New Weapon Types with D&D Beyond Drops

 Now that we've nearly exhausted the World of Warcraft book (fittingly coming out at a time when a massive number of players are dropping into the new Classic Plus version of WoW called WoW Forever - amazing timing that's actually probably less intentional than you'd expect. Consider how long after Descent into Avernus Baldur's Gate 3 actually wound up coming out) we're going to look at the monthly source of new content that I sometimes forget exists, but really shouldn't.

D&D Beyond Drops has given us one pretty good subclass, a lot of monsters and also feats and backgrounds and such.

November's slew of drops has a bit of a Planescape theme to it, giving us the long-awaited (maybe?) Bariaur species, which was one of the three original playable races in the original 2nd Edition Planescape books (along with Githzerai and Tieflings, the latter of which obviously took off pretty well).

But the thing I'm here to talk about is instead the three new weapon types.

It's actually kind of nuts that D&D doesn't play around with new kinds of weapons more. In the WoW book, they suggested using various weapons to approximate the very over-the-top Warglaives that Demon Hunters use - the famous legendary (or Artifact in D&D terms) Warblades of Azzinoth, wielded by Illidan, are presented as a pair of scimitars (great except I'd wish the main-hand one had a different weapon mastery). (Actually, in fairness, the legendary weapons from WoW, which were a particularly rare drop if you defeated Illidan, were considered one-handed swords because Warglaives wouldn't be added to the game until Demon Hunters were in 2016, nine years after Illidan was fought in the Burning Crusade expansion.)

Now, I also got the Grim Hollow Player's Guide a few months back, and that actually has a whole slew of advanced weapons that have new masteries and properties.

But in 5E's official releases, we've only occasionally gotten new weapons, like the Double-bladed Scimitar (which actually looks more like a polearm than the Warglaive, which actually looks like a two-bladed scimitar... should these swap names?) or I believe a new weapon in Tomb of Annihilation.

So there's precedent.

But the addition of weapon masteries has actually made new weapon types matter a bit more than they used to. So, let's take a look at these and see how they feel, and what kind of characters might want to use them.

Bola:

Bolas are martial weapons and have the and Finesse, Thrown (20/40) properties, and the Topple mastery. They deal 1 flat bludgeoning damage (plus ability modifier, of course). They weight 2 pounds and cost 2g.

    Like the Blowgun, this is one of those weapons that will probably need to be quite souped up magically to make it appealing if you're trying to maximize damage, given that its damage die is effectively 1d1. That being said, with the Topple mastery (which I think makes it unique among weapons with which you can make ranged attacks) could actually be very helpful from a utility perspective. Hitting a flying foe in particular (if it doesn't have hover) could be really clutch.

    I wouldn't recommend building a damage-dealing character around this, given the low damage, but it might not be a terrible idea to carry a few of these around if you have the weapon mastery to spare. Fighters will obviously have tons of weapon masteries active. Note as well that Rogues will have proficiency with this despite being martial because it has the Finesse property (and thus also works for Sneak Attack).

    You can also whip this around in melee, though I think you'd be far better off with some other weapon unless you get, like a Vicious Bola that will be getting bonus damage dice. Still, a Vicious Bola winds up doing only 1 more damage than a mundane Maul.

    So, more of a utility option in most cases.

Pitchfork:

The classic weapon of angry mobs (equip your Commoners with these!) this is a simply weapon that deals 1d6 piercing damage, has the Reach and Two-Handed properties, and the Push mastery. It weighs 3 lbs and costs 1g.

    First off, the cost feels high - a peasant can't be throwing around a gold. But for an adventurer, it's pretty negligible.

    Now, a d6 is the lowest damage you can get with a two-handed melee weapon, but I think the existence of Reach justifies this - normally reach will sort of "downgrade" a weapon by a damage die, like how a Halberd is like a Greataxe, but goes from a d12 to a d10 in exchange for an extra 5 feet of reach.

    And actually? For a melee weapon wielded classically by simple farmers, reach is probably incredibly valuable - along with Push, it's all about fending off scary monsters, and being able to strike them from beyond the monster's reach is really valuable (and I'm given to understand that this was a huge part of actual medieval warfare - that polearms were far, far more popular and common in actual combat than your classic swords and axes.

    What this weapon is perfect for is a Monk, because you'll be upgrading past the d6 by level 5 anyway, and this is I believe the only simple melee weapon with reach. Without the Heavy property (which is why Monks don't use Greatclubs - though also they can get a d8 weapon just by using a Quarterstaff or Spear with two hands) there's nothing stopping your Martial Arts bonuses to applying here. And given that a lot of Monk weapons are often taken from the tools of civilians (which back in pre-industrial days was like 95% farmers) this fits incredibly well.

Weighted Chain:

This is, I'd guess, a weapon with far less historical precedent, but it's cool as hell - it's a bigass chain you swing around at your foes. This is a martial weapon that deals 1d8 Bludgeoning damage, and has the Finesse, Heavy, Reach, and Two-Handed properties and the Graze mastery. It costs 15g and weighs 10 lbs.

    We need to unpack this: this is the only weapon with both finesse and reach, and the presence of finesse means that a Rogue can actually use it. Now, that being said, the Graze mastery, while very good (though I might have overrated it a bit when 5.5 first came out because I didn't think about how many enemies you face with lower ACs than a boss-level threat) is not very good for Rogues, given that they get far more of their damage from Sneak Attack than their actual weapon hit (in contrast, this makes "d1" weapons like the Bola more appealing to a Rogue than to other classes).

    Much as the Glaive downgrades its damage die from a Greatsword to get its Reach (sort of - 2d6 is a little better than a d12, but their max damage is the same), this is downgrading one die further to get Finesse.

    While it is a finesse weapon, though, this is a heavy weapon, in terms of both weight and the property. In terms of weight, your table might completely ignore carrying capacity, so who cares? But if you don't ignore it, that makes this potentially a little tricky to use on a character that isn't Strength-based.

    However, the property, which does mean we're going to have to have at least 13 Strength (while it is a finesse weapon, heavy imposes a Strength requirement simply on any melee weapon. we just haven't had a Heavy Finesse weapon before,) also does meant that this is a valid option for a Great Weapon Master build. To get that feat, you'll need a 13 in Strength anyway, so if you have the ability score points to spare, you could use this on a Rogue. Sadly, a Monk cannot use this because while the Rogue gets any martial weapons with Finesse or Light, Monks only get martial weapons with the light property (they sort of don't care about Finesse, as they effectively get that with their Martial Arts feature anyway).

Overall Thoughts:

Anyway, while your players might not think to take these when they build their characters (and in 5.5, class starting equipment doesn't let you choose "any martial weapon" anymore, now giving you specific weapons as part of that package - though you can also just take gold) DMs can get these into their games simply by rewarding magical versions of them. Have your players find a +1 Weighted Chain and see them exclaim "wait, a what?"

I will say, I really like the Grim Hollow weapons (especially the Cumbersome ranged weapons, which require you to use Strength instead of Dexterity for them) but these require a fighting style to pick them, which is a bit of a drag.

But yeah, Drops has been a fun sort of constant flow of cool ideas that can be plugged in wherever.

My First Brand New Dungeon in WoW Forever: Ruins of Lordaeron

 Ruins of Lordaeron is one of the new dungeons that never appeared in Mainline WoW that has been added in WoW Forever. It's designed for characters in their late teens or early 20s (levels, not age, of course).

The dungeon is built in the area that, in the post-Cataclysm WoW, is accessible above Undercity, or the ruins thereof now, officially serving as the modern Forsaken capital, even if it's certainly not as detailed or dense as the Undercity.

You more or less make a U-shaped path through the ruined capital city, around the central keep where, outside of the instance, you can access the elevators down into Undercity (and of course, the throne room where Arthas murdered his father the king).

In terms of dungeon design, this is decidedly old-school, calling to mind the scattered packs of monsters like you see in a dungeon like Stratholme - it's not too difficult to only pull one pack at a time, but you occasionally get patrols (including a couple patrolling bosses). Twice, or maybe three times, there are bosses that come after a wave of undead monsters spawn.

This being decidedly pre-Wrath, the threat here is the remaining Scourge holding the surface of the city. Most of the foes are undead, though the first part of the dungeon is a bunch of giant spiders.

As you come around the southern bend of the ruins, you'll see a cemetery, which you have to sort of loop around back to to face the final boss, a skeletal mage recalling the one in the Scarlet Graveyard.

I think the map here is only minimally changed from what exists in Modern WoW, though the routes are cut off in a way to keep you going in roughly the right path. However, the entire dungeon is overrun with a thick necrotic fog, which makes it profoundly dark and foreboding. The final cemetery area has some glowing green vapors that give it a nice, otherworldly quality.

Indeed, the lighting and weather effects in WoW Forever are quite impressive, and the decision to make nights truly dark (especailly in Undead-associated places like Tirisfal Glades, though to be fair, I've been following a Tirisfal-Silverpine-Hillsbrad path that has tended to keep my in the spooky woods and fields) both adds to the atmosphere and mood and also does genuinely challenge you to see where you're going. I don't know that that's such a bad thing, but I imagine there must be accessibility features that can make the darkness less intense.

I will say that tanking a dungeon, at least at level 20, is a very different beast than modern WoW. DPS has unlearned the need to actually give the tank a chance to get threat on their enemies, but at these low levels, it's also not like the DPS can't take a few hits. While I did get Consecration, it's both very mana-intensive and also doesn't guarantee that the enemies will pay attention to me if a Mage is spamming Arcane Explosion.

At least so far, I'm not seeing a ton of players using crowd control, but given how distinct AoE versus single-target abilities are (and how few of the former there are at these levels,) it seems far more viable than in Modern WoW, where it's rarely worth doing, and even if you do, there's so much passive AoE going out that it's quite hard to avoid breaking CC.

I've never liked that the challenge of Mythic Plus is all built around how quickly you can finish the dungeon. While I get that this is the easiest thing to use, and prevents groups from cheesing high-difficulty dungeons by, like, waiting long enough to pop Bloodlust/Heroism on every pull, it has meant that carefulness is basically passé, and you're incentivized to sprint to the next pull, or even chain-pull.

(Note for tanks: chain pulling is not just pulling multiple groups at once. It's when you've gotten a mob down to one or two low-health enemies who will probably die to DoTs and start the next pull then.)

The disempowerment - or rather, the rolling back of the assumption of empowerment that we have in Modern WoW - slows the pace of these dungeons. But in a way... the fact that the dungeons themselves are designed like they made them in 2004, when you had bosses that just did like, one unusual thing (this one knocks the tank in the air occasionally!) makes me feel less excited to take my sweet time going from pull to pull.

I think you could argue that modern dungeon and raid bosses are too complex - that you need to take a seminar to learn how to even attempt some bosses. But I think there's a middle-ground of memorable bosses with unique abilities that require you to change up your strategy while still being explainable in two or three sentences that I'd be happier with.

Ruins of Lordaeron is actually relatively accessible for Alliance players, because the ruins above Undercity don't have any guard NPCs, at least until you get past Terenas' tomb (hey, I thought he was cremated and the urn used as Kel'thuzad's phylactery. What's even in that sarcophagus?) While I do think you get flagged for PvP, it's a relatively quick jaunt over to the instance portal. By contrast, the other new "in a city" dungeon is, I believe, deep within Ironforge (I want to say through the doors in the throne room that goes to the lower city where Diamond Magni was for several expansions - though I haven't seen it myself because I haven't actually played any other characters than the Undead Paladin on Forever). I suspect, much like Ragefire Chasm or Stormwind Stockades, that members of the opposite faction should well and truly just skip that one.

WoW Forever Will Stay Fun if You Can't Fall Too Far Behind

 I was thinking about WoW Forever, which I've been playing for the past few days.

I've got an Undead Paladin (I resolved that if I make a character of each class, I'll have to do it on the opposite faction of my oldest character in Modern WoW, meaning my Paladin, Hunter, Druid, and Warlock have to be Horde and my Shaman, Mage, Warrior, Rogue, and Priest have to be Alliance) up to level 19, planning to run the new Ruins of Lordaeron dungeon when I hit 20 (and get Consecration).

I'm also planning on having each class go as the spec that I play on that character (or if not that actual character, as a few of those old toons have been demoted to secondary alts for their class, then the one I play in Modern) because, well, the classes play so differently that I don't really feel like there's much redundancy. A Protection Paladin in Midnight is almost unrecognizable from one in WoW Forever - I think the only two spells they'll share are Consecration and Judgment, and the latter is very different in Modern than it is in Forever.

Anyway, leveling is a slow process. Part of that is stuff that I don't really feel all that nostalgic about - like being unable to tag mobs that another person has hit first. I'll note that I do like the intent of this, which I believe is to get you to group up with other players if you're questing in the same area. But the number of people I've tried to group up with only to be unceremoniously declined makes me feel instead that I'd rather I didn't see so many active players. This is something that kind of sucks in an MMO: almost all the changes to these sorts of systems are meant to make you feel glad that there are other players out there. But I'm brought back to blissful it felt when there was basically no one else in a zone where you were questing - at least until you got to a group quest with a bunch of elites to fight.

Still, leveling being a slow process is actually... a good thing?

I think that if there's one real problem at the heart of Modern WoW, it's that we feel rushed. Make sure you experience all this content in the current season before it becomes irrelevant! That means leveling up as fast as you can. It means gearing up as fast as you can. It means that there's less time to soak in the atmosphere of a quest line, to feel like you're one lone adventurer (or maybe a small group of adventurers) in a world of mystery and danger.

However, the early days of WoW, and I think vanilla in particular (though I speak from only a couple months of experience in Vanilla, and was somewhat ignorant of what the game even looked like at max level,) put far less emphasis on the "endgame." To a certain extent, it was kind of frustrating, because the massive raids were experienced by only a tiny fraction of the players (I believe that less than 1% of players during Burning Crusade even went into Sunwell Plateau, or maybe that was how many finished it).

Because endgame was kind of this far-off, distant thing that most players didn't even expect to see, you could really focus on the leveling process, and not worry so much about how long it was going to take you to get to the cap.

I hope that WoW Forever can sustain that feeling.

And I think a key to this is that feeling of horizontal progression - if they pull it off.

See, here's where I see this falling apart:

Let's say that players start doing Molten Core, or the new Barrow Deeps or Hyjal Summit raids. Then, a few months later, they maybe open up Blackwing Lair, along with some new raid, like... I don't know, those caverns below Stonetalon Mountains that were a big thing in Warcraft III but have never appeared in WoW.

It'll be the new raid, so I'm sure the novelty of it will draw people to try it out. But if the gear there is pure sidegrades, will people run it once and then kind of lose interest?

This is obviously why Modern WoW has these seasonal resets - if you're a raider, you're sure to check out the Venomous Abyss because the gear you get there is just fundamentally better than what you could get in the Voidspire raid.

But, of course, that then leads you into the opposite problem: that the Voidspire gathers dust as no one has any mechanical reward for going through it.

Indeed, given the whole seasonal model, my (basically dead) guild's role as the "Clean Up Crew," running Naxxramas after Ulduar had come out and running Ulduar after Trial of the Crusader had come out, doesn't really make sense, as you can get better gear from doing pretty easy solo content.

So I would say that between the two options, unless they can come up with some genius third option, is to lean more toward the former. Make the reason to go into the new raids be because it's something new.

And... I would also not come out with new raids as often as they do in Modern WoW. With Modern, a fast patch cadence was a big priority after the content droughts of earlier expansions.

But I think WoW Forever should keep a foot on the brakes - don't overwhelm the players with too many endgame options. If anything, expand the low-level content, adding new races and zones to encourage players to make new characters and start new journeys and reset to a lower power level.

Like, I don't think you want to leave players who hit the level cap with nothing to do. But I think it's crucial that what level-cap content you do make remains there, waiting for players to hop into it even if the raid has been out for five years. As long as it doesn't feel like you've got to rush to catch content before it vanishes into obscurity, you'll be able to cultivate that relaxed pace of the game.

Like, I never ran Sepulcher of the First Ones during Shadowlands, only coming to it I think after War Within came out (generally, raids become soloable two expansions after their initial release). While I'm happy I've been able to see it (I feel like there's some ineffable, half-remembered aesthetic from, like, 1960s animation that the First Ones' aesthetic reminds me of) but I certainly don't feel like I get a sense of how it actually felt to do these bosses at an appropriate level. That one guy that you chase down a long trail... I can take it down before it's gone like 10 feet.

So, truly, they really need to make the endgame a relaxed field of options that never go out of style.

To be frank, if they made a version of WoW like that, with that sort of "all endgame content is current" approach, but then added in all the conveniences of, well, modern class and quest design, modern environmental design, and with the story having moved forward as it has in Modern WoW... that might actually be my preferred form for WoW to take.

As it stands, though, I think I'm still more invested in the 22-year history of the Core/Modern/Retail/Mainline/Real WoW, and all the various ways the game has grown and evolved. I've been playing more of Forever this week than Modern, but that's largely due to the fact that we're quite a ways into the current patch, and while I still do have to polish off some armor set appearances, I'm sort of ok taking it easy until the 12.2 Worldcore patch comes out.

WoW Forever is Reminding Me How Far We've Come (But Also What We've Left Behind)

 I've been there. I was there, in the trenches. I started playing World of Warcraft in the fall of 2006, and I have never once let my subscription lapse. That's not some misguided declaration of loyalty to a company that, let's face it, has plenty of reasons not to deserve our loyalty, or pride, but just an acknowledgement that, while I did come in right at the tail end of vanilla, I've seen WoW through all of its eras.

WoW Forever is built on the foundation of WoW Classic, which rolled back World of Warcraft to how it was in 2004 (mostly). I think one of the biggest motivations for the release was the feeling of what was lost when the original continents were profoundly revamped in the Cataclysm expansion, but it has also been there as a way to preserve an earlier version of the game.

Classic itself is actually two versions of the game, with the "true Classic" preserving the 1.X era prior to Burning Crusade, and then a gradual revisit to various expansions - which makes sense, given that I, for one, feel far more nostalgia for Wrath of the Lich King than my brief time in Vanilla and even my full time through Burning Crusade. In fact, it's sort of three, because now there's apparently Burning Crusade Anniversary.

What impresses me here is that, for the same subscription fee (that hasn't gone up, I think, since 2004 - though I get the 6-month version that does lower the cost-per-month) Blizzard is now running, effectively, 5 versions of WoW that anyone with any subscription can access.

But to come back to my initial point: I was there in Vanilla, and even if I didn't get anyone to the level cap until about a year later after Burning Crusade had been out for the better part of 2007, the actual experience of leveling up through the Old World was mostly unchanged other than a few new quests here and there and some Blood Elf and Draenei NPCs.

WoW Forever's longterm plans are somewhat up in the air - though the presence of a very Cataclysm-accurate Gilnean peninsula on the world map does feel like it hints that this zone will be opened up at some point (and I wonder if that also means the Worgen will be brought in as playable).

Playing WoW Forever, the class design and pace of play does, actually, take me back. It's a far, far slower game than what we have in Modern WoW (I was going to say what we have in 2026, but of course, this is technically also 2026). Going to class trainers to learn new abilities and even ranks of your abilities, having only one flight point per zone, having to wait to get a mount until level 40. The lack of any Zeppelin between Thunder Bluff and Orgrimmar, so you have to hoof it (literally if you're a Tauren) across the Barrens to get your flight points.

And... I don't actually hate that.

See, by contrast, I felt very dumb the other day when, in Modern WoW, trying to complete my tier set appearance set on my Shaman, I accidentally put a Champion-quality cloak in the Catalyst, wasting a charge on it when I wanted to put a Hero-quality one in, so that once I get a full set of hero gear upgraded with crests, I'll have all four versions of the Shaman tier set's appearances.

There's an efficiency to gaining power in Modern WoW, and a real feeling that you can and thus should race to get the highest-quality gear you can that certain things fall by the wayside. Leveling up now is a brief inconvenience on a new character, and even content from the same expansion, but from a previous season, is kind of skipped in favor of whatever is new.

For my altoholic tendencies (see the name of the blog,) this is really enabling, because I can grind away and get really good gear on a character of every class in a season. It's not, like, trivial. It's a lot of stuff to do. But it's relatively easy. Tier 11 Delves start to be pretty easy once you get Valeera's level capped out, and thus a flow of gear that only a few expansions ago would be better than anything I'd ever expect to have (at least while it was relevant) is what I've now come to expect.

So, slowing down, making that journey to level 60 a real challenge and substantial commitment, is actually pretty cool. You get to feel a bit more like an adventurer in a more traditional sort of RPG. I mean, in D&D, barely anyone even makes it to the level cap.

And this isn't just about the speed of leveling, but also the challenge of the world around you - just going into an area filled with monsters is going to test you. I just did some quests in Silverpine Forest that took me to Pyrewood Village. Teaming up on my tanking (while he's going with a tank build, ironically his first like 12 talent points go into the Retribution tree) Paladin with a DPS paladin (or at least he was wielding a two-hander) and a Frost Mage, we had some hairy moments there when we got more Worgen attacking us than we had meant to fight. We wound up getting through it ok, but I definitely blew through some healing potions and the other paladin had to heal me occasionally while I tanked all the foes.

And that felt epic - it made Pyrewood Village feel like a truly scary and deadly place.

But:

The design of the classes (and here I've really only gotten to play a Paladin, but it has reignited a lot of memories) is... janky as hell.

I'm not really talking about power levels, though I guess that this is going to come hand-in-hand. What I mean is that when I am fighting on my Undead Paladin, here's what I do:

I get Seal of Fury up (a new spell designed for tanking,) refreshing it every 30 seconds, which is how long it lasts. Then, I do Divine Strike, a new ability that does a bit of holy damage, and has a 10-second cooldown. Then, I do Judgment, which, with Seal of Fury up, does some holy damage and then taunts the foe. This also has a 10-second cooldown, though I have started investing in talents that will get it down to 8.

That is it.

In other words, there's a lot of downtime where you just watch your character swing their weapon, hoping that they'll crit, or at least not miss.

Now, sure, maybe that's particularly true of Paladins, whose Seal system does lean more into buffing their auto-attacks than doing something active. Hell, back in the day, we didn't get Divine Strike. There can be some interplay with various seals, swapping which one you have for different judgment effects. But that is still relying on auto-attacks and that same Judgment cooldown.

There are other reversions: there's no open tagging for enemies. If someone isn't in your party and hits a foe first, you can't get credit for it. Ok, fine - you don't want an area with 30 people questing there to be a trivial "just tag everything with a DoT". And you also don't get to share quest item drops unless it's from a unique enemy - sure, you bring 3 people to Pyrewood Village to collect shackles from the Worgen there, so you'll need to take out 3 times as many Worgen." But then, we hit a part where we all needed to get a book out of a bookshelf in the Pyrewood Inn. The other paladin looted it first. Then, we had to wait about a minute before the book respawned within the bookshelf (which you sort of opened like a chest) for the next person to get it, and then once again for the last player to get their book for the quest.

This kind of friction... is not something I've been pining for. This is not what I'm nostalgic for.

The only reason, really, that I'm bothering with WoW Forever at all is just to see what's new. It's really exciting to see Dalaran towering over Lordamere Lake (though it also drives home how absurdly tightly-packed the original 7 human kingdoms were - Lordaeron City and Dalaran are about as far from one another as Boston and Cambridge).

Ok, no, that's not entirely true. I am also bothering with it because of the difference in stakes. One of the core philosophies that Blizzard talked about with it was the idea that players aren't these grand and important champions, but are just adventurers of little renown in a big and scary world.

And that vibe is something that you can start to miss.

Again, the analogous thing with D&D is that by the time you hit higher levels, you have such incredible power (well, if you're a spellcaster) that the only things that can really challenge you are world-threatening or even cosmic threats. There's no reason to spend months trekking across the wilderness, foraging for food, when the Wizard can cast a spell every day that teleports you to any location in a different plane of existence.

Our characters in Modern WoW, especially if you started in those first couple expansions, though, have earned that epic tier of play - at a certain point, when you've been part of the team that took down the Lich King, and also Deathwing, and Ragnaros, and beat both Kil'jaeden and Archimonde twice... you just aren't a random nobody anymore.

The expansions have gone from making you earn that respect to just acknowledging it and assuming it. I think this started with Warlords of Draenor, where the player character was your faction's chosen Commander for the expedition to Draenor. They doubled down with this in Legion by making you the leader of your class order (or at least a member of its most elite council).

What this allows the game to be is super epic. But it also means that it's really hard, maybe impossible, to reset things so that we come in as faceless nobodies again.

But what's the longterm plan?

As someone who feels a strong attachment to Modern WoW, there is a feeling of... worry? Jealousy? Anxiety? surrounding the apparently massive success of WoW Forever - which supposedly had the biggest launch in WoW history, beating even Cataclysm (while Cata is probably very few peoples' favorite expansion, it rode in on the coattails of Wrath of the Lich King, which is very many peoples' favorite expansion, and I think the longstanding peak of active players for WoW was actually after the Cataclysm launch).

Part of me is enjoying the nostalgic trip to this 2004-like version of WoW, with all the jankiness. But another part of me feels like I'm going mad: is this really how people want to spend their time in Azeroth? Autoattacking, fighting to tag mobs, spending fifteen minutes running across a zone just to get a quest that sends you right back where you came from?

Truthfully, I think that the enlightened response here is to just be happy that both versions exist, that the varying versions of WoW let people with different tastes and desires for what they want out of the game to get what they prefer. And if it turns out that the people who want the updated, forward-looking, slicker, and maybe more fast-paced (both in terms of gameplay and content releases) game are in the minority among WoW players, is that so bad?

Humans both like to feel that they can think for themselves and be independent and unique, but at the same time, we get a lot of comfort from people agreeing with us. Like: I don't care at all about sports. I don't watch them. But solely because I grew up outside of Boston, I have it deeply programmed into me that being a Red Sox fan is morally correct, and being a Yankees fan is a moral failing. And it's absurd, because it does not affect me in any way shape or form whether someone out there disagrees over which team is better to like. (Fun fact, my sister lives in Brooklyn, and her husband grew up as a Yankees fan, so as a compromise, they've decided that they'll encourage my nephew, if he winds up caring, to be a Dodgers fan. And it kind of works, because they used to be the Brooklyn team, but I also live in LA.)

And again, because Blizzard has all these WoWs on the same subscription, there's less of a sense that one version is competing with the other.

In fact, what I really hope we see is some of the lessons learned in doing WoW Forever applied to Modern/Mainline/Retail/Real WoW. There could be some great cross-polination here.

But also, because they have both of these versions of the game (and like three versions of Classic as well, lest we forget) it means that they can also kind of have their cake and eat it too.

Priest Spells for Clerics in WoW D&D

 There is a part of me that wishes that the WoW book were given the treatment of the early 5E setting books like Explorer's Guide to Wildemount, maybe "Champion's Guide to Azeroth," to let me refer to it as something other than WoW, which, as you'll note on this blog, is a frequent topic of my posts (the blog started as a World of Warcraft-specific one, in fact).

But here we are.

Anyway, I already went over the new Cleric subclasses based on the corresponding Priest specs of the same name. The short version: Discipline would be bad if not for a really amazing 6th level feature, and Shadow is, sadly, just awful (which truly pains me, because I think it could have been a really cool new vibe for the Cleric class - if you want a vaguely darkness-themed Cleric, go Twilight Domain, assuming your DM hasn't banned it for being OP).

Anyway, we finally come to the last of the new spells in the WoW book (I think the only character option thing we haven't covered is the Totem feature that replaced Primal Knowledge for Shaman/Barbarians).

The Cleric has a good spell list, but it's a fairly specialized one - unlike the other full-caster-healer-capable class, the Druid, the Cleric is a little more narrowly focused on radiant or necrotic damage and various support/healing spells.

What does this add to the table?

Apotheosis:

9th level Transmutation, Bonus Action, Range Self, 1 min.

You transform into an angelic form. You gain a fly speed of 90 feet, resistance to Bludgeoning, Piercing, Slashing, and Radiant damage, and whenever you cast a spell using a spell slot that restores HP to one or more creatures or deals radiant damage, the spell's effects are determined as if you had cast the spell two levels higher than the slot you used (maximum effect is that of a 9th level spell).

    So, I actually thing this is awesome. It's a 9th level spell, so obviously this is going to have to be your biggest move of the day. But for a big move, this one's a... well, it's a big one. It's concentration free, so no worries unless they have dispel magic or a similar effect (though they'll need to roll quite high to dispel it). The resistances are maybe not super relevant given that you're probably flying the hell away from any foes that would do such damage types.

    But I think the real key here is the auto-upcasting. Technically, you're getting two more 9th level spell slots, albeit ones you can only spend on a 7th and 8th level spell, respectively. While a lot of super-high-level spells don't upcast very well (because they figure you're already casting one of your biggest spells of the day,) there's nothing to say you can't cast, like, a 7th level Summon Celestial and get a 4-attack-per-round beast (well, celestial, technically) out of it.

    Where this really shines, though, is when you're using low-level spell slots. Maybe you only need to smack an unconscious friend with a Cure Wounds. Well, at 17 or higher, 2d8+5 is maybe not going to save them from going down immediately again. But now your utterly disposable 1st level slots are healing them for 6d8+5, and even at this level, that's going to potentially get them enough of a buffer to get out of harm's way.

    Yeah, I know a 9th level spell needs to be incredible (it's part of why I found Detonate so profoundly disappointing in Arcana Unleashed) but I think this might have the juice. Do note, though, that you won't get the upcasting benefit on the turn you cast this, unless you can somehow miraculously cast a 9th level spell without using a spell slot, because this won't affect something like a spell out of an item.

Holy Nova:

4th level Evocation, Action, Range Self, Instant

An explosion of Holy Light surrounds you in a 30-foot emanation, harming enemies and healing allies. Each creature of your choice makes a Con save, taking 5d6 Radiant damage on a failure or half as much on a success. Each other creature regains 3d6 HP.

The damage and healing goes up by 1d6 per spell level above 4th.

    One little note: if you're unaware of an enemy creature within 30 feet of you when this goes off, I think you technically heal it. That said, if you're unaware of them, they're probably already at full health (a hidden foe I think you could still designate as a target for the damage).

    Ok, so: the damage here is a bit low in vacuum. And the healing is definitely low. But is combining both effects enough to make it worth a 4th level slot? Damaging foes is a good way to protect allies, and this lets you help out allies who are in serious trouble. But it's not a Mass Cure Wounds, doing far less healing.

    In other words, I don't think this is great, but it might be ok in the right circumstances (it will also activate Atonement for Discipline Clerics on probably the entire party).

Prayer of Mending:

3rd level Abjuration, Action, Range 60 feet. 1 Minute.

You place a holy ward on one wiling creature within range. The next time the creature takes damage, the ward activates, and the creature heals for 1d8+Wis. The ward then jumps to another ally of your choice within 30 feet of the warded creature, with the same effect. If no ally is within range, the spell ends, and it also ends early if the ward has healed 3 times.

The spell can heal one additional time for each spell level above 3rd.

    This one's different, I'll give it that. The heal is very little - a 5.0 Cure Wounds' worth. The damage that triggers it is not prevented, so I think a character can still briefly go unconscious before this heals them back up. We will need to guess at which party member is next to take damage, though - it'd suck if this lands on someone and then none of the monsters attack them.

    But in the long run, this 3rd level spell can do up to 5d8+20 or 25 healing. That is more than a 3rd level Cure Wounds (which would do 6d8+4 or 5). And because it takes no action for this to jump between targets, you might even have it ping-pong before the two allies most likely to take damage, and even use the whole thing up in a single round if there are a lot of monsters.

    It's a weird spell. And I think there are going to be a lot of situations where it winds up not doing all that much. But I applaud both the pretty direct translation of the WoW spell and a truly original healing spell in D&D.

Psychic Horror:

4th level Enchantment, Action, Range 30 feet, Instant.

You target a creature within range and send them visions of the Void, forcing them to make a Wisdom saving throw. On a failure, the target takes 2d10 Psychic damage and has the frightened condition for 1 minute. While frightened, they are also stunned until the end of your next turn. At the end of each of its turns, the target repeats the save, ending the effect on a success. On a success, the creature takes half damage only.

The damage increases by 1d10 per spell level above 4th.

    I don't think this is good. Ignore the damage - it's certainly far too low for us to even care about it on a 4th level spell. The bigger thing here is that you frighten the target and stun them for a round.

    If we compare this with Cause Fear, a spell from Xanathar's, that is concentration, and doesn't have the stun, but is 1st level. Look, this will be nice if the target fails the save, but the damage as a consolation prize is almost an insult. I just don't think this is worth it.

Shadow Word: Pain

1st level Necromancy, Action, Range 60 feet, 1 Minute

The target makes a wisdom saving throw. On a failure, the target takes 1d10 plus your spellcasting ability modifier in psychic damgae and is cursed for the duration. On a success, they take half damage only.

Until the curse ends, the target takes 1d10 psychic damage at the start of each of its turns. It repeats the save at the end of each of its turns, ending the curse on a success.

The spell's initial damage increases by 1d10 for each spell level above 1st.

    I was prepared to hate this, and I do think it's probably not very good. On a single failure, you're getting 2d10+Wis, which isn't actually that bad for a 1st level spell (compare this to Guiding Bolt, which is 4d6 - if we have a +3 to Wis, this is going to do the same damage on a single failed save than Guiding Bolt does on a hit).

    The power of this spell would be if they fail the save and keep failing the save, but it will have to tick a long time for it to really start to feel crazy. But, in the spell's defense, it's only a 1st level spell, so at higher levels (and with a much higher spell save DC) it's something you might be able to kind of fire off at the start of a fight and forget about.

    Still, given thad D&D combat usually lasts like 2-4 rounds, you probably aren't getting that much out of a damage-over-time effect - one of the hazards of trying to translate WoW design into D&D.

Void Eruption:

5th level Necromancy, Bonus Action, Range 120 feet, Concentration up to 1 minute.

Shadowy energy erupts in a 20-foot-radius sphere at a point you can see within range. Each creature makes a Con save, taking 5d6 necrotic damage on a failure or half as much on a success. At the same time, you take on a form of Void for the duration, with the following benefits:

As a bonus action on your turn, you can hurl a bolt of void energy at a creature within 60 feet of yourself. Mkae a ranged spell attack, and on a hit, the target takes Necrotic damage equal to 2d6+Wis.

Also, while you're in an area of dim light or darkness, you have the invisible condition.

    Take this on a Twilight Cleric, holy crap! But seriously: the initial damage here is a little low, and note that you can't actually make the Void Bolt attack on the same turn you cast this (not sure why they didn't make this spell an action). But the bonus action attack is decent damage for a kind of secondary effect, and if you're in the right environment, you can probably make ample use of the invisibility.

    I like this. It's a decent little AoE spell stapled to a decent little source of damage that can weaponize your bonus action (something I don't think Clerics get to do much, especially after the nerf to Spiritual Weapon).

And there we have it. I think at this point we've gone over every spell in the WoW book, which is quite a few of them. Every single one of these is exclusive to a certain class (and even subclass for the Demon Hunter and Death Knight ones,) which is in line with how spells in WoW work (and I think, like, most class-based RPGs). I mean, sure, the Paladin's Holy Light and the Shaman's Healing Wave are basically the same, but they are flavored very differently.

I've been posting up a storm with this book - it's a pretty massive amount of stuff, and I do think that about 70-80% of it could easily be slotted into a homebrew campaign without too much friction. Just file off the serial numbers and make Tauren your setting's minotaur species or Worgen your setting's werewolf species.

But also, I will say, Azeroth is among my favorite fantasy settings, and its variety of tones and the stories it can tell has been a huge influence on me. I've written a lot about how I like to have industrial/modern elements to my D&D settings, and I think that that reflects the influence of WoW upon my tastes (among other things - The Dark Tower series by Stephen King is also a huge part of that).

    All that being said:

I think it's important that D&D doesn't start emphasizing Universes Beyond products over their own original IPs. Personally, I've found myself less inclined to play Magic the Gathering as I see Marvel Superheroes, Avatar the Last Airbender, and other IPs interrupting the original stories and settings that the game visits with its sets.

Indeed, I'll even go a step further: I think the best products that D&D ever puts out are the ones that are setting-agnostic. Arcana Unleashed was a great example of this (I could have even done with less of an emphasis on the new factions they introduced). The absolutely essential books to pick up in 5.0 were Xanathar's, Tasha's, Volo's, and Mordenkainen's (for the latter two, though, you could just get Monsters of the Multiverse instead later on). Yes, to an extent, there's always going to be a bit of the D&D IP in those products as well.

But the true power of D&D is in letting you tell your own stories, to create your own worlds and characters.

The approach to classes in this book is there to re-create the rough mechanics of the WoW classes in D&D. But in doing so, they've narrowed the options, sending you down a very specific path. All three Mages in the book are Evoker Wizards. WoW is a very different kind of game, with basically no real game mechanics for, like, social interactions. And that's reasonable for something that is both a digital game and also something where the actual story going forward has to be consistent for all the millions of players playing it. We canonically make a difference because we're there for all the big fights, but our own choices can't make a difference because, well, the game would split into more timelines than even the Infinite Dragonflight could keep track of.

But D&D (and TTRPGs) provides the opposite - a minimally-multiplayer game that can let players (in collaboration with a DM who has a lot of work to do) really shape the world in ways that you just couldn't ever do in an MMO, or even an absurdly open-ended D&D simulator like Baldur's Gate 3.

Thus: I would strongly recommend that your takeaway from this book is to see it as an expansion of options, rather than a narrow path that is the only proper way to run D&D in Azeroth.

For the love of the Holy Light, unleash Bards and Artificers on Azeroth. Play a Dark Iron Dwarf who defected to the Horde. Hell, do a John LeCarré-style spy drama in Dalaran. Let your Mage be a Diviner who is working on behalf of the Bronze Dragonflight. Play a Forsaken Druid, or an Orc Paladin.

Play a Goblin Artificer!

And then... be a Forsaken in Ravenloft. Play a Demon Hunter in Planescape. Send Ragnaros, or better yet, your own original evil fire elemental that uses Ragnaros' stats, to menace some major city in your homebrew world.

Play everything exactly as presented in this book, or rip out the bits and pieces you like in it and paste them back together to make the game that works for you.

A Look at Ragnaros

 Ragnaros, unlike Arthas, was first established in World of Warcraft (Arthas got a two-year head start, being one of the key characters of Warcraft III, and then also got a little over five years of WoW before we fought him). In a lot of ways, Ragnaros' sort of heft as a villain grew after his first defeat, because he demonstrated what an Elemental Lord was, and the important role they play in Azeroth's history.

Of course, being an elemental, his defeat in Molten Core, WoW's first raid, was not the last time we faced him. Instead, he served as the final boss of Cataclysm's Firelands raid, I believe in 2011, where we traveled to the elemental plane of fire and destroyed him in his home plane, ending him forever.

Still, as the boss of that first 40-player raid, he carries with him a sort of prestige as an important figure in WoW's history. Mind you, Molten Core is... um... boring as hell. It's basically just one giant cavern, with bosses that don't so much have their own distinct rooms as just, sort of, corners where they're hanging out. I think the real spectacle of it was trying to organize 40 players to work together. Notably, the first expansion shrunk the larger raid sizes to a maximum of 25 players, which remained true until flexible raiding (where the instance's difficulty scales to the size of your group) let you take 10-30 players in at a time.

Ragnaros is the Firelord, the Elemental Lord of Fire, and is nearly as old as the planet itself. Before there were any humanoids or even any organic life on Azeroth, the four Elemental Lords fought one another. Because the Worldsoul of Azeroth had such potential for power, it drew in far more of the world's Spirit energy than a typical Worldsoul would. The lack of Spirit on the surface of the planet caused disharmony among the elements, putting them in conflict with one another. (By contrast, the Orc homeworld of Draenor, which doesn't even have a Worldsoul, actually has very chill and cooperative elementals.)

The Elemental Lords' war against one another weakened them and their forces when the Old Gods first arrived on Azeroth, and they were not only defeated, but enslaved by these eldritch flesh-mountains. Forced to serve the Black Empire that the Old Gods created, it actually sort of suited them, as the Old Gods found their endless warring entertaining, and more or less set them to doing what they were already inclined to do.

However, when the Titans discovered Azeroth, and set about the destruction of the Black Empire, the Elemental Lords were conscripted into fighting the Titanforged forces. Ragnaros is known to have battled the Keeper Odyn, the original Prime Designate (essentially the leader of all the Titanforged) personally, and burned his face, such that Odyn has a beard of permanently-molten, glowing metal as the scar of this conflict.

But Titanforged won their fight, and the Old Gods were sealed away in their prisons. As for the elementals, the Keeper Ra, working with a talented Vrykul sorceress named Helya (a sort of surrogate daughter of Odyn's... this relationship went very badly in the long run, but that's a whole other story) created new planes of existence tied to Azeroth - the Elemental Planes. There, the elementals would be bound, kept contained there amongst their own elements. Bound to the planes as they were, if an elemental were slain in the mundane world, they would simply return to these planes. Ragnaros, most aggressive and dangerous of the Elemental Lords, was bound to the Firelands, along with the other fire elementals.

However, during the War of Three Hammers, when the Bronzebeard, Wildhammer, and Dark Iron dwarf clans fought a massive civil war across Khaz Modan, the Dark Iron Thane Thaurissan sought out a power that could turn the tide in their favor. Accidentally, he summoned Ragnaros to Blackrock Mountain, the highest peak in the Redridge Mountains (which were kind of the border between Khaz Modan and the kingdom of Stormwind.

Ragnaros' arrival scorched the landscape for miles (lore-wise - in-game the entire continent is like the size of Manhattan, so willing suspension of disbelief here) and also infused the Dark Irons with elemental fire, turning their skin ashen grey and causing their hair to glow like embers. Ragnaros came to dominate the Dark Iron Clan, and was worshipped as their god, taking refuge deep below the mountain in the Molten Core, while the Dark Irons turned crueler and more aggressive under the Firelord's influence.

When brave adventurers came in and slew Ragnaros in the Molten Core, the Dark Iron society began to transform, and especially due to the fact that the late Dark Iron Emperor had married the daughter of the Bronzebeard King, it created a succession crisis that ultimately ended with the Dark Irons re-integrated into Khaz Modan society, and brought into the Alliance.

Years later, though, as Deathwing shattered the world with his return from Deepholme (the Elemental Plane of Earth,) he called on Ragnaros to assault Mount Hyjal and to burn the World Tree Nordrassil. Opening a portal to the Firelands on the mountain, ultimately the heroes of Azeroth counter-attacked and killed Ragnaros in his home plane.

So, an epic boss. How epic is his stat block?

Ragnaros is CR 23, so, on his own, for a 5-player party, that'd be a high-difficulty encounter at level 17, and a medium encounter at 20. In theory - of course, given especially at super-high levels, the difficulty of a fight can vary greatly based on what kind of party you have.

He has an AC of 20 and 296 HP - which is quite low, but he also has something that works a bit as a "phase transition" that can heal him up. This is, I'll note, a really interesting bit of tech to give fights the sort of phased encounter that you get with a WoW boss fight (especially raid bosses, which are the most complex). We'll talk about that when we talk reactions.

Ragnaros also has a 60-foot speed. Oh, and he's gargantuan, of course.

Unsurprisingly, he's immune to fire damage, as well as poison, and a ton of conditions. You kind of get the gist - he's a big bad boss fight.

Now, passives:

Empowered Burning causes any burning effect caused by his abilities to deal 1d12 damage rather than the typical 1d4.

Fire Aura deals 2d6 fire damage to any creature within 10 feet at the end of his turns, and also causes them to start burning (see above).

We have the usual Legendary Resistance and Siege Monster. Then, also, his Master of Flames feature lets him ignore fire resistance with all of his abilities (they list each one, so I guess in theory if you give him, like, a spell scroll of meteor swarm, that won't benefit).

The Firelord has a two-attack multiattack, with Sulfuras Smash as his melee attack and Elemental Fire as his ranged one.

Sulfuras Smash has a +15 to hit and a reach of 30 feet. This does an average of 22 force damage and 14 fire damage, and whether he hits or misses, each creature within 20 feet of the target (including the target) makes a DC 23 Dex save, taking 4d6 fire damage on a failure (save for none).

    So, just to math this out, on a hit and a failed save, the primary target is taking 50 damage per swing, so 100 damage a turn, plus a little AoE burst.

Elemental Fire is also a +15 to hit, with a 150 foot range, and does 22 average damage on a hit, and also causes the creature to start burning.

    So, 44 damage here, or I guess technically 50.5 if the target isn't put out before its turn.

Finally, he has a Recharge ability called Magma Blast (recharge on 4-6). This is a 60-foot radius sphere (so almost certainly the whole battlefield) with a 150-foot range. Everyone inside makes a Dex save, taking 42 average fire damage on a failure and half as much on a success. But save or not, the targets all start burning.

    So far, pretty simple to run - just hit targets in melee with Sulfuras Smash, or if they're all too far away, use Elemental Fire, but primarily use Magma Blast whenever it recharges, unless you want to focus down a character. (Though 100 damage per turn is going to take more than one turn to put down a tanky Barbarian or even other tank-like characters.)

Submerge is a 1/day reaction that Ragnaros can use when he becomes Bloodied or takes damage while bloodied. He enters a nearby pool of lava and submerges. While in the lava, he has total cover from anything that originates outside the lava and regains 30 HP at the start of each of his turns. He emerges when he reaches his HP maximum or if all his allies within 150 feet of him are killed.

    Ok, so this is a classic Raid Boss mechanic - you get the boss to half health, and then they become untargetable during a transition phase. At that point, often there's some new mechanic - usually just new enemies showing up that you have to fight - that requires a shift in tactics. I believe this happened in the original Ragnaros boss (the only time I did that raid when I wasn't far higher-level than it was designed for and thus able to obliterate anything without anyone else in the raid was when they updated it to what was then level 100 for the 10th anniversary event, but that was in 2014, so that's a pretty hazy memory itself at this point).

    Now, how should you run this at a D&D table?

    I think for the healing to be a threat, you need to make that other fight relatively hard - if it's like a typical D&D combat, at most Ragnaros is regaining like 90 HP. For him to heal up to full from bloodied, he'd have to go under for about 5 rounds. Now, for sure, the point here is to reward the players for efficiently taking down whatever minions show up as fast as possible. We'll check in with this with our overall thoughts later on.

Lastly, we have legendary actions.

He can make an Elemental Fire attack with one. Alternatively, he can do Wrath of Ragnaros, which has him shoot out a 30-foot-radius sphere centered on a point within 150 feet he can see. Creatures within make a DC 23 Dex save, or take 2d10 Force damage and 2d10 Fire damage and are pushed 30 feet away from the center of the sphere. On a success, it's half damage only. Succeed or Fail, and the target starts burning. Ragnaros can only do this one once per round.

    This isn't that scary for its damage alone (I know it might seem silly to dismiss 22 damage every turn in a very large sphere, but again, we're expecting a tier 4 party here.

    But here I think we need to talk about how we build this encounter.

How to Build a Ragnaros Encounter:

    First and foremost, in Molten Core, Ragnaros was fought in an arena with a big, spiraling path of rock amidst a bunch of lava. Lava in WoW is maybe not as devastating as it is in D&D, though surely far more dangerous than it is in Elden Ring (look it up if you aren't familiar). But that's what the knockback from Wrath of Ragnaros is for - you want to knock players into lava.

    Now, technically in 5.5, the only mention of how much damage lava does is simply an option in the "improvising damage" table of DMG chapter two (in the section of "resolving outcomes"). Thus, this is probably not intended to be the "universal average damage of being submberged in lava." But the suggestion, which is 18d10, does make it quite scary. That's 99 damage on average. The point, though, is that you need not be beholden to that amount. given that you might expect players to be plunged into this frequently, you might be inclined to make it more like 10d10, which would give you 55 on average.

    That said: the lava does need to be a huge threat, because we really don't want players to risk diving into the lava to finish Ragnaros off before he can heal at all.

    Here is my problem with the design, actually: Ragnaros has a tiny amount of HP for a monster that should be able to threaten a 20th level party on its own. While I think the idea is that he'll heal up to get a bit over 50% of that HP back, at the very best that gives him roughly 450 HP.

    That's still probably not enough - a reasonably well-thought-out character by level 20 can probably put out 100 damage per round, and if there are just three such characters in the party while you've got two who are doing something more support-oriented, our buddy here is going to barely get a turn before he has to use his big retreat thing.

    What I might, thus, do is make this a bit more like a Mythic transition, and simply have him automatically submerge at 0 HP, but then double the healing he's getting (at least).

    The monsters in the transition phase I think should be tanky - they're not there to deal the most damage, but just to survive long enough to give Ragnaros as much time as they can to heal up.

    My worry with this fight is that he might go down far faster than you'd want him to. The damage, sure, is good - but I don't know that you want such a massive boss monster to feel like a glass cannon.

Ok, but let's talk about his hammer.

Sulfuras, Hand of Ragnaros, was the first legendary weapon that WoW ever got. With a couple weird exceptional expansions, there's usually no more than two legendary weapons in an expansion, and each tends to involve a massive undertaking that only a small number of players will actually complete, and usually these are designed for a small subset of classes and specs - for example, Shadowmourne, the legendary axe you could get from Icecrown Citadel (the raid where you fight the Lich King,) was a two-handed axe with Strength on it, which meant that it was really only realistically used by DPS Warriors and Death Knights and Retribution Paladins (tank Death Knights could actually use it, but given that it was oriented more toward damage, this was not generally what most guilds prioritized).

In D&D, it's represented as an Artifact weapon (which is a more accurate analogue for a WoW legendary, though the game has also had Artifacts, which are arguably even more unique and special, but are built into the story of their given expansions and easily acquired by any player).

Anyway, Ragnaros has this as part of his equipment, so you can assume it's loot that the party can grab. Here's what it is:

Sulfuras, Hand of Ragnaros, is an artifact maul that requires attunement. It has a +3 bonus to attack and damage rolls and does an extra 1d10 fire damage on a hit. Also, on a hit, the target starts burning, taking 1d10 fire damage as the burning damage instead of the usual 1d4.

As a Magic action, you can use Sulfuras to Ignite the Elements, doing one of the following. You can only do this once per dawn.

Boiling Point will cause any container or body of water within 1 mile of you to boil for 1 minute. Any creature that enters the boiling water or starts their turn there takes 2d10 fire damage.

    Now. On one hand, I think we'd want to put a reasonable limit on this and say that you can't do this to the ocean. On the other hand, this is the weapon of an elemental lord. On the third hand, we are not an elemental lord. So, maybe if we say this is a 1-mile radius, that's plenty powerful enough. Also, I'd assume we'll ignore the fire resistance that being submerged in water gives you, treating it similarly to a Dragon Turtle's Steam Breath.

Embersmoke will let you cast Incendiary Cloud from the weapon, with a DC of 18.

Eruption causes lava to erupt in a 10-foot-radius, 60-foot-high cylinder centered on a point you can see on the ground within 120 feet. Each creature in the area makes a DC 18 Dex save, taking 9d10 fire damage and 9d10 bludgeoning damage on a failed save or half as much on a success.

    The funny thing here is that most cylinders are wider than they are tall, but this is a big spike of damage. So, it might be hard to hit a lot of targets with it, but boy will they take a lot of damage! That's 99 on average.

The weapon has 1 minor beneficial, 1 minor detrimental, 1 major detrimental, and 1 major beneficial property.

    I've never really loved this mechanic, as it can wind up giving artifacts properties that don't really feel in-keeping with their theming. That said, if you intend (as I think the game intends) for players not to hold onto an artifact for very long (I must have missed that memo, because I've let my Barbarian keep a slightly tweaked version of the Sword of Zariel from level 16 to level 19, where he is now - but honestly, I think a high-level Barbarian needs a really awesome weapon) this can make holding onto them a challenge that the players might then be inclined to move on from.

Destroying Sulfuras requires taking it to a hidden underwater temple to Neptulon the Tidehunter (Elemental Lord of Water) in the tunnels beneath Vashj'ir (itself an underwater realm off the coast of the Eastern Kingdoms) where the maul becomes nonmagical and destructible.

    (I assume this is meant to be the Throne of the Tides, a dungeon from Cataclysm that I always thought was meant to actually be in the Abyssal Maw, the elemental plane of water, where you actually help free Neptulon from attempted domination by the Naga and their Old God-associated allies. The dungeon infamously ended with Neptulon getting abducted, though it happens so quickly that I genuinely didn't even notice and thought he had just vanished as if to say "cool, thanks, have some loot while I got about my business." But also, with the corresponding raid that was due to release at the same time as Firelands scrapped, we didn't really get that plot resolved, so when we next saw Neptulon during the Shaman class quests in Legion, he just kind of showed up like nothing had happened.)

Demon Hunter Spells for D&D

 While I think the Death Knight is a ubiquitous-enough fantasy trope that you don't need much of an explanation (it's even in the D&D Monster Manual,) the Demon Hunter from WoW is a lot more idiosyncratic.

While I do think that it does make sense, on a flavor level, to use the Ranger as the underlying class to build the D&D version on, given the theme (downplayed, actually, in 5.5) of Rangers focusing on certain types of monsters, it's a very different vibe, especially compared to the WoW Hunter. While Demon Hunters have "Hunter" in the name, they're really more like a lightly-armored warrior fueled by fury and rage, having become basically half-demons with a core of fel magic that is always threatening to explode out of them. If the Death Knights are deadened, cold, and grim, Demon Hunters are blazing with energy that they must struggle to contain, but can unleash that power on their foes.

Basically, you should be asking the question: are you a hunter who hunts demons, or a demon who hunts? And the answer to that is "Yes."

So, the spells are going to have a very different vibe from your typical Ranger spells (and hey, Death Knight spells had a very different vibe from Paladin ones). There's no "disappear into the wilderness" in this concept. It's about steel and fel fire.

Oh, and the Void. Just earlier this year (2026,) with the release of the pre-patch for the Midnight expansion, a third Demon Hunter spec opened up, as well as the ability for Void Elves to play as them (previously they were limited only to Night Elves and Blood Elves). Devourer Demon Hunters actually play as ranged spellcasters. I'm curious whether that playstyle will work in D&D (taking Void Warrior to pick up Eldritch Blast, for example,) though even Devourers do have some abilities that send them flying into melee, only to leap back again.

So, let's talk spells:

Chaos Nova:

4th level Evocation, Action, Range Self, Instant

Each creature of your choice in a 20-foot emanation takes 2d6 Force damage and must succeed on a Wisdom save or be stunned until the end of your next turn.

    The damage is low, but it's A: guaranteed and B: not the reason we're casting this spell. Instead, we're trying to get an AoE stun. The fact that this is a Wisdom save rather than a Con save makes this potentially really powerful against the right kind of enemy. It's also friendly-fire-proof.

    Now, 4th level spells are very precious for a Ranger... er, Demon Hunter. But I think this is the kind of clutch move that might be worth it. I'd strongly consider this one.

Collapsing Star:

4th level Evocation, Action, Range 60 ft., Instant

You send a blast of void energy to explode in a 20-foot-radius sphere centered on a point within range. Each creature in the sphere makes a Con save, taking 4d12 Force damage on a failure or half as much on a success.

    The damage here is an average of 26, slightly below a Fireball in the same size area. The Force damage is more reliable than Fire, of course, but the Con save is probably less reliable than Dex. The thing is, given that tradeoff (and maybe the damage type is more relevant,) it feels like this should do a bit more damage, or just be a 3rd level spell. I don't think this is bad, per say, and again, Fireball is intentionally overpowered. Rangers don't get Fireball, of course, so this might still be welcome in your toolkit.

Consume Soul:

1st level Necromancy, Action, Range 60 ft., Instant

You drain the essence of a creature within range. They make a Con save. On a failure, they take 4d4 Force damage and you gain Temp HP equal to half the Force damage dealt. On a success, they take half damage only.

The damage increases by 1d4 for each spell level above 1st.

    So, ten damage plus 5 temp HP on a failed save, or just 5 damage on a success. Why not let us get the Temp HP even on a success - after all, the damage is already getting halved, so it'll be like 1d4 Temp HP, which is tiny.

    I mean, if we're playing like a standard Demon Hunter, we're probably dual-wielding, meaning if we hit with both attacks (and by level 2 have Two Weapon Fighting) we might be doing two attacks for 1d6+3, or 6.5 each, meaning this is probably doing less than our regular attacks would. I don't really see this being used. Maybe ever. I mean, I guess it's ranged? But... you know, while WoW Demon Hunters don't use ranged weapons (in fact, only Hunters do,) a D&D one could.

Demon Spikes:

3rd level Transmutation, Bonus Action, Range Self, 1 minute.

You sprout jagged spikes. You gain a +2 bonus to AC and when a creature hits you with a melee attack, they take 10 piercing damage.

    So, the bonus action, the concentration-free duration... I think this could be good. There's some internal anti-synergy, of course, because the higher AC means they're less likely to take the piercing damage. But if you're getting swarmed by a bunch of weaker enemies, you'll like both effects. It might also just discourage foes from attacking you. A 3rd level slot is a bit precious for a Ranger (and doesn't come until level 9) but I can imagine this working in some situations. Might need to see it in action.

Eye Beam:

2nd level Evocation.

Action, Range Self, Concentration up to 1 minute.

You concentrate magic into your eyes (or eye-sockets, if we're being lore-accurate). When you cast the spell and as a Magic action on your subsequent turns for the duration, you can shoot a 15-foot cone of fel magic. Each creature in the cone makes a Dex save, taking 3d6 Force damage on a failure or half as much on a success.

The damage increases by 1d6 for each spell level above 1st.

    So, this is similar to Dragon Breath. The downside is that you can't cast it on allies (or familiars,) as it has to be on yourself. Also, you can't pick between several damage types. The plus side, though, is that it's Force damage, which is probably going to be better than any other damage type you could have chosen (unless you needed Fire to shut down a Troll's regeneration or something). One other small but notable difference is that you get to do this damage with the initial bonus action, so you free up your action to do something else (you can't double-dip on turn one, though).

    So, is that worth the trade? I think possibly. Also, it's such an iconic Demon Hunter ability (feels like it probably ought to be a line spell, but I'm glad it's a cone, as that makes it better).

Fel Rush:

1st level Transmutation, Action, Range Self, Instant

Fiery fel magic surrounds you. Until the end of your turn, your speed increases by 30 feet and your movement doesn't provoke opportunity attacks.

When you move within 5 feet of a creature or object that isn't being worn or carried, it makes a Dex save, taking 2d6 fire damage on a failure or half as much on a success. A creature or object can take this damage only once per turn.

The damage goes up by 1d6 per spell level above 1st.

    To break this down, this is effectively a 1st-level AoE spell. While the damage is lower than, say, Burning Hands or Thunder Wave (though only a little lower than the latter) the utility we get with it is pretty good. While I wouldn't use this for the speed alone (we could just, you know, Dash,) the ability to get out of melee with scarier foes or just reposition safely could be a big deal, and the effective area you can "paint" with the spell's damage is way bigger than a 15-foot cone.

    And even Rangers wind up being able to be pretty liberal with 1st level spell slots by mid tier 2. I like this one.

Fiery Brand:

2nd level Evocation, Action, Range 30 ft., 1 minute.

You place a demonic symbol on a creature within range. They make a Wisdom saving throw. On a failure, they take 3d10 Fire damage and are cursed. While cursed, you have resistance to all damage they deal. On a success, they take half damage only. The creature can repeat the save at the end of each of its turns, ending the spell on a success.

    It's going to really suck if the target succeed on their save the first time. 3d10 on a single target is... well, it's not nothing, but it's not, you know, Eye Beam (hitting multiple targets every turn for only a bit less). I think I don't like this one, but there's a bit of an ambiguity here:

    If they fail their save on subsequent turns, do they take the damage again? It is "the save," but I really don't know what is intended here. If they can take the damage multiple times, I'd say this is a little better, but not amazing.

    I'd prefer, instead, that the resistance be guaranteed on the first turn. Hell, just don't give them a save initially, but also don't have it deal damage until they do make a save at the end of their turn. And then, well, we can negotiate on how much damage they take.

Infernal Strike:

1st level Evocation, Action, Range Self, Instant:

You jump through the air without provoking opportunity attacks and land in an unoccupied space within 30 feet. Each creature in a 10-foot emanation originating from you makes a Dex save, taking 2d6 Fire damage and having disadvantage on attacks against creatures other than you until the start of your next turn. On a success, they take half damage only.

The damage increases by 1d6 for each spell level above 1st.

    This is fun. And like Fel Rush, this is a cool mobility spell with some damage added on. But unlike Fel Rush, this is also a great way to get the enemies focused on you. It actually pairs well with Demon Spikes (both staple Vengeance Demon Hunter abilities). The area isn't huge, but I like this. This is cool.

Metamorphosis:

3rd level Transmutation, Bonus Action, 1 minute.

(Note that this requires you to use a Soul Shard as its material component, which is consumed. You get Soul Shards as part of your subclass features.)

You take on a demonic form, gaining one of the following benefits:

Devourer: When you roll a damage die for a spell, weapon, or feature that deals Force damage, you can treat any 1 or 2 as a 3.

Havoc: When you hit a creature with and attack roll using a Melee weapon, the target takes an extra 1d6 Fire damage.

Vengeance: You have a +2 bonus to AC, and your HP maximum and current HP increase by 5 for the duration.

    Ok, first odd question: do you have to use the form associated with your specialization? The spell doesn't actually specify that, so in theory you could pick a different one. And I wonder if the spell is paying a cost for this versatility.

    Devourer has one of those effects that looks good but winds up being a bit underwhelming, though upgrading both 1s and 2s does make it better. For reference, this makes a d4's average damage go from 2.5 to 3.25, a d6 goes from 3.5 to 4, a d8 goes from 4.5 to 4.875, a d10 goes from 5.5 to 5.8, and a d12 goes from 6.5 to 6.75. If we figure, then, that we're rolling mostly d6s, that means our rolled damage is going up by about 14%. I don't know that that is worth a 3rd level spell slot.

    Havoc is also underwhelming, because this is literally like the Paladin's Divine Favor, which adds a d4 to all of our attacks' damage in radiant damage. That is, sure, a lower die, but only by one step. There is no way that we should have to cast a spell two levels higher to get just 1 more average damage than a first-level paladin spell. If this were 2d6, then sure. But no. (Though it is Concentration-free...)

    Vengeance is basically stapling Aid (but just on us) to Shield of Faith, and hey, when you add a 1st level spell to a 2nd level spell, does that make a 3rd level spell?

    I think this is one of those options that pays a heavy price for giving you a lot of options, but because you only get to pick one, it winds up feeling too weak each time it's used. It's a shame, because this is arguably the iconic Demon Hunter "big cooldown" ability, and in WoW, each spec has its own version fo it (Devourer's is weird, as it's not really a cooldown so much as something you have to build resources to use). What I think this should have been is a big 5th level spell along the lines of Tenser's Transformation (though suited more to a Demon Hunter's playstyle).

Sigil of Chains:

5th level Conjuration, Action, Range 90 ft., 1 Round

A sigil appears on a point on the ground you can see within range. A 20-foot-radius sphere erupts from it, and each creature in the sphere has to make a Dex save. On a failure, they take 5d6 Force damage and are pulled up to 10 feet toward the center of the sphere and become Restrained until the end of your next turn. ON a success, they take half damage and their speed is reduced by 10 feet until the end of your next turn.

    Like Chaos Nova, the damage here is more of a cherry on top of the sundae, though it's certainly more substantial. This is a great spell to use if you've got a friend with an AoE to hit them with afterward (or if you want to line them up for one of your own).

    I think I like this, and I really like that you get a bit of crowd-control even if they succeed on their saves. It's a 5th level spell, so we don't get it until tier 4, but I think this could still wind up being useful for that battlefield control effect.

Sigil of Flame:

2nd level Evocation, Action, Range 90 ft., Instant

You inscribe a sigil int he air that then appears on a creature you can see within range. The target makes a Con save, taking 2d8 fire damage on a failure or half as much on a success. Whether or not they fail their save, the sigil radiates heat in a 10-foot emanation originating from the target until the end of its next turn. At the start of the target's next turn, the target and each creature in the emanation must make a Con save or take 1d8 fire damage.

The damage, both initial and later, increases by 1d8 for each spell slot above 2.

    Ok. This one's complicated. If we're just looking at the damage to the main target, we're talking 3d8 for a 2nd level spell. That's maybe not great, as 2nd level AoE spells will do that much to a bunch of creatures no problem.

    However, there are two factors at play, one in its favor and another against it.

    Against it is that that secondary damage is a save-for-none.

    For it, though, is that the scaling winds up being very good - at 3rd level, you could potentially get 5d8 on that primary target, then 7d8 at 4th level, and 9d8 at 5th level (and if you multiclass, maybe higher?)

    That being said: the scaling is only half as good for the actual AoE portion. In fact, it's less than half, because of the save-for-none element.

    Also, last little bit: there is no friendly-fire protection on this. So, you put this on a foe, and now your friends who are in melee with them, or were planning to be, now will either have to stay away from them or risk taking damage.

    So here's my take: I think this is probably not a good spell. It is maybe even a bad spell. And yet, I kind of like it? Like, if you have a monster that is protecting or otherwise aiding other monsters it's near to, this might incentivize the bad guys to spread out?

Soul Reap:

3rd level Necromancy, Action, Range 60 ft., Instant:

You send a botl of cosmic matter toward a creature within range. You make a spell attack against hte target, which does not benefit form half- or three-quarters cover. On a hit, you deal 6d6 Force damage.

If you roll a 6 on a d6 for this spell, you roll another d6 and add it to the damage. When you cast the spell, the maximum number of d6s you can add is equal to your spellcasting ability modifier.

The damage increases by 1d6 for each spell level above 3rd.

    So, before we get into the math of it, I suspect this will have disappointing damage for a single-target spell. Remember that 3rd level spells can do 8d6 in AoE. If that's special for Fireball and Lightning Bolt, then maybe we should expect a 3rd level spell to do 6d6, but still as AoE. This will only hit a single target.

     But, let's look at the math. The chance that we get a single bonus die on this (on a regular hit and not a crit) is about 67%. The chance that we get a second bonus die from the initial damage is about 60%. The chance we get a third bonus die from the initial damage is about 52%. And that's probably where our Wisdom caps us. Now, the chance to get more dice is slightly higher because the exploding die we get from each 6 is going to also give us a 1/6 chance to explode again if we haven't hit our cap.

    But let's imagine a best-case scenario. We've capped our Wisdom and we get 5 6s on the rolls (very unlikely). So, that makes this 11d6. That's an average of 38.5 damage. Now, is that terrible for a 3rd level spell, even against a single target? No. But it's also very unlikely we get that.

    To be fair, if we compare this with Scorching Ray, that will, at 3rd level, hit for just 8d6 if everything hits, and this is honestly probably going to do more than that. (Scorching Ray's power is if you can get a bonus to each hit that lands, like with Conjure Minor Elementals.) So... I mean... I don't know. Maybe this is good? If an AoE spell wouldn't help because you're fighting a solo boss, sure. This will potentially do more than your normal attacks.

Throw Glaive

1st level Evocation, Action, Range 60 Feet, Instant

You create a demonic warglaive and hurl it at a creature or object within range. Make a ranged spell attack against the target. On a hit, the target takes 1d8 Slashing damage and 1d8 Fire damage, and the glaive richochets to a different target within 30 feet of the first target. Make a new attack and damage roll against the new target.

The fire damage increases by 1d8 for each spell level above 1st. Also, the glaive can ricochet a maximum number of times equal to the spell's level, though a creature can only be targeted once per casting of this spell.

    So, I know the broad consensus online is that this is pretty good. But let me consider it:

    The damage is reasonable, if a little underwhelming, against a single target. 2d8 is what you get for a Thunder Wave that could be guaranteed to hit multiple targets and with a save for half. However, if we do hit, the range at which you can go after the second target is pretty generous - even if foes are spread out, you can probably hit a second target if there is one on the battlefield. We will, of course, probably only cast this if we have a second target. However, we can't just multiply the damage by that, because to hit the second target, we must have also hit the first target. So, if we have something like a 75% hit chance (which might be generous until we can get our Wisdom higher) the chance we hit the second target is actually only 56.25%. This is why I'd start to be skeptical about the power of upcasting this, because if we go whole-hog and cast this at 5th level, even if we have that 75% hit chance (more plausible at level 17+) the chance that that last bounce actually hits the target, requiring it to hit all five previous targets, is only about 18%. Now, it would also be hitting those targets for 5d8 fire and 1d8 slashing, but if we compare that to Steel Wind Strike, which is a Ranger spell, that can hit up to 5 targets for 6d10 force damage (so 33 to Throw Glaive's 27 - technically against one fewer target, but the overall damage is higher if everything hits because of that 6-damage difference) but in that case you are guaranteed to be able to make attacks against every target.

    Ok, so upcasting is limited. But how do we like this at 1st level?

    Well, if you do hit on both attacks, it's 4d8 damage. Certainly more than you'd be doing with your attacks alone. I think it's fine, but not a game-changer.

Overall Thoughts:

    Like the Death Knight, I think that there's a bit more in the Demon Hunter that encourages you to think of yourself as a spellcaster than the base Ranger gets. I do really like how spells like Demon Spikes, Fel Rush, and Infernal Strike, though, encourage you to use those spells to get yourself into the martial mix.

    I do think that between these spells and the Demon Hunter subclass, this will feel very different than a standard Ranger.