Two New D&D Beyond Posts Provide Greater Detail for WoW Subclasses

 Actually, one of these came out eleven days ago, but I just found out about it.

Anyway:

The WoW D&D book is both very exciting for me as a longtime WoW player who also loves D&D while also being a terrifying specter of the dilution of D&D through a bunch of crossover-IP corporate synergy nightmares. Did I get excited to play the Final Fantasy Magic the Gathering set? Yes. Has the prevalence of Universes Beyond in Standard made me stop playing Magic the Gathering as much as I used to? Also yes.

But at least for now, I'm happy to just turn off my captialism-weary brain and embrace the rank consumerism of this corporate crossover because, hey, I've been dreaming up a D&D/WoW crossover ever since reading through Tomb of Annihilation, where you can find that weird chair that transports people to other worlds, and thought it would be hilarious if a party blipped out of that adventure and wound up in downtown Orgrimmar. (We'll see how things go when we're getting UB products for IPs I don't give a shit about.)

Anyway, the articles suggest ways that you can re-create WoW classes and specializations with the book, and then gives details on the various subclasses included in it.

Let's start off with a caveat:

If I were to run an Azeroth adventure, or perhaps even more if I were to be a player in one, I'd probably be inclined to go against the grain and not try to make a character that directly corresponded to the way they play in WoW. Whether that's just creating a character that has no real precedence like an Artificer (while conceptually, an Artificer would have no problem fitting in with WoW, until/unless we get a Tinker class as has often been rumored, there's no player class that really corresponds to it. That said, my Goblin Survival Hunter uses a mechanical - think construct - pet and that spec is all about throwing bombs and literally "Conjuring a Barrage" with a shotgun, meaning I think he'd actually be best-represented by a Battle Smith Artificer rather than a Beast Master Ranger) or tweaking existing concepts to make a better-feeling character that perhaps fits closer to my idea of what a WoW spec ought to feel like (like my Undead Subtlety Rogue going with a mix of Echo Knight Fighter and Arcane Trickster Rogue).

Here's what I'd say if I were running a campaign or adventure in Azeroth: I'd strongly encourage players to use the guidance provided here, but I'd fully allow for people to play anything from 5.5 (and most things from 5.0). There's nothing remotely like a Bard in WoW (though you could argue an Augmentation Evoker at least functions in a similar "buff your allies more than yourself" manner) but I see zero reason why they couldn't exist in Azeroth just because the developers haven't added that to the game.

In a similar manner, the approach to the Shaman class is... unexpected, so I'd fully embrace a player who wants to play... actually truer to the WoW Shaman, something like a Circle of the Land Druid.

But with all that preamble out of the way, let's review what the articles actually tell us.

We'll start with the WoW class guidance.

Interestingly, both WoW and D&D 5E have thirteen playable classes (at least until Dark Sun adds the Psion to D&D). While there's a nearly one-to-one correspondance between some of them (surely the Druid is the equivalent of the Druid) it's not a perfectly-aligned mix. There's no Artificer or Bard or equivalent in WoW.

Now: WoW's classes each have three (or four for the Druid) specializations. While this most closely corresponds to subclasses in D&D, the expression of these ideas doesn't work totally the same. Group roles: tank, healer, or damage, are not nearly as strictly delineated in D&D. Specializations thus will be a separate mechanical idea that have more minor benefits. Let's take a look at the WoW classes alphabetically:

Death Knights:

Death Knights will use the new Oath of the Ebon Blade subclass for Paladins. This replaces several Paladin features beyond the typical subclass levels, like swapping out Lay on Hands for Death Coil (a feature that can add damage to foes as a bonus action or heal friendly undead, including the Death Knight themselves). All three specializations are represented in this subclass, which will each grant a separate rune to carve into the Death Knight's weapon, which grant various benefits.

Demon Hunters:

Demon Hunters, like Death Knights, use the framework of another class, in this case the Ranger, but replace certain features. Its three specializations will affect what subclass spells you get. Demon Hunters will be able to use soul fragments carved from foes to fuel various abilities, including getting to cast more spells, and they also get a new Fighting Style feat that allows them to get Warlock cantrips, so you can have, for example, Eldritch Blast if you want to go for the Devourer specialization (which is more spell-focused).

Druids:

Druids are a far simpler class to convert to D&D, but there are some exciting and notable changes here. Balance Druids can easily be represented with the Circle of the Stars subclass, simply flavoring their Starry form as instead being a shift into their Moonkin (think a sort of magical antlered, upright-walking Owlbear) form. Restoration Druids just go Circle of the Land. Meanwhile, the Guardian and Feral specializations both go Circle of the Moon, but here's the kicker: All Azerothian Druids will get access to new Wild Shape forms: Bear form, Cat form, and Travel form (which itself seems to get both Aquatic and Flight versions, much like in WoW). What I believe these will be are scaling templates that you can use from level 3 to level 20, which is something they experimented with in the One D&D testing two or three years ago, but abandoned. If they let the attack bonuses and damage of their attacks scale with Wisdom (just let the attack bonus be your spell attack bonus) I'll be overjoyed and more or less think this fixes the Circle of the Moon subclass.

Evokers:

D&D, as far as I know, is the only game that makes a really clear distinction between a Wizard and a Sorcerer, and even if their spell selection is similar, the concept of them as classes is quite distinct. Evokers, the newest class in WoW (introduced in 2022,) though, actually fit quite well into the idea of a Draconic Sorcerer. However, given that WoW Evokers have three specializations, there will be some variation: different specializations will be given different subclass spells, with Preservation Evokers, for example, getting healing spells, and Augmentation Evokers getting more beneficial/buff spells. (I suspect that Devastation will look the most like a standard D&D Draconic Sorcerer, but perhaps we'll get some fun spells like Deep Breath).

Hunters:

Another pretty 1-to-1 equivalent, the Hunter is basically D&D's Ranger. Here, the Marksmanship specialization is simply represented by the Hunter subclass (this feels like a weird fractal pattern) but with encouragement to stick to ranged weapons to match the specialization. Both Beast Mastery and Survival, though, are represented with the Beast Master subclass. In WoW, Beast Mastery is a ranged specialization like Marksmanship, while Survival is the Hunter's sole melee "spec." However! While you might think they'd just call it a day, apparently if you are going for the Beast Mastery specialization from WoW, you'll actually replace Roving with a new feature called Pet Specialization. In WoW, Hunter pets can have one of three specs, Tenacity, Ferocity, or Cunning, and so I assume this will correspond in a similar manner. But I find this interesting because it takes something that might be "settled" with a simple use of existing D&D player options and futzes with it a bit.

Mages:

Mages are pretty clear analogues for D&D Wizards, but due to WoW's general focus more on combat as its primary mechanic (I'd argue D&D also centers combat, but not to the degree that WoW does,) all Mages focus on blasting foes with magic from afar, the only real distinction being the flavor of magic (with various interesting mechanical effects). Thus, all Mages are considered Evoker Wizards. But your specialization will grant you some distinct features: Arcane Mages will get a feature called Clearcasting, where if you land a critical hit with a spell, you can cast a cantrip as a reaction, as well as enhancing your Force damage dealt. Fire Mages will get some additional fire spells like Flame Strike (which they do get in WoW as their main AoE spell) and the ability to cause foes to burn when they deal fire damage to them. Frost will gain access to new spells that deal cold damage and inflict the Restrained condition, with another feature that lets them deal bonus damage to restrained creatures (similar to WoW's central Frost Mage mechanic, Shatter). While I think it'd be far too limiting to restrict players to only one Wizard subclass, I do appreciate that they're adding all these interesting features to distinguish them - I just wonder if players will have to give something up for them.

Monks:

Again, this is a class with a clear counterpart in D&D, so it's not too hard to convert. However, there appear to be a few new feats that will allow Azerothian Monks to better represent their powers. Windwalker Monks will simply take the Warrior of the Open Hand subclass, but they can grab a Fists of Fury feat that increases the damage they deal with each subsequent hit. Mistweavers will go Warrior of Mercy, and can get a feat that allows them to reduce incoming damage to allies or give temporary hit points. Brewmasters get a reworked Drunken Master subclass renamed Warrior of Mystic Brews. While this subclass retains several features from the old Xanathar's subclass, they also now incorporate an actual brewing mechanic, where you can make potions that grant you benefits for an hour (or 8 if you spend a Focus Point when making the potion,) and eventually you get to mix two of your brews together to get both benefits. But old features like Tipsy Sway, Intoxicated Frenzy, and Drunken Technique remain from the old version of the subclass (though we'll have to see if they've been tweaked.)

Paladins:

Once again, a clear counterpart class exists. And here, the Protection and Retribution specs are very simply represented in the existing Oath of Devotion and Oath of Vengeance subclasses, respectively, with no apparent mechanical distinctions (if you want to be strict about it, Protection should go with a one-handed weapon and shield while Retribution should go with a big two-handed weapon). However, Holy Paladins will take the brand-new Oath of the Holy subclass. This subclass really focuses the Paladin on their healing capabilities. Perhaps to shore up the Paladin's limited half-caster spellcasting resources, Oath of the Holy Paladins can restore their Lay on Hands pool by dealing radiant damage to foes, and a few other subclass features, including their level 20 "ult" will also help them heal.

Priests:

While D&D Clerics are more heavily armored, the Priest is pretty unambiguously the WoW version of the Cleric class. Holy Priests will simply go with the Life Domain and call it a day. But the other two specializations are both getting their own brand-new subclasses. Discipline Domain (for Discipline Priests) will focus on being able to heal and deal damage at the same time. Probably the most distinctive feature is Atonement, which is a temporary buff (not sure how temporary) that can be applied to creatures they heal which then causes anyone with the buff to gain more HP when the cleric deals damage to an enemy. The standard Holy Bolt channel divinity option is buffed in various ways by the subclass to also aid in healing. Meanwhile, Shadow Priests get the new Shadow Domain, which focuses a bit more on psychic damage and has various ways to disperse into a shadowy form to avoid taking damage from foes and also heal up allies as you deal necrotic or psychic damage.

Rogues:

Once again, a fairly one-to-one equivalency. Assassination Rogues strangely enough go with the Assassin subclass. Subtlety Rogues go with the Soulknife subclass (which actually makes some sense given that the Shadow damage that they deal in WoW can stand in for both Necrotic and Psychic damage in D&D). Outlaw Rogues will take the new revised Swashbuckler subclass. The Swashbuckler looks like it will be fairly similar in early levels, but then get some new features at higher levels, such as new Cunning Strike options, and eventually (I think this is the capstone) will get the ability to get an additional attack against a target that they've hit with Sneak Attack (it'd be fantastic if you could get a second Sneak Attack, but I'll temper my expectations).

Shamans:

Probably the most unexpected equivalency, Shamans are represented in D&D as Barbarians, which is very strange for a class that, in WoW, is very spellcasting-focused (even its melee specialization, Enhancement, uses its melee strikes to grant it the ability to instant-cast spells like Lightning Bolt). That said, the connection with a deep, primordial past and the ancestors does at least fit in with the D&D conception of a Barbarian. Shamans, though, replace Primal Knowledge with a new feature: Totems, which allows you to easily summon objects that grant buffs to allies in a radius (and while they last a short time, it seems you have an unlimited ability to put them back out there as a bonus action). Like Priests, we're getting two subclasses, one of which is a revision of an existing one. Enhancement Shamans are represented by the Path of the Spiritual Guardian, a revamp of the Ancestral Guardian subclass (ironic given that in WoW, Enhancement is the spec that doesn't get access to the "ancestral spirits" hero talent tree, Farseer, but whatever). The Spiritual Guardian subclass does look like it's getting a new capstone feature, which allows you to make an additional attack after hitting with a "powerful blow." (Not sure if this means a critical hit or a Brutal Strike.) Elemental Shamans will use the brand-new (I hope brand-new, because they should probably just sweep what remains of the Storm Herald under the rug, at least mechanically speaking) Path of Elements, which gives the Barbarian ways to deal fire, cold, and lightning damage to foes, and encourages them to cycle through these different damage types, as well as getting access to some utility spells (unspecified). Restoration Shamans are encouraged to go with Path of the World Tree, seemingly interpreting the WoW Resto Shaman's healing as the protective abilities that the World Tree Barbarian gets.

Warlocks:

Again, a class that exists in both WoW and D&D, even if the concept is a little different. New eldritch invocations will help you get some more minions out there. Destruction and Demonology Warlocks use the Fiend subclass, fittingly enough, with Demonology getting some Eldritch Invocations to keep their summons alive longer (hopefully we'll also get some lower-level spells to summon fiendish minions: maybe Hand of Gul'dan as a 3rd level spell or something that gives us some flimsy little Wild Imps after hitting for minor AoE damage). Affliction Warlocks will, surprisingly if you ask me, take the Great Old One subclass, with new invocations that allow them to summon Aberrations and deal more damage with curses. This one is actually a bit surprising, given that if Affliction were going to go outside of Fiendish magic, I'd have thought it more likely they'd go either Undead (which to be fair is not in the PHB) or Archfey, given the existence of hag-like witches in admittedly just like a single zone from the Battle for Azeroth expansion. Great Old One Warlocks would have been my guess for how to do a Shadow Priest if they weren't making the whole Shadow Domain subclass. But oh well. There certainly are plenty of aberrant monsters to make pacts with in Azeroth.

Warriors:

Finally, Warriors are a near-perfect equivalent for Fighters. Both Arms and Protection Warriors are encouraged to make Battle Master Fighters, and just using a Great Weapon for Arms and going sword-and-board for Protection. There will be some new maneuvers, though, that might further distinguish their powers. Fury Warriors are encouraged to take the Champion subclass (and dual-wield,) though this is the only case where the book, or at least the article, suggests going a little off the beaten path and suggests you go with the Berserker Barbarian instead (which I also think is a very direct equivalent to the Fury Warrior other than the fact that you can't wear heavy armor).

    So, there you have it: clear guidance and in some cases new character options for playing every WoW class in D&D. I think this is cool, but here are some thoughts on it:

I think that if you are a DM who is familiar with WoW (like I am,) but your players are totally or mostly unfamiliar with it as a setting, I'd try to encourage your players to try using this guidance to build their characters. If, however, your players are already perfectly familiar with Azeroth as a setting and WoW as a game, I'd say that it'd be totally fine and even fun to go off the beaten path. For example, there's no playable Necromancer in WoW (though the Unholy Death Knight is pretty darn close,) but it would, I think, make perfect sense to allow a player to play a Necromancer Wizard (perhaps more likely if they're Forsaken, but perhaps they're a deprogrammed former member of the Cult of the Damned.) Similarly, while there's no Bard class in WoW, we do have characters like (the long-dead and currently ghostly, but friendly) Lirath Windrunner, who would have totally been a Bard. And honestly, Gnome, Goblin, and quite a bit of Draenei culture is super Artificer-heavy (one of the minor but recurring Draenei characters is literally called Grand Artificer Romuul.)

Frankly, I think the main appeal to importing Azeroth to D&D is to give us the freedom to do things we couldn't do in WoW, coming up with our own stories and adventures and letting us play heroes that the rules of the MMO don't allow for. Thus, this guidance is all well and good, for sure. But I think it should be treated more as a prompt than a restriction. Surely we could have some Kul Tiran Tidespeakers represented by Circle of the Sea Druids, or elite Kirin Tor Battlemages represented by Eldritch Knight Fighters. Maybe a Farseer (a title generally used for powerful and respected Shamans) could be a Diviner Wizard.

Again, the guidance is cool, and I'm really excited to see how the mechanical tweaks and changes all work. But I'm most excited to kitbash the hell out of all of this and repurpose it, either to change how an Azerothian adventure would play out, or to use the options found here to enhance adventures in my own homebrew worlds or other canonical D&D settings.

Raising the Dead - Mechanical Questions About Playable Undead in 5.5

 While we are not actually getting the World of Warcraft D&D sourcebook until next month, there have been a few previews, and thanks to the exposure of Dungeon Masters, the WotC-produced actual play show that has been running short campaigns to showcase new products (not unlike the original incarnation of Acquisitions Incorporated, actually,) a few things have been revealed from it.

The most interesting of which is the ability to play as the Undead.

Now, here's a funny thing:

In World of Warcraft, the playable Undead race has been around since the game's launch in 2004. Presented as "Forsaken" in the book (a word that the playable undead apply to themselves as a kind of national identity in WoW, and largely synonymous with their particular breed of sentient and free-willed undead,) this is the first D&D species in all of 5E to have the Undead creature type. The irony, though, is that in World of Warcraft, despite the race being literally called "Undead" and the existence of creature types in a similar manner to how they work in D&D (a slightly different list of types, but the concept is the same) that includes Undead, WoW Undead player characters are actually classified as Humanoid.

Now, both D&D and WoW strive for balance, but given both the ability for developers to constantly tweak WoW with patches and such and also the narrower tolerance for imbalance in a game where you might not be able to get into a raid with a guild if you can't get your DPS numbers high enough, WoW's need for balance between its various players options is certainly greater, and making Undead (the race) count as Humanoid (the creature type) just heads off a ton of problems that could arise.

Now, Death Knights, the first class to be added to the game four years after its initial launch, are also undead, story-wise. While the process of creating a Death Knight versus the way that the Forsaken came to be the way they are is very different, in both cases, the root cause was the Undead Scourge and the Lich King. While Forsaken who rose from death prior to the breaking of their bond to the Lich King began their unlives as shambling zombies, Death Knights were always possessed of their humanoid-level intelligence and capabilities, just essentially magically brainwashed into fighting for the Lich King. Forsaken (and I'll just use this to refer to the race/species in both games to simplify things) can also be Death Knights, which means that you started off as a human, died to the Plague of Undeath, rose again, broke free of the Lich King's control, were then killed and raised yet again by the Lich King, then once again broke free of the Lich King's control (to be fair, given the ongoing timeline of the game, there are cases where Forsaken might have initially risen from death already with free will, and also Death Knights who were raised by Bolvar Fordragon, who was the Lich King but one who more or less acted as a warden for the Scourge, meaning that his Death Knights were always there to protect Azeroth, rather than menace it).

Anyway, like Forsaken, in WoW, Death Knights also count as humanoid. There is an exception: they have an ability called Lichborne that temporarily makes them undead and removes certain debuffs (what we'd call conditions in D&D) as well as making themselves valid targets for the healing of the Death Coil ability. But broadly speaking, they're humanoid, which again, heads off various balance issues.

So, it is interesting to me that in the upcoming D&D book, both the species and the subclass-that's-more-than-a-subclass will count as Undead.

This is interesting for a few reasons:

When they were originally testing the "Gothic Lineages" in Unearthed Arcana prior to the announcement of Van Richten's Guide to Ravenloft, they actually experimented with having Dhampir and Reborn officially count as both humanoid and undead (or possibly humanoid and construct for Reborn). There was "reminder text" that said that spells that normally wouldn't work on undead, like Cure Wounds in 5.0, would work on them because of the humanoid creature type there as well. I put that reminder in quotes because that's not obvious: such spells said they didn't work on creatures of that type, and so you'd assume that if you had that type, even if you had another type, the spell wouldn't work.

But 5.5 kind of fixed that: the vast majority of spells that once excluded Undead and Constructs from their benefits now have no such restrictions. There's nothing stopping you from casting Healing Word on the Battle Smith's Steel Defender or on the Necromancer's Skeleton familiar (though I don't know that it would be the most optimal play). Indeed, our first playable Construct species was in 5.0 with the Autognome, which had a special list of healing spells that would work on them despite being constructs (a list that was not actually comprehensive). But with the 5.5 updates to the spells, the Warforged, released as humanoid in 5.0, were made Constructs in Forge of the Artificer, and as far as I know, there's no real downside to that anymore, as I believe any beneficial spell will work on a Construct.

Despite this fix, Ravenloft: Horrors Within didn't change the creature types of the Dhampir or Reborn. In the former case, though, I'll actually say this was 100% the right call: the very premise of a dhampir is that they're the living offspring of vampires. The whole point of a dhampir is that they're vampire-like, but not undead nor bound to be evil. Dhampir are often vampire hunters, actually, like Blade from the Marvel comics, Alucard from the Castlevania series, or Vampire Hunter D from... Vampire Hunter D. (The D honestly might just stand for Dhampir, which the English dub of Vampire Hunter D: Bloodlust infuriatingly translates to "Dunpeal" despite the fact that Dhampir is a... well, maybe not English in origin, but it's certainly a European-origin word.)

So, a lot of spells got the restriction on Constructs and Undead removed. Similarly, the Cleric's Turn Undead feature now specifies that it only affects undead creatures you choose - and thus you can (if you choose) avoid screwing over your Forsaken, Death Knight, or Forsaken Death Knight party member.

But!

There are some problems that might arise.

The biggest is resurrection magic:

There are only a few resurrection spells in the game - by my count, and not including weird things like Clone, we've got Revivify, Raise Dead, Reincarnate, Resurrection, and True Resurrection. Let's look at each of these:

Revivify, the quick mid-combat resurrection spell that requires the target be dead for no longer than a minute, has no restrictions. We're gold on this one.

Raise Dead, which gives you a 10-day window and thus can potentially be left unprepared until you need it, however, won't work on a creature that was undead when it died.

    This is kind of interesting: what I assume the point of this restriction is is to make spells like Finger of Death or a Death Tyrant's Negative Energy Cone scarier - if an ally dies affected by these, you can't just raise them.

But there's a sort of interesting question this raises: if you Revivify someone who died to a Shadow Dragon's breath and then rose as a Shadow... are you bringing the (probably) humanoid character back to life? Or do you just get the Shadow the party had to put down back to attack you again? Maybe that's a weird case because the Shadow is probably a separate "body" from your friend's corpse. But in a Finger of Death scenario, if your friend gets zombified by it and you revivify them after taking them down as a zombie, is the zombie's corpse a humanoid corpse or an undead corpse? (This is also relevant for Animate Dead - can my necromancer just endlessly recycle the corpses or bone piles I used to make my undead army, or do they lose their juice once I've turned them undead the first time?)

Reincarnate also requires you to target a humanoid who has died. That actually makes a lot of problems for more beyond the undead - you can't use this on a Thri-kreen, Plasmid, Warforged, Changeling, Kalashtar, or Forsaken, each of which (in their latest printing) don't count as humanoid. 5th level spells are not kind to our Forsaken or Death Knight PCs.

Resurrection has the same limitation as Raise Dead - it simply doesn't work on a creature that was undead when it died.

    Ok, but here's the insane thing: can we cast this on an undead creature who hasn't died as undead yet? Like, again, if our buddy gets killed with the Lich's Finger of Death spell, can we cast it on the still-active zombie? After all, they weren't undead when they died, and they haven't died again yet, so... does that work?

Finally, True Resurrection. This is the ultimate "you can basically always get a PC back if you have a 17+ level Cleric or Druid" spell, where I think you basically only can't use this if they were killed by a Nightwalker or some such thing. Even if a creature was undead at their death, True Resurrection restores them to their non-undead form.

    But that, in and of itself, creates weird issues for our Forsaken and Death Knight characters. If we cast this on a Forsaken character, do they... have to become Human? Changing their species? This is a part of Reincarnate, so it's not like there's no precedence. Honestly, this could be an amazing story moment, especially if you're playing up the Alliance/Horde conflict in your Azeroth adventures, given that the Forsaken are not on great terms with living humans given that their primary experience with the latter is, like, the Scarlet Crusade (mad religious zealots convinced that anyone outside their ranks is tainted by the Undead Scourge and must be eradicated). But this could even be a character's quest - seeking to be freed from the curse of undeath if they should find a cleric powerful enough to restore them.

    For a Death Knight, though... I mean, species traits aren't nothing, but again, there's precedence for a spell - specifically a resurrection spell - changing that, even randomizing it. But what do you even do with a Death Knight that has been restored to true life via True Resurrection? Do they... do they just become a more conventional Paladin?

Ok: big grain of salt time:

We don't actually have the book in hand (I think some YouTubers do as part of the promotion for the book, but I sure as hell don't have it,) so there's every possibility that the book addresses all of this. It might be as simple as saying that in both these cases, these spells work fine on Forsaken and Death Knight characters, as a special carve-out.

What might be a little more fun, though, would be if they make certain Necromancy spells duplicate that function. Let's say that Animate Dead gets an alternate use, similar to how the Plant Growth spell has two modes. In this case, maybe Animate Dead effectively works like Raise Dead for undead PCs. You get a nice benefit: that it's a more forgiving window of time compared to Revivify and it doesn't have a consumed spell component, but the downside is that you need someone who can cast the spell. Now, Clerics actually simply have Animate Dead on their spell list (something I think I've literally never seen a Cleric cast, though to be fair, I don't know I've actually seen Animate Dead in action before at all). But it also means that, say, a Wizard might be the one to bring your Death Knight back.

Certainly, I think that unless you have a blanket ban on resurrection magic to up the stakes of your campaign (something I think both the current and previous campaigns of Critical Role have done) in which case this distinction isn't really a problem, you shouldn't penalize players for picking this species and/or subclass.

See, I think resurrection magic in D&D is a pressure valve. Stakes are great to have, and the danger of losing a PC can make for a more exciting game.

But as I think many years of watching shows and reading books in which characters get killed off left and right has taught me: sometimes it's less interesting for a character to simply get killed off than for them to continue onward in the face of peril. (I gave up reading the Saga comic series when a character who should have been completely immune to the danger of being killed off was, somehow, killed off for basically no reason and with no real impact on the story.) Yes, death is a fail state in D&D, and games need fail states, but there's a reason why in video games you get to reset to the last place you saved. You're not ready for that story to be over.

Again, the WoW D&D book sounds like it's going to be doing much bolder experimentation with what you can do with the 5E framework - something I wish that non-Universes Beyond books would try more. Perhaps if it's a success, we might see such experimentation in core D&D products. I'd be very much down for that as a direction - after twelve years of 5E, I think we can stand to get a bit more radical with design.

Into the Labyrinth

 Back in Cataclysm, they put the Halls of Origination in as one of the dungeons that released with the expansion. A 7-boss instance, it was a way longer dungeon than had come out since Vanilla. The idea was to recapture that idea of the giant old dungeons from 2004 like Blackrock Depths or Blackrock Spire (which used to be a single large instance). The thing is, the way dungeons actually were used by players by then had changed, and while we weren't really racing to finish them against an actual timer, as we can now with Mythic Plus, players didn't really want to commit an entire evening to clearing out a massive mega-dungeon, so instead, people pretty quickly turned to just doing the three (I think it was three) mandatory bosses and getting the currency rewards for completing a heroic dungeon (mythic dungeons wouldn't be a thing until Warlords of Draenor).

But in Legion, even as it introduced Mythic Plus, which requires you to get through the dungeon in a limited time, they also gave us The Return to Karazhan, the first official Megadungeon. RtK actually recreated the beloved Karazhan raid, though it redesigned some of the early fights and then kind of replaced the second half of it. We would then get a single megadungeon each expansion, with Operation Mechagon in BFA, Tazavesh the Veiled Market in Shadowlands, and then Dawn of the Infinite in Dragonflight. War Within, though, didn't really have a megadungeon, just adding a conventional dungeon with each major patch.

But War Within gave us Delves, which are sort of like dungeons, or a kind of different interpretation of what a dungeon could be.

And with the Labyrinth of Kindo'jan, we have our first Megadelve.

You'll do a main story quest to have your first foray into it. Like other delves, you choose from tier 1 to tier 11 difficulties, with comparable rewards. The map, as far as I can tell, doesn't change, but you'll encounter different scenarios in the various chambers. There are four wings based on the four Amani Loa, each of which is essentially a delve's worth of content to go through, though these are also divided into separate chambers. Clearing a chamber will unlock further chambers that you can go into, with a special challenge in each of them. For example, one area might have the spirit of an ancient Amani warlord who wants you to find the bones of his beloved raptor, and then fight the spirit of the raptor to tame it and bring it back to him. A wing will typically have two of these varied scenarios followed by a boss fight.

If you clear the entire labyrinth (which is a great way to get like, half the new special delver's journey for it finished) you'll unlock a chamber with a new nemesis boss, Kindo'jan, which I have not been able to beat yet. (I wonder if I should try it on a lower tier and see if that counts for the achievement. At this point in the season, I'm running on tier 11 for every delve). Like any nemesis, Kindo'jan is hard, with a mechanic that auto-kills you if you get hit by three clearly avoidable abilities during the fight. There are also some instant-death mechanics like winds that can blow you off the platform if you don't find the narrow safe spots.

Still, you can get a lot of rewards and a lot of vault progress with a full clear - you'll get three bountiful chests (I think that the labyrinth is going to always be bountiful) and a bunch of other rewards. There are also new curios along with new upgrades to them (they now go up to 5 levels) and a number of rewards you can find as you progress the Journey for it and unlock various Loa-barred chambers that contain things like non-consumed glove enchants.

It does feel like HP pools are a bit higher - the bosses seemed to take longer to take down than the ones in existing delves, but maybe that's just unfamiliarity. On my main, I'm a tank, so I have Valeera go DPS, and it really varies a lot whether she takes things down near-instantly or slowly chips away at them.

I don't know if Kindo'jan has any power-progression rewards, so it felt a little painful to leave an otherwise fully cleared labyrinth with him still up, but I just didn't have the patience to keep plugging away at it.

There's a new currency you can earn that will eventually allow you to purchase myth-level gear, though it appears you only get one per week, and need three to buy the piece. That's not that bad, given that I've been pretty satisfied with Hero-level gear.

Anyway, we'll have to see how satisfying it is to go back into the same area over and over - I'm certainly going to be running it a fair amount for now, but I imagine I'll need the variety of the other delves as the Labyrinth stops being as novel.

Still, it's a good choice of location for this first megadelve - an ancient troll ruin makes for a great old-school dungeon crawl.

Here's What Project Lamordia Is:

 Well, Project_Lamordia just went live on D&D Beyond, and while I initially thought I'd wait to see some reviews, I decided to be that person who actually checks a thing out and lets others know about it.

First off: what it is:

This is a $15 digital adventure pack with three short adventures that can reasonably be done as one-shots, or strung together as a sort of 1-5 or 6ish campaign (though if you actually string them together, these are going to be some quick levels).

The adventures all take place within the cavernous headquarters of Mordenheim Kinetics, a high-tech, modern facility that reimagines the domain of Viktra Mordenheim as some kind of monstrous Silicon Valley tech company (getting real Ex Machina vibes, honestly).

The booklet suggests various ways that you can place this in relation to the broader Ravenloft setting, or potentially make it a location in a "Gothic Earth" setting, which would be a kind of D&D-horror-themed version of the real world.

Personally, I think the way I would run this is just make it one version of the actual Lamordia setting from Ravenloft. Given that each domain is a nightmare realm unto itself, with differing iterations of it depending on the story that you want to tell, I think a version of instance of Lamordia in which it is this modern hi-tech version of itself doesn't break the overall worldbuilding rules of Ravenloft.

Frankly, this supplement plays into my tendencies when running D&D, where I often incorporate modern technology and genre tropes to exist alongside the dragons and knights. But I think in this case, they actually encourage you to truly commit to a modern aesthetic, with a ton of re-skinning to make things fit with the modern feel. A bullseye lantern is just a flashlight, and a greatclub might be a baseball bat.

If you already own Van Richten's and Horrors Within, there's a bit of overlap here. The Reborn are presented as an option, for example, and there are a number of Dark Gift feats, though there are also some new backgrounds worth considering.

One thing that was left out of Horrors Within that we see here is a revamp of the Survivors mechanic introduced in Van Richten's (which I was just writing about a few posts ago). The Survivors here are built for this modern setting - though I do have a few quibbles, like giving the Lamordian Mercenary a Baseball Bat (greatclub) as a weapon when I feel like if this is meant to be a private security officer, giving them something like a truncheon or nightstick instead (maybe using Mace stats) would be more in keeping with the flavor.

I've read two of the three adventures, and these truly are little 5-room dungeons (I think they have literally five rooms) that represent different floors of the expansive facility. The goal in each adventure is simply to escape the facility, but escape is not so easy given that even if you get out of the building, the fog around it becomes denser as it turns into the Mists of Ravenloft.

Some elements that I really appreciate and give it some of that modern flare: in the first adventure, the party is given a task by Viktra Mordenheim, but they only ever speak with her over a phone. Likewise, there are audio cassettes that provide important information for the quest (there is, though, I think an editing error, as the first adventure I think ought to only have one cassette, but its location is listed in two places. I'd just stick it where the text of the audio on the tape is actually written, though this other cassette could have some other spooky stuff on it.)

Again, re-skinning is the name of the game, and they handle stuff like armor by describing materials like plasteel - something that perhaps gives this a bit more of a near-future sci-fi feeling than a truly modern one (though they still use audio cassettes).

The adventures are quick, with just a couple combat encounters, but as anyone who has tried to run a short adventure intended to be a one-shot can attest, players will absolutely fill in the gaps and make what you thought you could do in a single session into a four-session thing.

While some stat blocks will look familiar if you've got Horrors Within (CEO Viktra Mordenheim, at a glance, looks nearly identical to her HW version, and Adam appears to be a Mordenheim's Monster like the stat block there) there are also some original ones, with the various Echoes and Created, as well as stats for the three von Aubrecker siblings, who are all warped researchers working at the facility.

While this thing is a quick little digital booklet - the kind of thing you'd expect to get staple-bound for AD&D or 2E back in the 80s or 90s - it does present some interesting ideas, including this Gothic Earth setting.

What this isn't really doing is a radical reimagining of the game's systems to change it for a modern setting - it relies a lot more on re-skinning (at one point, the players can find an envelope of cash which is described as 100GP - as 100 dollars.) Still, this feels like a fun experiment from the D&D team. Maybe I'll get a chance to run at least one of these adventures some day.

Titans and Worldsouls

 For a game that borrows so much from Dungeons & Dragons (making the upcoming crossover D&D sourcebook pretty simple to implement,) the cosmology of Warcraft is surprisingly light on gods.

Or... is it?

See, in D&D, with some exceptions, each setting tends to have a pantheon of usually anthropomorphic deities that cover various divine domains. Frequently there's overlap, as a god like Bahamut (the platinum dragon who is the god of good-aligned dragons) will show up in tons of different settings because he's so iconic, while his opposite number, the five-headed dragon goddess Tiamat, is basically always found worshipped on worlds where they know of Bahamut (sometimes they have different names, but canonically Paladine and Takhisis from Dragonlance are just other names for Bahamut and Tiamat, respectively. Tiamat at least is even derived from real-world Mesopotamian myths, though I don't believe she's draconic in those myths).

There's a sort of mechanical functionality to the way gods work, even, where different gods will have different domains, and thus if you make a Cleric character, you'll want to pick a deity that they worship who aligns with the domain-based subclass you want to play. (Though at a DM's discretion, you can bend this to let you worship an off-label aspect of your chosen deity).

The point is, though, that at least until the release of Chronicle shortly before Legion came out, there were only two categories of being that were referred to explicitly as gods: Elune and the Old Gods.

In the latter case, you could argue that this is actually giving them too much credit. While immensely powerful, the Old Gods were really just aberrations born from the Void, created by beings who might be better classified as gods, the Void Lords (only one of which, Dimensius, we have seen and recently killed).

Elune, though, always sat in this ambiguous space. While a cosmology of Titans and Old Gods and demons and such began to take shape, Elune never really fit into that system.

But we got a potential answer, maybe even directly, if you take it that way, in Shadowlands. When the Winter Queen worked with Tyrande to take the rescued souls of those slain in the burning of Teldrassil to create a seed for a new World Tree, Tyrande became possessed by Elune, who was referred to by the Winter Queen as her sister.

The implication here seems to be that, as the Winter Queen is connected far more with the cyclical nature of life and death than the other Eternal Ones who serve over more permanent afterlives, is that Elune might reside in the "Life Domain" that is some realm opposite the Shadowlands.

It's a bit messy, though:

Chronicle described a cosmos that has six primal forces at play: Order, Life, Light, Disorder, Death, and Void. The Grimoire of the Shadowlands reoriented these forces compared to the version we got in Chronicle, though as many have pointed out, this might simply be a different perspective on the same model (think of each force as being on the face of a six-sided die, with opposites on opposite faces).

For most of these forces, we got the force itself, a type of magic associated with it (like Fel for Disorder or Shadow for Void) and then beings that embody those forces. But it's not neat and tidy: Void has both the Void Lords and Old Gods, while Death has the Undead and Fel has Demons. There's no description of the Eternal Ones or the denizens of the Shadowlands.

    Now, to quickly take an aside here: the main reason for inconsistencies is probably that a creative department at Blizzard made up of mere mortals has to lay this track out ahead of themselves constantly to maintain a 22-year-old MMORPG. I guarantee you that Chris Metzen wasn't planning on the Nathrezim being the creation of Sire Denathrius when they were introduced in Warcraft III.

The cosmos is messier than that, and indeed, there's something almost good about that: in the real world, we often try to apply cultural equivalences to others' cultures and ideas, and that typically requires sanding down the nuances and incongruities. Indeed, something like Chronicle that tries to put the cosmos into this neat system is clearly written by someone who shares the Titans' predilection for order.

But now we get to the meat of the issue:

Worldsouls.

We know that Azeroth has a Worldsoul. In Chronicle, we were presented in what seemed to be objective fact that what a Worldsoul is is a nascent Titan, or perhaps better put, an unborn Titan. The Titans' mission to save Azeroth from the corruption of the Old Gods is presented as an unalloyed good because it is her destiny to be the greatest of the Titans, who are a force for cosmic good in the universe.

But whether it's a retcon or just shading in the details (I'd argue the former, but one I'm willing to forgive given how WoW thrives in nuance) the story now seems to be that a Worldsoul isn't necessarily going to be a Titan if it matures unimpeded. Instead, it seems that Aman'thul, the first of the Pantheon to awaken, cultivated this Titan identity and instilled Order into the others as they were born.

Now, is that inherently bad? No. I think Order is a force that can be good, but we keep seeing examples of the darker side of the Titans' efforts on Azeroth, the rigidity and intolerance for deviation from the plan, which culminates in a callous capacity to wipe out enormous populations if things aren't going quite right.

Independence from the Titans feels like a greater ambition now for Azeroth's heroes, which I think will come to a head in The Last Titan, where we're likely going to come into direct conflict with them.

But here's what I want to know:

Have we ever seen what happens when a Worldsoul... becomes something else?

Aman'thul, Aggramar, Khaz'goroth, Golganneth, Norgannon, and Eonar are the current "members in good standing" of the Pantheon. Sargeras had been their champion, but embraced fel corruption as a weapon to fight the Void, becoming an omnicidal zealot, but while you could say he's now a "Fel Titan," he was a standard, Order-based Titan initially.

Beyond these, though, we have only two other named Worldsouls apart from Azeroth.

Argus only briefly manifested in a humanoid/Titanic form, just long enough for us to kill him. He was brought forth by the Burning Legion, so was he a "true" Fel Titan? Given that, up until his arrival in the Seat of the Pantheon, his Worldsoul self seemed to be pleading with Magni to be saved from this corruption, he likely wasn't fully Fel until that moment, so... was he maybe just a standard Titan who was brainwashed similar to how Aggramar was before we knocked some sense into him?

Next, we have Telogrus. While the Worldsoul that Sargeras killed by cutting a planet in half wasn't explicitly named in Chronicle, the Void Elves off-world sanctuary of Telogrus Rift is heavily, heavily implied to be the remains of that world, so I've generally assumed with a lot of confidence that the world Sargeras killed, and thus the name of the Worldsoul within it, was Telogrus. This one never had a chance to be born, but what would have emerged would surely have been some kind of Void Titan like the Pantheon feared would happen with Azeroth if they didn't intervene and stop the Old Gods. But Azeroth/Aln'hara is reputedly a far more powerful Worldsoul than others. So: are there already some "Void Titans" out there? Is that what Dimensius was?

K'aresh also apparently had a Worldsoul, and despite the planet's destruction, that Worldsoul actually survived, which raises a whole ton of questions. While the people who would become the Ethereals/Brokers more or less did to their world what Sargeras would have to save it from Void corruption, it doesn't appear that this process necessarily means a total loss.

I was going to say the only world we've visited that doesn't have a Worldsoul was Draenor (it's the only one we explicitly know didn't have one,) but I'm given to assume that Worldsouls are actually somewhat rare in the cosmos. Thus, places like Val or Naigtal or the other places we first visited via portals in Legion probably didn't have them, and perhaps not places like Nathreza or Xorroth or that third one that is mentioned in the Portal Keeper Hasabel fight - Rancora (I just looked it up).

But I do think it's interesting that I don't think we've ever seen what happens if a Worldsoul is born without influence from the Pantheon.

One thing that I think is a really interesting bit of old lore is that the Pantheon were originally described as the "leaders" of the Titans as a people. Now, this might be some kind of retcon or even just clarification: perhaps what they meant were that the Pantheon were leaders to the Titanforged.

But it would be really interesting to know if there are Titans that aren't part of the Pantheon, beyond someone who barely lived at all like Argus or renegade former members like Sargeras.

One thing we might consider: is a Titan inherently a being of Order? Or would any Worldsoul who reached maturity/birth be considered a Titan? Did Aman'thul merely indoctrinate nascent (in this case meaning recently born) Titans? Or did he physiologically alter them to make them more like him?

And if that's the case: why did he wind up the way he did?

If there's a time when Blizzard would be well-situated to addressing some of these issues, an expansion called The Last Titan seems like a prime opportunity. But we shall see.

(Wow, now that I think about it, we actually have a lot of named worlds in the Warcraft cosmos).

Squeezing the Last Bits of Juice from Control Resonant

 I've cleared my quest log. Yes, that includes all the Tasks and World Feats and such. At this point, without going into NG+, I think the only things I have to do in Control Resonant are to get the high scores in the various SHUM III arcane cabinets (some of which I already have) and... possibly hunt down stray monsters (I genuinely don't know if they infinitely respawn, but certainly some parts of the city feel very quiet now - escorting rangers was a lot easier when I just killed everything along the path first).

I have also maxed out all of the Primary and Secondary Aberrant forms, with I believe two or three of the combo finishers also maxed, though I suspect it might not be possible to get enough Living Steel or whatever the ultimate material is required to get them all in a single playthrough.

While I did get a middle score on the Shum cabinet in Unknown (not the one in the apartment, but in a warehouse) and that gave me a pretty hefty amount of Zone XP, my guess is that you can't get any zone to 12 on a single playthrough - I believe all of mine are at 10 or 11, so I assume capping it out (I believe the cap is 15) requires going to NG+.

I'm sitting on a ton of Source, so I could go on a tour of ice cream trucks to see if I can get the materials to make all the Artifacts I have yet to craft. I know that at certain zone levels, you get new artifact recipes, so this would likely be a major progression path for a second playthrough.

Now, I believe that this game actually lets you have multiple save files, what a thought! and that starting NG+ still saves your original game separately. This is sort of ideal for me in case they add DLC. While there was no conflict in Alan Wake II when doing DLC because it was a separate game file, assuming that CR's DLC will be, like, new zones for the world (assuming we get DLC) like it was in the first game, it'll be nice to have Dylan sitting there in the post-game where the folks at the FBC actually like him now.

Still, barring some major changes in the second playthrough (as far as I know, the only change I've heard of is that the blinking lights outside the apartment with the Alan Wake teaser have a different pattern, probably sending a different message) I'm not in a rush to replay the game. Might revisit it in a year or so (I'm sure to get the Max Payne remakes, so maybe I'll be back in Remedy-obsessive mode).

Anyway, having devoured the game at this point, what are my thoughts?

I think the action gameplay is pretty satisfying, though after a certain point, outside of the Resonant bosses, it stops being particularly challenging, with a few exceptions, like the Hold the Line world feat in the Park, or in the various combat challenges in SHUM. The Resonants are the best bosses I've seen in a Remedy game, though I do think that they sort of use the best stuff early on (the Artist and Dancer are probably my favorites) and some of the later ones (the Physicist, I think, being the prime example) are a bit less impressive, design-wise. The actual final boss is also a bit underwhelming in ways reminiscent of the final fight in the first game.

I really like the relationship between Dylan and Zoe, which sort of forms the heart of this game, and Dylan's path to processing his past - not just the Hiss, but the horrible abuse he suffered in the Prime Candidate Program - makes for a strong character arc.

I do think, as I wrote before, that I think the game opens up a little too early. I don't know that the game necessarily gets much out of the open-world nature. The first game, to be fair, also had a somewhat open-world structure (ironic given that it was confined to a single building, though an enormous one). But while the real "side stories" were mostly compelling, the needs of an open world led to some repetitive and not terribly exciting content. I don't know that I needed a task in each zone to find three packages in various locations (though thank you for not making them enormous locations). Indeed, the actual tasks and world feats and such weren't that interesting, but the more hidden things, like finding the Secret Organization hideouts, made for really cool content. I think that an open-world benefits more from this kind on non-signposted stuff with a real lore reward.

Part of me wants the game to have been weirder, though when I think back, there was actually plenty of weirdness (the Underpass, for example, has a very House of Leaves-like story going on in there). Avoiding fan service is admirable, but I still feel like I would have appreciated a visit to the Oceanview Motel and Casino or something of that ilk.

One thing I felt was a smart call was to vary up the time of day and weather in some of the later zones. While it's perpetually bright day in Downtown, Central, and Western Incursion, the Evac Zone and The Park both take on a bit more character thanks to their overall different color palette. I maybe would have started this earlier by giving us more varied aesthetics in those first couple zones.

Time will tell how much of what we saw here plays into the larger RCU. One major question is whether the "masquerade" of the world of the weird is irrevocably broken - if, as Pope suggests, Manhattan will remain altered by this "patterning" even after the barrier falls, will this world simply be one in which everyone's aware that there's some insane crap going on all the time? And will that mean the FBC comes under much higher scrutiny by the government and news media?

We've only really gotten a look at the RCU from the perspectives of the Alan Wake and Control games. I know that they'd love to find a way to make Quantum Break, or some equivalent thereof, canonical, and I suspect that the Max Payne remakes might at least gesture toward being canon to the RCU (though again, my assumption is that we should just treat the stories there as the first couple Alex Casey novels with the name changed.)

There are some really impressive things the game accomplishes: I think the Shift ability could have overtaxed players' spatial awareness, but for the most part, it feels like an interesting challenge rather than a migraine-inducing motion-sickness machine. There are parts in the Underpass where I did get very turned around, but it felt like a fair challenge rather than an impassable struggle.

Again, I feel it important to note that the combat here, despite its clear distinction from the first game in that it's primarily melee, does feel like an evolution of what we got. The joy and the flaw of the first game's combat is that Launch was so good that you wound up using it more than anything else - even the Service Weapon felt kind of like "the thing you use while waiting to do more Launch." Dylan's loadout, on the other hand, feels much better-balanced, with a good mix of damage types, resource costs, and situational power that made me feel like I always had a "right move" to pick from, and the satisfaction of pulling off an execution to then wipe out waves of drones and even heavies made me feel like a real force on the battlefield. This rhythm doesn't vary that much, and maybe we could have used a bit more variation. But compared with the first game, we've got far more enemy variety here, and much more interesting visual designs for them as well. There's no "guy with gun" enemies here, which was most of what we fought in the first game. I'm not 100% convinced that the drone-style enemies serve their intended purpose - I found pretty early on that I could focus down the heavies and just clean up remaining drones once they were taken care of. Perhaps making drones more easily falterable compared to heavies would have given them a better purpose (typically by the time I faltered a drone, they'd be dead.)

But nitpicks aside, I'm really happy to immerse myself in this world again, and I hope that it sells well enough to let Remedy make their next big original game soon.

Jesse Faden at the End of Control Resonant

 Yeah, right there we're obviously talking spoiler territory.

I was pretty surprised when Control Resonant was officially announced and we learned that it would be Dylan, rather than Jesse, who would be our player character. Dylan had been the closest thing we got to a primary antagonist in the first game, serving as the mouthpiece for the Hiss, a fact that was something of a twist of the knife for Jesse, whose entire motivation in coming into this world was to find and reunite with her brother.

Dylan, of course, seems a lot better as of Resonant, and watching Gaming University's streamed playthrough after having beaten the game myself, it's remarkable seeing what a journey he goes on over the course of the game - early on, Dylan is deeply depressed and lost, and by the end of it, he's starting to feel a bit more loose and free. Indeed, his friendship with Zoe is a massive indicator of this transformation, as she's initially very cold toward him, but by the end of the game they seem like best friends.

But what of Jesse, the Director?

Well, we need to get into spoiler space here.