Doing Conditions the Souls-Like Way

 I started playing D&D around the same time that I first played Dark Souls, two gaming obsessions (oddly not Dark Souls itself - I'm much more into Bloodborne and Elden Ring, but it's all of the same genus of game, from the same studio) that have stuck with me now for a bit over a decade.

While I personally prefer a class-based RPG system, I really appreciate how Souls-likes use a skill-based system to create very different kinds of characters (admittedly less for Bloodborne, which has a narrower style of gameplay for the most part).

It would be fun, I think, to find a way to make a system that works on the same principles for TTRPGs (basically using item scaling and stat requirements to govern what a player can do, and thus allowing different flavors of magic, for instance, to build into by focusing on certain spellcasting stats or spreading between them).

But while that's a really tricky bit of design to work out (we need to keep numbers manageable where you can just roll some dice to get your result and not need a calculator or an abacus) there is one element of these games that I think could be kind of interesting to work out:

The manner in which conditions work.

Ok, for those who aren't familiar with these games, or have never played them, there are often various conditions that can stack up on your character, or which you can inflict on foes. The most basic is Poison, which we'll use as our main example.

Getting poisoned in these games is pretty nasty, as while the condition lasts, you'll continually lose health. But you can avoid it if you're careful:

When an enemy has an attack that inflicts poison, you'll get a little bar on your screen, roughly below your character depending on your camera angle. Each poison-inflicting attack will fill that meter (or if you run through one of the many, many, many poison swamps in these games, it'll tick up for every second you stay in the fetid waters). Until that meter fills, you're actually fine. And if you go for a while without getting any more poison build-up, the meter will start to drain until it's empty and no longer displayed on the screen.

But if it does fill, you are hit with the condition - in the case of poison, that damage over time will continue onward. At that point, the meter will actually start to drain, with the condition lasting as long as the meter still has anything in it. (This actually means that once you are poisoned, you're effectively immune to poison build-up, though the second that the poisoned condition ends on you, if you're still wading through a poisoned waters, you'll start to build it up again.)

This is how all conditions work - some of them have instantaneous effects, like Bleed, which will cause a sudden burst of massive damage, which then instantly drains completely but of course makes you vulnerable to the next bleed. There's often a more powerful poison variant (in Elden Ring it's Scarlet Rot. I think in Dark Souls it's Toxic, and in Bloodborne it's just... fast poison).

Now, one of the interesting things is that often in these games if you equip an item that helps defend against these conditions, raising, say, your Immunity in Elden Ring, you'll actually see these bars appear on your screen, partially filled, and draining.

And that, to me, implies something about the way these work:

Typically, in these games, you have stats that affect your resistance to these conditions (as well as resistances to different damage types). What I think these resistances do (it might be more complicated than this, but bear with me,) is essentially make that meter longer. If you have, say, 135 Immunity, that means that you'll need 135 "poison points" before you actually get poisoned. If an enemy has an attack that inflicts 40 poison points on a hit, you'll thus be fine (other than the damage it causes) if you take three of them, but the fourth gives you this further problem.

The reason that equipping an item that increases your immunity causes that meter to show up on your screen, then, I'd guess, is that if you had 135 and now suddenly have 160, there's 25 points within that meter that suddenly have been added, and rather than just start you off with an empty meter, it's basically treating it like you permanently have Poison Points up to your maximum. I imagine they do it this way to prevent weird shenanigans that might be caused by swapping gear mid-fight. If we invert it - if we figure that with 135 Immunity you're "135 points away from being Poisoned," and suddenly your maximum is 160, then the game needs to drain your now-larger meter to get to your new maximum.

The point, though, is that this could be a system we replicate in a TTRPG.

Poison, of course, is different in D&D - you can be poisoned without taking any damage, and that damage-over-time association that it has in most games is not there in D&D (though there are some effects that have that).

But the way it generally works is that an effect subjects you to a Constitution saving throw, and if you pass the DC set by the effect (and/or the monster producing said effect,) you avoid being poisoned.

But let's say we built a system in which, say, your Constitution Score instead set your Poison Tolerance (Resistance and Immunity already have meanings in D&D, so we'll say Tolerance for now). We might then have monsters that inflict, say, 5 Poison Points on you with an attack. As it is now, higher Con makes it less likely for you to get poisoned, but it's more predictable.

Now, does this make sense in a game where we generally want combat to only last 3-4 rounds? Perhaps not. But if we were to build a new system that has a different attitude toward how fast combat can flow, maybe this would be an avenue worth exploring.

Single-Playing WoW and the State of Online Multiplayer

 So, I have a confession.

And it feels weird that it's a confession and not just a statement of fact, because I'm actually not doing anything wrong.

I basically play WoW solo these days. On occasion, my best friend, who has been playing just about as long as I have, will have me grab a character (usually one of my tanks) to run a Mythic Plus dungeon. But for me, my focus these days has really been on doing things on my own. Solo play. Delves are truly my endgame.

And I think I was always inclined to play this way. Back when hitting level 30 was kind of a big deal, I really didn't even try to find groups for dungeons until I was level 30, or even level 40. I remember eventually figuring out how to look for groups in trade chat (this was before the Group Finder was implemented). And yeah, by the time the Group Finder was implemented in I believe 3.3, I got into a habit of running a bunch of dungeons on all of my characters each week. I've also got to say that the experience of running dungeons back then was wild. When my Troll Mage hit level 80 and geared up just high enough to qualify for a heroic dungeon, I came in understanding that, yes, I'd be sort of getting carried, but by that point in the expansion, these dungeons weren't really a challenge for established max-level characters, with most clears taking under ten minutes. But the players in that group, whether because they resented me for being just barely at the gearing minimum or because they were just assholes, decided to spend the dungeon getting me killed, the Hunter misdirecting enemies to my squishy Mage, and eventually just kicking me as they raced through the dungeon while I was running back as a ghost. Yes, it's been like 16 years since that happened, and yes, I'm still mad.

Now, I think perhaps because the WoW playerbase has gotten older, my experience with them in more recent years has been less toxic, the people less angry and aggressive, more mellow and cooperative. But it's still frustrating sometimes. Just a couple weeks ago, I was brought in for a Mythic Plus Windrunner Spire run. It didn't go wonderfully - we certainly didn't beat the timer. And one of the players claimed they didn't have enough gold to repair their gear, so my friend gave him what he claimed he needed, before that player pretty swiftly "disconnected" and didn't log back in. We were forced to finish the dungeon with four of us, and it was pretty clear the guy had been scamming my friend. A bizarre thing to scam a fellow player for, given that a thousand gold at this stage of WoW's lifespan is a pathetically small amount - I think I got 18k off of a weekly quest on one of my characters the other day.

But it left a sour taste in my mouth.

I think the implementation of Delves is a recognition of the fact that sometimes, playing with others isn't so fun. WoW's an MMO, built on the very premise that it's cool to be in a game where there are tons of other players also playing. But especially given the game's longevity, some of us older players have lost patience over time for dealing with other players' crap.

Yes, this post is partially about The Duskbloods. I saw a Blue Sky post by Jacob Geller, famed video game video essayist, saying "Sometimes I feel the potential of multiplayer is more exciting as a game design concept than it is to actually play." And I feel that. I think there's often talk about how being with other players can lead you down unexpected and interesting roads - you can't predict what is going to happen because other players will surprise you.

It is, thus, kind of funny that a really refined multiplayer game, like WoW, works really hard to funnel that experience into something predictable. If you're running a dungeon, everything works best if the players are acting in clearly prescribed ways. If I'm your tank, you want me pulling groups carefully, positioning them so that you're not fighting with me to max your DPS. The best players to play with are the ones whose actions you can predict, and so as a player, I aspire to be very predictable to my fellow players. That's how we win. That's how we overcome our challenges.

Back during Wrath, when my guild (which is basically a ghost town these days, probably in part due to my lack of enthusiasm to organize raids, a role I fell into as our guild's most consistently playing tank after our original guildleader quit WoW) was running Naxxramas (well past the point when it was "the current raid," but back then they didn't have this idea of seasonal catch-ups, so it was still reasonable to try to progress through to earn gear that would get us into Ulduar,) we were fighting Heigan the Unclean, with his infamous "safety dance." The funny thing is that I think that mechanic is actually not terribly hard with a modern computer, but back then, there was enough lag that you really needed to anticipate the slime waves well in advance. We were, I think, doing it on 25-player mode, and about 75% of the way into the fight, all but me (protection paladin,) and a shadow priest and a holy paladin were dead. The three of us performed that safety dance for 35 full minutes, clinching victory.

It was unexpected. It was a legendary moment. It might have been a bit boring for the rest of the group (though they were cheering us on in TeamSpeak). But the design of the game these days wouldn't allow that. If that many DPS were down, there would be an enrage timer that would end the fight.

Multiplayer games promise endless predictability, but multiplayer game design requires that the possibilities become narrow enough that the game retains coherence.

Game companies have been pushing online multiplayer a lot in the past decade or so. We've even seen marketing efforts to promote it as a superior way of gaming (I can't remember if it was EA or Ubisoft or one of these big game companies people generally dislike, but there was a tweet or something that was like "He's a ten, but only plays single-player games," which, frankly, I think was part of a corporate psy-op.

I actually don't really understand how the money of it all works: WoW obviously is incentivized to keep people playing because it's a subscription-based service. But I know a lot of these games are still ones you just buy once, so I don't totally understand why this business model would be so much more lucrative.

Anyway, the fact that WoW is accommodating this style of play I think speaks to a broader desire for a calm and private gaming experience. You could argue that this is WoW trying to be everything to everyone (remember how they implemented basically Pokemon back in Mists of Pandaria, which they've only just stopped adding onto?) but I will say, after almost twenty years in this game, I have sentimental attachments to it and my characters. I imagine one day my WoW characters will, inevitably, be packed away in Stormwind or Orgrimmar or their houses to gather dust forever, but it's nice to be able to keep playing the game I started halfway through college, experiencing its story and its thrills, even as my appetite for playing with friends is satisfied far more effectively by my D&D games.

Watching Duskbloods is Making Me Crave Bloodborne II

 I think it's actually a violation of the terms of service for the Duskblood Network Test, but there are some videos of footage from the game on YouTube. Is that ethical to watch? Eh, I don't think it's that bad. This is more like a closed beta test, and that's not something you intentionally release to random players without some expectation that stuff is going to get shown around. Honestly, it's not that much more enlightening than the official footage that the various reviewers were using in compliance with FromSoft's stuff.

Also, hey, I wasn't the one who uploaded it.

But ethical issues aside, I find myself reminded that while I'm incredibly curious about the lore of the game and very impressed with its aesthetics and gameplay systems, I just don't think this is the one for me: these sorts of time-limited match multiplayer games don't really appeal to me. And while the Network Test is only previewing one of the game's multiple (I think 3 at launch) maps and only some of its playable Bloodsworn characters, but it's clear that any sense of story progression is going to take place largely outside of the main game (I assume in a similar manner to Nightreign).

I have few doubts that those stories will be fascinating, and, I mean, look, I'm a total sicko for FromSoft's vague and evocative storytelling style, with its surreal imagery and reframing of established tropes to create something truly new and unexpected.

But all of this is basically making me lament that Bloodborne never got a sequel.

Naturally, there are comparisons to be drawn between The Duskbloods and Bloodborne (including, you know, having Blood in both names,) both having a broadly Gothic aesthetic. Now, I am also curious to see if the Duskbloods is quite as (classically) gothic as we're led to believe: the map in the Network Test isn't totally like Yharnam, but has a similar architectural style - the kind of high stone buildings that vampires might perch upon. I'd argue it's not quite the same - I think the city map in the test looks a bit more late-19th-century or even early 20th in vibes, including a very Big Ben-like clocktower (though I think I learned somewhere that Big Ben is actually the bell in said clocktower, and that the actual tower is just "The Clocktower," later named Elizabeth Tower in 2012). Meanwhile, Yharnam in Bloodborne was likely inspired more by Edinburgh, Scotland, and given the tricorne hats that are so iconic to the Hunter's Attire, I've always thought of it as taking place slightly earlier, kind of Regency period (then again, the alternate Hunter's cap is a top hat, and I'm no fashion historian. Actually, one of my best friends sort of is, so I should ask him).

Still, if Demon's Souls, Dark Souls, and Elden Ring all fit in that broad "medieval fantasy" aesthetic with plate armor, shields, and big weapons, The Duskbloods seems to share a lot more DNA with Bloodborne as a revisit about a decade later to this Gothic vibe.

Bloodborne was intentionally designed to encourage a faster pace of combat, including using the Rally mechanic to make players a little less worried if they wind up taking a hit so that they'd keep up the assault. We've seen with Nightreign and with Duskbloods that From is very much experimenting with faster movement speeds, slowly dialing up the pace of combat since the laborious days of Dark Souls. Indeed, I even think that just giving everyone such high starting Stamina in Elden Ring was in part to let people swing their weapons around more.

The high speed of Nightreign and Duskbloods character, though, also makes sense in a game where there's limited time to accomplish your goals. Duskbloods has you racing other players to gather the most Virtue (gained by doing various things across the map) to avoid being Culled from the competition. Given that you'll be racing to the various sources of Virtue, it makes sense that you can move at such high speeds and jump an insane number of times in the air (I believe it's a quadruple jump that can be followed by an air-dash, and also your initial jump can be charged, so it's way easier for you to overcome vertical obstacles).

I wonder if such abilities would be used in a future single-player game.

Now, look, it has only been two years since The Shadow of the Erdtree DLC came out, and while that was DLC for a game that itself was two years old at the time, it was a massive amount of content, one that would have felt like a whole game if the original hadn't been even more massive.

In other words, I don't want to get greedy. Bethesda seems to only finally be moving toward getting Elder Scrolls VI out a full fifteen years after Skyrim came out (and I'd guess we'll be waiting at the very least until 2027). FromSoft did have its crazy 2014-2016 run of Dark Souls II, Bloodborne, and Dark Souls III, but especially if they're developing new IPs that won't allow quite as many development-saving measures (that said, there are for sure some Pthumerians among the foes you fight in Duskbloods) I can be patient.

The main thing, though, is that I'd really love to get a game that looks like The Duskbloods but has a fully fleshed-out single player experience.

I'm fine with - even encourage - them to futz with the formula a bit. FromSoft invented the Souls-like genre, and I think one of the reasonable criticisms of properties like Bloodborne and Elden Ring is that they do borrow a lot from earlier games by the studio. But I think the saving grace is that those two are two of my favorite video games of all time, and the iteration on the existing concepts feels more like refinement than laziness.

Anyway, if it were somehow revealed that The Duskbloods takes place in the same universe as Bloodborne, I wouldn't find it tremendously shocking on a storytelling level. It's the licensing and exclusivity that makes that unlikely. Bloodborne was a PS4 exclusive (and kind of the reason I got a PS4 in the first place) and The Duskbloods is a Switch 2 exclusive - a console I still haven't gotten, though given that I've had every Nintendo home console from the SNES forward, I expect I will eventually.

But I do think that the exclusivity might be a big part of why there is no Bloodborne II. Like Demon's Souls (which was a PS3 exclusive,) FromSoft instead created a new and similar franchise to keep refining the formula. (Actually, funnily enough, a cut voice line from Bloodborne seemed to imply that it took place in the Demon's Souls universe, though it might have just been a cheeky reference).

So, I could just go back and play Bloodborne again. It's tempting. But I've also played so much of that game. I don't think I've actually beaten everything on all of these characters, but I think I've gotten, like, through most of the game and the DLC on something like six characters. Bloodborne, of course, doesn't have quite the same build variety that Dark Souls or Elden Ring do (indeed, while you might make an effective character that blends Strength and Skill, for the most part, the builds for Bloodborne are just "put more into your main damage stat, and maybe ensure you have, like, decent Health and Stamina"). Sure, one of my Strength-focused characters uses the Whirligig Saw and another uses the Boom Hammer, but it's not much of a distinction.

My real hope here is that, after two games in a row with iconic characters whose entire kit is determined by their pre-determined personality, that From has cultivated a lot of new ideas for powers and abilities that a future game can let us build around. Having a game where we get to choose to invest in stats that enhance, say, the weird rocket attack that Zork in the Duskbloods uses, or going for more conventional Dexterity to wield rapiers and scimitars, or blending them some way to create something really weird - I'd love that.

But also, man, I'm a sucker for the Gothic aesthetic. In a way, I worry that because Duskbloods exists, it's less likely we'll get a single-player successor to Bloodborne from them (whether part of that franchise or no).

Greedily Absorbing Whatever Lore I Can From a Duskbloods Preview Video

 No one really does worldbuilding like From Software.

Famously, the head of FromSoft, Hidetaka Miyazaki, has talked about how he used to read English-language fantasy novels as a kid, only sort of knowing the language, and thus only getting a vague sense of the worlds that they described and piecing together what clues he could as to what we going on. That sense of deep mystery - mystery almost in the ancient, religious sense - permeates the worlds of games like Dark Souls, Bloodborne, and Elden Ring. To this day, even in a game like Dark Souls, there are elements of the story that are left open for debate, entire plotlines in the backstory of the world that are only vaguely alluded to.

It's an approach that can turn some people off, but the loyal fans of the company's titles tend to be more fascinated and intrigued. There's an entire secondary "game" of finding a dozen different YouTube channels that explore elements of the games' lore.

What's exciting here is that we appear to have an entirely new world, the first since Elden Ring dropped in 2022 (to be fair, there's only been one new FromSoft game to come out between then and now, which was a sort of spin-off of Elden Ring).

What's frustrating, of course, is that Duskbloods is going to be a PvP, short match-focused game, in other words the kind of game whose structure does not appeal to me (I say structure because the moment-to-moment gameplay looks very cool). So, like Nightreign (which is similar in structure, though PvE-focused, and so at least more in line with my tastes) I'm expecting to experience this vicariously, to absorb the game through the videos people share.

But hey, let's see what we can glean.

First off, the overall setting of the game seems to be kind of Gothic in tone, though unlike Bloodborne, which skewed kind of early-to-mid 19th Century (tricornes might even push it back to the 18th century,) there are multiple characters who carry what appear to be early-20th-century firearms, and there's an event involving a zeppelin that makes it look almost World War One-like in time period.

In a way, this kind of fits: Dracula, the most famous vampire novel, came out in the 1890s, and there are elements of that story that seem to be sort of forgotten, like the fact that one of its heroes is a Texan cowboy. Interestingly, Lies of P, which owes a lot of its gameplay mechanics to the Souls-like games pioneered by FromSoft, has an belle epoch aesthetic, a period at the end of the 19th century in France, which has some real overlap.

Juxtaposed with this kind of Steampunk technological level, though, the environments of Duskblood seem to evoke the gothic. The hub, similar, I think, to the Nightreign version of Roundtable Hold (obviously the one in Elden Ring is also a hub, but for a very different kind of game,) is called the House of Dusk, and from what we can see in preview videos, it has a very "gothic manor" vibe, with elaborately carved wood panels on the walls.

It's interesting: while it of course transforms more into a kind of Lovecraftian tale of Great Ones and alien mutations, Bloodborne initially presents itself as a city taken over by its own take on Werewolves. This ranges from the hunters in the city streets who have more of a Lon Chaney-style "person with a lot of fur on their face" to more extremely lupine monsters (I can't recall if those are all considered Darkbeasts, but you know what I mean: the ones on the bridge near Cleric Beast and the guys who attack you in the Upper Cathedral Ward). Of course, keeping with a classic horror convention, they never come out and call the werewolves werewolves, and it's sort of fitting given that they're... like, yes, they're people who have taken on lupine aspects, but the rules are a bit different.

In Bloodborne, the one tip of the hat to the other most classic Gothic monster (well, I guess ghosts might also be in there,) the vampire, was primarily in the form of Castle Cainhurst, with its Vilebloods. Vilebloods who are basically all wiped out, unless we think that those gargoyle-like foes and maybe the blood tick foes are part of that "genus." Cainhurst is a fun optional side-dungeon with one of the tougher bosses in the game, but by that point you're probably going deep into the weird dream-logic of the full on cosmic horror and leaving the Gothic behind.

In The Duskbloods, the characters you play seem to all be coded as vampires, but I suspect that we'll never hear the word vampire uttered at any point within the game. Again, this is a common convention, such as in the excellent Mike Flanagan mini-series, Midnight Mass, though one of the things that this convention allows is for the creators to set their own rules as to how these things work. Fun fact, did you know that it wasn't until the 1922 film Nosferatu (an unauthorized adaptation of Dracula with the names all changed to avoid legal issues) that the convention that vampires burst into flames if exposed to sunlight was established? Dracula goes out in the day all the time in the novel and the Coppola movie.

Ok, let's talk about other elements at play.

In the preview, we see players fighting against robed figures who seem to be in some kind of religious attire. Notably, most are of human proportions, but there are giant ones who have the same gaunt, pallid faces as the Pthumerians from Bloodborne. I'm inclined to think this is probably a case of re-using assets, something FromSoft does all the time, but it's interesting. I wonder if there's a similar bit of lore here where some ancient civilization has connected with modern humans.

There is apparently a gameplay system called Sigils, which gives players special objectives to increase their Virtue (which Miyazaki describes as being inspired by Victory Points in various board games, and are what you need to maximize to avoid being Culled at the end of different rounds of the game - basically only the three players with the most Virtue get to the game's final phase). One of these has what appears to be a heraldic or religious symbol, and boy howdy does it sure look like it's the rough shape of a uterus.

This isn't surprising: FromSoft's games have often used anatomical themes, especially those related to childbirth and reproduction. Bloodborne is chock full of this stuff, but we also have things like the Formless Mother in Elden Ring (an Outer God referred to as a mother that's all about constant bleeding? That... that make you think of anything?)

I mean, once again, we have a kind of gothic-horror-looking game that literally has the word "blood" in the title. And indeed, since Dracula (actually, since at least Carmilla, the lesbian vampire novel that pre-dated Dracula by about twenty years and to which Stoker was kind of responding with more buttoned-up sexual mores,) vampires have been tied to ideas about sexuality. And FromSoft is the sort of game company I don't expect to shy away from such themes, even if they'll probably approach them from really oblique angles.

I'm actually curious to see if technology plays a major thematic role in this game. Bloodborne gave us the insane trick weapons and firearms (using guns in a way probably no other game has used them) but I think the technology felt largely incidental, with the manipulation of people through religious authority was the far bigger thematic focus.

But in this game, with all the guns and zeppelins and the player character Zork, who wears a giant metal Iron Man-like suit, I think this might be part of the ideas that the game intends to explore. I'm given to understand that the moment the game takes place in is sort of apocalyptic in vibe (which isn't, like, unprecedented in FromSoft games. Weirdly Elden Ring might be the exception as the one in which things have already fallen apart, and the world is desperately waiting for something to change) and I wonder to what degree that apocalypse was driven by technology (certainly World War One was this horrifying revelation to the world about the degree to which the mechanization of warfare had made killing so much more efficient. Interestingly, the US I think was less psychologically wounded by this because we had gone through our first really industrialized war with the Civil War).

The other curious question is what motivates our player characters. In Nightreign, the Nightfarers seem to be there basically to save the world, and even if their individual stories introduce some shades of grey, they're meant, I think, to basically be good guys. But especially with this more PvP-focused game, I wonder if that's quite different here.

The ending cutscene if you wind up winning a match seems to involve you bowing before a sun dripping with blood - a little like the symbolism of the sun at the end of Dark Souls III, actually. Is victory a... good thing in this game? Or are we to play as the monsters that are bringing about the end?

Regarding the individual characters. Naturally, I'm fascinated by the weird Steampunk Iron Man that is Zork. The other characters we've seen are Albert, a messy-haired... um, dude. Bloodhand Jan wears all white and a metallic helmet that covers his eyes. We see him smashing his head into what looks like a rock in order to bleed enough for his blood to form a trail for him to follow to his target, and I wonder if the white clothing is there to evoke a straightjacket, like poor Renfield from Dracula (who, I'll point out, is not complicit in Dracula's plans in the novel, and is basically just another victim who also happens to be mentally ill). Trang Lanh has an east-Asian (I want to say the name sounds southeast Asian, but I could be wrong) who fights with a big chakram that appears to be sort of pitted or rotten in the inner rim. Sniper Layla carries a giant rifle and wears a long duster, and is also bald and gaunt with skin that looks corpse-like. Senator Samir Patres is also gaunt and swarthy, but wears elegant cloths and glasses. And then there's Zork, whose massive bell-shaped helmet has bulbous eyes and a sharp beak that comes out the front, and fights with some kind of weird giant riveted pipe contraption.

Most of the details we've gotten are about gameplay systems, so we'll probably have to wait a fair bit before we learn more.

UA: Path of Ceremorphosis Feats and Mind Blast Spell

 Like the Lich and Death Knight feat paths from the Villainous Options earlier this year, the following feats allow you to make your character slowly turn into a Mind Flayer. Naturally, Mind Flayers are among the most iconic monsters in D&D, and the idea of a bunch of adventurers being implanted with Ilithid tadpoles is, of course, the central premise of Baldur's Gate 3.

What's interesting is that these feats give you various psionic abilites that work similarly to how the Psi Warrior Fighter and Soulknife Rogue do (as well as the upcoming Dark Sun Psion class). Let's check them out:

Tadpole Host

Prerequisite: level 4+

You have an ilithid tadpole in your body, the starting infection that leads to ceremorphosis. You get the following:

Ability Score Increase: Your Intelligence rises by 1, to a max of 20.

Mind Sliver: You learn the Mind Sliver cantrip, using Intelligence as your spellcasting ability.

Psionic Power: You get Psionic Energy Dice (PEDs) to fuel various psionic abilities. You have a number of PEDs equal to your proficiency bonus, and they are each a d6 (but they improve if you take more Path of Ceremorphosis feats). You can only use these specific PEDs for features you gain from this feat path. You can't use a feature from this feat path that expends a PED if you have used up all the PEDs you get from this feat. You regain all expended PEDs when you finish a long rest.

Psionic Overload: When you deal Psychic damage, you can expend a PED and roll it to deal extra psychic damage equal to the roll.

    This is the big prerequisite for the feat path. The fact that it only buffs Intelligence could wind up very limiting, as it'd be hard to justify taking this on anyone but a Wizard, Artificer, or the upcoming Psion. It's also a General Feat, meaning that this is taking one of your precious 5 (really 4 given that you'll want an Epic Boon at 19) ASIs. On its own, I don't know if this is really that exciting, but we'll see what is built upon it.

Ilithid Thrallmaker

Prerequisite: Tadpole Host Feat

Your psionic abilities have made you a master manipulator:

Ability Score Increase: You can raise either Intelligence or Charisma by 1, to a max of 20.

Psionic Energy Dice: Your PEDs from this feat path become d8s.

Telepathy: You have Telepathy with a range of 10 feet, or if you already have telepathy, the range increases by 10 feet.

Persuasive Presence: You always have Charm Person prepared, with Intelligence as your spellcasting ability. You can cast it without a spell slot by expending a PED. You can also cast it with spell slots if you have them. When you expend a PED to cast the spell, roll the die and subtract half the result (rounded up) from the target's saving throw.

    Again, you really want to be an Int-based caster for this feat path. Charm Person can be very helpful in certain adventures/campaigns, but if there are a lot of non-humanoid creatures with which you're interacting, this might feel like a waste. Again, I don't know that this really makes out for missing out on some of the more powerful feats (though admittedly, I think spellcasters are less feat-dependent).

Tadpole's Safeguard

Prerequisite: Tadpole Host

Ability Score Increase: You can raise Intelligence or Constitution by 1, to a max of 20.

Psionic Energy Dice: Your PEDs from this feat path become d8s.

Telepathy: You have telepathy with a range of 10 feet, or if you already have telepathy, the range increases by 10 feet.

Warding Backlash: You always have the Shield spell prepared, with Intelligence as your spellcasting ability for it (though does that matter with a spell that has no save or attack roll? I've never understood that). You can cast it without expending a spell slot by expending a PED. You can also cast it with spell slots if you have them. When you expend a PED to cast the spell and the attack misses, roll the PED. The attack then takes psychic damage equal to the amount rolled.

    This, on the other hand, is really good. Really just getting Shield is always good, and while Wizards and Psions can get that anyway, having it always prepared is nice (and Artificers who aren't Battle Smiths or Artillerists will appreciate it). Also, we can buff the damage by expending a second PED if we want to, though I doubt that's optimal.

Ulitharid's Might:

Prerequisite: Tadpole Host

The tadpole you have is mutating you into an ulitharid, a more powerful and rarer type of ilithid.

Ability Score Increase: You can raise your Strength, Dexterity, or Constitution score by 1, to a max of 20.

Psionic Energy Dice: Your PEDs from this feat path become d8s.

Telepathy: You have telepathy to a range of 10 feet, or if you have telepathy already, it increases in range by 10 feet.

Extended Tentacles: Two long tentacles sprout around your mouth. You can use these tentacles to make an Unarmed Strike, and when using them, your reach increases by 5 feet.

    I think it's clear that you're only intended to take one of these last three feats. This could be good on a Monk or perhaps a character built around grappling. Being able to grapple from more than 5 feet away is actually quite powerful, as you might hold a foe far enough away that they can't attack you back.

Full Ceremorphosis:

Prerequisite: Level 12+ and at least two Path of Ceremorphosis feats.

You've grown four tentacles around your mouth, have an elongated skull and purple skin slick with mucus. You're a mind flayer at this point.

Ability Score Increase: Your intelligence raises by 1, to a max of 20.

Psionic Energy Dice: Your PEDs from this feat path become d10s, or if they're already d10s, they become d12s.

Aberration: Your creature type is Aberration.

Ilithid Specialization: You pick one of the following benefits:

Brain-Seeking Tentacles: When you hit a creature with an unarmed strike as part of the attack action on your turn, you can use both the damage and grapple options. You can expend a PED when you use htis benefit to roll the expended die, and the creature takes extra damage equal to the number rolled plus your Intelligence modifier, and then subtracts half the number rolled from their saving throw to avoid the grapple (rounded up). If the target is reduced to 0 HP from this benefit, the PED isn't expended. You can use this benefit once per turn.

    Ok, before we move on, let's go over this. There are elements here of the Grappler feat, though again, we're now spending three feats to get here and probably need to be an Intelligence-based character, which means that we might not be great at grappling (not sure if the Psion Metamorph gets to use Int to set their grapple dcs, but if they do, these feats would be quite good for them).

Mind Flayer Spells: You always have Detect Thoughts, Levitate, and Mind Blast (a new spell) prepared. Intelligence is your spellcasting ability for these spells. You can cast these spells without expending a spell slot by expending a PED to cast them. You can also spend spell slots on them as normal.

    We've got to go into Mind Blast, but it's a 6th level spell, which is actually kind of nuts to get to cast nearly for free several times per day. Especially given that this feat path really leans into Int-based spellcasters as the ideal candidates, this feels like the best thing to grab.

Repeatable: You can take the Full Ceremorphosis feat multiple times, choosing a different options for Ilithid Specialization each time.

    So, we'll have to be level 12 for this (even if we're a Fighter or Rogue and can get a third general feat before then) and fully invested in this path. Is it worth it?

    Well, flavor-wise, I think it delivers decently. I certainly think you'll only want to take one of the three middle feats: I think a Psion/Artificer/Wizard going Tadpole Host, Tadpole's Safeguard, and Full Ceremorphosis taking the Mind Flayer Spells feels like the best version of this. You could grab a second Full Ceremorphosis at level 16, but frankly, I think we'd be ready to grab something like War Caster at that point.

    Like the Lich and Death Knight, the tricky thing here is that feats are so precious that you've got to make a really strong case to invest not just one but several into one of these paths. Does this do enough? Maybe...? There's a lot of storytelling potential here, but boy will you need real buy-in from both the DM and your fellow players.

Now, let's look at the Mind Blast spell:

Mind Blast:

6th level Evocation (Psion)

Casting Time: Action

Range: Self

Components: S

Duration: Instantaneous

You unleash a concussive burst of psionic energy. Each creature in a 60-foot cone originating from you makes an Intelligence saving throw, taking 6d8 psychic damage and having the stunned condition until the start of your next turn. On a success, they take half damage only.

Using a Higher-Level spell slot: The damage increases by 1d8 for each spell slot level above 6.

    The damage isn't anything to write home about for a 6th level spell (27 average, which is less than a 3rd level Fireball) but an AoE stun targeting a saving throw that a lot of monsters aren't terribly good at is quite powerful. As someone playing a Wizard who recently hit level 11, I can tell you that 6th level spell slots are very precious. But this, then, makes the Full Ceremorphosis feat look way more exciting, as you'd have as many as 4 (and eventually 6) free castings of this per day. A hell of a way to start of an encounter if you can avoid hitting your friends.

UA: Imaskarcanist Wizard

 The third and final of the new Underdark UA's subclass options, we're once again dealing with the culture of Deep Imskara and their magical "Unlight." Like the other two, this subclass has a flavor table to roll on, here detailing how you learned this magic (which seems to assume you're not from Deep Imskara).

As always, Wizards are such a powerful class because of their unparalleled spell list, so your subclass often adds just a bit of gravy on top, but let's see how we feel about this particular gravy.

Level 3:

Unlight Adept:

When you cast a spell that deals Acid, Cold, Fire, Lightning, or Thunder damage, you can change that damage to Radiant. Additionally, dim light created by your spells creates bright light instead.

    The latter part is not super important, though if your DM actually remembers that dim light gives disadvantage on perception checks to see (remember that even people with Darkvision might have a need for some form of light) it could be marginally helpful. The damage type switch, though, is quite good: radiant is among the most reliable damage types in the game, and being able to swap all the regular elemental damage types into that means that anything from Fireball to Lightning Bolt to Tasha's Caustic Brew can be swapped to a different type if you are worried about resistances or immunities. (As a Scribes Wizard, I often plan around having certain "good damage types" at each spell level, but here you just have this feature and are basically covered).

Unlight Invigoration:

As a bonus action, you can choose a willing creature within 30 feet of you that you can see and roll one or two of your hit dice (er... hit point dice. That's a 5.5ism that I haven't gotten used to). You expend the dice and the target gains Temp HP equal to the roll's total plus your Intelligence modifier, and until they have no Temp HP, they have advantage on Strength checks and shed bright light in a 10-foot radius.

    I don't totally understand the reasoning behind the Strength advantage, but this is kind of interesting: if you think about it, you've probably got higher Int than Con, so if you just spend one die, it might be more effective than healing up on a short rest with that hit die. It's less hit-point-die efficient if you roll 2, but if you quickly need a bit of THP, this can help out. The advantage on Strength could be good to throw on a Fighter or Paladin (or Barbarian who doesn't want to use up all their Rages,) which could actually be great when in exploration mode because as long as they don't take damage, they'll keep that advantage basically until they finish a long rest.

Level 6:

Unlight Restoration:

As a bonus action, choose a creature you can see within 30 feet and roll one or two of your hit point dice, expending them. The target regains HP equal to the total rolled and sheds bright light in a 10-foot radius until the end of their next turn.

If you expended two dice, you can choose to end either the Blinded, Deafened, Paralyzed, or Poisoned condition instead of healing them.

    So, this is interesting. Arguably, the healing is a worse choice than the temp HP from Unlight Invigoration unless they're already unconscious (or at higher levels, if you're trying to top people up to protect them from things like Power Word Kill) because it's slightly lower in total than the Temp HP. But again, this can pop friends up from unconsciousness, and while you're tapping into your own potential healing on short rests, the fact that you have a number of d6s equal to your level could actually mean that this keeps your party going quite a while. Wizards rarely get the ability to heal at all.

Level 10:

Secrets of Deep Imaskar:

You gain the following:

Imaskarcana Lore: You can attune yourself to a magic item as a Magic action once per long rest.

    This is fun, but very marginal. It just lets you pretty much start using an attunement item the moment you find it, but after that point, but this is not something you'll be doing every day.

Piercing Unlight: Your spells ignore resistance to radiant damage.

    While this is cool given that you can make nearly all of your spells do radiant damage, it's also pretty rare, I think, that you encounter monsters with radiant resistance (which is part of what makes that Unlight Adept feature good).

Imaskar Seals: You always have Glyph of Warding prepared and can cast it once per long rest without a spell slot. When you cast it this way, you don't need material components, and you cast the spell as if you were using a spell slot equal to the highest Wizard spell slot you have. Any previous glyph created htis way is broken and that spell is ended without triggering.

    This, actually, is pretty nutso. While Glyph of Warding isn't the easiest spell to use offensively, let's just bear in mind that this can eventually give you a second 9th level spell every day. I'm assuming the intent is that even if you multiclass with a pure caster, this is really meant to be cast at the highest level of Wizard spell you can learn (so if you were, say, 13/7 Wizard/Psion, you'd have a 9th level slot but would only be able to learn up to 7th level spells, so I'd assume this would be the level you could cast the free glyph at, but I could be wrong).

Level 14:

Doom of Unlight:

When a creature takes Radiant damage from a spell you cast, you can use a reaction to curse the creature with Unlight. The creature makes a Con save against your spell save DC, and is cursed on a failure. Until the curse ends, they suffer the following:

The target emits bright light out to 20 feet.

Attack rolls against the target hav advantage.

At the start of each of the target's turns, they take radiant damage equal to your character level.

The target has advantage on Strength checks and melee attack rolls.

If the target hits another creature with a melee attack, they can repeate the Con save, ending the curse on a success.

If the target is reduced to 0 hp, it explodes. Roll d8s equal to half your character level, and each creature in a 10-foot emanation around the target takes radiant damage equal to the total rolled.

Once you attempt to curse a creature this way, you can't do so again until you finish a long rest or expend a 6th level spell slot (expending taking no action).

    Boy, this is crazy. So, first off, there's no range on this. I don't know if we could know that a creature took this from our Glyph of Warding, but that seems ideal. The thing that's so strange about this curse is that it creates, sure, big problems for the creature (taking our character level - not wizard level, so if we put those last 6 levels into something else, it should still do 20 - damage every turn will be enough to melt a lot of creatures if they can't get uncursed,) but the curse also buffs them with advantage on their attacks, so it's a real gamble.

    I'm a little skeptical here: 5E subclasses typically don't come with downsides to their abilities (the exception being the Wild Magic Sorcerer, though that became, I believe, less risky in 5.5), and the game is balanced around assuming that the dangers come more from monsters and environments. I think all in all this is probably going to be worse for your foe than it is for the party, but the fact that there's even a question that that might not be the case makes this run counter to established design conventions.

Overall Thoughts:

    I think that, of the three subclasses presented here, this one feels the most likely to actually see play. Not knowing much about the lore being related here (and possibly established; I don't know if Deep Imskara is a new thing or not) I can't really get a feel for the "vibe" of this or the Barbarian subclass.

    Using hit point dice as a resource is a cool idea, though one we saw in one of the Dark Sun playtest options as well. I believe Grim Hollow also had some Blood Magic spells that work this way, but that's third party.

    Anyway, that's it for subclasses. Last we just have the Path of Ceremorphosis feats.

UA: House Agent Rogue

 Ah, Menzoberranzan. One of the deadliest places in the Forgotten Realms. Center of Lolth-worship among the Drow and basically a place where deadly intrigue rules over all. A fitting place for a Rogue.

The House Agent is meant to represent the kind of fixer/problem-solver for one of the houses of Menzoberranzan that is called in when something needs to be taken care of brutally and discretely.

As with the Unlight Barbarian, there's a flavor table to roll on or pick from describing how you passed your loyalty test to your House. There's a lot of fun flavor here. How are the mechanics?

Thematically, this is a Rogue with some spellcasting, but not in the traditional sense like an Arcane Trickster. It's mainly spells that can be cast once a day, and some alternate Cunning Strikes.

Level 3:

House Insignia:

You have a magical token with the insignia of your sponsor house. Using it, you can cast certain spells (Charisma is your spellcasting ability). If you lose the Insignia, your house will get you a replacement when you finish a long rest, whether by courier or magical teleportation or whatever.

You know the Friends cantrip, and you can cast Find Familiar only as a Ritual, and can only choose the Spider form for it. You get a few other spells, each of which you can cast once per long rest using your insignia, gaining new spells as you hit higher levels.

At 3rd level, you have Charm Person. At 5th level, you have Suggestion. At 9th level, you have Hypnotic Pattern (essentially half-caster progression).

    So, on one hand, this is a lot of cool stuff to get. On the other hand, however, you could get this stuff and more as an Arcane Trickster. Sure, you get Suggestion two levels earlier and Hypnotic Pattern four levels earlier, but the flexibility of an Arcane Trickster, to me, would almost certainly be preferable.

Charming Presence:

You can take the Influence action as a bonus action, and you also gain proficiency in your choice of Deception, Intimidation, Performance, or Persuasion.

    This depends, I think, a lot on how strict your DM is about what kinds of ability checks you can make in combat. Generally the way my best friend/DM and I do it is that if you want to significantly affect a creature's behavior, like talking a foe out of fighting or just taunting them to go after you, you need to commit your full action to this, and so this feature would be pretty useful. But DMs who are less strict with the rules might make this feature, at least the bonus action Influence part, useless.

Level 9:

Backstab:

You have advantage on attack rolls against creatures that are within 5 feet of you and are Friendly or Charmed (interestingly it doesn't say they have to be charmed by you.). You also get a new Cunning Strike option:

Stunning Betrayal (costs 4d6): If your target was Friendly to you or had the Charmed condition when you hit them, they have the Stunned condition until the start of your next turn.

    I love Cunning Strike in theory, even if I think sacrificing damage on a class that already does less damage than it feels like it should is a little problematic. I will also say that the fact that they become un-stunned at the start, rather than end of your next turn, makes this a little less powerful. It's sort of a no-save stun, except you have to have gotten them into a good state to make use of it.

    One thing that might be a problem here is that DMs might not always think in terms of the Friendly/Indifferent/Hostile attitudes that are part of the rules, but might be overlooked by more intuitive roleplayers. It's something where you should talk to a DM about making sure that the meaning of these terms is clear. Flavor-wise, I think this is really fun for transitioning a social encounter to a combat encounter. But when you're sacrificing most of your Sneak Attack damage at this level, I don't know that it'll make for the kind of assassination vignette that it wants to evoke.

Level 13:

Infiltration Partner:

Your familiar through Find Familiar now has Darkvision out to 120 feet and Truesight to 30 feet.

Additionally, when you cast Find Familiar or finish a short or long rest while you have a familiar, you can grant Temp HP to the familiar equal to your Rogue level.

    30 feet of always-on Truesight for your Spider buddy is actually not too bad. Also, that Spider might actually be able to take a hit now and then if they're cushioned with double-digit Temp HP. What I'd love is if we could also give the Spider scaling Stealth bonuses - A Spider has a +4 by default, but by this level we might have as much as a +15.

Silver Tongue:

A creature's Hostile attitude does not impose Disadvantage on Charisma checks to influence them.

    Again, I imagine a lot of DMs might not even know what that means, so talk to your DM to make sure this subclass feature is actually coming into play.

Level 17:

Subtle Manipulator:

You gain an additional Cunning Strike option:

Confound (5d6): The target must succeed on a Wisdom saving throw (using your spellcasting DC, which is Charisma-based) or be Charmed for 1 minute. They can repeat the save when they take any damage to end it early.

Additionally, you can cast Friends as a bonus action, and the target no longer automatically succeeds on the save if you're fighting it or they're not a humanoid.

Finally, when a spell you cast gives a target the Charmed condition, they don't know they were charged by you.

    I mean, the benefit here is that you never run out of Cunning Strikes. And unlike Charm Person, Confound isn't going to give them advantage on the save because you just hit them.

    Here's what I'll say: in the right campaign, this could be very fun. But also, by high levels like this, a massive number of monsters are immune to the charmed condition.

Overall Thoughts:

    I really like the flavor of this subclass. But I just think, not unlike the Unlight Barbarian, that while there are some cool ideas at play here, it's A: underpowered and B: will only work in a very specific kind of campaign.