do 14 damage total (2d6 now and 2d6 later, and never a crit because then we'd be Divine Smiting) so 14x71% is 9.94, or rounded to 9.9.

So, on turn three, we have the same 56.4 damage we did on turn two, but now we add both of these (notably, their percentage likelihoods add up to 97%, which is pretty close to our 96% hit chance, so I think I'm more or less ok). That means, in total, we're doing 71 damage per turn.

Phew! That's better than anything I've tried so far, and by a lot!

Big caveat here is that if we do lose concentration on Haste, we're in big trouble.

Titan Druid (v2) vs Wyvern

 Well, like we did with the Hollow Warden while it was still in UA, we're going to try out the subclass from the most recent UA that I'd be most excited to play. Bringing back the idea of Wild Shape using Templates from the One D&D playtest, the Circle of Titans provides, I'd think, a more consistent shape-shifting druid experience. And on top of that, you can eventually become Gargantuan.

Of all Druid subclasses, this is the one that I think I'd be most excited to play in a real game, especially thanks to the fixes in the recent UA. But how do they do, damage-wise? Well, now that we've designated a Wyvern as our default monster to attack (rather than a Death Knight, which is too unusual of a monster for these purposes) we can try it out.

So, how do we build this?

    Stats and Feats

Naturally, we'll want to maximize our Wisdom, because it will increase our AC, our attack bonus, our Rend damage, not to mention our spell modifiers. Thus, we'll aim to start with a Wisdom of 17. The question, then, is whether we want to try to just cap it at level 8 or pick up general feats.

As a Druid, we are still a full spellcaster, so we'll have plenty we can do when we're not transformed, and that might encourage us to take feats that aid in spellcasting or allow additional spells. Fey Touched is a classic choice, letting us get a free Misty Step and then have it prepared, along with other spells (though I don't think we'll need Hunter's Mark, at least by level 10).

Given that our Titan Forms are pretty solidly "SAD" (single-ability-dependent,) I'm inclined to say that we can slow-play our Wisdom in order to cram as many General Feats in there as possible. At level 4, as always, we grab War Caster, but for level 8, we have a few options. Inspiring Leader is a very solid feat that works great on both Charisma and Wisdom characters in 5.5, though you won't benefit as much from the Temp HP.

While we will be primarily a melee combatant, none of the melee feats are likely to do much for us given that we're using natural weapons. We might get something like Sentinel later on, but probably not until we cap Wisdom. So, we'll assume we've got a 19 Wisdom by level 10, and thus a +4.

As for our other stats, I think basically we want to get a decent Con more than anything. We'll want decent Dex as well, both for Initiative and for our AC while out of combat. That said, I'm going to suggest going Magician rather than Warden for our Primal Order, because the bonuses from the latter stop being relevant when we Wild Shape. It does leave us pretty squishy when we aren't shifted, and unlike a Moon Druid, we can only be shifted for 10 minutes at a time, so we need to really make sure we save our spell slots to refresh Wild Shape if we run out of charges. Luckily, any spell slot will do, and for sure taking on our Titan Form is going to be the best use of a 1st level spell slot.

    As a side note: if we want a magic item to boost our Rend attacks, in theory a Wand of the War Mage could help, but it's a matter of interpretation. Technically you get the bonus to spell attack rolls "while holding the wand." And thus, does it actually raise your spell attack bonus or is it a bonus to the spells you cast while holding it? As a DM, I'd for sure interpret it in the former way, as otherwise there'd be no way for you to increase your attack bonus in this form (this is a big problem I have with the Moon Druid). If you're attuned, I'd say you get the bonus.

But we're not taking magic items into account here.

    Spells:

So, we have a lot of spells and spell-like effects from our Titan Forms.

We can only cast our Circle Spells while shifted, but if we spend our first turn casting a good concentration spell, we can keep that up.

Naturally, Druids are one of the two classes that gets Conjure Minor Elementals, so it's going to be hard to consider any other. We can upcast it to 5th level to get 3d8 extra damage on each attack. While we only get two attacks, that's still pretty significant damage, even if it's not like what we'd do with Scorching Ray. Note that we will really want to do our best to protect our Concentration. We might even spend our level 8 feat on Resilient Con and just worry about getting Wisdom capped later on. War Caster will help, but even if we have a +3 to Con, that still makes it somewhat easy to drop concentration.

So, if CME is adding potentially 6d8 damage per turn for us (27 average,) are there other options? We could do Summon Fey. Cast at 4th level (saving us some higher-level spell slots and only having two less damage than a 5th level version) it'd hit twice for 2d6+7. That's actually 28 average if they both hit. Now, CME will do more on a crit, so the truth is that CME is probably doing more damage overall. And the Fey is endangered both by our losing concentration as well as just taking too much damage. That said, it also has some utility.

I would say both are very worthy concentration spells, but for the sake of simplicity, we'll assume we're going CME. CME lasts 10 minutes while Summon Fey lasts an hour, which means both could plausibly be cast before combat starts, but I'm also going to just assume combat is something of a surprise, so we'll need our action on turn 1 to cast it.

    Titan Form:

I actually think our form doesn't really change our damage output much, but the Insectoid form will have Flyby at this level, meaning we can go in and out and potentially avoid getting hit. That said, it's only a 40-foot fly speed, so even if we fly in and out, we're probably only 20 feet away, and a Wyvern at least has 80 feet of fly speed, so unless we have a friend locking them down, they can still come after us.

I think the best damage ability for a form is the Behemoth's, giving them that Godzilla breath weapon, so I'd probably default to that unless we need the Insectoid's healing (Leviathan is going to probably only be useful if we need to fight in the water).

That said, for single target situations, we probably want to save our spell slots - if we needed to really burn something down, the breath weapon is great, but we'll be doing tons with our Rends anyway.

    Game Plan:

All right, so, when combat begins, we're going to start off by casting Conjure Minor Elementals at 5th level. This will add 3d8 damage to our Rend Attacks if the target is within 15 feet (and our Rends have a 10-foot reach, so that should be fine). We then go into our chosen Titan Form.

This gives us an AC of 17, and our Rend attacks will have a +8 to hit. At this level, they'll do 2d8+4 damage on their own, but CME adds 3d8, meaning each of our two hits will impact for 5d8+4. We can't attack yet this turn. We can be Huge sized by level 10. If we're worried about getting hit, we can expend a spell slot to get bigger. It's most efficient to use an odd-numbered spell slot - a 1st will get us to AC 18, a 3rd will get us to AC 19, and if we burn our other 5th level slot, we'll get AC 20. I think this is dubiously helpful - maybe if we're drowning in 1st levels we can get that little bump.

Next, we'll use 20 or more movement to activate Shock Wave. If we're running to our target, that's easy, but if we're already within melee range, we'll want to run around them (if there are multiple foes, this can be tough, as circling a target will probably draw an opportunity attack from one of its friends). If we can manage this, we can send our shockwave to knock the target prone. (Great if we're fighting non-hovering flying enemies like a Wyvern). Our saving throw DC will be 16 at this point, and a Wyvern has a +3, meaning that they fall on a roll of 12 or lower, or 60% of the time.

On turn two, we'll be able to attack. However, given that the Wyvern probably stood up on their turn, we'll need to run around them again to try to do Shock Wave.

With a +8 to hit, we'll hit on a 6 or higher, meaning a 75% hit chance. But we'll have advantage 60% of the time.

So, without advantage (40% of the time0 we'll hit for 5d8+4, or 26.5, and crit for 22.5 extra. Thus, 26.5x75% is 19.875 and 22.5x5% is 1.125, so this is 21 on average. Happening 40% of the time, that gives us 8.4.

With advantage, we have a 93.75% chance to hit, and the usual 9.75% chance to crit. 93.75%x26.5 is about 24.8, and 9.75%x22.5 is about 2.2, so we get about 27 here. Happening 60% of the time, that's 16.2.

Thus, each hit is going to do an average of 24.6. Across two hits, that's 49.2 damage per round.

That's pretty good, if not staggeringly so. But it's certainly very solid and comparable to a lot of other builds we've done. There are fewer moving parts, like our somewhat complex Eldritch Knight Booming-Blade-Push build.

Just out of curiosity, if we were willing to empty the tank, I'm wondering what the Behemoth's breath attack would do. If we spend a 5th level spell slot, it does 10d10 radiant damage and half as much on a success. Our DC is 16, and the Wyvern has a +0 to Dex (ok, this is one area where they may be atypical). So, if they roll a 15 or lower (75% of the time) we do full damage (55) and if they succeed, it's half (27.5). So, 55x75% is 41.25 and 27.5x25% is 6.875, so we'd be doing 48.125. That's less than we'd do with our attacks and CME.

However, there are some caveats: we get to do this on turn one, for one thing. So, if we imagine averaged out across a 3-round encounter, our CME version does 49.2 on turns two and three, but nothing on turn 1, so it's really more like 32.8. At this level we can't do three 5th-level breath weapons, but if we drop the third one to a 4th level spell slot, it just means it'll do 80% of the others, so that becomes 38.5. Thus, our average damage over three rounds is about 44.9 damage.

The other caveat is this: if we can hit more than one target with that breath, the overall damage we do becomes insane. While AoE doesn't kill any one target faster (though evidently it might if we're willing to burn out all our spell slots) it does wind up doing far more damage overall, and in a fight to the death, that's all relevant, even if, for your own safety, it's better to knock down monsters one at a time if you can do it faster.

Truly, given that it scales better than Lightning Bolt, I'm actually expecting that the breath weapon will get nerfed at some point, but I think this subclass, played pretty straightforwardly, will do just fine.

Hollow Warden Heavy Weapon Build (vs Wyvern)

 So, the Hollow Warden Ranger is the big subclass that is getting people to actually consider playing a Ranger again. The subclass' redesign after some criticisms of it in the UA brought to light a new bit of "tech" for Ranger subclasses, which is to use Favored Enemy as a resource akin to Wild Shape charges or Channel Divinity. It's more limited than that, as there's no way to trade spell slots for more uses and no refreshing it on a short rest.

Still, it does allow for a really cool new potential with Rangers, to perhaps wean them off of the Hunter's Mark spell - something that the 5.5 redesign emphasized in ways that the 5.0 version, for all of its flaws, didn't. I still think we might need another "alternate class features" update to fix it like we got in Tasha's for 5.0.

And let's also be clear: I think we're grading on a curve here.

Now, I'm going to do something a bit unconventional: Rangers differ from their d10 brethren by not getting training in Heavy Armor. I think the general assumption, even if you're going with a melee build, is that you'll be focusing on Dexterity as your primary stat. Hollow Wardens are nearly obligated to go melee. But while the Dual Wielder feat enables you decently when it comes to dexterity-focused melee builds (coupled with the Nick mastery, you start getting four attacks per turn by level 5) I still think, generally, that going Great Weapon Master with a Greatsword (or Glaive, if we also get Polearm Master as well) winds up being a bit better damage.

The one trick here is that we will still need at least a 14 in Dexterity, because otherwise we won't get the full benefit of Medium Armor.

Generally, on a thematic level, I'd probably go for a Dex build anyway, even if the damage is a bit lower, simply because there's so much benefit to having high dexterity.

But the fact that Hollow Wardens can get a reaction attack increases the value of hitting with the hardest possible weapon, and unless you have an Antimatter Rifle or other modern/futuristic firearms, that's the Maul and Greatsword. The Maul is probably more interesting with its Topple Mastery, but my math tends to show that Graze is pretty much always the best mastery for damage-dealing (except when fighting extremely low-AC targets).

Now, the only Ranger I ever played was actually a Strength-based dual-wielder (this was pre-Tasha's, and I wanted to play a Minotaur, who got bonuses to Strength and Constitution). He actually did ok in the landscape-traversal part of Tomb of Annihilation, though we didn't really get beyond level 5 (I intended to multiclass into Fighter for the remainder of the adventure, as he was meant to be a kind of 80s action hero-style commando). It does require spreading yourself pretty thin to get decent ability scores. If we start with a 17 in Strength, we're probably not getting more than a +2 to Dex, Con, and Wisdom, and basically have to dump Int and Charisma.

So, let's talk feats and such:

We're of course, taking Great Weapon Master at level 4 (if you're getting sick of this feat, perhaps I'll err on the side of ignoring it for future builds). At level 8, though, I'm tempted to just cap Strength because we probably want to be able to boost Wisdom or Con at levels 12 and 16.

For our weapon, again, we're going Greatsword.

For our fighting style, Great Weapon Fighting is kind of crap, so I'd probably go with something like Defensive (to make up for the fact we're stuck with Medium Armor) or Blindsight (kind of cool on a thematic level). Interception could be good, but we want our reaction free for Prowling Retribution.

As far as spells go, we're only going to have up to 3rd level spell slots. Elemental Weapon is kind of interesting - it adds a d4 of elemental damage and a +1 bonus to attack and damage rolls, which actually out-damages Hunter's Mark (the bonus damage is 1d4+1, compared to 1d6, which are both equal to 3.5, but we're also hitting a little more often). It is an action to cast (downside) but lasts an hour, so it's plausible to have it running before we fight our foe. It is a 3rd level spell, so somewhat more precious (we might want to save those for something like Conjure Barrage, which is now a very good spell) but for single-target damage, it's decent. Summon Fey could be great here, but our Wisdom is kind of crap.

If we figure, across 3 attacks, we're getting 3d4+3, that's like 10.5 extra damage if they all hit (which is also more likely if we cast this) while our Fey will hit only once admittedly for like 13. But the Fey will probably have a +6 to hit, while our own attacks with Elemental Weapon would have a +10 to hit.

Well, if we want to be thorough, we can fully calculate both, but I think we're going to stick to Elemental Weapon here.

So:

We'll hope we've pre-cast Elemental Weapon. Thus, our attack bonus is +10 to hit and we deal 2d6+1d4+6 on a hit. That becomes 2d6+1d4+10 if it's part of our attack action. We hit on a 4 or higher, so that's an 85% hit chance.

The only real damage bonus we get from our subclass here, then, is Prowling Retribution from our Wrath of the Wild. Ideally, we'll get this once a turn if we crowd in on our Wyvern target.

So, turn one (again assuming we have Elemental Weapon up already) we activate Wrath of the Wild and then make two Greatsword attacks.

As usual, we'll separate out the guaranteed Strength modifier damage here, so we get two attacks that add 2d6+1d4+5, or 14.5 on a hit, and an additional 2d6+1d4, or 9.5 on a crit. 14.5x85% is 12.325, and 9.5x5% is .475, giving us 12.8 average damage on each of these attacks. Then, we add back in the 5 guaranteed Strength damage from Graze, bringing those to 17.8 each, so we're looking at 35.6 damage. That's promising, honestly, because we're not finished.

On turn 2 onward, if we crit on either attack, we can make a bonus action attack. There's a 9.75% chance of that (the same as rolling a nat 20 with advantage). The damage here is a little lower, as we don't get the proficiency bonus. So, we're talking 2d6+1d4+6, though we save the 5 from Strength to add in later, meaning that a hit "adds" 2d6+1d4+1 to our damage, which is 10.5 on average. 10.5x85% is 8.925, and then the crit bonus is just as much as before, or .475, so if we get our Hew, that's 9.4, but we then add the Strength back in, giving us 14.4. However, this only happens if we got that crit (or if we downed another foe, but we're imagining this as pure single-target situations) so it's 14.4x9.75%, or about 1.4 damage on average. This brings us up to 37 damage per round.

Now, the last piece of the puzzle is our Prowling Retribution, which allows us to make a weapon attack as a reaction if we or a nearby ally is dealt damage by our target. That's not guaranteed - the Wyvern might miss with both of its attacks. With Half Plate, the Defensive Fighting Style, and Wrath of Nature, we'll have an AC of 19 at this point. A Wyvern has a +7 to hit. So, they need to roll a 12 or higher, meaning a 45% chance to hit. But across its two attacks, they'll get at least one hit roughly 70% of the time. We can use that as the chance we get to use this reaction attack.

Then, it's actually just like our Hew attack - it should do an average of 14.4 damage. That can happen 70% of the time, so it adds roughly 10.1 damage per round.

Thus, we're now looking at 47.1 damage per round, which looks pretty good to me.

That being said, getting hit is going to make it very likely we'll lose concentration. Thanks to Hungering Might, we get to add Wisdom to our Con saves (meaning we might aim to get a +3 to Wisdom, though this might wind up dropping our Con modifier by 1, which would even these out). We probably only have a +4 to Con saves, which will often help against the Bite attack, but the Sting is going to make it a lot harder to concentrate.

Some adjustments to consider:

We calculated this against a Death Knight with a dual-wield build (which is honestly more likely what I'd actually play). We would probably consider going Hunter's Mark rather than Elemental Weapon. While we only really have to make a single Nick weapon attack (once we weave in a Scimitar or Dagger for our "light weapon property" attack, that will let us attack with our Shortsword for our bonus action attack, because we did actually make an attack as part of the action with a different weapon in a different hand). Though, now that I think of it, while we wouldn't be able to boost the damage on the Nice weapon, we'd get overall more damage from the spell because we're still making four attacks with the Shortsword per round compared with three with the Greatsword. But I think Hunter's Mark still might be the right call, because I don't think +1 to hit with 4/5 attacks will give us more than an extra d6 of damage we'd be getting by boosting the damage of our Scimitar.

I still don't think the dual-wield build will do as well, because we'd be losing 8 damage from the hits of our Attack damage, as well as the little bit of extra damage from our Hew attacks. But it probably does decently.

For the record, if we had a 3rd level Summon Fey, they would have a +6 to hit (or +7 if we got Wisdom to +3 ). They deal 2d6+6 Force damage on a hit. So, if we do have a +7 to hit, they're hitting on a 7 or higher, so 70% of the time. It's 14 damage on a hit and 7 more on a crit. 14x70% is 9.8 and 5%x7 is .35, so it's an average of 10.15 extra damage, or 10.2 rounded off.

But then we need to adjust our own damage.

We now only have a +9 to hit with our own attacks, so we hit 80% of the time. Our attacks deal 5 guaranteed damage and then add 2d6+4 on a hit and 2d6 on a crit, so 11 and 7. 11x80% is 8.8, and 7x5% is .35, so we're looking at 9.15, then adding that guaranteed 5 for 14.15 per attack, or 28.3 with both attacks.

Now, our Hew attack will be 5 guaranteed, and then 2d6 on a hit and an extra 2d6 on a crit, so we can combine our probabilities for 85% of 7, or 5.95, giving us 10.95 damage per hew attack. That's 9.75% of the time, so we've got basically 1 extra damage per round.

Then, 70% of the time, we get our reaction attack, also doing 10.95 on average, so about 7.7.

Thus, if we go Summon Fey, we get 10.2+28.3+1+7.7, or 47.2.

Wow. That's actually slightly better - literally by 0.1 - than the Elemental Weapon version. Actually, given that the Fey has some additional utility (and can soak damage for us) I might prefer it.

Getting Six Feet Deep into the Path to the Grave

 The Grave Domain is maybe the Cleric subclass I'm most familiar with. One of my most consistent players in my 6-years-running Ravnica campaign is a Grave Cleric (he was Orzhov but has broken with the guild over the efforts by the guild leadership to maintain their hold on power through undeath - actually, by this point in the campaign, the Obzedat have all been banished to true death in Agryem, and there are a lot of internal reforms), but on top of that, when I did (most of) Curse of Strahd, our Cleric was also a Grave Cleric.

The new version of this subclass sparked a lot of debate because of the perception that it had been nerfed. I want to investigate that.

Now, several features changed. Sentinel at Death's Door is more effective now when it's used, but you can only use it when a target is Bloodied, meaning that you can't save a friend from a big crit at the start of combat. It's basically a trickier judgment call now - typically I see it just automatically used if the Cleric has a reaction open to negate any critical hit.

But the much biggest controversy is over Path to the Grave.

The Xanathar's version of this had you use your Channel Divinity to set up a monster, giving them vulnerability to the next attack that hit them. Ideally, you get someone like a Paladin to hit them and then expend a high-level Divine Smite, or have a Rogue land a Sneak Attack. It required careful planning, though the Cleric can opt to Ready this action to ensure that the right character is about to attack (I'm not sure if I'd let you declare this after you see an ally crit, though if you're waiting for them to crit and they never do, it'd be a wasted action... might be ok).

Anyway, the new version works very differently:

Now, you curse the target (no save) as a bonus action (you do need to be within 30 feet). This lasts until the start of your next turn. The curse imposes Disadvantage on Attack Rolls and Saving Throws. Then, when you or an ally lands an attack on the target, you can end the curse (no action required) to cause the attack to deal Radiant or Necrotic damage equal to your Cleric level.

Let's unpack things a little:

First off, the disadvantage that the curse imposes is entirely new. That aspect, at least, is a full buff.

But what about the damage?

Well, you're doing 3-20 damage, depending on your level. What's interesting about this is that it really doesn't matter who hits or how hard. An off-hand dagger attack is going to benefit from this just as much as a Paladin smiting on a crit. It's flat damage, and the only thing you need to deliver it is for someone to hit the target before your next turn. This can even be you, as this only takes your bonus action to activate.

Now, vulnerability did double all damage, effectively (if they were resistant, you'd negate that, which still doubles the damage they would have done. It doesn't help with immunity, but that's just doubling zero). So, basically, it's a question of whether the ally whose attack you're boosting was dealing damage with a single attack higher than your level.

I do think there's a good chance they were. Even a dual-wielding fighter is going to probably be doing something like 1d6+3 damage on a hit when you first get this, which is obviously more than the 3 you're adding.

But at higher levels, what kind of damage are we looking at? A Paladin hitting with a +3 Greatsword and with Great Weapon Master and capped Strength at level 17 is going to hit for 2d6+1d8+14, which is 25.5. So, yeah, vulnerability would be better.

But a level 20 Monk might still only be hitting on an individual attack for 1d12+10 (if they have +3 Wraps of Unarmed Prowess and had capped their Dex before hitting level 20,) meaning that Path to the Grave would actually be more damage for them than the old version (well, if they crit the vulnerability would be better).

    Look: I think in a vacuum, this does look like a nerf. It's certainly not going to enable insane burst damage the way the old version worked.

But the disadvantage imposed by the curse can potentially be really helpful, making it harder for them to resist things like grapples and stuns, or just full on damage from something like your own Spirit Guardians.

I maintain that if we had not previously had the old Grave Domain Cleric, people would actually be pretty excited about the one out of Horrors Within. Really, only the Phantom Rogue, to me, missed the mark (it could be so much better if you got the Spirit Trinkets earlier).