Metroidvania and D&D

 The first time I played Super Metroid was either in 1999 or 2000. While I had gotten an SNES in 1996 (after the N64 had already come out) I got my N64 just the next year, so those two console generations - which represented a pretty big jump - kind of overlapped for me. I was familiar with Mario and Zelda, but it was 1999's Super Smash Bros. that introduced me to Samus. After she became my favorite fighter in Smash, I decided to check out one of her titles, and the only one that was on a console I owned was Super Metroid. I got a used cartridge for 5 bucks. Probably the best 5 bucks I ever spent.

Nowadays, Super Metroid is remembered as an absolute classic. It's the Metroid game that most ROM hacks use as their foundation. It has a killer soundtrack and a fantastic world design. While the first title probably invented the Metroidvania genre (the other half, Castlevania, wouldn't actually work like one until the PS1 era's Symphony of the Night, which I've never actually played) Super Metroid is maybe the most quintessential example.

What is a Metroidvania?

Well, for context, in the SNES era, most games were divided into discrete levels. Even a relatively open-world game like The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past still put you into dungeons that were kind of separate from the rest of the world - you could be confident that once you got inside a dungeon, you would find all the tools you needed to beat it within.

Metroidvanias place the character in a large and complex environment, but only give you access to a small part of it initially. The player must search that territory for items and upgrades that enhance their abilities and open up new paths. In Metroid games (the recent Dread actually being an exception,) the first upgrade you tend to get is the Morph Ball, which allows our badass armored space bounty hunter to roll into a sphere and quickly travel through narrow crevasses (this series staple was actually because they were struggling to give Samus a crawling animation in the NES original). So, your experience with these games begins by funneling you to that first item, with various barricades and obstacles that cannot be overcome until you get the next item in the sequence. (That said, the designers often put in extra-challenging ways for knowledgeable players to break that sequence, which is how you get people who do "backwards" runs of Super Metroid where they beat the four major area bosses in the opposite order of how the game expect you to do it).

Having beaten Resident Evil 2's remake recently (Leon's first run and Claire's second) I was trying to decide if it counted as a Metroidvania. The answer is kinda-sorta. With the exception of the Nest lab at the end, the whole game is one interconnected map, with the baroque police department headquarters up on the surface level and a vast sewer complex below. These connect in unexpected ways, and until you get on the tram that takes you to the Nest, you can always return to the RPD's main lobby that acts as the real start of the game for Leon (other than a prologue that takes place in locations you cannot revisit - just as Samus cannot return to the destroyed Ceres Station in Super Metroid).

The distinction I might make here, though, is that the key items and opened passages in RE2 are not based on abilities you gain that aid you in other ways (with rare exceptions like how getting a combat knife allows you to cut through some tape over a control panel). There's no use for the various card-suit keys other than opening the doors with those locks on them, and RE2 lets you know when a key item is safe to discard, meaning that these don't enhance your abilities over time - they are only useful in the finite instances for which they are intended. Not only do you no longer need a pair of bolt cutters after you cut the three or four chains holding doors closed, but the bolt cutters cannot be used for any other purpose, and just jam up your inventory space, incentivizing you to toss them (and unlike a Skyrim-like game, the item vanishes from the world when it's discarded).

Still, the structure of these games are both about exploring a space in a kind of sequence that gradually opens that space up. Part of the challenge of the game is that you don't know what that sequence is initially, and so when you get a new tool, you need to consider all the locations where you saw barriers that that new tool can overcome (newer games in these genres often mark such places on a map).

This structure isn't limited to Metroidvanias - Silent Hill 2's remake (yes, I've spent a lot of the last year or so familiarizing myself with the classics of the Survival Horror genre through their recent remakes) puts you in "dungeon" like environments that need to kind of be solved like a big puzzle, but once you depart, you don't come back to them - the overall structure is linear even if individual chapters require backtracking.

Anyway, I think part of what I love about DMing D&D is the opportunity to be an amateur game designer. I know nothing about the digital tools required to build video games, but I like to think I've absorbed a lot of game design philosophy over my very soon to be four decades.

D&D began in the 1970s, and while there were rudimentary computer games at the time, the revolutionary development of the medium in the 1980s had not yet taken place. Still, I think that those dungeons that people built back then were in many ways the blueprint for a lot of these exploration-heavy video games.

But I also don't think that it totally works, because of the generalities built into D&D that might clash with dungeon challenges:

Consider keys:

In RE2, finding keys is a huge part of the game. Leon and Claire each find three of the four card-suit keys (there's one exclusive to each of them, Clubs for Leon and Hearts for Claire) and there are plenty of other keys to find, as well as lots of items that might not be literal keys, but are effectively (like the aforementioned bolt cutters).

In D&D, picking locks is a valuable skill that Rogues in particular tend to be good at. Rogues and Artificers (as well as PCs from some backgrounds) start with a set of Thieves' Tools, and the expectation for those characters is that they're going to be able to use those tools to get around the need for a key. Wizards (and maybe other classes?) can get the Knock spell. And any character could try to use an Athletics check to just knock a door down, ignoring the challenge of the lock.

D&D is built to allow imaginative and creative solutions to problems. Metroidvania design is about discovering the intended path that is obscured by its expansive world. Straying from that path might reward you by finding optional collectables - the missile expansions or energy tanks that give you more longterm combat power, for instance.

As a DM, it's kind of an unspoken covenant with your players that if the course of action they describe makes sense with the logic of the world, you must at the very least allow them to attempt to take that course of action. It might be mitigated by a roll, and extreme actions (like battering down a reinforced door) might be met with extreme difficulty, but generally not impossibility. You might say that one important door is impossible to knock down, but your players will start to get impatient with you if say that every door is impossible to knock down, especially because there are in-game tools that they might have acquired to do just that (like a battering ram, a real item that has a gold cost and everything).

I had a moment like this - frustration at having all my character abilities shut down but also appreciation for what the DM was looking for me to do:

My Triton Wizard, in his backstory, was informed of a hidden Age of Arcanum facility called the Cryptorium. The sentient book that sent him on his adventure (and trained him in the Order of Scribes and acts as his Manifest Mind,) and who was originally a living human wizard from long ago, thought that the other members of his ancient order (also turned into books) could be found there. It was the dungeon that I had basically written into my backstory, and truly, my DM (who is also my best friend) did an amazing job with the conceptualization of it (I had given only the name, but the place was built into the lakebed of the Erdeloch in the Dwendalian Empire, and was a sort of magically-high-tech underwater facility, which also gave my Triton some time to feel cool swimming around).

The central challenge of the dungeon was to gradually go up through its levels (it was basically an underground tower carved into a solid piece of rock, entered at the bottom through a submarine docking bay). When we noticed a hole in the ceiling of the central chamber where a hovering disc elevator ought to go, naturally my first instinct was just to cast Fly on myself and secure a rope at the top.

But that would mean skipping the intended solution, which was more fun. So, in a manner I suspect was sort of improvised, the central chamber of the Cryptorium now had an antimagic field. I pointed out that we had fought a monster in that base level of the central chamber, during which I had cast a cantrip, so the field was revised to allow cantrips, just not higher-level spells.

It was, you know, railroading.

However, as we explored that level, we came to one room in which a great glass window looked out into the murky water of the lake. And a lightbulb went off in my head:

If we broke the glass, the water would flood in, and we could swim up through the hole.

This, it turned out, was the intended solution. And even if it was kind of forced upon us in an awkward way, I freaking loved it. Once again, this was tailor-made for my character, who both has a swim speed and can breathe underwater. The rest of the party had to work a little harder - while I had Water Breathing running on everyone as a matter of course given our location, the rush of water was a hazard, and we also needed to ensure that we had collected and protected any valuables we could find that might be harmed by the water.

Now, this isn't really a Metroidvania-style solution. While we would quickly recognize that flooding a floor gave us access to the next floor (something we repeated once or twice to get to the top of the facility) and so could more easily get past the rest of the dungeon, it wasn't some tool that we could use more universally.

And I think that's because D&D's design is not really built for that.

In 5E, player power comes predominantly from our class, and our overall build. Magic items usually enhance those things: a Vicious Weapon still plugs into a Fighter's overall strategy of "hit things with weapon" and rather than transforming how they do what they do or when they can use it, it just amplifies the effect.

I could imagine a campaign in which you introduce monsters that can only be defeated with some special kind of, say, poison, but because the game design has to be modular and generalized, you're never going to get a big monster book with that built in.

To take another RE2 example: in the final stretch of the game, you encounter Plant Zombies. These things will not die unless they burn to a charred crisp (I think - I read somewhere that if you destroy all of their bulbs they won't come back, but I always burned them). With fire as the only means to permanently destroy them, you're incentivized to conserve either the fuel for Leon's flamethrower or the Incendiary Rounds in Claire's chemical launcher.

A rough equivalent in D&D is a Troll's regeneration ability. Trolls cannot die as long as they can continue to regenerate HP. But to turn that off, you can hit them with Fire or Acid damage, both of which are damage types that a spellcaster can get in cantrip form. If you have that available, there's no need to use up any limited resource to ensure you're free of their threat.

Once again, the broad capabilities of D&D characters means that the DM has limited control over what solutions they can force the player into finding.

There are rare exceptions: Flameskulls come back to life after just 1 hour unless they are sprinkled with Holy Water or the Dispel Evil and Good spell is cast on them. While the latter is something that a player might happen to have on them and thus not be limited to some specific resource, it's a 5th level spell, and thus a pretty significant sacrifice of future power.

But cantrips and tools have the potential to disrupt this kind of puzzle-box dungeon.

I don't think it's impossible, but you might have to really go outside the box on what kind of obstacles you set up. Magic is a good start, but even that can be countered by things like Dispel Magic. Even impenetrable physical barriers can potentially be bypassed with things like Stone Shape, Dimension Door, or Passwall.

Certainly, these spells consume spell slots as important resources, but those are also resources that might come back if the players find a way to take a rest inside of a dungeon (like with a Mordenkainen's Magnificent Mansion spell).

I think my conclusion here is that while you can take a lot of inspiration from the puzzle-box dungeons found in Metroidvania and similar games, on a basic level, D&D is not really built for that kind of experience. A more stripped-down game might make it work. But D&D is very much built to allow players to improvise and color outside of the lines. That's very fun in its own way - as a DM, I'm always excited when my players come up with a solution I never thought of - but it does mean that the experience is going to feel different.

Running a Catastrophe in D&D

 In my very first session of D&D I ever played (and ran) I had the campaign's main villain appear at the party of a debauched local ruler and summon the Tarrasque to attack the city.

The Tarrasque was chosen purely because it was the scariest, highest-CR monster in the Monster Manual (even Volo's had not come out at that point, though the Tarrasque has only had three CR equals - two of which are versions of Tiamat). One of my players, the only D&D veteran of the group, remarked "we're far too low level to fight that," and I realized only later that he might have feared that he had agreed to play with a DM who was just going to pound his players with unbeatable fights.

The Tarrasque never got within a mile of the player characters - by the time it came to destroy the palace in which the campaign had begun, they and most of the guests of the Sand Prince had fled, leaving the already chaotic and anarchic city of Camrada to descend into utter chaos.

I was a brand-new DM, and I was also following the advice of the 2014 DMG, which profoundly under-tuned combat encounters (though I think that the "adventuring day" XP totals compared to the tuning of even a "deadly" combat encounter in that tells you that there were very different assumptions about adventure pacing being made).

Thus, when the three level 1 party members fought two Kobolds (an ostensibly balanced low-difficulty encounter) and then a single Thug (likewise,) they plowed through them - in fact, by winning initiative, they actually didn't even give any of their foes a chance to act.

There are a lot of ways that I'd run the beginning of that campaign differently now with a decade of experience under my belt. But I do really like the idea of throwing the party into a major crisis.

One of the challenges I have running a campaign that has honestly spent most of its time in tier 3 and now a significant amount of time in tier 4 is that enormous catastrophes are the kind of crisis that the party is equipped to stop. The party literally just defeated the Tarrasque, and while I made one suboptimal choice in the combat (I didn't use its legendary action to knock out the Sorcerer's Tenser's Transformation spell, gained via Wish) the party beat the monster fair and square. (Half of them were unconscious at the end of the fight, but that just means I didn't think it was too easy).

Anyway, the point is that I would caution that it's difficult to make this work at higher levels. Earlier in the campaign, back when they were level 16, I believe (it was the start of my Orzhov arc, and the Lich who served as the boss of that arc also saw them hit level 17 - fun fact, the second and probably final time they fight him will be what gets them to 20, though now backed by a ton of very powerful minions), I had spirits of the dead flood the streets of Ravnica after the magical artifact that the Orzhov use to regulate the connection between Ravnica and Agryem, or the "Ghost Quarter" was damaged by the main villain. This happened while some characters were off in separate parts of the city, and so the plan was to have little vignettes where they each had to fend off an attack in pairs before the party could group up. One of these encounters was just skipped - the Gruul Sorcerer used Conjure Animals (the 5.0 version) to get a giant vulture or something and fly over all the undead creatures that emerged.

Truthfully, I think that a catastrophic set-piece is a great way to start a campaign in tier 1.

I've been giving a lot of thought to how to achieve survival horror in D&D, and I think that honestly would probably work best starting at level 1 and throwing several trivial combat encounters (like a single zombie against a party of four) before the party gets to rest.

This is different, genre-wise. Here, we want spectacle and bigness while still making things surmountable. I think you can sustain this pretty well at somewhat higher levels. Even going as far as level 5, your Wizard might be able to cast Fly, but only on a single target.

Generally, I think that the next campaign I start running (whenever that happens) will probably skip ahead to level 3 - I think level 1, and to an extent 2, are more like tutorial levels, and unless I have a lot of different players who haven't played D&D before, they'll probably be champing at the bit to at least have a subclass. But that's fine - it just opens up options for what kind of monsters I can use and how flexible they are to endure more encounters over time.

But we're getting ahead of ourselves: what do we mean by a catastrophe?

Something really bad is happening - it's a major event and something that will probably be remembered historically. Urban locales work well for this because there's a concentration of people that raises the stakes: perhaps our party will have the opportunity to save some helpless civilians in the process. They might only be one small corner of the fight.

Draw Steel has a published adventure called the Fall of Blackbottom that I think really does this kind of adventure: the party begins in a multi-story inn in a major town. Enemy soldiers drop an enormous metal sphere on the inn, which plummets through the roof and all the way down to the ground floor, and the sphere contains a portal to the Abyssal Wastes that summons in a bunch of demons. That's really just a single big encounter.

Another catastrophe could be an outbreak of an undead plague (though take careful consideration on how infectious it is - Romero-style zombies don't really work in D&D because they're essentially one-hit-killers).

While having some hints and clues sprinkled in here, the moment of a catastrophe is one of confusion - our most salient evidence of what is going on is just what is plainly happening in the moment. If it's elementals you're throwing at the party, they can put a pin in that and try to figure out who has the means to summon them. If it's an invading army, maybe the party can recognize the banners and uniforms of the invading soldiers, or maybe the insignia they bear is intentionally unknown, a mystery to be uncovered once the crisis of just surviving has died down.

Depending on how comfortable you are as a DM, the players might have some choices in how they want to escape the chaos, but I think that giving them a very clear goal could be helpful: maybe they have a friend with a ship at the docks, or they know about a tunnel built for such a moment. The goal is to reach that escape route, and the challenges and encounters you put in their way become the obstacles to that goal.

Now, what kind of encounters do we use?

Combat encounters are a key staple here, and especially if this is the beginning of your campaign, giving your players an opportunity to try out their new character's abilities is something you don't want to hold off for too long, especially in an action-heavy introduction like this.

An invading force naturally lends itself to combat encounters - enemy soldiers, demons, undead, what-have-you, are easy enough to just throw at your players.

To ensure that there's a certain breathlessness to the escape, you'll want there to be multiple encounters (not all combat) before they can escape, and thus, this first fight (especially if starting at level 1) should be pretty easy. A low-difficulty encounter using the 2024 DMG's guidance will probably suit you fine.

Now, I have a tendency as a DM to rarely re-use monsters in the same campaign, but I you're not bound to that. Especially if this is some unified force invading a city, it would make sense to have the rank-and-file invaders use the same low-CR stat block. Say it's a demonic invasion: it would make sense for Manes to be the front-line fodder.

Later, to keep the stakes clear, a second combat encounter might still be more of the low-ranking monsters the party has seen before, but adding in something scarier - a Manes Vaporspawn, for example, jumps from CR 1/8 (two per player at level 1 for a low-difficulty encounter) to CR 1 (one per four players at level 1/low difficulty). Maybe the party fought off eight Manes in their first fight, then had some non-combat encounter after that, and then this scarier monster makes its debut in the second encounter, with just a pair of Manes to make it clear that these are all part of the same invasion.

We want to give the players a tougher enemy that's certainly reasonable for them to fight and defeat (again, we'll be using tougher things if they're starting at level 3,) but the key is that we want to make sure that the tougher monster feels tougher, and actually starts to make them fear defeat, even if they can still handle it.

The reason for this, is that we want to get them to a point where it's clear they need to flee: ideally, they defeat the Vaporspawn, but maybe they're really rough after that - maybe one PC goes unconscious.

We can be generous with healing items - maybe in the non-combat encounters we make sure they can find a healing potion or two. Getting healed up just means they can keep running.

Now, I think perhaps we have a combat encounter with a different objective: perhaps we need to save some civilians, reinforcing our party's identity as heroes even as they are also fighting to survive (or giving them the opportunity to show that they're self-centered antiheroes who leave others to a dreadful fate). Here, we stick to those easily-slain, low-CR monsters to make the party feel powerful again.

And lastly, the final combat, in the final stretch to their escape route, is where we force them to flee: An overtuned encounter where it's clear that the fate of the city is not something that they can currently change. What we do is we use several of the tougher monsters. Where once the party was fighting like eight Manes at a time, and a single Manes Vaporspawn was a bit more of a challenge, now the party sees, at a distance, like four of them. The Vaporspawn are not blocking their escape route - instead, they are there to chase the party to their escape.

As a DM, you might feel pressured, especially at low levels, to protect your players' new characters. But I do think that here, you'll have given them the information they need to say that these creatures are going to be too much for them.

A couple other notes:

First off, you want to vary things up - have non-combat encounters between the fights. Massive destruction can block off expected routes: maybe a tower falls down, blocking the street the party was going to take. This could force them down into the sewers (where they might have the encounter with that tougher monster) to get around the rubble. A burning building gives the party an opportunity to save some civilians at the risk of taking damage from smoke inhalation or even a level of exhaustion. Meeting heroic NPCs might give the party allies who show up later to cover their eventual escape.

Treating each of these vignettes as discrete encounters rather than amorphous roleplay opportunities might make you feel like you're railroading your players, but I think it'll help keep up the pace. Linearity in a moment like this helps sell the urgency of it, and once the party escapes the chaos, you can move to a more open campaign design.

The other thing I'd strongly encourage is ensuring that it feels like a lot of things are going on in the city. Imagine a big skybox where other, maybe larger, dramas are playing out. The party might just be fighting Manes, but perhaps we see the city's gryphon-mounted skyguard getting shredding out of the air by Vrocks.

Remember, we want to sell this catastrophe as a reason to become more powerful, and thus more capable of stopping something like this. Depending on your tastes, the carnage might be more visceral or more implied. Will your players feel thrilled by seeing others (maybe the city guard) getting eviscerated by the monsters as our protagonists flee, or will they feel that this is a failure that starts the story off on a sour note? If you feel it's going to be the latter (and here I think session zeroes and talks about tone are important outside of gameplay) consider instead showing more structural carnage - a famed wizard tower collapses, maybe blocking off a more obvious route of escape, or some temple or coliseum. Landmarks that once oriented the players will sell the importance of this event  in their destruction.

Finally: while we want to kick things off intensely, even an explosive opening requires some build-up. If we're going to see a great city fall, you want to give the players some time to get to know it. In a four-hour play session, you probably want to start off introducing your characters in the city - a great time to lay out some of the locations where your encounters will take place. If we see a Wizard tower fall, maybe it belongs to an NPC that the party, or at least one member of the party, knows. We don't have to kill off that NPC, but we can at least raise the possibility that they've fallen along with their tower.

The thing is, without establishing the stakes, the carnage won't land as hard. A lot of stories set in the real world get to take a shortcut here: threatening New York lands because it's a city that most people are very familiar with. Threatening some fantasy city requires build-up because we need to know about it to care about it. Indeed, using an established setting like the Forgotten Realms can help here - if the players are familiar with Waterdeep, you could start the campaign off with chaos and people would feel invested. But if we assume that it's a homebrew setting or even just a more obscure one, we need a little time, at least, to get to know it.

All that being said, that doesn't mean we can't bring the chaos right at the start of a campaign. A connection to the city could happen in the backstories of the characters, or just how you describe it - making it clear that this is a place where people live, where there's a daily bustle of life that gets interrupted by our opening.

We might not know this city, but if you as the DM make some effort to remind people about what people living in a city are like, how a city lives and breathes, with all the humanity in it (even if it's not a human city,) we can feel that panic that makes an opening like this feel powerful.

Later on, the party will discover why this catastrophe took place, will find out who was responsible for it, and will confront the evil that kicked it all off. But for now, survival is the name of the game.

How Villainous Are the Villainous Options?

 In the primordial days of D&D, it was imagined as a game about amoral dungeon-crawling, where the Gold you hauled out of those ancient castles, deep caverns, and abandoned temples literally was the XP you earned to level up. Alignment initially focused more on the law/chaos axis, but the game worked out just fine with evil party members because ideology and morals could take a backseat to survival within a hostile environment like a dungeon.

As the game has evolved, and the influence of fantasy stories with more traditionally heroic protagonists became stronger (surely the popularity of the Lord of the Rings movies in the early 2000s, where its heroes are on their adventure purely to save the world, was a part of that,) I think it has been trickier to have truly villainous PCs. Adventures are usually about stopping some monstrous villain.

To be sure, a villainous protagonist could find themselves opposed to a villainous antagonist (consider the seasons-long arc in Breaking Bad where Walter White contends with Gus Fring, the irony being that Gus, while monstrous in his own ways, is probably not quite as evil as the show's main character).

Despite the meaning of the words (protagonist is the instigator of the "agony" of the dramatic story,) which originate in Greek tragedies (such as Oedipus killing his father and unwittingly sleeping with his mother, and thus bringing ruin upon himself) modern storytelling, especially in genre fiction, typically has heroes reacting to some nefarious plot. Luke Skywalker might want to go out into the world and be a hero, but the specific opportunity he gets to do that is a response to the Empire killing his adoptive parents to cover up their pursuit of the documented weaknesses in their new doomsday weapon. Luke is reacting to the Empire's newest overreach, rather than setting out with a specific goal that then gets interfered with by an antagonist.

There's an argument to be made, thus, that a lot of modern heroes are actually heroic antagonists to a villain protagonist.

I bring this up because of how adventure design probably needs to work with evil-aligned PCs.

If you are doing a heroic campaign, you can still have evil party members. Neither evil nor good are monoliths (in the former case, there's a major part of D&D lore, the Blood War, that makes that clear). Just because a tyrannical red dragon is burning towns in the area, the fact that they're causing suffering doesn't mean that your aspiring crime-lord Rogue won't have beef with them. Hell, even if you're an aspiring Lich (something that you can do with the Path of the Lich feats) you might really object to that dragon burning so many bodies that could have been perfectly serviceable zombie minions.

One example of this I really like is Spike in season two of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. When Buffy's vampire boyfriend Angel loses the curse that restored his soul, Angel undertakes a maniacal plot to unleash a demon that will swallow up the entire world. Spike, still a soulless vampire, decides to help Buffy stop him - not out of any benevolent intention, but because he likes that the world exists with all these humans walking around full of blood for him to drink. Sure, an apocalyptic cataclysm would be a great feat of evil, but Spike isn't into evil just for the sake of it.

One of the things I really like to think a lot about alignment is that there's the "capital" versus "lower-case" versions of each extreme of the chart (as well as Neutrality). "Capital E" Evil is someone who pursues evil ideologically, wanting to maximize suffering and pain as much as possible. "Lowercase E" Evil is someone who pursues their own interests, and is fully willing to do evil acts to get what they want, not because they want to be evil, but just because they don't really care if others get hurt.

You can apply this to everything else: Capital C Chaotic would be someone who actively wants to tear down systems and institutions, while Lowercase C Chaotic might be someone who just kind of wants to live outside of them.

Lowercase E evil characters are usually going to be less evil than Capital E evil characters (though not strictly - a somewhat impotent goblin serial killer who dreams of ruining the world but doesn't have the means to do so might be dedicated to evil but be less harmful than a callous noble who readily starts wars to distract from domestic unrest). But I also think it's going to be far easier to fit a Lowercase E evil character into a party of adventurers.

But what about our specific options?

5E already has a fair number of "dark"-themed class options. Shadow Monks, Aberrant Sorcery, most Warlock patrons - there are plenty of options for characters that could come off as quite villainous.

Looking at the recent UA, the theming of the subclasses leans toward the villainous, but I'm not sure that any of the subclasses really force you into an evil space.

Pestilence Domain, admittedly, forces you to justify worshipping a god of disease. I did mention in my breakdown of that subclass that, actually, you could argue that God in Exodus acts in a Pestilence aspect, afflicting the Egyptians with the Ten Plagues (many are more invasive species, but you've got the Boils there and arguably the death of the firstborns). I think you could also argue a Pestilence God as simultaneously being a god of medicine, evoking Paracelsus' "dosage makes the poison" and how a deity might inflict and cure diseases.

Circle of the Titan is, I think, the least obviously villainous, because the most iconic of the Titans, the Tarrasque, is actually a morally neutral figure. Sure, Krakens and Blobs of Annihilation are evil-aligned, but I can very easily see a Druid who follows this path out of a respect for the majesty of these beings that doesn't really depend on beneficence or malice.

Hell Knight Fighters do start to get into that truly morally questionable side of things: one can presume that the Infernal Wounds you inflict are particularly painful, and you might slay a foe and send their soul to the Nine Hells to become a Lemure, which is pretty unambiguously a bad thing to do (though I guess you could argue that if you kill an evil person, they're going to wind up as a Lemure, Manes, or Larva anyway).

Demonic Sorcery is, of course, tied to the chaotic evil of the Abyss, but Sorcerers usually get their powers through means outside of their control, and so it's hard to blame them for what kind of powers they get.

On a mechanical level, the Path of the Death Knight is actually somewhat neutral - it gives you some admittedly dark-themed spells and makes you undead by the end of it, but none of its spells are anything a good-aligned character couldn't get. The Hellfire Orb, sure, is unique, but again, it's nothing that someone couldn't do with a Fireball and Circle of Death. Flavor-wise, a Death Knight has to have turned their back on goodness in some way, and will remain a death knight until they atone. But I honestly think that that lore, while cool, could be expanded to include the status extending to someone who is cursed rather than choosing this path.

The Path of the Lich, though, really leans into consuming souls. I realize that there are different interpretations of what a soul literally is, but I tend to define it as the consciousness of a sentient being, and so the destruction of a soul is worse than killing someone, and maybe is the most unforgivable evil act because it robs them of any future and afterlife. While the UA post does point out the occasional good-aligned Lich, it's hard to imagine ever using Soul Siphon (a feature that most other feats interact with) and still consider yourself good. (I do have a prominent Lich NPC in my homebrew setting that I think is either Lawful Neutral or even Lawful Good, and I don't know if he just doesn't need to consume souls or if he has a system by which criminals condemned for execution who would prefer oblivion over going to the Lower Planes in the afterlife can volunteer to feed his Soul Jar. Alternatively, I might interpret a soul's "consumption" as merely being trapped in the phylactery rather than destroyed, and that if you destroy it, it frees all the Lich's victims).

I do think, ultimately, that any of these options could probably work for antiheroes or at least lowercase E evil characters. The key is that you should really coordinate with fellow players and your DM if you want to play an evil character and make sure there are clear boundaries on how that evil is expressed - what kind of in-world behavior is rich characterization and what is just going to derail the narrative.

UA: Path of the Lich

 The Lich is probably the most enduring contribution to pop culture that D&D has made. While there were characters who embodied the undead wizard in older fiction, like Thulsa Doom in the Conan books (which was kind of combined with another character for the James Earl Jones character in the movie) to evil overlords who would endlessly come back if a magical artifact was kept intact (like Sauron with his ring and Khoschei the Deathless's egg) D&D codified this type of character and gave it an enduring name: Lich, and archaic English word just meaning "body," but which now has a kind of elemental association with dark, evil, and extreme power.

And with these feats, you, too, can become one those enduring undead masters of the arcane.

Like the Path of the Death Knight, you'll begin with an Initiate feat, the prerequisites for all the other feats. Then, you'll have to pick up at least one other intermediary feat before getting the capstone Lich Ascension feat.

Liches are, in most settings, always evil (same for Death Knights) but there are some potential, maybe, paths in which you could become a more benevolent Lich. These are "villainous options" though. In the grey blurb, they do mention that liches can vary in alignments and motivations. Oddly, though, I think that the general lore is that death knights cease to be death knights if they atone, while a Lich's transformation is not really based on their moral outlook but on the steps they have taken - it's just that those steps tend to involve consuming others' souls, which is pretty evil basically any way  you look at it.

Still, I'd actually be somewhat more open to the idea of a non-evil Lich who just uses very obscure and esoteric necromantic rites that might not involved condemning anyone to oblivion.

But let's get into the feats.

Lich Initiate:

Prerequisites: Level 4+, Spellcasting or Pact Magic feature.

Ability Score Increase: Increase your Intelligence, Wisdom, or Charisma by 1, up to 20.

Creating Your Spirit Jar: Choose a tiny object of great significance to you (or roll on a table). You spend a long rest anchoring your soul to the object, allowing you to consume the souls of the living to bolster your power. You can only have one spirit jar at a time and the old one is destroyed if you create a second one.

Spirit Jar Destruction: Your spirit jar's AC is equal to your spell save DC, and it has a number of HP equal to your spellcasting ability modifier plus your character level. If the jar is destroyed, you gain 2 Exhaustion levels and you can't use the Soul Siphon ability until you create a new one.

Soul Siphon: When you reduce a Humanoid enemy to 0 Hit Points, you can consume its soul and gain a boost of arcane energy (no action required). On your next turn, the first creature you hit with an attack takes extra Necrotic damage equal to 1d6 plus your spellcasting ability modifier. You also gain this benefit if someone else reduces a Humanoid enemy within 10 feet of you to 0 HP. A soul consumed this way can be restored only by a True Resurrection or Wish spell.

    Like the Lich you are trying to become, I don't think you need the Spirit Jar to be anywhere near you. Indeed, it might best to lock it away in some secure and/or remote place. Soul Siphon is pretty powerful given that there's no limit on use, but it also only works on Humanoids.

    It's also... yeah, not really easy to imagine that flavored as anything other than evil. Note also that the boost is only to attacks, so if you're relying on saving throw spells for your damage this will not come into play a lot. Still, melee Bards, Warlocks with Eldritch Blast or Pact of the Blade, Sorcerers with Sorcerous Burst, or just a good old Fire Bolt can all benefit.

Arcane Restoration:

Prerequisite: Lich Initiate Feat

Ability Score Increase: Intelligence, Wisdom, or Charisma by 1, up to 20.

Essence Rejuvenation: When you use Soul Siphon to consume a soul, you can choose one or more expended spell slots to recover. The spell slots can have a combine level equal to no more than 4. Once you use this feature, you can't again until you finish a Short or Long rest.

    Again, you're limited to humanoids to harvest souls, but frankly, dang. Indeed, while we're probably imagining full casters using this, an Artificer, Ranger, or Paladin could also follow this path and that four levels-worth of spells looks amazing to someone who might only have 2nd level spells at this point. And that's per short rest, not just long.

    What this doesn't work well for is Warlocks, who won't have any spell slots lower than 5 a level after they pick up this feat.

Transfer Life:

Prerequisite: Lich Initiate Feat

Ability Score Increase: Intelligence, Wisdom, or Charisma by 1, up to 20 (unlike the Death Knight ones, these seem universal, which honestly makes sense).

Soul Transference: When you use Siphon Soul to consume a soul, you can choose a creature within 60 feet of yourself to gain Temp HP equal to your proficiency bonus plus your spellcasting ability modifier (minimum 1).

    We'll need to be at least level 8 (actually, I suppose an Eldritch Knight could get this at 6 in theory) so we're talking a +3 PB and probably a +4 to our spellcasting ability for this, so that 7 Temp HP. It's no action required, but maybe not stupendous.

Undead Grasp:

Prerequisite: Lich Initiate Feat

Ability Score Increase: Intelligence, Wisdom, or Charisma by 1 up to 20.

Paralyzing Touch: You know the Chill Touch cantrip, or if you already know it, you gain another cantrip of your choice. You choose Intelligence, Wisdom, or Charisma as your spellcasting ability for this when you pick this feat.

When you deal damage with Chill Touch, you can expend a level 1+ spell slot to attempt to paralyze the target. The target takes an extra 1d10 Necrotic damage per level of the spell slot consumed, and must succeed on a Con save against your spells ave DC or have the Paralyzed condition until the start of your next turn.

    On one hand, I like how this echoes the classic Lich ability. But there are a couple problems: First is that it's both an attack and a save, so they have two chances to avoid it (though in fairness, we choose to use this after we hit - it's just are we likely to actually try casting this and getting into melee range if we aren't going to use this?) The other is that the condition ends before we get to do anything to them on our next turn.

    I do think this works really well for Bladesinger Wizards, Valor Bards, and maybe Eldritch Knight Fighters, who all get to use a cantrip as the first attack in their multiattack. Paralyzing a foe and then hitting them with a weapon means an automatic crit. Great for Gishes, less great for true pure spellcasters.

Lich Ascension:

Prerequisite: Level 12+, at least two Path of the Lich feats.

Ability Score Increase: Intelligence, Wisdom, or Charisma by 1, up to 20.

Undead: Your creature type is Undead.

Unholy Anatomy: You have resistance to Necrotic and Poison damage, and you don't gain exhaustion levels from dehydration, malnutrition, or suffocation.

Frightening Gaze: You learn the Fear spell if you don't already know it and you always have it prepared. You choose Intelligence, Wisdom, or Charisma as your spellcasting ability for it when you choose the feat. You can cast the spell without expending a spell slot a number of itmes equal to your spellcasting ability modifier (minimum once) per long rest.

Rejuvenation: If you die and you have a Spirit Jar and you are not revived beforehand, you re-form in 1d10 days in the nearest unoccupied space within 5 feet of your spirit jar with all your Hit Points.

    I mean, the Rejuvenation thing is the main event for a Lich. And the only case in which I think it could be a downside is if your party needs to secure a resurrection diamond and you wind up rejuvenating before they can revive you, potentially separating you from them far away, even on another plane.

    Fear is a good spell, and this gives you several free uses of it.

    As I mentioned in the Death Knight post, being Undead has its downsides, even if healing spells now work on you just fine. And the damage resistances are good.

Overall Thoughts:

    I don't know that I love this as much as the Death Knight one - I guess that that supplemented you with a lot of extra spells because your character might not even have been a spellcaster. Most of the Lich's features focus on Soul Siphon, which, aside from the morality of it (again, this is a Villainous option) might also wind up being unusable in a campaign with little to no humanoid enemies. That's honestly a pretty big liability for something that is the crux of this character-defining feat path.

    And especially in 5.5, where lots of classic humanoid foes like Goblins or Gnolls are now classified as other creature types, it's going to be a serious problem.

    The Lich Initiate feat is actually more of a liability than a benefit if you can't use Soul Siphon, as your Spirit Jar's destruction imposes a pretty major downside.

    So, how would I build a Lich character?

Basically any spellcaster could work fairly well for this, and there are sort of too many to choose from. To go the classic route, you could go with a Necromancer Wizard (which we should be getting the 5.5 version of later this year). Naturally, we'd have to pick up Lich Initiate early on - for sake of argument, I'll say 4, though we could delay the whole progression and grab War Caster first and then take Initiate at 8 and Ascension at 16. So, what's our in-between feat?

Honestly, because of the issues raised here, I might go with Undead Grasp just to avoid putting all my eggs into the Soul Siphon basket. This will work on any foe (that isn't both immune to necrotic damage and also the paralyzed condition) so it's pretty campaign-agnostic. Arcane Restoration is very tempting, but I think I might want something like War Caster instead for my general spellcasting purposes.

It might be fun to use this on a half-caster, but because the feats only boost mental stats, the Artificer is probably the best choice in this case. Here, Arcane Restoration is going to be give us, proportionately, a pretty huge chunk of our spell slots back. The upcoming Reanimator subclass is the best thematic fit here, of course.

While we can siphon souls from any distance if we strike the killing blow, we might want to play a more close-range character to benefit from our party killing foes near us, which might make a hardier Cleric or Druid (or maybe Bard) a solid option. Again, I think a Bladesinger Wizard actually works really well for this.

    If I had any feedback (which I will for the survey that comes out next week) I'd say that the reliance on Soul Siphon, while flavorful, is very limiting to this Path, and I'd try to diversify the means by which an ascendant Lich does their business. Also, given that they explicitly call out non-evil Liches, it'd be nice to have the Lich Initiate feat use something other than this invariably heinous act. Perhaps the Soul Jar initially just increases our ability to recover HP before it fully brings us back to life, or maybe we get some other offensive ability that isn't restricted to humanoid targets and maybe doesn't have to consume souls?

I write that realizing that I don't want to de-fang this most iconic of evil monsters, and so it might be a mistake to give them the soft-focus treatment. But again, beyond the morality of Soul Siphon, the worry I have is that a player feels trapped by this set of options if they're in a campaign without a lot of humanoid foes (something that becomes almost necessary at high levels, when humanoids are just not tough enough to challenge a party).

And with that, we come to the end of this latest UA. I think there's certainly some reworking and tuning up that these options will need, but I applaud WotC thinking outside the box and giving us some truly new and innovative options.

Note that none of these four subclasses has ever appeared in any previous 5E content (one could argue the Hell Knight is thematically linked to MCDM's Illrigger, but I don't think that counts). With so much stuff getting reprinted for 5.5, which was meant to be backwards compatible (and to a large degree is,) I'm really happy to have a UA with absolutely nothing that we've seen before. So, major points for that.

UA: Path of the Death Knight

 This isn't a subclass. It's a group of associated feats that allow you to become a Death Knight. We'll see this as well as the Path of the Lich.

Conceptually, this is really cool. Let's see how it works out.

First off, there's a table for "Death Knight Journeys" to explain why your character is pursuing this path. There are classic acts of dishonor and depravity, but there are some with a bit of wiggle-room that allow you to be a more sympathetic character.

You'll need to take the Death Knight Initiate feat first, and then you'll need at least one other Death Knight feats before getting the final Death Knight Ascension feat, which requires level 12 (so no, Fighters cannot get this at level 8).

The feats' ability score bonuses clearly point toward Paladins as the most likely class to take this path, though Fighters and Barbarians can also do pretty well with them.

Also note that because you'll be taking at least three general feats to get the final one, Paladins actually might not be able to get as high Strength or Charisma as they'd like (weirdly making this possibly better on a Fighter).

Death Knight Initiate

Prerequisites: Level 4+, Weapon Mastery Feature

Ability Score Increase: Increase Strength or Charisma by 1, to a maximum of 20.

Death Points: You have a number of Death Points equal to your PB. You regain all expended Death Points when you finish a long rest.

Dread Strike: You always have Wrathful Smite prepared, using Charisma as your spellcasting ability. You can cast it without expending a spell slot by expending 1 Death Point. When you expend Death Points to cast Wrathful Smite, the target has disadvantage on the wisdom saving throws to avoid or end the spell's effects. (You can also cast the spell using spell slots, as normal, but without this bonus effect).

    Wrathful Smite is a somewhat lower-damage smite spell, but if the fear effect goes off, it's pretty useful. And at level 4, two free Wrathful Smites are pretty nice to have. (Note, here, I think Barbarians cannot cast any spells while raging, so this really does seem built for Fighters and Paladins, and I guess in theory Strength-based Rangers).

    This is the baseline feat that you need for all the others. Frightened is a good condition that admittedly a fair number of foes are immune to, but you get to pick when to use it. Let's see the subsequent ones:

Dread Authority:

Prerequisite: Death Knight Initiate Feat

Ability Score Increase: Increase Constitution or Charisma by 1, up to 20.

Dread Command: You always have Command prepared, with Charisma as you spellcasitng ability. You can cast the spell without expending a spell slot by expending 1 Death Point (or you can use a spell slot as normal). If cast with a Death Point, undead targets have disadvantage on the saving throw against the spell.

    This is interesting: we can't boost Strength with this one, but if you figure we start ourselves off with a 17 in Strength, we might get to a +4 with the first feat and then boost our Charisma next. (We don't have to take this feat, mind you).

    Command is a solid spell, one with a Charm-like effect that doesn't actually charm the target, and thus means it works on just about any creatures. It's not the most powerful, but again, we're getting a couple uses per day.

Harbinger of Doom:

Prerequisite: Death Knight Initiate Feat

Ability Score Improvement: Increase your Strength, Constition, or Charisma by 1, up to 20.

Ill Omen: You always have Bane prepared, Charisma as your spellcasting ability. You can cast it without expending a spell slot by expending 1 Death Point. When you cast it with a Death Point, affected targets subtract 1d6 instead of 1d4 from their attack rolls and saving throws.

    The ability scores here are very flexible. Bane's a fine spell, and I like the pattern of making the spells slightly better when cast with Death Points. I do wonder why we can't upcast them by spending more, though.

Deathly Presence:

Prerequisites: Level 8+, Death Knight Initiate Feat

Ability Score Improvement: Increase Strength, Constitution, or Charisma by 1, up to 20.

Awful Presence: You always have the Fear spell prepared (Charisma as spellcasting ability, you know the drill at this point). You can cast it without expending a spell slot by expending 1 Death Point. When you expend Death Points to cast Fear, you deal 2d6 psychic damage to each creature that fails its saving throw in addition to its regular effects.

    Notably, this lets us cast a 3rd level spell for just one Death Point, and it also gives us that spell a level before a Paladin typically gets 3rd level spells (and five levels before an Eldritch Knight Fighter could). Fear is a very good crowd-control spell, and by level 8, we can use it three times a day. At 9, we can cast it four times and then also spend spell slots to cast it even more.

Unholy Steed:

Prerequisites: Level 8+, Death Knight Initiate Feat

Ability Score Increase: Increases Strength or Constitution by 1, up to 20.

Spectral Steed: You always have Find Steed prepared. You can cast it without expending a spell slot by spending 1 Death Point. When you use it this way, the steed is a Fiend and targets you choose have Disadvantage on the Wisdom saving throw against Fell Glare.

    On a Fighter this is really cool. On a Paladin, this is mostly worthless, as we get Find Steed automatically and can cast it for free once per day anyway. The Otherworldly Steed bonus actions are only once per day. I'd skip this on a Paladin for sure, and honestly probably would on a Fighter as well.

Death Knight Ascension:

Prerequisites: Level 12+, two Path of the Death Knight feats

Ability Score Increase: Increase your Strength or Charisma by 1, to a maxium of 20.

Undead: Your creature type is Undead.

Unholy Anatomy: You have resistance to Necrotic and Poison damage. You don't gain exhaustion from dehydration, malnutrition, or suffocation.

Hellfire Orb: As a magic action, you can expend 1 to 5 Death Points to throw an orb of hellfire at a point within 120 feet. Each creatuer in a 20-foot radius sphere centered on that point must make a Dex save (DC based on your Charisma). On a failure, creatures take 2d6 fire plus 2d6 necrotic damage for each Death Point expended, or half as much on a success.

    Ok, a lot to break down here:

    Being Undead is certainly the thematic culmination of your transformation into a Death Knight. It does, also, create problems if you have a Cleric in the party that wants to Turn Undead. Thankfully, healing spells now work on Undead and Constructs, so there's no real problem there.

    The damage resistances are actually quite nice, and the lack of need to eat, drink, or breathe is situationally nice but less likely to come up.

    Hellfire Orb is, of course, an iconic Death Knight ability. At level 12, you'll be able to expend 4 points, which gives you 8d6 fire and 8d6 necrotic damage, which is quite a lot, basically two fireballs at a time. I suspect that if I played one of these, I'd be hesitant to pour all of my points into one of these unless we had a big group of foes that were all pretty beefy. Just two Death Points will give you a Fireball (half of whose damage is necrotic and thus less likely to be resisted).

    The main thing is that it's an option to Nova pretty big: one level later, we can do 5 points and thus a total of 20d6 damage, which is half of a Meteor Swarm (my DMPC dropped one of those on the Tarrasque, and transmuted the fire into lightning to make sure it all went through, and boy is that a lot of damage).

Putting it All Together:

Ultimately, to get the full Death Knight transformation, you'll need to dedicate three feats to this. Paladin is almost certainly the intended class for these feats, but I think a Warlock with a quick Fighter dip to get Weapon Mastery would also work very well.

In the Paladin's case, I'd probably pick the Initiate feat up at level 4 to get me started, then grab Deathly Presence at 8, and finish up the Ascension at level 12, leaving my level 16 feat for something like Great Weapon Master. If I started with a 17 Strength and 16 Charisma, I'd be able to cap Strength by 12. I might actually take GWM earlier (perhaps at level 4 and push everything else back,) and instead pump Charisma or Con with Ascension at 16.

For a Fighter, playing an Eldritch Knight would help so that I could cast the spells using spell slots along with Death Points. With an extra feat at levels 6 and 14, I might pick up an Ability Score improvement to speed things up at level 6, or perhaps take Death Knight Initiate then, after getting GWM, Dual Wielder, or Polearm Master.

For a Bladelock, I'd start with a level of Fighter (a solid plan for any Bladelock) and then stick to Warlock for most of my career, getting Initiate at 5, probably Deathly Presence at 9 (though if I have Fear already at level 6, I might grab a different one - sadly Unholy Steed doesn't boost Charisma), and then Ascension at level 13, after which I might consider putting another level or two into Fighter for Action Surge and maybe a subclass. Naturally, Undead Patron would be a fitting subclass (though any dark-themed one works).

This is a really interesting approach to these transformations - obviously it fits into the existing framework of feats, and does present a bit of a challenge given the pretty huge commitment if you want to go all the way. That might keep it balanced, though. I do think that the addition of a special resource to fuel your spells that isn't just like "once a day unless you have spell slots" does make this a lot better than a lot of feats that grant spells.

I'm super curious to see what book these might come out in, but given that we still don't have a confirmed Dark Sun book, I'm not holding my breath (though if I were a Death Knight, I could).

Next, we'll finish up this UA with the other, arguably more iconic undead monster's path: the Lich.

UA: Demonic Sorcery

 As the second-most represented fiends, I still kind of feel like demons wind up underrepresented in D&D. I think there's an assumption that, because of their chaotic nature, they must be mindless brutes and cannot be the slick, conniving schemers that Devils are. I disagree with this characterization. I have a whole rant about how law and chaos are more about institutionalism versus personalism, and how demon lords have to be very clever to make sure they maintain control of their forces, and they're careful not to anoint a successor so as to ensure that they are irreplaceable.

But yes, demons: gross, malformed, unpredictable, wild. This is chaos mixed with evil, and thus less likely the whimsical whack-a-doodle of the Wild Magic Sorcerer. Let's see how they work:

Demonic Spells:

1st level: Detect Magic, Entangle

2nd level: Misty Step, Spider Climb

3rd level: Dispel Magic, Gaseous Form

4th level: Confusion, Hallucinatory Terrain

5th level: Contact Other Plane, Hallow

    Misty Step is a spell I take on basically anyone who can get it. Detect Magic and Dispel Magic are good utility spells to have around. Confusion is helpful because it gets around Charm immunity. Some solid ones here.

Level 3:

Abyssal Rupture:

When you spend at least 1 Sorcery point as part of a Magic action or bonus action on your turn, youc an unleash one of the following effects (once per turn).

Demonic Lash: One creature within 20 feet you can see takes 1d4 Slashing damage, and if it's Large or smaller, you can pull it up to 10 feet closer to you.

    Rare that a Sorcerer wants a creature to be closer to it, but there are scenarios where it could be good.

Fiendish Carapace: Until the start of your next turn, attacks against you have Disadvantage.

    This is sure to be the default option, giving you a little more survivability as a squishy sorcerer.

Level 6:

Abyssal Aura:

(Get Ready)

When you use Innate Sorcery, you can infuse chaos into your surroundings. While Innate Sorcery is active, you warp reality in a 10 foot emanation around you. You roll a d6 to determine the effect. If it has a DC, you use your spell save DC.

You can do this once per long rest for free, or spend 2 Sorcery Points (no action required) to restore your use.

1: Sticky Webs: The area becomes difficult terrain for your enemies. Each enemy that starts their turn in the emanation must succeed on a Strength save or be restrained. They can take an action to make an Athletics check against your DC to end the effect.

2: Caustic Ooze: The area becomes difficult terrain for your enemies. Each enemy that starts their turn there takes 1d6 Acid damage and must succeed on a Dex save or fall prone. At level 11 this becomes 2d6 and at level 16 it becomes 3d6.

3: Terrifying Screams: Each enemy that starts in the emanation takes 1d6 Psychic damage and must make a Wisdom save or be frightened until the start of their next turn. The damage increases to 2d6 at 11 and 3d6 at 16.

4: Enthralling Spores: The emanation is Heavily Obscured for creatures of your choice. When you reach level 11, enemies that start in the emanation must make a Wisdom save or be charmed by you until the start of their next turn.

5: Poisonous Foliage: The emanation is lightly obscured. Each enemy that starts its turn in it takes 1d6 Poison damage and must succeed on a Con save or have the poisoned condition. Again, the damage goes up to 2d6 at 11 and 3d6 at 16.

6: Enervating Bones: Spectral Limbs erupt from the ground in the emanation. Each enemy that starts its turn in the emanation takes 1d10 necrotic damage and cannot regain hit points until the start of its next turn. The damage goes up to 2d10 at level 11 and 3d10 at level 16.

    Well, first off, I stand corrected: This is the reason to use Demonic Lash.

    Notably, you can't choose which of these features you get, but they're all at least pretty comparable in utility. They mostly avoid friendly fire (the foliage does lightly obscure things for everyone, but that just means disadvantage on perception checks). This is a Sorcerer who is going to want to be up close with foes, which means you should build accordingly.

Level 14:

Abyssal Conduit:

Your Abyssal Aura is now a 20-foot emanation. You can also roll twice on the table and pick between the effects you roll. If you roll the same number twice, you can pick any of the options.

    So, this is both a wider aura and more control over what you get, which are both good. 20 feet is still fairly close, though.

Level 18:

Fiendish Servant:

You can cast Summon Fiend without a Material Component (you also, presumably, get it prepared for free - it's not typically a Sorcerer spell, I believe). You can also cast it once for free per long rest, though when you cast it this way, you must choose the Demon form for the summoned fiend.

    I love the Summon spells, and Fiend is a very good one. The Devil version has the highest damage potential (and also both flies and has a ranged attack, so it's pretty resilient) but the Demon form is also pretty good, and since it's a free casting, this is just gravy. A free 6th level spell per day is not bad at all.

    Part of me wishes this came earlier, but I don't know that I'd want to delay Abyssal Conduit to do so.

Overall Thoughts:

    However you build this character, you need to make a Sorcerer who can stand to be close to its enemies. The Abyssal Carapace option does help a bit, but I think you might want to take other defensive features into consideration.

    The subclass puts a lot into Abyssal Aura. You'll probably want to use it each fight, but you might not always want to use it. That might be ok: we get features that don't rely on it. I think the tough thing is when you use it and get an option that you really don't want, like Poisonous Foliage when you're fighting things immune to poison. Like, say you're fighting a bunch of devils. You'll still want to use the feature because the other possibilities are good against them, but if you happen to roll a 5, you've got something that's kind of worthless. And you'll need to both spend Sorcery Points and another use of Innate Sorcery to try for a different aura on your next turn.

UA: Hell Knight Fighter

 The Nine Hells are evocative, but I also sometimes feel like they get overexposed when we talk about the outer planes. Modeled on Dante's Inferno, we're sort of queued up already to recognize its structure, its nine circles. In Asmodeus, we have a Lucifer without an official Abrahamic God in D&D's polytheistic cosmos.

So I get it, it's compelling.

I might be a little more annoyed by this focus if not for the fact that this UA does give us a corresponding subclass to the chaotic evil plane of the Abyss.

I could very much imagine an evil paladin of the Nine Hells, but giving Fighters some infernal power kind of reflects the more conviction-agnostic characterization of the Fighter class. There are various suggestions on why you might have become a Hell Knight, and while the subclass is very villain-coded (you will be sending souls to the Nine Hells when you kill) there are some scenarios where you might not have taken up this role willingly.

Let's get into mechanics:

Level 3:

Diabolical Gift:

You get two benefits:

Devil's Sight: You can see normally in Dim Light and Darkness, both magical and nonmagical, within 120 feet.

    This is worded just like the Warlock invocation of the same name, and notably is not Darkvision, which means that you should be able to see in color, and I think you could argue that "seeing normally" would be as if it were all bright light. While you might still consider the Blind Fighting style at level 1, this is going to cover a lot of what it covers, and better.

Devil's Tongue: You know the Infernal language, or another of your choice if you already speak Infernal.

    A "ribbon" that could be very useful in a devil-themed campaign (and if you're a DM with one of these in your party, you'll want to have some devils pop up - though their immunity to fire damage might hinder this character a little if they're fighting them).

Hellfire Weapon:

When you take the attack action, you can imbue a weapon you are holding with hellfire, turning it into a Hellfire Weapon. It remains transformed this way for 10 minutes or until you use the feature again, die, or the weapon gets more than 5 feet away from you for 1 minute or more. You can also end it early, no action requried.

While transformed, the weapon emits dim light out to 5 feet and you can choose to deal fire damage with it instead of its normal damage.

    The light isn't terribly useful given our Devil's Sight, and might actually be a hindrance, but it's certainly cool conceptually and can be useful if we need fire damage to take advantage of vulnerabilities or stop regeneration.

Infernal Wound:

We're not done with level 3!

You have one Infernal Wound die, which is a d6.

Once per turn when you hit a creature with your Hellfire Weapon, you can deal extra fire damage equal to one roll of your Infernal Wound die and give the target an Infernal Wound.

While wounded in this way, the creature takes fire damage equal to one roll of your Infernal Wound die at the start of each of its turns. The effect lasts for 1 minute, until the target regains hit points, or until the target or a creature within 5 feet of it takes an action to stanch the wound. A target can be affected by only one instance of this feature at a time.

You can use this feature Con times per short or long rest (minimum 1).

    This is pretty great, actually. A d6 isn't huge, and weirdly the die never gets upgraded, but it's a no-save DoT that requires someone's action to end. Put this on a troll and you're in fantastic shape. It also has the crit-smite advantage of being able to wait for a critical hit to use (though it's probably worth it on any hit just to get the wound ticking on the target).

Level 7:

Advanced Wounds:

When you roll a 6 on the Infernal Wound die (presumably either on the initial hit or the ticking damage) you can apply one of the following effects:

Purulence of Minauros: Caustic pus (gross) erupts from the wound. Each creature in a 5-foot emanation originating from the target takes acid damage equal to your Con modifier, and the target has the poisoned condition until the start of its next turn.

    Two problems: first, if you're in melee, that damage is going to hit you (unless you have a reach weapon - not a bad idea for this subclass). Also, if you get this on the initial hit, they might not do anything until the start of their next turn. Granted, for the ticking damage, this could poison them right at the start of their turn. (I also assume they don't take the acid damage given that an emanation goes out from them. Maybe I'm wrong?)

Rupture of Cania: the wound explodes with arcane energy, dealing Force damage to the target equal to your Con modifier.

    This adds insult to injury - they're already taking 6 damage from the wound, and now they're taking maybe three more. Good in a strictly single-target situation.

Stygian Gangrene: Infernal rime spreads out from the wound, dealing Cold damage equal to your con modifier to the target and preventing it from taking reactions.

    Oh, actually, this is better than Rupture of Cania unless the target is resistant or immune to cold damage. I feel like Rupture of Cania needs something more.

    The overall feature here will only come around about 16.7% of the time (for now) but luckily we have more at level 7:

Hell-Forged Equipment:

While wearing armor or wielding a shield (likely for a Fighter) you have resistance to Fire damage.

Also, damage from your weapons and fighter features ignores resistance to fire damage.

    Unlike resistance to poison or necrotic damage, as we saw with the Pestilence Cleric, fire resistance is actually quite common, including nearly all non-Devil fiends (devils tend to be fully immune). That's really helpful. And fire damage happens all the time, so having resistance to it is great (it even helps you when traveling through hot climates).

Level 10:

Hellfire Surge:

When you use your Action Surge while wearing armor or wielding a Shield (again, likely, unless you're like a Fighter/Barbarian multiclass) you can superheat your equipment, erupting in a 10-foot emanation. Each creature of your choice must make a Dex save (DC based on your Con modifier). On a failure, they take fire damage equal to your Infernal Wound Die (again, this is always a d6) and are burning (which is now a Hazard that deals 1d4 fire damage at the start of a creature's turn). On a success, they take half damage and are not burning.

    While certainly limited in use, this is an AoE DoT you get as a Fighter. Get in the thick of a bunch of enemies and light them up.

Level 15:

Blister of Avernus:

Your hellfire deals painful, boiling blisters (gross). When you roll a 6 on your Infernal Wound DIe, you can roll another d6 and add it to the damage. The maximum number of d6s you can add to the Infernal Wound's damage is 3.

    So, we might be hitting a point where the lack of a die upgrade is actually better for us, as we have a higher chance of rolling the max. The chance of getting a third die is 1/36, but this will get more likely with our level 18 feature. Between this and the Advanced Wounds, we get sometimes get a really lucky burst of damage, but I think you could argue this is a bit of a double-dip.

Level 18:

Hellfire Condemnation:

Whenever damage from your Hellfire Weapon or Infernal Wound reduces a creature to 0 hit points, the creature dies and its soul rises from the River Styx as a Lemure in a layer of the Nine Hells of your choice in 1d4 hours. If not revived before then, they can only be returned to life with a Wish spell.

    Theoretically, this could be useful against a foe that can escape death. Would this kill an Arch-Hag without needing to find their anathema? Does this prevent a Lich from coming back via its Soul Jar? That might be far too powerful for monsters that have built-in ways to come back.

    On the other hand, does this also prevent us from subduing targets non-lethally? I guess we can discharge our Hellfire Weapon, but while the flavor of this feature is cool, I think we need to revisit its implementation.

Infernal Bargain:

When you roll your Infernal Wound Die, you can treat a roll of a 1 as a 6.

    This is actually enormous for our earlier features: doubling the chance that we activate both Advanced Wounds and Blister of Avernus. The d6 now has an average damage roll of 4 1/3 (up from 3.5) and we now have a 1/3 chance to activate Advanced Wounds. The chance of getting three dice on a Blister of Avernus is now 1/9.

Overall Thoughts:

    This subclass is really interesting and different. Fighter subclasses come in varying levels of complexity, and while this will seem complex at first, I suspect that it will wind up being fairly simple after any significant experience playing it.

    I don't think we're looking at the same power level as an Eldritch Knight or Battle Master, but it's still pretty cool. Letting us set our DCs via Con also lets us pour all of our ability score stuff into just two stats (Battle Masters have the advantage of being truly SAD, but this is better, I'd say, than needing Intelligence on top of Strength/Dex and Con).

    It's kind of flavorful that these mortal knights empowered by the Hells are actually far less effective against Devils, who are almost all immune to fire, while they're quite capable against Demons, Yugoloths, and other fiends who are merely resistant.