Scaring Your Players With Higher-CR Monsters

 Two caveats:

First off, the campaign I'm currently running is at level 19. The players have fought the Tarrasque and killed it (half the party was unconscious at the end of the fight, so I kept my pride). There is nothing that is too high in terms of CR for them to face, so this isn't something I can do in this campaign anymore.

Second, I find it really hard, like, on an emotional level, to stray much from the guidance on combat encounter difficulty. I take great care to ensure that my players always face reasonable challenges, even if they might be tuned "hard," which, in the 5.5 DMG, does actually make for some pretty tough fights.

And yet...

So, I often see DMs, such as Brennan Lee Mulligan when running Critical Role's Campaign 4, or when he did Dimension 20's A Crown of Candy, talk about intentionally not balancing fights for the players' levels. The idea here is that the world sort of exists beyond the player characters, and it's up to them to ensure they survive it.

I think this makes a certain amount of sense, but notably it always seems to be invoked when the players are low-level. If I took this attitude toward my design for my level 19 party, even a plane as nightmarishly deadly as New Phyrexia (where they currently are) would still probably be trivially easy for them to manage except, possibly, when facing the Praetors (to be fair, I have basically designed the adventure as focusing mostly on boss fights with these characters, as I don't want them to be stuck at level 19 for more than a year, which I think was the case for levels 17 and 18).

But let's turn things around again:

Here's the thing: while there is resurrection magic in D&D (though notably, in both the campaigns I mentioned run by Mulligan, they're not allowed to use resurrection magic,) PC death should feel fair. In-world, of course, it need not feel fair - a tyrannical regime or deadly monster killing someone needn't feel fair, but it shouldn't feel unfair to the players at the table.

After all, as a DM, especially at lower levels, it's trivial to kill your PCs. Throw an ancient dragon at a level 3 party and they'll probably all die to the first breath weapon (even if they succeed on their saves).

However, there's a downside to making sure every combat encounter is fairly balanced: by the time you face a monster, you're ready to fight it, meaning that it never really gets to impose a sense of terror and dread.

I think my affection for Death Knights as monsters is well-documented here (I also love the WoW class). I think the most direct, clear example of a Death Knight in fantasy pop culture are the Ringwraiths from Lord of the Rings. They're undead, or the kind of Tolkien equivalent (they lived far, far longer than they should have, and their spirits remained even as their bodies withered away into nothing) and were basically noble lords who allowed this desire for immortality to corrupt them (I'm generally against the idea of death, disagreeing with the "death gives live meaning" rhetoric, but I sure don't want to live in a world in which asshole oligarchs like Elon Musk live forever).

Anyway, I also like Death Knights because they work really well as the kind of figure who could move about in society and not immediately draw attention to themselves. The Riders in Black who show up in the Shire asking about someone named Baggins certainly freak the hell out of the people they meet, but there's just enough plausible deniability to imagine that they're just, you know, creepy dudes and not ancient undead terrors.

So, the first really obvious way to use a high-level monster to scare a low-level party is just to use them as an NPC. Combat, of course, is just one of three pillars in D&D, and while it's the one that has the clearest and most extensive rules, it's not what the game needs to always center around.

Not every monster just kills everything it sees. Especially in the case of intelligent monsters, they probably have an agenda.

Let's concoct a scenario:

A, say, 2nd level party has gotten a quest to deal with a gang of bandits who robbed a caravan. It's a sort of secondary detail that the caravan they hit was bringing some artifacts from a ruined temple to a museum in the big city. The message the party gets is that this is just one of many robberies attributed to this particular gang, and it's a standard bounty quest.

The party shows up at the bandit's hideout, maybe an old ruined fort in the woods. When the party arrives, something's off. First, they find one of the bandits dead on the ground, a giant wound through their torso and into a blood-stained tree, and that the tree itself looks a bit withered where the weapon pierced it.

They arrive at the hideout, and find that there are bandits guarding the entrance, but they're not facing outward - they're distracted by something going on inside. Maybe this gives the party a chance to get the drop on them, or maybe they try to engage with them socially. The bandits, panicked, are probably hostile and still likely to fight. Maybe in the middle of a fight, a previously-unseen bandit emerges, seeming to be there to join the fight, but instead just screams at the top of their lungs and runs out into the woods.

In the middle of combat, there's an explosion: a Hellfire Orb has detonated elsewhere in the fort, and the fortress' roof is now burning with strange fire (maybe green, maybe blue - something otherworldly).

At this point, the bandits are probably going to just run for their lives. The party may consider doing so as well, and if that's the case, well, you've made your point.

But if the party's curiosity gets the better of their sense of self-preservation, they might go into the fort to try to recover the artifacts.

There, you can describe a scene of slaughter. If the bandit encounter was tuned to be a reasonable challenge, the party finds twice as many bandits all dead, the floor slick with blood. If the bandits have some bruisers with them, like an Ogre, maybe there's an Ogre who looks like they were slammed onto a shard of wood and impaled, making it very clear that a monster that would have been pretty serious for them is trivial to whatever has done this.

The party goes further into the fort. Maybe they find a survivor who is just hiding and can fill them in: that a knight in black armor they had never seen before came in and attacked without warning. Maybe they follow the trail of destruction down into the fort's basement, where the artifacts were being kept.

There, they behold the Death Knight (could be a Death Knight Aspirant - still high-enough CR to demolish a level 2 party) who is singularly focused on going through the artifacts. The Death Knight ignores them, and if they just stand and watch, the knight finally finds what they're looking for - an ancient stone key or something - and, if the party remains non-hostile, the Death Knight just pushes past them and leaves the fort.

Now, if you feel like you really want to hammer home just how deadly they are, here's another trick: the Death Knight isn't done with their slaughter yet - the bandits' leader, a Bandit Captain, is facing off with the Death Knight. The party might come in mid-battle, so the Bandit Captain has already taken a hit, and so they come in just as the Death Knight hits them with a lethal attack - make the attack roll, and roll the damage, and declare it all so the party knows precisely how much damage this guy does.

Let's consider various scenarios:

If the party tries to speak to the Death Knight, they might just remain silent, not interested in engaging with the party, because they're singularly focused on their mission, or perhaps provide only a gruff response.

If the party attacks the Death Knight, at this point, I think you have license to punish them. The first character to attack (maybe not in initiative, but the first one to suggest attacking) should be the Death Knight's target. Put them down - maybe don't coup-de-grace them, but consider that a Death Knight Aspirant hits with a single attack for 24 damage, which will likely drop most 2nd level characters in a single hit (even a Barbarian with a +3 Con will typically have 25 HP, so maybe two hits).

If the party leaves the Death Knight be after this, maybe only tending to the downed party member, the message is clearly delivered.

If the entire party attacks the Death Knight? Well, I think this is where you might need to get creative. On a certain level, this is a TPK the party has well and truly purchased with their actions. But if you don't want the entire campaign to be derailed, here's another option:

The Death Knight goes to strike, but pauses, looks up at the beams holding up the ceiling, the crackling fire raging above (remember that the roof was on fire?) and rather than striking the party down, simply pushes past them to leave the fort. Maybe one turn (not round) after they do this, the roof collapses, and while it's a lot of scary damage and a challenge to get out of the burning rubble, you make it a more reasonable thing for 2nd level players to escape. By the time they get out from under it, the Death Knight is gone.

Again, the ultimate fail state of D&D is a TPK. But I think particularly as players have become more interested in the narrative possibilities of the game, a TPK can be an unsatisfying conclusion to a story. It's certainly something you should talk about in a session zero (and later too).

Establishing villains early on is a pretty important way to set the stakes for a more narrative-based campaign. I think that the key to making the game feel reasonable, even if it's not "fair" in the strictest sense, is to really telegraph when the party is dealing with something beyond their means to defeat (and motivate them to get more powerful so that they can!)

Guessing the Level Ranges for World of Warcraft Dungeons in D&D

 One of the intriguing and exciting things about the WoW/D&D crossover is that they're re-creating several old dungeons from WoW as D&D dungeons.

For those who don't play WoW, a dungeon has a very specific meaning:

Dungeons are instances, which means that when you enter one, that version of the area exists only for you and the players in your instance group (your party, or your raid, which is basically a bigger party). Dungeons are built for parties of five players - one is the tank, another is the healer, and then three players play the "DPS" or damage-dealing role.

Dungeons then typically follow the following rhythm: you fight your way through "trash mobs," or lesser enemies, and then face off against a number of bosses, typically 3-5 of them in a dungeon. While there might be unique mechanics to trash, bosses tend to be more intricate, with various way you have to (or at least are supposed to) handle their mechanics. (For example, you might have a Goblin mobster who throws explosive barrels around the arena, but also lines up a deadly shot against a player that can only be blocked by one of those barrels, so you need to run to put the barrel between you and the boss while they're aiming, but then run away from the barrel when the shot ignites it and causes it to explode after a couple seconds).

In WoW, bosses each drop a random piece of loot from their specific list (progression in WoW is focused far more around gear than leveling up - basically hitting the level cap is the start of the game proper).

Now, as a computer game, WoW focuses a fair bit more on the combat side of things than D&D does. The number of encounters you'd have in a typical dungeon would probably take months for you to actually get through. D&D does have legendary creatures that function somewhat as "bosses," but each individual combat encounter is certain higher-stakes than a typical "trash pull" in WoW.

There are dungeons where there are things to do beyond fighting your way through enemies, like one from the Legion expansion in which you have to ask around at a party to find clues as to who is the hidden Dreadlord demon amongst the guests who holds a key to the dungeon's final boss. But these are somewhat exceptional: mostly, the challenge is just fighting.

Thus, I'm sure that the redesign of these dungeons will likely really shrink down the number of actual fights you have and introduce other elements to them.

But the other question I have is this: what levels do we imagine these dungeons being balanced for?

Again, in WoW, you spend most of your time at the level cap, generally running content from the current expansion (expansions always come out with multiple dungeons and other such content). All of the dungeons announced for this book were either from the game's original release (referred to as Vanilla by players, or sometimes Classic, though the latter is complicated because there's also an alternate version of the game Blizzard released that recreates the 2004 experience called Classic,) with just one exception being Azjol-Nerub, which came out with 2008's Wrath of the Lich King expansion (one of the most beloved eras of the game's history).

Now, before the game's first expansion, The Burning Crusade, introduced the idea of Heroic Dungeons (versions of dungeons that were tuned for level-capped players,) most dungeons were actually locked at a particular difficulty, and so, if you came to, say, The Deadmines at level 30 or so (not to mention the original level cap of 60), you were going to far-outclass anything it would throw at you.

I assume they'll be presenting these as dungeons in the D&D style, so they won't "scale" with players' levels. So, where might they fall?

Azjol-Nerub:

One of two dungeons from Wrath kind of linked to one another, the other being Azj-Kahet, the Old Kingdom. Azjol-Nerub was the term for the broader underground realm of the spider-like Nerubians (well, I say spider-like, though their ruling class is more Scarab-like). The Nerubians have ancient ties to the Eldritch Old Gods (for sure the Great Old Ones of WoW, though there are other contenders like the Void Lords, and there is a connection between them) but they were also conquered by Arthas, the fallen prince, who was a Death Knight serving the Undead Scourge before he merged with the Lich King, his ego and personality taking over the Scourge's dread sovereign.

This dungeon released in Wrath of the Lich King, the second expansion, which took place on the frigid continent of Northrend, meaning that the sort of "canon" of our characters was that we had already faced the enormous threats in Vanilla and the first expansion, so being strict to WoW's story, we might say this is obvious the highest-level dungeon.

Except... well, the game now has a level-scaling feature, so you could actually go to Northrend as soon as level 10 (the current cap is 90) and thus be able to do any of these dungeons at basically anywhere from 10-80 (the level scaling generally falls off once they want to push you into the latest expansion's content).

Azjol-Nerub has us confronting the undead king of Azjol-Nerub, Anub'Arak, and while he does come back for round two in one of Wrath of the Lich King's raids (the bigger, 10-25-person instances) he's still a pretty heavy hitter, who I'd guess would be CR 10 if not a little higher.

Thus, this feels like a big enough deal to have us come here in tier 2, maybe level 8-10-ish.

Blackfathom Deeps:

This dungeon has a mix of Twilight's Hammer cultists (who are apocalyptic chaos-worshippers, tied to the mad Old Gods, though probably just happy to support anyone who could lead to destruction) along with the Naga (serpentine mer-people, really quite similar in appearance to Merrow, who are former elves saved from drowning by one of the Old Gods when their civilization fell into the ocean like Atlantis, all dedicated to their incredibly powerful mage-queen Azshara). Naga are disciplined and regimented, and the final boss of the dungeon is a sort of hyrdra (in WoW, hydras are often represented in boss fights as just a series of serpentine heads emerging from water you have to fight separately - though there are some models that have the full body). Thus, I think this is either a late-tier 1 or, maybe more likely early tier 2 dungeon, around level 4-6.

Deadmines:

The Deadmines are the headquarters of the Defias Gang - originally the Stonemason's Guild of Stormwind, after they rebuilt the city following its destruction at the hands of the Horde in the First War, the House of Nobles refused to pay them for their work, and their leader, Edwin VanCleef, retaliated by forming a gang that would terrorize the rural areas of the kingdom. Very sympathetic motivations, but with very questionable methods. Given that we're likely fighting bandits as our primary foes here, I think this could be very low-level, even a level 1 dungeon, or at least one that you start at level 1 and maybe get up to level 3 in.

Dire Maul:

Dire Maul's an odd dungeon: the ruins of the Night Elf city of Eldre'thalas, it's really kind of got three things going on. Part of the city is haunted by ghosts, and the demon-summoning prince who's causing a bunch of arcane chaos there. Another has been taken over by ogres. And the third wing is corrupted by a Satyr, who in WoW are Night Elves who fell to demonic corruption and became demons (but are also kind of tied to the Old Gods, and particularly something called the Emerald Nightmare, which is a corruption within the Emerald Dream, its sort of nature-focused Feywild equivalent).

As a D&D dungeon, I imagine this will be one of those dungeons where you can tackle different parts of it with different quests and such. There's even a friendly faction of Night Elf scholars of the arcane (it's a thing that for ten thousand years, arcane magic was banned in their society thanks to the aforementioned Azshara and the problems she caused).

Basically, there's a lot going on here. But I'm not convinced that this means it has to be particularly high-level. I think this feels like a good mid-tier-2 dungeon, and given how huge it is, you might be able to have enough to cover a few levels, maybe starting at level 5 or 6 and being level 8 or 9 by the end of it.

Onyxia's Lair:

Something of an odd choice, to be honest: Onyxia's Lair is a raid, but there's just a single boss (the eponymous Onyxia,) a black dragon who schemed under the guise of Lady Katrana Prestor, the head of Stormwind's House of Nobles (notably, her father, Deathwing, had also schemed as Lord Daval Prestor, and took over a different human kingdom called Alterac). By the time she retreats to her lair, which is on the other side of the world from Stormwind, it's basically just a march to fight and kill her.

Onyxia's at least an Adult Black Dragon (though in WoW, Black Dragons breathe fire - they're tied to the deep places of the earth, so you could flavor their fire-breath as more lava-like, while the Red Dragons, who are guardians of life, have a fire that can, like, enrich the soil). Anyway, I think of all the dungeons, this is the most likely to be built for tier 3 players. I'm sure we'll get a bespoke stat block for Onyxia, and I think it should ideally be balanced for a level 14-16 party.

Scarlet Monastery:

Scarlet Monastery is interesting: it was WoW's first "winged dungeon," which really meant it was four very quick dungeons that would only take a relatively short time (though as the game has evolved, dungeons generally go quicker than they did back in the day. "Short" was like, "only an hour.")

The Scarlet Crusade is one of the main foes that Undead (or "Forsaken") players have to fight in their beginning zones. The Forsaken are those undead who regained their free will after having been brought back to life by the Plague of Undeath, a major weapon of the Undead Scourge. While the Forsaken, as a people and nation, have done some truly horrendous things, they're still ultimately people, and plenty of them are good and heroic (or even just innocent).

The Scarlet Crusade, though, are a group of religious zealots who never gave the Forsaken a chance to prove themselves, and instead seek to slaughter them just like they do the mindless undead of the Scourge. And, you know, while they're at it, the Scarlet Crusade might also just want to eliminate anyone else that isn't part of their cult, just in case they're corrupted with undeath. It's not in Scarlet Monastery that we discover this, but it turns out that the madness and paranoia in the Crusade is being stoked by a Dreadlord, a demon who has possessed the body of its leader and seeks to use it to wrest control of the Scourge back for the Burning Legion.

The Monastery is a place of militant, corrupt fundamentalists, a real Spanish Inquisition vibe. I actually think this could be a lower-level dungeon, perhaps being around level 3-4, though I'd kind of want it to be slightly higher, around level 5. But the foes here are all humans (except for some hunting hounds,) and while we've got some higher-CR humanoid stat blocks in 5.5, I think we really aren't likely to see this go beyond level 6 or so.

Shadowfang Keep:

I'm going to make an assumption here that this is the original version of the dungeon, as this changed significantly when WoW's third expansion, Cataclysm, saw a huge revamp of the original continents' questing zones. While Deadmines also changed a lot, the overall premise was similar (the final boss was instead Vanessa VanCleef, who sought to reestablish the Defias to avenge her father). Shadowfang Keep, however, was basically an entirely different dungeon with the same map.

But let's assume the original version: a castle lying in the very northern reaches of Gilneas (beyond the Greymane Wall, which was erected when the king of Gilneas decided to cut his people off from the world). Abandoned after the building of the wall, it was there that Archmage Arugal, a powerful wizard (well, Mage in WoW terms, but basically that's what its Wizards are) sought to find a way to fight the Undead Scourge, and happened upon a secret and forbidden druidic ritual to find the "Pack Form." Turns out, however, that by channeling the Wolf spirit Goldrinn, druids who went that way lost control and turned into the werewolf-like Worgen. The Worgen were supposedly immune to the Plague of Undeath, though, so Arugal went forward with summoning these beings from the Emerald Dream, and unfortunately, this caused their curse to spread through the region, transforming people into Worgen.

Arugal went mad, considering the Worgen his children to protect. (Eventually, the Worgen made it past the Greymane Wall and infected a sizable chunk of Gilneas, which is how we have playable Worgen - alchemists and later Night Elf druids found a way to calm the beast and let them retain their human minds).

I don't know if we'll get specific Worgen stat blocks, or simply use Werewolves (they are truly the WoW equivalent,) but if we imagine numerous encounters with multiple CR 3 werewolves, I'd say this is probably going to be a tier 2 dungeon.

That being said, it might be tricky given that playable Worgen will be a thing in the book, and this original version of Shadowfang Keep is very much built on the idea that Worgen are just deadly monsters (scary enough even to freak out the Forsaken - the dungeon is in the zone they're meant to go to next after their starting area).

In the post-Cataclysm version of the dungeon, the Worgen there are only ghosts, and instead it has been taken over by a number of Gilnean nobles who rebelled against the King after they discovered he had become a Worgen. Siding with Sylvanas, the leader of the Forsaken, and rising as Forsaken themselves, they then turned around and betrayed her (shooting her in the head, actually, which I think was the third time she died, though she got better), so both factions had beef with them.

Personally, I felt that this version of the dungeon is a little less iconic, but it would make more sense for Worgen players to be involved. In terms of level range, I honestly don't truly remember very well what most of the enemies in there were (I think there was a heroic version, like Deadmines, in Cataclysm). But we'll say that it could potentially be of a similar range.

One instance I'm sort of surprised not to see on the list is Icecrown Citadel. This was the final (well, ok, there was one single-boss raid that came out later that was more of a prologue to the next expansion) raid of Wrath of the Lich King, in which we fought through the bastion of the Undead Scourge and confronted WoW's most popular and iconic villain, the Lich King, aka Arthas Menethil, who's on the cover of the book.

We're certain to get a stat block for him. But I also think that ICC, as we called it back in the day, would make an excellent dungeon for the end of tier 3 - it's super epic, with a very memorable final boss fight. There are only a handful of raids I'd save for tier 4 (off the dome, I think Antorus, the final raid of Legion, and Sepulcher of the First ones, the final raid of Shadowlands, both feel well and truly tier 4, as they're on crazy cosmic scales).

While they're hoping to let the book cover at least all 22 years of WoW (if not the entire 32 years of the franchise as a whole,) they've clearly go to pick their battles. Making every single dungeon in WoW into a D&D dungeon would require a book the size of an entire shelf, and are we really begging for the Oculus?

I realize I'm also kind of hedging here based on the fact that WotC tends to release content that goes from level 1 to 12ish, and rarely gets into the late tier 3/tier 4 areas. That being said, I know that that's kind of changing with recent releases. So who knows?

Well, we will in November.

Very Vague Rumors of a Second Elden Ring DLC

 Elden Ring's Shadow of the Erdtree DLC was enormous: while the Land of Shadow certainly wasn't as large as The Lands Between, it was nonetheless a huge region with basically an entire Dark Souls' worth of stuff, sending us into iconic fights with Messmer and a resurrected Radahn and Miquella, as well as really fantastic side content like our exploration of the Abyssal Woods that led to Midra, or Metyr, the Mother of Fingers. (And who could forget Igon's howling fury at Bayle the Dread?)

What I think a lot of players were surprised by, though, was the lack of closure for the story of Godwyn, the first of the demigods to die, slain in soul while his body has continued to live. Godwyn is something of the Baldur of Elden Ring's pantheon, beloved by all (it seems) and whose death triggered The Shattering.

Let's do a summary here:

Godwyn is (though to be) the son of Marika and Godfrey (first Elden Lord and also first of the Tarnished, whom we defeat en route to the final fight against Radagon in the base game). It's likely he was the firstborn, and while Marika's whole Golden Order is built around the notion that she's eternal, in a more traditional monarchic system, Godwyn would have been the clear heir apparent. Godwyn defeated and befriended the dragons, ushering in the establishment of the Dragon Cult within Marika's Golden Order (Cult here in the more traditional term, as a kind of narrower religious movement that is accepted by the larger church but not adhered to by all. I think technically by this definition, a monastic order like the Franciscans would count. In polytheistic traditions, it would be like people who dedicated themselves particularly to, like, Athena, while still worshipping the other Olympians).

Godwyn is thought to have been a kind older brother to Malenia and Miquella. He also, presumably, had children of his own, as it seems that the various characters with "God" as a prefix to their names (subtle, right?) were all part of The Golden Lineage. Unfortunately, this eventually led to Godefroy (a minor Evergaol boss) and Godrick the Grafted, who claimed to be the rightful heir to the Elden Ring, though how direct his descent from Godwyn was is questionable (Nepheli Loux, interestingly, is probably a direct descendant if not the daughter of Godfrey, whose actual name is Hoarah Loux, meaning she's probably got a more legitimate claim as heir to Godfrey specifically, even if she's not descended from Marika).

Anyway, Godwyn was the golden child, but on the Night of Black Knives, he was ambushed and slain by the Black Knife Assassins. In a simultaneous act, the cursemark of death was inscribed in his flesh while the other half of it was inscribed on Lunar Princess Ranni's body. Ranni's soul survived but her body died, while Godwyn's soul was killed and his body left alive.

It's not clear if this was evident to start with, because Godwyn's remains were given Erdtree Burial down in the Deeproot Depths. Perhaps because his body lived on without its soul, this created a corruption that now spreads across the Lands Between - Deathroot, which leads to the rise of Those Who Live in Death - more or less Elden Ring's version of the undead (though interestingly, some item descriptions describe the various "nobles" found on the road as undead. Likewise, the Tarnished are described as "Those who Died Yet Live." Unlike the Tarnished, Those Who Live in Death are rotting and decayed, sometimes skeletal.

Godwyn is now considered the Prince of Death, and Fia's questline, where she serves her role as a Deathbed Companion, has her ultimately lay with the Prince to create the Mending Rune of the Death Prince, which gives us the Age of the Duskborn ending.

There are a few things that I find really interesting surrounding Godwyn.

Among the Golden Order Fundamentalists, there are some who hunt Those Who Live in Death, who find their existence to be an affront to the Golden Order, such as D, Hunter of the Dead. Fundamentalist incantations require equal parts Faith and Intelligence, and their dedicated Seal scales with both in equal measures. Many of these have special effects against Those Who Live in Death, preventing them from rising again once struck down the first time.

Ironically, Death Sorceries work the same way, requiring a mix of Intelligence and Faith, and again, their dedicated staff, the Prince of Death's Staff, scales equally with both.

Anyway, Deathroot is said to hold fragments of the Rune of Death, which is why Gurranq (aka Maliketh) has us gather it for him in his attempt to reconstitute it and keep it under lock (supposedly there's an old bit of folkore that dogs can purify dead things by eating them, which might have inspired this).

Godwyn's form is utterly bizarre - his face has transformed into something that almost looks like a scallop shell, and his lower half is that of a fish.

Now... the interesting thing is that we never actually see him before the moment he's assassinated, and when he is, he's being held up by his elbows much in the way that he's posed in death, and he's lower than the assassins. Is it possible that he always had a merman-like form? Certainly Marika's disdain for her Omen twin sons, Mohg and Morgott, with their omen horns (which marked them actually as Hornsent, who would have been considered blessed in an earlier age) would have abhorred Godwyn's exhibition of aspects of the Crucible, where people manifest animal-like features (including horns?)

Perhaps, or perhaps not: after all, Marika hated the Hornsent, which were specifically all about horns. But given that Godfrey drew power from the Crucible (even if he himself is fully human in form) maybe it wasn't even that much of a shock if Godwyn was born with that fishy lower half, and maybe it was acceptable?

Otherwise, there's a possibility that the fish tail was a result of his corruption by Death. There is a lot of aquatic imagery related to death as a power, such as the Tibia Mariners. Perhaps the abyssal depths of the ocean are tied to death, and so the Prince of Death would naturally take on a form more at home int he deep waters?

The strange thing is that Godwyn's presence is pretty thin in The Land of Shadow. The Land of Shadow holds a pillar where it is said that "all manner of death converge." The Suppressing Pillar seems like it was probably made on Marika's orders, given that, as a god who sought to embody abundant life, she loathed death in all of its forms. The Land of Shadows is, in many ways, the Land of the Dead.

Godwyn has a presence there, but it's not as extensive as you'd expect it to be.

There are three catacomb dungeons in The Land of Shadow. These are far larger than the ones in the base game, with multiple levels to descend. In each, you can find one of Godwyn's loyal knights, the Death Knights, who employ his golden draconic lighting magic. (Two are the dungeons' final bosses, while one is found dead there, and you can get their cool armor set, while the final boss is actually outside the catacombs and leads into the Abyssal Woods).

In either one or two of these (I can't remember,) there is a massive Godwyn face similar to the one we find in the depths of Stormveil Castle.

We know that Godwyn's body is growing, cancer-like, across the Lands Between. It's truly some of the most unnerving imagery in the game, with root-like structures manifesting eyes, and showing up even on some creatures (like the crabs in the moat outside of Leyndell where we fight Dung Eater or the various Basilisks).

Thus, these huge facsimiles of him might just be particularly advanced growths. But their presence in the Land of Shadow implies that the Deathroot does reach there somehow (hell, it even shows up in Farum Azula, which raises some really interesting questions about when the city flew up into the sky). I believe, though, that one of the odd details about the Shadowlands Catacombs is that, other than these massive faces, you don't actually see the Deathroot threaded through them like you do in the base game.

When the Shadow of the Erdtree DLC was announced, many players were convinced that we'd finally have our big fight against an undead Godwyn the Golden, and so a lot of people were kind of shocked and even disappointed that we were having a kind of rematch with Radahn as its big final boss fight.

Here's the thing: FromSoft tends to zig when you expect them to zag - Shadow of the Erdtree's marketing was focused a ton of Messmer, who is a memorable boss to be sure, but also kind of a supporting player in the real drama of the expansion. Similarly, Artorias of the Abyss was the headliner for the DLC that shared his name, but the actual final boss of that was Manus.

In other words, if we do get a second DLC, if they put Godwyn front-and-center, I would say the chances are very high that he'll be an important boss on the way to the actual final boss. If he's barely referenced, though, I think there's a fair chance.

All this being said: at this point, do we want more DLC for Elden Ring? Or would we want an Elden Ring 2? I know that Dark Souls III was kind of all about how dragging a series out for multiple sequels leads to diminishing returns. But Elden Ring's world is so profoundly dense with lore, even more, I'd wager, than that of Dark Souls.

I wouldn't be upset at all about getting an Elden Ring II (Roman numerals seem more appropriate for the series). At the same time, I suspect that the focus would be more on new elements, with a ton of new characters and taking place probably thousands of years after the first game. Of course, a figure like Godwyn is sure to still be around in thousands of years. How might the Deathroot have evolved in that time?

To be clear, all this speculation is based on a social media post that simply referred to the beauty of riding around on the Siofra River, but it kind of came out of nowhere.

My WoW Characters as D&D Characters

 With the official WoW/D&D crossover book now announced, I thought it would be fun to figure out what my various WoW characters would count as if translated into D&D.

I've been playing WoW for nearly 20 years, and in that time, the number of character options has expanded profoundly, so I have a ton of characters. But I generally have a "main" for each class, so I'll stick to those. The name of this blog, of course, is a reference in large part to how many alts I make - I'm always eager to see RPGs from multiple angles.

Jarsus: Human Protection Paladin --> Human Devotion Paladin

This one's fairly straightforward, but I will say that there's an alternative to the Oath of Devotion here, which would be Oath of the Watchers. I've also tended to lean into the Engineering profession's aesthetic, though this might be reflected more in just having tool proficiencies rather than fully going into levels of Artificer (though put a pin in that).

Oterro: Draenei Blood Death Knight --> Draenei Ebon Blade Paladin

So, the Oath of the Ebon Blade is basically the way they're going to handle player Death Knights in this, and that narrows our options a little. I suspect it will probably lean a bit more into the necromancer-themed Unholy Death Knight, but I don't think there will be a better equivalent for Blood.

Veranos: Night Elf Havoc Demon Hunter --> Wood Elf Demon Hunter Ranger

There's some promise of guidance to make established playable species work for equivalent WoW races, and I've always thought that Night Elves and Wood Elves are pretty clearly equivalents of one another. Like the Death Knight, the Demon Hunter is summed up in this one subclass, though I do think Havoc is the most "quintessential" of Demon Hunter specs, so I think this might be reflected decently.

Darsino: Undead Subtlety Rogue --> Forsaken Arcane Trickster Rogue

I'm not sure that any D&D subclass really captures the shadow-magic vibes of WoW's Subtlety Rogue. Honestly, it might work better with a Warrior of Shadow Monk. Soulknife is another possibility, as I think "Psychic" and "Shadow" damage in WoW are often equivalents (though Shadow is also sometimes the equivalent of Necrotic).

Tarbhad: Tauren Enhancement Shaman --> Tauren Path of Elements Barbarian

I know Ancestral Guardian is being reflavored as Spiritual Guardian, both of which could feel very WoW Shaman, but I think that my sense of Tarbhad is that he leans more into the elemental magic. It's very odd to have a version of him that can't cast spells, but he is focused on melee. I think if you wanted to do an Elemental or Restoration Shaman, you might lean instead into the Druid class, or even Cleric if you used Tempest Domain.

Goraas: Draenei Frost Mage --> Draenei Conjurer Wizard

The subclass here is very difficult to pick, because in WoW, they're simply separated by element, whereas in D&D, it's more "what you want to focus on with your spells." So, this could be Evocation, or really anything (maybe not Necromancer). But I guess the fact that a Frost Mage can summon a water elemental to fight alongside them made me think of Conjurer.

Morcanis: Gnome Demonology Warlock --> Gnome Fiend Warlock

This is funny, because in WoW, Warlocks are by definition using demonic Fel magic. Now, I actually think that this could possibly lean even farther into being a Conjurer Wizard - Demonology is all about summoning a ton of demons (mostly little imps). Indeed, the WoW Warlock is not really about forging pacts so much as it is delving into forbidden knowledge, which is honestly more like a D&D Wizard, just kind of "dark" themed.

Ardten: Worgen Arms Warrior --> Worgen Battle Master Fighter

Actually, I think I've been playing this one more as Protection lately, but I think the flavor of Arms is 100% consistent with the disciplined, tactical soldier that the Battle Master Fighter represents.

Etharian: Blood Elf Shadow Priest --> High Elf Shadow Cleric

I mean, they're adding Shadow Domain, so this one's basically a gimme. And for those unfamiliar with WoW lore, Blood Elves literally were called High Elves just a few decades back. After their kingdom had the majority of its population slaughtered by the Undead Scourge, they (or at least most of them) renamed themselves Blood Elves to reflect the bitterness and grief they feel.

Blattz: Goblin Survival Hunter --> Goblin Battle Smith Artificer

First off, only in the recent Midnight expansion have I prioritized this guy over my old Dwarf Beast Mastery Hunter, who would clearly just be a... Beast Master Ranger. But in WoW, Goblins and Gnomes are automatically given the ability to tame some "mechanical" (equivalent to Constructs) pets in place of beasts (others can get this ability, but need to do various things to attain it) and so Blattz has a mechanical squirrel as his primary pet. On top of that, Survival is a melee spec, which Battle Smiths sort of lean into (though you can still be fairly effective at range). And Goblins are one of the more "technological" peoples in WoW, so this just feels kind of right. Interestingly, there is evidently not going to be a Goblin species in the WoW book, and there still hasn't been a 5.5 update for them, though presumably we'd just use the Monsters of the Multiverse version, which was kind of pitched as a "pre 5.5" update.

Rackhom: Kul Tiran Guardian Druid --> Human Moon Druid

In WoW, "Feral" was originally the single spec that focused on shape-shifting, but because of the way that talents and specializations changed in Mists of Pandaria back in 2012, they broke out the tanking-focused Guardian spec, built around Bear form, from the damage-dealing Feral, built around Cat form. Either of these would be pretty well-represented by Circle of the Moon, though I will say that part of the reason I started prioritizing my Kul Tiran over my old Night Elf Druid was that their animal forms look like creepy wicker-man constructs made of furs and bone, and so I might even go with the upcoming Circle of the Titan. Maybe I just prefer the mechanics of that subclass. Anyway, Moon makes perfect sense here.

Gaotso: Pandaren Brewmaster Monk --> Pandaren Mystic Brews Monk

This is a pretty obvious one, though I wonder if the Mystic Brews Monk will also incorporate some healing to cover WoW's Mistweaver healing spec (arguably, Warrior of Mercy kind of covers their "Fistweaving" mix of melee and healing).

Arkanizormu: Dracthyr Devastation Evoker --> Dracthyr Draconic Sorcerer

It's funny - Dracthyr are kind of WoW's Dragonborn equivalent, but they're typically a bit slimmer and have wings. Initially they were only able to become what was then a new class, the Evoker, which is built around channeling the magic of the five Dragonflights (Red, Green, Blue, Black, and Bronze - though unlike in D&D, most of those flights are good guys. Indeed, even though the Black Dragonflight was evil for ten thousand years, the few surviving ones have reformed and are serving their original role as guardians of the world). Anyway, pretty clear analogue here.

    It'll be interesting to see how the various species, subclasses, and spells express the flavor and mechanics of the WoW classes. Naturally, there are a few other ways I think you could get a really clear analogue in D&D for certain WoW specs, like Circle of Stars really fits well with the Balance Druid.

Anyway, it's kind of exciting that we'll be getting this in only a few months.

What Will D&D Star Wars Look Like?

 So, when I was I think 9 years old, I got into Star Wars. Like, really, really into Star Wars. My family had the movies (at the time, there were only the three from the original trilogy) on LaserDisc (a format that was superior to VHS, but 100% obsolete once DVDs came out - think vinyl-record-sized discs, and you'd typically have to have a feature length movie on both sides of one disc and one side of another).

For a long time (in my memory it was like months, but was probably like a couple weeks) I would watch two Star Wars movies a day - starting with A New Hope (yes, the home video versions had that on the opening crawl, though the packaging just said "Star Wars") and then Empire Strikes Back, then the following day would be Return of the Jedi and A New Hope, and then the next day was Empire and Jedi, and then repeat.

While I haven't seen those movies in years, I'm sure that if I were to watch them again I'd be able to say almost all the dialogue along with the characters.

But my love of Star Wars kind of faded over time. The term "copium" wasn't a thing in 1999, but 13-year-old me certainly worked pretty hard to convince myself that Episode One was good. By the time the second prequel came out, I had decided Phantom Menace wasn't good, but I worked pretty hard to make myself thing Attack of the Clones was. The process repeated, but with shorter turn-around times.

Still, despite thinking the prequels were crap and the sequels were a bizarre mess (I liked Rian Johnson's deconstructive take, but it seems like no one at Lucasfilm seemed to have actually planned the trilogy out in advance, which is utterly insane for such a massive IP,) I do love that world. I think there's a reason that people keep wanting to go there and expand the Star Wars universe - it just scratches this itch.

I will say, of the Disney-era stuff, by far my favorite was Andor - though I've only seen the first season, as my access to Disney Plus lapsed before the second season came out (which I've heard is even better).

But I think it goes to show you that Star Wars is a world that can support lots of different stories (I actually really liked the early episodes of The Mandalorian, when it was more in that pulp-novel, wandering hero mode with very little dialogue. It kind of got buried under all the "lore" and the desire to backdoor pilot other shows). It can be a family-friendly adventure, or a gritty drama about how difficult it is to fight an authoritarian regime.

Now, I think that there's an elephant in the room we should address: SW5E is a hack of D&D 5E that is designed to allow you to run adventures in the Star Wars universe. It gets around copyright laws by being entirely free. Notably, it was this hack of the system that Dimension 20 used for A Starstruck Odyssey (naturally hacking it a bit more to work in the Starstruck universe).

In other words, you might argue that this product isn't really necessary - though I think the sheen of "official" will probably make it more popular.

Anyway, Star Wars is interesting because I do think it's primarily a fantasy setting. But it clearly has a science-fiction aesthetic, and it's probably more accurate to describe it as science-fantasy (arguably it's the quintessential example).

Indeed, when they released the 5E Spelljammer set, I think I had built that setting up to be something it isn't, which was science-fantasy, whereas Spelljammer is much more truly "fantasy in space," with its tall ships sailing between the stars.

What I was looking for, frankly, was something more akin to Star Wars, with laser guns and robots and enclosed spaceships. I adore the used future aesthetic, where the ships have rusty hulls scorched by oblique blaster bolts they managed to shrug off. It's certainly more in line with how I portrayed my "Sarkon Starbound" setting when I ran a brief campaign using Spelljammer rules (I think every player was one of the Spelljammer species - a Thri-kreen, a Giff, an Autognome, and an Astral Elf).

Now, what I'm really curious to see is how they handle the magic and magical classes of D&D.

See, as I understand it, Star Wars' magic is kind of all tied up in The Force, and while I'm sure some of the expanded materials do touch on other kinds of Force Users, in the movies at least we basically only ever see the Jedi and Sith. (I do like that Rogue One had someone who was devout toward the Force but with no special abilities. It's a reminder that you don't have to be a Cleric or Paladin to be religious in D&D!) How that squares with 5E, which is a system in which most PCs have some kind of magical ability, will be curious.

It'll probably be a while before we see this one. While the Warcraft book (I think just singular?) is coming in November, we got just the barest teaser for this one.

Dark Sun: Details a Bit Light on the Most Edgelord-y Setting

 There's a certain class of nerd that frequently complains about how, as various franchises have sought a broader appeal, that they've lost some of their grit.

I tend to be very wary of such nerds, because there's often an underlying (or, in the past decade or so, pretty overt) element of that that is some combination of racist, misogynistic, homophobic, transphobic, or in some other way being upset that people who aren't like them are able to enjoy something.

That being said, I do think it's true that in a more corporatized media landscape, there is a lot of sanding down of the edges on things. Many words have been written about how the current state of Hollywood seems afraid to portray any kind of sex or sexiness.

There is a lot of nuance, though, to how something like a Trigger Warning is supposed to work - it's not censorship, but just a heads-up for audiences that might have experienced related traumas. I think that there's a place for all subject matters to be dealt with in art, though the freedom to approach certain themes or ideas in the manner you wish to doesn't mean people don't have the right to complain about it (Freedom of Speech goes both ways).

All this is to say: the animated trailer for D&D's new Dark Sun two-book set is clearly meant to send the message: we're going brutal with this.

Now, the prospect of a Dark Sun book has long been rumored, and when we got such things as a Warlock Patron "Sorcerer King," it was basically confirmed that we'd have something set on the bleak world of Athas.

The trailer depicts violence in an utterly gruesome matter - and not, really, that much else. Warriors on some wasteland battlefield tear one another apart. The first shot is someone falling to the ground, presumably just felled (and for his sake, I hope he's dead by the time he hits the ground) before another warrior literally rips the skull and spinal cord from his body (Mortal Kombat-style,) rendered in unflinching detail.

The message, to my mind, is that the big tent approach D&D is taking is also making a space for the edgelords.

And... I actually think I'm fine with that.

Dark Sun has a lot of themes that are seen as radioactive in today's nerd culture, like slavery, for example. I think that these subjects can be explored in nuanced and interesting ways - it just means being careful.

Basically, just make such subject matter opt-in. The use of safety tools in TTRPGs isn't about banning anything that might be disturbing or dark, but it's about finding what is actually fun for your players. And while you might be very comfortable with lots of dark subjects, it's important to remember that the people you play with might not be.

But more likely than a binary "everything goes" versus "nothing that's rated above PG" it's more likely that there's going to be some nuance to it. For example, I know a lot of people (myself included) who are far more ok with sexual content than hyper-violent content (the logic being that sex is something normal people do all the time, and deadly violence is something I think we all would prefer to avoid in our lives). But you might also be more interested in slavery as a thematic element if it's about uprisings and rebellions, fighting for freedom, and not focusing on the brutal torture and abuses suffered by those bound by chains.

Every D&D group is going to have different perspectives and opinions, and while I think players signing on to play, say, Storm King's Thunder, are unlikely to encounter things that make it too uncomfortable to play, the same general "just be a compassionate person" guidance is really the key to approaching a setting like Dark Sun.

But the point is, by talking about it, you might also find that your players are all super into the hyper-violent brutality of the setting, and that gives you a big old green light.

Anyway, in terms of details about it, we don't really have much, other than that it'll be a two-book set. One book will be more player-facing, with subclasses and the like, and almost certainly, this will include the Psion class, the first full new class to be added to the game since the Artificer.

I have high hopes for the Psion, based on its UA playtest, and especially if we get some new spells for it.

The other book is, I believe, more of a setting book, though I'm not sure if there will be "a big adventure" or if it will be more akin to the 5.5 setting books where you get lightly-sketched adventures that could be done in a session or two.

I'm also curious to see if some of the gameplay restrictions from earlier editions will hold true in this. For example, I think metal is supposed to be very precious, with metal weapons (I heard) being as rare as a +1 weapon. I'm not sure I love the idea of nerfing martials that way, though if there are also consequences for spellcasting because of the warped way magic works there, maybe it'll balance?

I think this one is slated for "late 2027," which means we probably have about a year before we get our hands on it.

Going In Depth with D&D/WoW Crossover

 Ok, let's get the details straight here:

Dungeons & Dragons: World of Warcraft is the upcoming product coming in November that acts as a setting book for D&D using the world of Azeroth.

Subclasses:

Initially I misunderstood and though they would be giving us all the classes from WoW as full and independent classes, but apparently there are instead several subclasses, some of which aid in re-skinning an existing class to function as the equivalent in D&D.

Oath of the Ebon Blade and Oath of the Holy are two subclasses for the Paladin, the former letting you play as a WoW Death Knight (curious to see if it's akin to the "Oathbreaker" one we saw in UA) and the other being presumably a more healing-oriented Paladin like WoW's Paladin healing spec.

The Demon Hunter is a new ranger subclass. In WoW, Demon Hunters are those who decided to fight hellfire with hellfire, and took on demonic magic into themselves to fight against those evil fiends. Hopefully this will take some cues from the Hollow Warden to be a bit stronger than your typical Ranger subclasses.

Clerics get the Shadow and Discipline domains, based on the specs for WoW's Priest class. Shadow is all about blasting your enemies' minds with nightmarish psychic damage and communing with the eldritch power of the Void, while Discipline is built around healing your allies by striking your enemies, and has a bit of a "fire and brimstone" flavor to it. (Actually, I think this kind of flavoring isn't there as much anymore. It's a bit more of a mix of light and dark, primarily healing with the light and harming with shadow).

Barbarians will get the Path of the Elements subclass, which presumably is meant to give us the equivalent of an Enhancement Shaman, who sling elemental magic around them as they fight up in melee.

Then, three existing subclasses (maybe I'm wrong about the Oathbreaker/Ebon Blade connection) are the Path of the Spiritual Guardian Barbarian (which has a less obvious connection - I'd actually say this could also be an Enhancement Shaman - Shamans are literally people who commune with unseen spirits,) the Swashbuckler Rogue (equivalent to WoW's Outlaw Rogue) and the Warrior of Mystic Brews Monk (WoW's Brewmaster Monk).

Again, I actually think just making new subclasses is the more reasonable direction for this - adding Evokers, Shamans, Death Knights, and Demon Hunters as fully fledged new classes would be a lot. 

For species, there are apparently new "WoW-mapping" rules for 5 existing species (presumably Humans, Dwarves, Elves, Gnomes, and Orcs) and then new ones for Dracthyr, Draenei, Earthen, Forsaken, Haranir, Mechagnome, Pandaren, Tauren, Troll, Vulpera, and Worgen. (Surprisingly no Goblin here, which technically haven't yet gotten a 5.5 version.)

There are going to be a whopping 60 new spells, which seem to all be player spells/abilities from WoW. Examples include Rune Strike (ok, actually, that's not a thing anymore,) Demon Spikes, Moonfire (here I thought that was just Moonbeam?) Also, naturally a bunch of magic items and such.

There's also evidently a profession system, which seems built around downtime activities, so I'm not sure how this will differ all that much from normal D&D crafting, but let me play an engineer.

There are evidently a crapton of monsters - 50 new monsters and 30 new "dungeon bosses," which I assume will be legendary creatures in line with the Horrors Within Darklords. I don't know if we have specifics, but I'd love to see Hogger as a legendary level 1 monster.

Seven classic (well, not all "Classic") dungeons are also included, revised to work as D&D dungeons. These are:

Azjol-Nerub (underground realm of creepy spider people who were absorbed into the undead Scourge)

Blackfathom Deeps (ancient elf ruins submerged in underwater caves and taken over by the apocalyptic Twilight's Hammer cult)

Deadmines (the headquarters of the Defias Gang, who seek to overthrow the government of the human capital of Stormwind)

Dire Maul (ancient Night Elf ruins taken over by ogres, ghosts, and ancient demons)

Onyxia's Lair (home to the evil and manipulative dragon who, fun fact, kind of engineered the animosity that led to the Defias Gang's war on Stormwind)

Scarlet Monastery (bastion of a group of crazed zealots whose fight against the undead has descended into paranoia and madness)

Shadowfang Keep (well, depending on if we're talking the original SFK or the post-Cataclysm one, it's either the castle occupied by the crazed archmage Arugal, who unleashed the werewolf-like Worgen upon the world, or it's occupied by a group of undead traitors to the Kingdom of Gilneas, who would rather sell out to the nation's enemies than acknowledge a kingdom mostly transformed into Worgen).

    I will say, I can't be upset by this. WoW has, of course, been a big influence on the way that I run D&D (my goblins basically always have Brooklyn accents, though this has also worked quite well in Ravnica - which you could argue was kind of an early in-house Universes Beyond). There's plenty of good genre cross-over, so it'll be very easy to pillage this content and use it in non-Azeroth-set campaigns.

I'm also eager to get my hands on some stat blocks: I want to see Murlocs and Abominations, and I'll be really curious to see what stat block they make for the Lich King (I think it ought to be higher-CR than a standard Lich, though perhaps in the low 20s to account for having a bunch of minions).

I was also quite encouraged by a lot of the UA stuff - the Mystic Brews monk, assuming it's an evolution of the "Intoxicated..." something something, which was itself built on the Druken Master, looked a lot of fun (specifcally the ability to brew various beverages that gave you effects, like blowing a breath of fire each round).

Naturally, some of the species could, in theory, be broadened out to be setting-agnostic. Tauren are Minotaurs, and the Lupin from Ravenloft could very easily stand in for Worgen. Mechagnomes aren't... quite Autognomes (think cybernetic gnomes rather than artificial gnomes).

But basically, this is a setting that I'm actually more familiar with than any established D&D setting, so it's aimed right at me, even if it has the stink of corporate synergy on it.