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.

Dark Sun, Universes Beyond, and More D&D News out of GenCon

 Well, Universes Beyond is coming to D&D.

If you're unfamiliar, this terminology was established for Magic the Gathering, where they started making card sets in licensed IPs from other companies. Recently, those Universes Beyond sets have been coming out as Standard-legal (the most up-to-date, "current" format for the game, comprised of sets that have come out in the past few annual seasons).

As was leaked a few days ago, D&D will be getting its first of these UB materials set in the world of Warcraft. That's naturally a franchise I'm pretty intimately familiar with (nearly half my life playing WoW,) and certainly makes sense for a game like D&D, as it's also a broad fantasy setting.

The remarkable thing about it is that they plan to have 16 playable species (let's see, that'd be what, core 6 on each side makes 12, and then Pandaren and Dracthyr, maybe a few of the allied races?) as well as all 13 playable classes, with "specializations" for each... presumably these will just be other subclasses (though surely a Retribution Paladin would be a Oath of Vengeance Paladin?) I'm very curious to see how classes like the Demon Hunter or Death Knight are expressed in D&D terms. (EDIT: I got this wrong - it's just subclasses, which honestly seems way more feasible)

The "mic drop" at the end of the presentation was that the next UB setting they're going to do is Star Wars. Given the existence of SW5E, I imagine it'll also work fairly well. Personally, I'm less interested in actually setting a campaign/adventure there and more just drawing from it to help make a more science-fantasy version of Spelljammer (with used-future spaceships instead of sailing vessels in space).

I've had sort of mixed feelings about Universes Beyond - at this point, every other standard MTG set is a UB one. But unlike Magic, you aren't strong pressured to buy into each product in D&D, and tables can establish how much they want to allow or limit various content.

Anyway, moving on:

Dark Sun is official, and it's certainly being marketed as the ultimate brutal edgelord setting (evidently the books will have to be shrink-wrapped as it's meant for 18+ audiences only). The animated trailer they played was grisly, with bodies being torn apart. There was one shot in which a person seemed to send a pulse of psionic energy into a group of foes, whose heads then exploded, which I'm taking to mean that the Psion class is in (given that the Unearthed Arcana version was pretty well-received, I'm not surprised).

Greyhawk: Crown of the Witch-Queen is a new full-length adventure book coming next year, centered around Drelza, the vampiric daughter of Iggwilv/Tasha/Zibilna.

In the interest of supporting existing settings, they're going to third party companies to make books for the Forgotten Realms, Ravenloft, and Eberron. Kobold Press will be working on the Forgotten Realms book, Ghostfire Gaming will work on the Ravenloft one (they have some background with Dark Fantasy after all) and Visionary Production and Design (which did Exploring Eberron) will work on Eberron.

There are also some updates planned for D&D Beyond, though I haven't really looked into that as much.

Anyway, given the leak about the Warcraft book(s), I don't think we got any really big shocks here - maybe Star Wars, though it's also kind of an obvious one to go for with Universes Beyond.

But I'm very curious about Dark Sun, a setting I've heard about a lot but am not super-familiar with. No news on the "villain" book just yet, though it could come later in 2027 - the Warcraft book is coming in November of this year.

The Intelligence Officer for D&D

 I have a deep affection for the brooding, depressing, paranoid world of the spy thriller. While I do enjoy an action-packed James Bond movie, the more realistic and pessimistic version of the genre, particularly from the works of John Le Carré (who actually worked in British Intelligence, and had to get special permission from his bosses to publish The Spy Who Came In From the Cold while still working in that field) inspires me more.

In a lot of ways, you get the grimy back-rooms and shady characters of a Noir-ish crime drama, but with much higher stakes.

Now, D&D is a game about fighting monsters, and so this is not a build that would necessarily work in a one-size-fits-all party. Instead, this would have to be for a campaign that really focused on spycraft and espionage.

When you think of the ultimate spy character in D&D, you probably think of a Rogue. I actually think you'll be a bit disappointed if that's the route you go. Rogues (setting aside their shortcomings as martial warriors) are built to move swiftly and silently, to be assassins and thieves (I mean, those are literally two of their subclasses).

But the way actual Cold War spycraft worked wasn't really how Hollywood portrays it. It wasn't the American CIA officer who snuck into some Soviet research facility to take photos of their new submarine plans. Instead, the officer would recruit someone working at that facility, meet with them in secret, and persuade them to take the extremely high risk in exchange for something - usually money, and perhaps a promise to eventually exfiltrate them to start a new life in the US.

And that's why I think that the ultimate spy in D&D would be an Eloquence Bard.

I'll note here that I think Liam O'Brien had a similar idea in Campaign Four of Critical Role. While his character, Halandil Fang, is more like the William Shakespeare of the setting (a brilliant playwright and head of the city's most prominent theater company,) the tasks set to him at the "Schemer's Table" have been very high-stakes spycraft (a little more of an underground revolution than Cold War spying, but similar "maintain a plausible cover while secretly undermining the powers that be" drama).

First and foremost, the thing that the Eloquence Bard gets right from level 3 is Silver Tongue, which is effectively the Rogue's Reliable Talent, but specifically for Persuasion and Deception checks. Admittedly, at low level, getting no less than a 10 plus your modifier on these rolls might still not cut it in really dire situations. But if we grab Expertise in these skills, and assume we start off with a +3 to Charisma, we'll be rolling no lower than a 17 by level 3.

These skills are going to be really core to what we do as a spy. Persuasion can sometimes be used as a "misleading the target by telling the truth in a certain way," but it's also going to be crucial if you want to persuade assets you meet to do what you need them to do.

Now, I'll allow for the following: you might actually want to start off at 1st level with Rogue, because you will get one more skill proficiency this way. Multiclassing with both will allow you to get more expertise, though I think it's possible we'll want to just stick to Bard for a little bit for spell progression.

Other skills that I think will be very helpful to have are Insight, Perception, Stealth, and possibly Investigation. As a Bard, we're not going to get all of those, but we could pick a species that gets one of them as a bonus (Elves, for instance, can get Perception for free - and the fact that they never technically sleep and can actually keep watch while Trancing could be very helpful).

We'll naturally want to focus on Charisma as our best stat, but I'd say after taking care of enough Con to have some meat on our bones, we probably want to have a bit of Wisdom. It is tough - as a Light Armor class that doesn't actually focus on Dexterity, we'll probably have a terrible AC, so you might instead push Dex, which will help with Stealth.

I'll also say this: there's a case to be made for grabbing a bit of Sorcerer here - primarily for Metamagic, as we'll likely want to have Subtle Spell available to us.

One of the biggest challenges that an intelligence officer has in a hostile place is that their movements are being tracked constantly. It was crucial, of course, to not actually be identified as an intelligence officer, because at best you'd have your diplomatic credentials revoked and be deported, and at worse, they'd capture you and interrogate you (probably under torture,) and maybe kill you (though as I understand it, it was the cultivated assets who tended to be tortured to death).

Thus, any means to be able to do your work without making it clear you're doing your work can be helpful. Still, depending on how your DM rules it, you might be able to get some spells off without Subtle Spell and still go undetected if you, say, break line of sight and maybe are allowed to mutter the verbal components under your breath.

So, what spells might we consider taking?

For cantrips, I think Message feels pretty obvious - if you could arrange for your asset to sit in a public place and do something innocuous (akin to reading a newspaper) while you're in an inn looking down from a window on an upper floor and can just message into their heads, you could get a lot of discussion done without the asset seeming to be speaking at all.

Prestidigitation actually could be really great - if you need to make a Dead Drop (where you don't actually see your asset, but just leave instructions or equipment for them stashed away somewhere) you could identify the place it's hidden with a secret mark that then, conveniently, disappears after an hour.

Next, for 1st level spells, Charm Person might actually be best used when cultivating an asset - you charm them and then make your case. They will know that you charmed them when the spell ends, but you might find a way to put them into a position where they'll forgive you.

Disguise Self is a great option, though I'll throw this out there: you might instead want to get proficiency with a Disguise Kit. Disguise Self is thwarted by Dispel Magic, or even Detect Magic, and Truesight. A mundane disguise does not set off any pings in any kind of magical detection. I don't think it would even fail under Truesight given that it's not like this isn't your "true form."

Illusory Script - yes, it's tough to justify this on a Bard, as compared to a Wizard - is tailor-made for this kind of thing. You leave a dead drop instruction for your asset, and if someone happens to stumble upon it, the writing might be something innocuous.

Naturally, any kind of illusion spell, from Minor Image to Silent Image to Major Image to Programmed Illusion, could be very useful in myriad ways.

Onto second level spells:

You might consider grabbing Enhance Ability both for your party but also for your assets. The duration isn't super-long, but if you can make contact before they go on a dangerous endeavor, it will make them more likely to succeed.

Detect Thoughts is also pretty obvious: both for finding hidden listeners and also getting better angles to work on people.

Invisibility is obviously pretty helpful.

Suggestion is a pretty powerful one - you can effectively make an asset of someone if they fail a wisdom saving throw. While this probably won't be as reliable as someone you really coach through things, it can work in a pinch.

Now, rather than going through every spell level, I'm going to just talk about a few highlights. Naturally, as a Bard, at level 10 we can start getting any spell from the Wizard, Cleric, or Druid list, so the possibilities become very broad.

Nondetection could be helpful, but I think if you have to cast this constantly to avoid being detected, you're probably screwed. It might work if you're sending someone in where they're not supposed to be, but the whole point of cultivating an asset is that they are supposed to be there. Now, it could help your asset avoid getting their mind read via Detect Thoughts, but that's a pretty specific situation.

Mislead, a 5th level spell, is basically built for spycraft. You simultaneously go invisible while an illusory double of you takes your place. It's kind of what Loki does in the Thor movies, and if you're being tailed, you can send the illusion around a corner and have it vanish, or even have it just sit at a cafe doing nothing for an hour while you put some distance between you and the people surveilling you.

Modify Memory feels like a real must-have, the kind of major ripcord you might need to pull if a foe witnesses you.

Rary's Telepathic Bond can give you a really lasting connection with your asset in case they need guidance while they're on a mission for you.

Mind Blank and Glibness can both be really helpful. Frankly, as someone running a campaign with a high-level Bard, I kind of hate glibness because it just says "I succeed on all Charisma checks" (he's got expertise in all four charisma skills,) so when his character needs to do a high-stakes argument, there's very little interactivity to it.

But Mind Blank is one that could really help you if you're coming up against enemy mind-readers.

I will say that I don't know how sustainable a grim Cold War spy campaign will be at higher levels. I think Dark and Gritty in D&D really works best in tier 1, where bad luck or bad decisions can truly put you in a bind. The higher-level players get, the more ripcords they have to pull, and while you might be able to sustain the tension by finding some conceit for you to still need to empower low-CR NPCs to do these tasks, at a certain point, the game really allows a high-level character to have a better chance than any Apprentice Mage or Warrior Veteran.

Still, I think you could have a lot of fun if you played a character like a real spy, if a DM is willing to buy in to that fantasy.

The Paralysis of the Digital RPG

 So, my initial experiences of RPGs were JRPGs, where you're basically playing through a pre-written story. The way things end is the way things end.

I've hit a point in Cyberpunk 2077 where I realize some of the actions I took earlier in the game are having consequences. For example, I was unable to romance Panam because I guess I screwed up some dialogue earlier on.

I really want to just let go and let the actions I've taken as a player allow me to see the story I've built for them, but I get frustrated with this kind of thing because of the knowledge that it could all go differently. I found myself growing paralyzed playing Baldur's Gate III for the same reason.

It's a funny thing, because I love TTRPGs (see this blog) where we have infinite freedom to do as our characters will, but in a sense, because it's all infinite, there's no real sense of what you're missing out on if you choose a different path. The DM might set aside certain stuff they had prepared, but there's no "multiple endings" because there's only the one that you got.

And, like, actually the kind of sweet turning-down of V by Panam worked fine, genre-wise. Cyberpunk is very indebted to noir, and the hero not getting the girl in the end is a totally valid way for a story to go. It's just that I sort of feel like this kind of "miss this thing early on and you miss out on something later" style of gameplay doesn't make me feel freer.

I'm sure I'm in the minority here. And I don't know, maybe it says something about me that I want a very clear path laid before me.

But it does kind of make me appreciate that Remedy has said that Control Resonant won't have multiple endings. They are, after all, making a big interconnected world where continuity between games has to make sense (though at least for now it's only between two game franchises). But I also appreciate that I'll be able to play Dylan's journey across Warped Manhattan without worrying that I'll, I don't know, screw up and get the ending where he gets re-corrupted by the Hiss and kills Jesse (assuming that's not... you know... the actual ending. Which would be a hell of a downer).

More annoying was that my first attempt at the final mission with Panam, I tripped the alarm and we wound up getting chased by bad guys, in a fight that as far as I could tell was utterly unwinnable because I couldn't Quickhack the people in the cars chasing us and so I had to rely on my not-very-good smart weapons, and the van we were in kept getting destroyed. I wound up re-loading (the "continue from last checkpoint was already at this unwinnable stage) so I could get the thing done with perfect stealth, quicksaving a few times.

It's funny, because a lot of what I really like about this game is that it doesn't really penalize you a ton in its core mechanics. Healing items and grenades regenerate, and ammo is plentiful, so a rough fight that you make it through is fine. Your car can get super-damaged, but the next time you call it, it's fine.

I guess I like games that allow you to just go with your own flow. And I suppose for some people, these alternate endings and relationship options are fun rewards for doing things a certain way, but to me they feel like punishments for not doing things a certain way.

(EDIT: Ok, evidently I didn't screw it up, and there were more missions (quests?) in that storyline. Now that I've completed it, my V's partnered up with Panam. So, honestly, maybe I was just salty over nothing.)