Vestige Lock vs. Wyvern

 The Vestige Patron for Warlocks is one of the most buzz-generating subclasses to come out of Arcana Unleashed. Your patron is a dying god, who manifests as a companion pet that fights alongside you in battle. It's a really interesting inversion of the usual patron/warlock dynamic, and while I think you could certainly flavor it more as your patron manifesting an avatar to serve you, the biggest deal, I think, is that it's a Warlock pet subclass.

As someone whose first class-based RPG was World of Warcraft, Warlocks and Hunters (er, Rangers) have always felt natural as pet classes. And indeed, we'll be able to come with many flavors of pet, as the vestige can be undead, celestial, or fiend, with slightly different abilities depending on your choice.

So, how do we want to build this thing? While Pact of the Blade can be a higher damage option, I think here we're going to go the classic Blastlock route. Admittedly, if you play with Flanking (which appears nowhere in the 5.5 official rules, by the way) you might be inclined more toward Pact of the Blade, but I think my general assumption is that most Warlocks prefer to stay at range.

Unlike other pet subclasses, our companion can actually make ranged attacks as well, so if we want to keep both ourselves and our friend at a safe distance, we'll just hang back and lob attacks from afar.

Because we're building to level 10, we'll be skipping out on the 14th level feature (which is actually pretty great - eventually giving you essentially an extra 9th level slot to cast a Summon spell).

Ok, let's get into it:

As usual, we'll be looking to use a good concentration spell, and one that won't take up our bonus action, as we'll need that for the companion. I'll note as well that we might consider picking up Battle Familiar, which is available to Warlocks and doesn't require concentration. Like the Summon spells we get, it's fire-and-forget. Pact of the Chain is all well and good, but it's usually not worth sacrificing one of your attacks for the familiar's attack (and if we're using Eldritch Blast, we aren't taking the attack action anyway).

At 5th level, our Battle Familiar will be making two attacks that deal 12.5 force damage per hit. We might go with the Flyer to let them dodge in and out of melee range - they only have a 30 foot fly speed, so the safest bet is to fly 15 feet above a target and then dive-bomb them.

But that leaves a concentration slot open. I actually really like the utility that Summon Undead gives, but the math on whether, say, the Putrid one actually poisons and then paralyzes the target can get pretty messy. We might instead choose the Skeletal version to just do some pure damage, and again, at range where we and our vestige will be hanging out.

Essentially, once we have all of this up and running, we can have four creatures (us, our familiar, our skeleton, and our vestige) all bombarding the target with ranged attacks. There are two rounds of set up required, but both Battle Familiar and Summon Undead last an hour, so we could get this running if we know we're going into a fight.

Mind you, we choose one of the Domain Spell lists from the PHB, which function as our patron spells for this subclass. While Crusader's Mantle from the War Domain could be great, our pets aren't using weapons (technically the Battle Familiar would be considered to be making natural weapon attacks, at least in 5.0, but it's a little less clear in 5.5). Thus, I think we stick with these. That's going to take both of our spell slots at level 10, so this is an all-out option, but again, at an hour duration for both spells, we might be able to keep it up through multiple fights.

For invocations, we're obviously grabbing Agonizing Blast. I think that's the only one that's going to directly improve our damage output, but grabbing things like Repelling Blast, maybe even Gift of the Protectors to keep our minions alive, could be good.

Note that if we are casting both Battle Familiar and Summon Undead, we're going to be unable to use Vestige Recovery mid-combat, but again, we're staying at range, so hopefully our buddy isn't going to be getting hit.

    Now, feats:

As usual, I'd generally say grab War Caster and then, as a Charisma-based character, we can pick up Inspiring Leader. The tough thing here is that we probably won't be able to buff our Undead and Battle Familiar with this because it takes a short rest, which will eat up the hour that they last.

Anyway, if we're willing to delay capping Charisma, we should have a Charisma of 19 at level 10, for a +4.

So, let's do the damage calculation!

First, our Eldritch Blasts:

We have a +8 to hit, and we deal 1d10+4, or 9.5 average, on each of two hits, adding 1d10, or 5.5 average, on a crit. Thus, against the Wyvern's we hit on a 6 or higher, meaning a 75% hit chance. So, 75% of 9.5 is 7.125 and 5.5x5% is .275, so we get 7.4 average damage per blast, and thus 14.8 from this cantrip.

Next, our Vestige. We use a bonus action to command it to attack once. It also has a +8 to hit, and deals 1d6+7 on a hit (average 10.5) and an extra 3.5 average on a crit. 75%x10.5 is 7.875 and 5%x3.5 is .175, so we get 8.05 from the Vestige.

Then, we have our Battle Familiar, which does 2 attacks that hit for 1d8+8 per hit (12.5 average) and 4.5 extra on a crit. 75%x12.5 is 9.375, and 4.5x5% is .225, so we get 9.6 average per hit, and thus 19.2 average damage per turn from the spell.

Finally, we've got Summon Undead. The skeletal form does 2d4+8 damage on a hit (13 average) and 5 extra average on a crit. 75%x13 is 9.75, and 5x5% is .25, so that's a nice clean 10 damage per attack, and with two attacks, we've got 20.

Add it all up, and we're looking at 62.05 damage per round. Hey, when you're making seven attacks a turn, it adds up!

Now, if we get caught unaware, and still want to commit to this strategy, we basically need to layer things in the following way:

Turn 1: Cast Summon Undead and then bonus action command the Vestige. This means 28.05 damage on the first turn.

Turn 2: Cast Battle Familiar and then bonus action command the Vestige, which brings us to 47.25 damage on the second turn.

Turn 3: Eldritch Blast away and then command the vestige, doing our full 62.05.

    Now, the subclass, I think, is mainly giving us utility. That 8.05 extra damage isn't nothing: it brings this up to "really good" instead of just "pretty good" damage. But you can pull this off with other subclasses and do quite well. I'll also say that you might consider Summon Fey instead of Undead if you're going for maximized damage.

Still, it goes to show you that you can put out some big numbers here.

Class Spell Lists? Who Needs Them? The Adept Feats

 In the campaign where I play a Wizard, we did no conferring with one another when making characters, which gives us a weird party: we have two Wizards, two Paladins, and a Fighter. Now, we're level 11 now and one of the Paladins has multiclassed into Warlock while the Fighter now has levels in Rogue, so we do actually have 5 classes between our five PCs.

But you'll note that the only people in the party who can cast healing spells are the Paladins, and the straight-paladin (though the character is certainly not straight in that sense - in my games, it's always the paladins, not the bards, who are the horniest) still won't get Mass Cure Wounds or Greater Restoration unless/until we hit tier 4.

Now, my character's family back home has a few artificers in it - his father and twin sister both working as engineers at Port Damali's airship docks (did I write that into my backstory to try to get us some airship adventures? Yes. Have we had any? No. And we now have teleportation magic, so it's unlikely we will). And so, I've considered taking the old Tasha's feat Artificer Adept. Unlike modern general feats, there's no ability score bonus, but if I take Resilient: Constitution at level 12, I'll have already capped Intelligence and have an 18 Con (we rolled stats and I rolled well). But this would give me access to Cure Wounds, at least.

But I have a much better idea now.

There are eight "Adept" general feats in Arcana Unleashed. Their only prerequisite is that you have Spellcasting or the Pact Magic feature.

And each gives you five spells (one for each spell level up to 5) always prepared. And that means that any spellcaster can have access to a lot of spells that were previously locked behind certain class spell lists.

Each also gives an additional feature, so we'll go through them one by one. Naturally, as General feats, they give you an ability score bonus, bumping Intelligence, Wisdom, or Charisma.

But let's go through them:

Abjuration Adept:

Spells: Shield, Lesser Restoration, Protection from Energy, Banishment, Mass Cure Wounds.

    Holy crap! I mean, holy crap. Shield on any spellcaster now! Mass Cure Wounds! Banishment! These are some amazing spells. I'm seriously tempted to take this even though I already have Shield on my Wizard, mainly so that I can do really significant amounts of healing despite being the class that's "never supposed to be able to do that."

On top of this, when you cast an Abjuration spell using a spell slot, you can grant a creature within 30 feet you can see Temp HP equal to twice the level of the spell slot.

    This isn't going to do a ton when you're casting Shield, but a bonus 10 Temp HP on top of Mass Cure Wounds is going to be a bit of extra sauce. But again, the spell list here is incredible.

Conjuration Adept:

Spells: Entangle, Misty Step, Conjure Animals, Dimension Door, Conjure Elemental

    Yeah, we don't have the infamous Conjure Minor Elementals here, but this is not bad. If you were taking Fey Touched mainly for Misty Step, this is going to be probably the better option.

Additionally, when concentrating on a Conjuration spell, you get a bonus to your Con saves to maintain concentration equal to the ability score increased by the feat.

    That's quite nice, and makes up for things if your class doesn't have proficiency in Con saves. And this will work on any Conjuration spells, so if you're using CME or a Summon spell or the like, you'll be more likely to keep it going.

Divination Adept:

Spells: Detect Evil and Good, Mind Spike, Clairvoyance, Divination, Scrying.

    Ok, some good spells that are not very combat-focused (though there's Mind Spike, which is situational).

You also can use a reaction to grand a creature you can see within 60 feet of you Advantage or Disadvantage on a D20 Test. You can do this once per long rest, but recharge the ability when you cast a Divination spell using a spell slot.

    I think this is ok, but you'll need to make sure you're casting a lot of divination spells over the course of a day to get good use of it.

Enchantment Adept:

Spells: Dissonant Whispers, Enthrall, Hold Person, Dominate Beast, Modify Memory

    Pretty campaign-dependent, as Hold Person gets less useful when you're fighting fiends or undead. Dominate Beast is... I doubt very useful in any campaign to be honest. Modify Memory could be really great in Deadfall, actually, and any sort of intrigue-focused campaign.

Additionally, when you cast an Enchantment spell using a spell slot, you can ignore all components except for material components that have a specified cost or are consumed.

    Ah, ok, yes. This is where the power of this feat comes from. If you want to cast Suggestion without making it obvious that you cast Suggestion? Basically, if you want Enchantment spells to work the way they feel like they should? This is going to be really powerful in any intrigue-focused campaign where you want your magic to be less noticeable. Campaign-dependent, sure, but also very good in the right campaign.

Evocation Adept:

Spells: Chromatic Orb, Shatter, Fireball, Vitriolic Sphere, Wall of Force

    Fireball for the masses! That's right, you get a fireball, and you get a fireball, and you get a fireball. You all get a fireball! Seriously, though, this is huge. Fireball might not be the most powerful spell in the game, but it's probably the best AoE damage spell at its weight class. And Chromatic Orb can become downright silly when upcast, while Wall of Force is situational but quite good.

Also, once per turn, if you cast an Evocation spell and deal damage, you can roll up to two unexpended hit dice and expend them, adding the total to one of the spell's damage rolls.

    This is kind of like the Evoker's Overcharge feature, ish. Mainly, this will depend a lot on what counts as "one roll." Obviously, it'll be nice in AoE spells, where a Wizard or Sorcerer would effectively be able to upcast Fireball by two levels with this. If you rule that Magic Missile requires only a single d4 roll and all the missiles do the same damage, this could be enormous (on your Armorer Artificer, going from (1d4+1) x 3 to (2d8+1d4+1) x 3 would be huge. That's going from 10.5 average damage to 37.5 average damage).

Illusion Adept:

Spells: Silent Image, Phantasmal Force, Major Image, Hallucinatory Terrain, Seeming

    Some solid ones, again, less combat-oriented, but really quite good options here.

When you cast an Illusion spell with a spell slot, you can do so without components except material components with a specified cost and/or that are consumed. Additionally, creatures have Disadvantage on investigation checks to discern the illusory nature of your spells.

    Like Enchantment, this is going to let your Illusion spells work the way you want them to in an intrigue-filled campaign. I think the spell choices here are a little more broadly applicable.

Necromancy Adept:

Spells: Inflict Wounds, Ray of Enfeeblement, Vampiric Touch, Blight, Raise Dead

    Ok, some of these spells are bad. Blight does way less damage than it should for a single-target spell, and the same is true for Inflict Wounds (which was better when it was an attack roll in 5.0). I think the number one reason to grab this (at least for spells) is to get a resurrection spell if your party doesn't otherwise have one.

Also, if you cast a Necromancy spell using a spell slot, you can roll two of your unexpended hit dice and regain HP equal to the total rolled plus the spell's level, expending the dice.

    In a pinch, this could be very nice: cast Summon Undead at 4th level as a Wizard and you could heal for 2d6+4. But I don't know how often this will come up.

Transmutation Adept:

Spells: Jump, Spider Climb, Slow, Polymorph, Animate Objects

    There are some real bangers here. Slow is interesting as it's the only big 3rd level crowd control spell that no creature is immune to. Polymorph is extremely versatile and can be a great way to keep a nearly-downed ally in the fight. And Jump is actually quite good in 5.5.

Also, on your turn when you cast a Transmutation spell with a spell slot, your speed increases by 5 feet times the spell's level until the end of your turn.

    That's fun. Cast Polymorph and suddenly you've got an extra 20 feet of movement? That's fun.

Overall Thoughts:

    Again, I think the most exciting (and possibly game-breaking?) part of these feats is letting you grab spells you'd normally not have access to based on your class. Letting anyone be a healer, or letting anyone use Fireball, is going to potentially unlock a lot of new character concepts, and might help shore up parties that aren't built for balance.

    Clearly not all of these are created equal, but I do think that a lot of these feats are going to be quite attractive, even if they don't give you free castings or anything like that.

Going Full Pokemon Trainer with Familiar Feats

 Do you like having a familiar in D&D? Find Familiar, as a spell, is basically a spell that lets you have a pet, which can be a really fun bit of characterization and an opportunity to add a beloved mascot to your adventuring party. And while it's a little expensive to keep summoning them back, it's also a spell that lets you avoid the anxiety real-world pet owners have because your familiar can never permanently die.

But given that, do you wish that they could be more central to how your character plays? Well, Arcana Unleashed really leans into this with a number of feats that support a Familiar-focused playstyle.

To start, we have the Origin Feat, Familiar Friend. This comes with the Familiar Trainer background, a background that grants Con, Int, and Wis as its ability score increases, well-suited for Wizards, Artificers, (Psions eventually,) Druids, and Clerics.

The feat gives you the Find Familiar spell as an always-prepared spell, and lets you cast it once per long rest for free and without material components. So, already, this is going to make things a little more convenient.

Next, your familiar will have higher HP, getting higher current and max HP equal to twice your character level. Given that most familiar stat blocks have 1 HP, that's going to mean tripling it even at level 1, and while it'll take a while before it can truly take a hit, even by level 5 or so, it should be able to survive incidental scratch damage.

Finally, the feat will allow the familiar to grant you advantage on any ability check using a skill you have proficiency with if they're within 5 feet of you, no action required on their part, though they can do this only PB times per long rest.

    This last one is kind of interesting, as in the 5.0 rules, you could give the help action on any check, as could a familiar. To avoid just having all checks get advantage, I instituted a house rule that you have to be proficient in the skill they're using to help, which they then made official in 5.5. Familiars rarely have a whole lot of proficiencies (though they might have Stealth and/or Perception,) meaning their previous role of giving advantage outside of combat isn't really what it used to be. This feat restores some of that functionality, albeit in a limited way.

Now, though, let's talk General Feats. As with all General Feats, you can increase an ability score by 1, to a max of 20. It seems for these it allows any ability. However, these feats do require that you have the Familiar Friend feat, so it's kind of a feat path.

Elemental Familiar lets you imbue your familiar with elemental power when you summon them by casting Find Familiar. You pick Acid, Cold, Fire, Lightning, or Thunder. The familiar gets resistance to the chosen damage type.

Then, as a bonus action, you can command the familiar to use a reaction to burst forth with its elemental energy, forcing all creatures in a 5-foot emanation to make a Dex save, taking 2d4 of that damage type on a failure and getting knocked prone.

    So... this is not great. It's a pretty tiny amount of damage that doesn't scale and is a save for half. That being said, to its credit, you're probably there more for the ability to knock foes prone, and actually, now that I've said that, I think this might not be so bad after all. It's especially powerful if you can get your familiar up to a flying creature. The timing, however, is tricky: technically the familiar is supposed to go on its own initiative, so getting them into place and then having them wait there (fully open to attack) until your turn so you can use your bonus action is... a bit rough. Even if you house-rule that familiars go immediately after the controller's turn, it's still a bit awkward. The only way this really works smoothly is if you let the turns happen simultaneously, which stretches the rules a bit, though I think is within reason.

Otherworldly Familiar lets you imbue the familiar with otherworldly energies, picking between Necrotic, Poison, Psychic, Radiant, or Thunder (huh, Thunder can be from both!)

Like the prior feat, this gives resistance to the chosen damage type. Then, your familiar can move through other creatures and objects as if they were difficult terrain, and if they end a turn inside an object, they're shunted to the last unoccupied space they were in.

    Obviously, this is less of a combat-oriented feat. But if you like to use a familiar as a scout, this is going to make it a lot easier for them to get into places. I'm not convinced this is worth spending a whole feat on. Actually, I think it's not. But if you're really leaning into the theme here, and your DM doesn't have NPCs and monsters instantly kill a tiny spider if it starts walking around their lair, this could be pretty cool.

Soothing Familiar causes your familiar to create a soothing aura in a 5-foot emanation around them. When you or an ally rolls a die to determine the number of hit points restored to a healer, you treat rolls of 1 or 2 as 3s.

    Generally, I don't think these "replace 1s and 2s with 3s" features are good. Now, this will work on any healing, whether it be from spells, potions, or even just spending hit dice on a short rest. This will turn the average roll of a d4 from 2.5 to 3.25, a d6 from 3.5 to 4, and a d8 from 4.5 to 4.875 (are there healing spells that use d10s or d12s? Maybe Conjure Celestial?) Anyway, at best, this is increasing the dice healing of a Healing Word by 30%, though it's really less than that because it does nothing to the flat modifier. Again, I'm just not convinced this is worth a General Feat.

Warlike Familiar gives you the Battle Familiar spell, making it always prepared, and lets you cast it once for free per long rest. Also, while a creature within 5 feet of your familiar is hit with an attack, the familiar cna take a reaction to add a bonus to that creature's AC against the attack equal to your PB.

    So, this is interesting. I did a post about Battle Familiar yesterday, and it's a pretty solid spell, and especially if you're a Cleric, Artificer, or Psion who can' t normally get it, this could be nice. The reaction is also pretty good, though again limited to just one hit per turn. But it could come in clutch, and there's no limit on uses.

Overall thoughts?

    Well, in terms of power, I really think probably Warlike Familiar is the only general feat amongst these worth taking, and even then, it's mainly adding just a little functionality to a spell that you might be able to get anyway.

    There are for sure some very powerful feats in this book, but I'm inclined to think that this stuff is more about building a character around a fun and silly theme than being the most powerful adventurer you could be. It could be very fun to play with these, and again, there are situations where these feats could actually prove really useful. But again, I'm not inclined to think that these are parts of the next big brokenly powerful build.

Battle Familiar!

 I thought I'd go into a deep dive on Battle Familiar, an interesting new spell in Arcana Unleashed.

Between backgrounds, origin feats, and general feats, Arcana Unleashed is going to make anyone who really wants to have a familiar happy. Indeed, I think we'll need to go over some of the frankly crazy feats that have been added, but for now, let's talk about this spell.

Battle Familiar is similar to, but different from, the Summon Spells that first appeared in Tasha's and then got revised and reprinted in the 2024 PHB. There are actually two new Summon spells for "primal" spellcasters (sadly, my Wizard can't summon a dinosaur, as that's Druid-only) but Battle Familiar uses a similar format while being, well, again, quite different.

Ok, here's how it works:

This is a 2nd level conjuration spell available to Druids, Warlocks, and Wizards. It takes an action to cast, requires a 25+ gold diamond (which is actually quite cheap - consider that the component for Summon Beast at the same level is 200 gold) and lasts one hour.

No concentration.

You can summon a brand-new creature with this, but if you have a familiar already via Find Familiar, your regular familiar transforms into this one, but with the template's HP as temp HP on top of your familiar's regular HP. Given that most familiars have 1 HP, it's more or less the same, and Battle Familiar ends if the creature's Temp HP goes away, so it's honestly kind of just flavor. The usual restrictions on its actions are lifted, so the familiar can now attack. It also retains its creature type.

This last bit, I think, is mainly for necromancers. While we can pick Celestial, Fiend, or Fey for the Battle Familiar similar to how we can for Find Familiar, Necromancers can pick Skeletons or Zombies for their familiar, and can let them retain their undead creature type, which helps with some of their other subclass features.

Like the Summon spells, we can pick one of three kinds of battle familiar (in addition to picking their creature type, which doesn't have any inherent alterations to the battle familiar's abilities). These choicse are Brute, Flyer, and Stalker.

By default, the Battle Familiar has an AC of 11 + the spell's level, 20 HP, a 40 foot movement speed and 30 foot swim speed. They add 5 HP for each level beyond 2nd that the spell is cast at.

They have a feature called Talented, where they can add half the spell's level (rounded down) to their ability checks and saving throws. They have the standard Summon multiattack, where it's also a number of Rend attacks equal to half the spell's level rounded down.

Rend deals 1d8 + 3 + the spell's level in Force damage, using your spell attack modifier.

Brutes add 10 HP and 2 to their AC.

Flyers get a 30 foot fly speed with hover, as well as Flyby.

And Stalkers get to replace one of their attacks with Prowl, where they can move up to half their speed without provoking opportunity attacks and hide at the end of that movement.

In terms of damage, this is, I think, on the low end compared to Summon spells, but it is Force damage, which is the most reliable in the game. The HP scaling is also a little worse, as most of those spells get 10 extra HP per spell level (this is closer to Summon Beast).

Notably, like the Familiar, officially, the Battle Familiar rolls its own initiative, at least officially. If you're at my table, that thing is going immediately after your turn.

Ok, so why is this different from the Summon spells? Why would we use this over, say, Summon Fey, Summon Undead, or any of the other ones?

Did I mention it's non-concentration?

That, in a word, is huge. While we can't cast this multiple times, given that we can only have one familiar at a time, this pairs really well with, well, any other concentration spell. But, for example, let's say that you want to put more creatures on the board. Well, use this spell in conjunction with a Summon spell.

Like, say you cast this at 4th level and then cast Summon Fey at 4th level as well. Now, between the two of them, they're making 4 attacks that are dealing 11.5 and 14 per hit. While the familiar can still get knocked out of the fight, you never have to worry about getting some crap roll on concentration and losing this.

Now, how is the Familiar as a, you know, Familiar? Well, the stat block doesn't actually have any skills, so you might want to keep your familiar untransformed if you want to make use of their Stealth or Perception when sending them to spy.

I'll be curious to look into the various Familiar-focused feats and see how they play with this. But it does seem like a pretty solid option.

Deadfall Impressions

 Well, I blazed through Arcana Unleashed: Deadfall, reading the whole adventure once it became available on early access on D&D Beyond.

After finishing season two of Andor, my mind buzzed with the idea of a D&D campaign all about spycraft and underground rebellions. Who'd have thought that the folks at WotC were thinking the same thing? Yes, Deadfall is an adventure in which the party has to work clandestinely to subvert the tyrannical and mass-murdering schemes of Szass Tam, the once and would-be future tyrant of Thay.

It might be apocryphal, but I think the initial concept of Thay was birthed when Ed Greenwood wanted to prevent players from exploring farther east in his map of Faerun - a nation of all Archmages who were super evil and would just kill you on sight.

Naturally, it's been fleshed out a little more, and while Thay is still explicitly defined as a fascist state, its people are not 100% evil, nor 100% archmages. Indeed, much like Zenk in the D&D movie from a couple years ago, there are some from Thay who would like to see the place cease to be an evil, totalitarian regime. And then there's Szass Tam, who would like it to be a more evil, more totalitarian regime under his thumb (ideally in which most of the populace is his own undead minions).

While I've suggested that a game of spycraft seems suited for lower levels, this takes the opposite approach, and I can kind of see why: assuming you build a party for this adventure rather than carrying over a party that did some 1-10 adventure, you can really lean into a lot of classes and subclasses that are ideal for subterfuge. Truly, this is an adventure where I think Knowledge Clerics, Eloquence Bards (ok, they're kind of good in any campaign,) and Rogues of all sorts will probably thrive.

Admittedly, the spycraft stuff does eventually give way to more traditional high-octane action by the end of it, but the earlier part of the adventure does incentivize social skills, maintaining cover and ensuring that you're doing things discreetly.

I will say, I think if I ran this I'd want to lean into players' paranoia. While there's no point in which the adventure says that Szass Tam's agents are scrying on the party or anything like that, I'd lean into what your players throw out there: if they feel that they need to be running spells like Nondetection, for example, have little moments where such spells pay off.

While Thay is not all archmages, the NPCs in this adventure are of quite high CRs. If you haven't had a chance to use any of those CR 10-12ish humanoid NPCs from the 5.5 Monster Manual, well, get ready to see a whole lot of them. I didn't sit down and calculate the difficulty of combat encounters in this, but I suspect that they tend to the high side, with plenty of high-CR demons and undead as well as Bandit Crime Lords, Archmages, Archpriests, etc.

The book is written in a way to really get you from one plot point to the next with alacrity, but it might be useful as a bit of inspiration to build a more complex underground resistance if your players are willing to play a fairly long campaign.

But yes, by making this a tier 3-4 adventure, you're going to have players that are using and relying on powerful Expertise, things like Reliable Talent and high-level spells. It's levels like this where having a DC 18 Persuasion check shouldn't be that difficult if you have a character who leans into such things.

It is interesting to see Thay fleshed out as more of a setting rather than a big "don't go here, it's bad" sign. Red Wizards are infamous as the most monstrous humanoids in the Forgotten Realms, and yet there are a number of good-aligned Red Wizards in this (including the effective group patron, who is very highly positioned in Thayan government).

Again, I think I'd lean into the John LeCarre of it all, and maybe even play some of the party's allies more morally grey. I'm far from the first to say it, but Stellan Skarsgard's character Luthen Rael from Andor is a fantastic example of a person who is working for the greater good but uses very dark methods to accomplish this. I think this adventure can certainly use antiheroes of this sort.

Anyway, there's a lot to look at with the Arcana Unleashed package. Admittedly, I've already written a fair amount about the character options, but I will say that the hit-to-miss ratio for subclasses here is a lot better than it has been in other 5.5 books (though to be fair, that's comparing it to like, just the Faerun and Ravenloft books, and actually both had some nice hits, but here I think the worst subclasses are like a B, and there are a ton of really fantastic ones. I think that the Mystic Arts Monk is almost certainly the most powerful Monk subclass in all of 5E).

Back on My Bloodborne Bullshit

 Yeah, I guess the Duskbloods really got be nostalgic for one of my favorite games of all time, wishing that the new game would be paired with a game in the same universe but in a more traditional single-player format.

I return to Bloodborne every now and then. This time, the motivation was to make a character who could get the Uncanny Burial Blade as soon as possible. The standard Burial Blade can only be purchased after beating the final (or second-to-last, depending on the ending you're going for) boss. It's a thick scimitar-like weapon that transforms into a reaper's scythe. So you knew I was going to be obsessed with it. But given its normal acquisition, it's basically designed as a New Game Plus weapon, a mode that I've never really been eager to do in these games.

But! The Chalice Dungeons! There's a code for a Chalice Dungeon that lets you acquire it pretty early on in the game. As with the infamous "cummmfpk" dungeon, you need to do a little legwork first. So, much of my afternoon was spent going through Central Yharnam and Old Yharnam, getting the first Chalice to get into the chalice dungeons. You actually need to go through two layers of the first chalice dungeon to get access to this one (getting the Phumeru Root Chalice,) but especially if you have no qualms about pumping your level up with the aforementioned cheese dungeon, it's not too hard to get through. The enemies in the actual dungeon where you find it are very tough, but with enough HP you can make it through.

The Burial Blade is a little slow, especially in its transformed mode, but it has a huge arc, and puts a little Arcane damage on top of its normal slashing (similar to the Blade of Mercy and other Siderite-enhanced weapons). I actually don't know if it's worth leveling Arcane at all, but right now I'm going hard into Skill (must check to see what the soft cap is).

One thing I sometimes forget is that Skill also determines the damage of visceral attacks, so if you're good at parrying (and I'd say I'm... decent at it) you wind up striking very, very hard with those viscerals. I will say that I do not like the Threaded Cane much as a weapon, and swapped to the Saw Spear once I got it, which doesn't scale as well with Skill but especially at these low levels, it hit harder.

However, I'm going all in on my Burial Blade.

Anyway, having played a lot of Elden Ring in recent years, I'm reminded how that game very kindly doesn't have a super-hard "wall" at the beginning of the game. For some reason Dark Souls I and III and Bloodborne really give you this barrier to entry at the start, and even as a veteran player, dealing with, like, those two full-on werewolves on the bridge in Central Yharnam is really tough (the fact that we can't level up until we either face Cleric Beast or Gascoigne or find that one Madman's Knowledge in the region also makes it pretty rough).

Unlike my previous two playthroughs, thankfully, I made sure to talk to Eileen the moment she showed up to the Cathedral Ward, and then immediately went down to help her fight Henryk. Doing so ensures that I get to complete her quest, and fight the Bloody Crow of Cainhurst instead of her later on in the game. (Reward-wise, I don't know if there's a distinction. Maybe you don't get her covenant rune?) The Bloody Crow is probably the hardest NPC duel in the game, but I love Eileen as a character, and really prefer us to be allies to the end. Just the most badass old (I assume?) lady.

I've now cleared Hemwick (my record of never dying to the Witches is unbroken, though having gotten hit twice by a brain-sucker, I only had one Insight, from my entrance into the fight, so it was at minimum difficulty). I can't recall if you can do Hypogean Gaol yet - I'm sort of tempted to just try to do everything I can before pushing to the Midnight phase of the game, but I suspect that Vicar Amelia is getting impatient with me.

What's Iridikron Up To?

 The other day I ran through the hard-mode of Dawn of the Infinite, the mega-dungeon from Dragonflight, to see how the infinite-themed color schemes for the various customizable drake mounts looked (sadly, not really that great. I think I'll stick with my Infinite Timereaver, or maybe the Chrono Corsair if I'm feeling silly).

Anyway, Iridikron plays a clever trick - while we defeat him there, doing so allows Nozdormu to become Murozond, and so Chromie is forced to rewind time and basically have us do the dungeon again with different bosses (I mean, really, it's just the second half of the dungeon). While we do stop Murozond (and kind of resolve the Bronze/Infinite conflict to the point that the various Remix experiences can now happen in canon and we have friendly Infinite dragons) doing so then lets Iridikron escape with the Dark Heart, which of course plays a major role in War Within and Midnight.

Iridikron obviously made a deal with Xal'atath - we even see her within the void portal through which he escapes distant-past Dragonblight. But what's his endgame?

Well, we might not actually need to wonder, because he basically tells us: the world is going to be thrown into such chaos that he thinks the Titans are going to have to come and intervene, and he's going to be waiting for them.

The Primal Incarnates are powerful - I think we can confidently put them on the same "power tier" as the dragon aspects (though I maintain that Alexstrasza's fight with Razageth would have left the latter dead if the Red Aspect weren't so omnibenevolent that she couldn't follow through with breaking Razageth's neck). But compared to the Titans?

I mean, look, power levels in fantasy are kind of a silly idea that is born, I honestly think, from video game logic. I don't think that Isildur was supernaturally stronger than any other human - he just got a lucky strike against Sauron to cut his fingers off. And the Titans are clearly not omnipotent - their spirits were being held captive by some admittedly powerful demons in Antorus.

But especially with two of his siblings dead and one having turned against him (though notably not to the Titans) you really have to wonder what Iridikron has up his sleeve.

So far, it's felt as if Xal'atath is the primary villain of the Worldsoul Saga, and has certainly been the headliner throughout War Within and Midnight. On K'aresh, sure, she briefly allied with us thanks to shared goals, but our reason for stopping Dimensius (saving what's left of K'aresh) and hers (pokemoning up Dimensius' essence to have an absurd amount of void energy) obviously meant a betrayal was coming - one that we were just slightly too slow to anticipate (RIP Locus Walker).

But if Iridikron's primary beef is with the Titans, doesn't it seem like he's going to play a major role in the expansion called The Last Titan?

See, I have a suspicion that Xal'atath might not survive Midnight. I think we might be heading to her as final boss territory. Sure, maybe it's not a permanent death - maybe we cram her back into that knife.

Xal'atath has been a refreshingly effective villain, one who actually seems to be making some smart moves instead of being just implied to have done so (Jailer, ahem). It's not my favorite trope to establish the threat of one villain by having them off another (I'm still a little salty about something from the last Dark Tower novel,) but Iridikron has been dutifully cooking in the "established villain" oven for the better part of two expansions now, studiously absent.

I don't think we're going to see Irdikron betraying Xal'atath, but I think it's more likely that he's calculated that she will fail for one reason or another, and that will open up an opportunity for him to kick into gear.

Indeed, I suspect that Xal'atath's entire assault on the World Soul is part of Iridikron's game - letting her get to the point where the Titans are forced to intervene. Is he being a little cocky to assume her plans will fail? Perhaps.

I think that if and when we see Iridirkon again, I'd really like to see him put his "avoid being a raid boss at all costs" strategy into practice. Maybe he tries to persuade us to his side, and maybe he keeps setting up others to threaten us (like Fyrrak) and cover his exit.

Again, I think that Iridikron strikes me as one of the smartest villains we've seen in WoW simply because he seems to actually respect the player characters' power. There's no "pathetic mortal" talk here. Xal'atath, mind you, is another one of the better villains we've ever had, but as her plan gets closer to fruition (it doesn't seem like anything we've actually done this expansion has set back her plans) she becomes more vulnerable.

The nature of the game, of course, is that we're going to fight and defeat the bad guys in the end. But I really like the way that, narratively at least, these ones seem to be making us earn it.

Indeed, I think one of the most satisfying things about Arthas as a bad guy back in Wrath of the Lich King is that everything up to the last 10% of his boss fight is actually his plan working as intended. It takes a literal miracle to break Tirion Fordring out of the ice to destroy Frostmourne, and as the king of the Scourge, Arthas was capable of absorbing countless losses if it meant turning the greatest heroes of Azeroth into his mind-controlled minions (note that if you didn't do this boss fight back in the day, you might not realize that at 10% he automatically killed everyone in the raid group. He then starts raising us as Scourge until Tirion intervenes, and then the last 10% was basically a victory lap in which the raid gets resurrected by the ghost of Terenas Menethil, now freed from Frostmourne, and gets to just beat on Arthas as he's held by the spirits that have escaped. It was a hugely cathartic moment, though my guild didn't actually down him during Wrath, only getting him after being like level 83 in Cataclysm).