Baseless Speculation on the Demon Hunter Ranger

 The Death Knight and Demon Hunter were World of Warcraft's first two "hero classes," which is a somewhat ironic name.

In fact, in WoW's entire 22-year history, the game has only added four full classes to the original 9-class roster: the Death Knight in 2008's Wrath of the Lich King, the Monk in 2012's Mists of Pandaria, the Demon Hunter in 2016's Legion, and the Evoker in 2022's Dragonflight. In fact, of these four, only the Monk was not a "Hero Class." Hero classes required you to have a character of a certain level (usually the previous expansion's level cap, though Death Knights only started at level 55 when Wrath raised the cap to 80). The logic here was that it would be weird to have a low-level Death Knight going around in low-level areas doing relatively low-stakes quests, and so they wanted to start them off with a fair degree of power.

The game has changed significantly since 2008, of course, including the introduction of level-scaling, so you can, in fact, now level up a low-level Death Knight in regions like Westfall (traditionally the second zone human characters go to when they move on from their starting zone in Elwynn Forest).

While Evokers were basically unprecedented in the lore prior to this, the Death Knight and Demon Hunter were both the classes of iconic characters from Warcraft III, specifically Arthas Menethil and Illidan Stormrage, respectively. WCIII had a sort of vague RPG system within its real-time-strategy campaigns, where you'd have kind of hero unit that would be leading your units in all the base-building and such, and would be a formidable force. These hero units were the major characters of the story.

While the Death Knight has plenty of precedence in lots of fantasy RPGs (and I'd argue also in fantasy media in general, with figures like the Ringwraiths from Lord of the Rings and Darth Vader both occupying that archetype,) the Demon Hunter is a bit weirder.

To be clear, there certainly are Demon Hunters, or monster hunters in general in fantasy media. Indeed, one of the classes in Diablo III is also called a Demon Hunter, but I think that it adheres much closer to the way that such a character class is usually portrayed: in Diablo III, the class is more like Diablo II's Rogue (and I guess also Diablo IV's,) with a flavor of having lots of cool gadgets and traps to fight demons, but basically being your black-clad, acrobatic, kind of Solomon Kane-like figure.

WoW's Demon Hunters have an entirely different aesthetic, strongly informed both by WoW's Night Elf culture and also the aesthetic of its demons.

In WoW, a Demon Hunter is not just someone who hunts demons. Indeed, there's actually a Hunter class, which is much closer to D&D's Ranger, typically fighting with ranged weapons and/or an animal companion, with a lot of "nature survival"-themed abilities along with their weapon attacks.

The premise of the Demon Hunter is that it's a highly specialized path that fundamentally changes you on a physiological level. Demon Hunters don't just use fel magic - they literally absorb a demonic soul into their own, becoming half-demons themselves. Demon Hunter characters typically have horns, and might have scaly skin or cracks where the bright-green Fel energy shines through.

 Part of the ritual to become a Demon Hunter involves gouging out one's own eyes. The fel energy inside replaces them, allowing Demon Hunters to see, and even see through disguises and invisibility. Thus, as a cosmetic option, Demon Hunter characters can select a number of blindfolds, or they can just let the bright glow of their fel-filled eye sockets shine unencumbered.

While the current expansion, Midnight, introduced a third specialization (WoW's version of a subclass) that both allows them to act as a ranged spellcaster and channel Void, instead of Fel magic (which is color-coded in blues and purples, as opposed to Fel's neon green and occasionally deep red,) for the most part, Demon Hunters fight in melee, dual-wielding weapons - most iconically, Warglaives, which are massive, double-bladed weapons. They are absolutely fantasy BS kinds of weapons, because A: they would weigh a ton each, and B, it would be hard not to slice your own thighs while swinging two of them around at your foes. But in a video game, they look really cool.

Anyway, the motive of Demon Hunters is to use the power of demons to fight demons - in WoW, basically all demons are part of a massive interstellar army called the Burning Legion that seeks to conquer and destroy the universe - the conflict that started the series was caused by the Burning Legion manipulating the orcs into acting as a proxy army to invade Azeroth, which they had failed to conquer 10,000 years earlier thanks in part to people like Illidan Stormrage, who basically invented Demon Hunters and was the first one.

I do think there's some logic to building Demon Hunters on the bones of the Ranger, conceptually: while very different in aesthetic from your typical Ranger (again, WoW's Hunter class is the clear equivalent,) the Demon Hunter does have a focus on taking down monsters (even if in WoW, they've obviously got to be fine at fighting any type of foe. We haven't really had demons as a major threat since Legion, which ran from 2016-2018). Ironically, this might have made them a better fit for the 5.0 Ranger, with its Favored Enemy mechanic (naturally picking "Fiend" as your first favored enemy type).

As we talked about with the Death Knight being represented by the Oath of the Ebon Blade subclass for Paladins, I suspect that Demon Hunter Rangers will also see some significant changes to the level 1 and 2 class features, as hinted at in that James Wyatt interview.

Oddly, I almost think you'd need more distinct features than the Death Knight - DKs in WoW do have some cosmetic differences, such as glowing blue eyes (at least starting with Wrath of the Lich King, the power of necromancy is often represented with a bright, icy blue, though this was more specifically the color associated with the Scourge and the Lich King, as there are several colors of death magic when we went to the realm of the dead in 2020's Shadowlands expansion) and a few partially-rotten skin textures you can pick, but it's not nearly as dramatic as the Demon Hunter customizations (which was maybe just because of 8 years of development).

There are various aesthetic things I'd really suggest should be part of the Demon Hunter subclass, and represented mechanically:

First, the missing eyes. It might be too powerful to give them a baseline 30-foot blindsight, but perhaps they can activate blindsight in a reasonable range a certain number of times per day. This could upgrade to Truesight at higher levels.

Next, their tattoos: the Demon Hunter aesthetic is classically one with a lot of skimpy clothing: Illidan would typically go shirtless. In WoW, your armor is a huge part of your character progression, but when designing Demon Hunter-specific sets, they've often made them more revealing. Demon Hunters have magical tattoos that help protect them, and thus, I think giving the subclass Unarmored Defense would make a lot of sense - Dex+Wis would work fine, just like it does for a Monk.

Then, we've got their wings. In WoW, Demon Hunters can double-jump and also pop out wings to glide down and prevent falling damage. Maybe this is a Slow Fall-like feature, or maybe we set this one aside.

Then, we have Warglaives. In WoW, this weapon type is available only to Demon Hunters (and thus is always statted-out to be ideal for them, with the addition of the spellcasting Devourer spec adding Intellect to all Warglaives in addition to the usual Agility). There's not really an obvious equivalent to them in D&D. I might be tempted to make them d8 Light weapons, though perhaps for balance they need to be d6s. The other issue is that, thanks to Weapon Mastery, we'll want to either have two types of Warglaives (one with Nick and one with something like Vex or Sap,) or Demon Hunters will, weirdly, find themselves probably not dual-wielding them, which feels wrong. (Fun fact, in the expansion that Demon Hunters were made playable in, every spec got a single weapon or set of weapons for the entire expansion that simply got upgraded over the course of it, so Demon Hunters naturally only used Warglaives the whole time. It was only later that they started to use the axes, swords, and fist weapons that they were also capable of using the whole time). (Also, ironically, when we fought Illidan in 2007's Burning Crusade expansion, he had a small chance to drop his legendary Warglaives of Azzinoth, but because that weapon type didn't exist yet and the class that could use them wouldn't be there for 9 more years, those actually just count as one-handed swords. Illidan kind of got handed the villain ball in BC, but Legion did a lot to rehabilitate him as the rash but ultimately well-intentioned anti-hero he was always supposed to be).

Now, how much of this is going to be stuff we get at level 3? No clue. I actually have far less of a sense of what Demon Hunter features will be subclass features and what will be spells we can pick up. Even more than the Oath spells for the Ebon Blade Paladin, I feel like Demon Hunters have to get more than the typical "one per spell level" subclass spells that Rangers typically get. We know Demon Spikes will be one of them (a defensive ability used by Vengeance Demon Hunters, the tank spec for the class).

Still, I think that mobility has to be a major theme - Demon Hunters have a ton of mobility features in WoW, and a big part of their overall vibe is being "speed demons," so to speak (one of the major rotational AoE abilities for Havoc, their melee damage spec, called Blade Dance, has them rushing faster than you can see in a kind of X pattern, slashing all foes in the surrounding area.)

I will say, I'm far less enamored of the Ranger class in D&D than the Paladin one, so I'm a little more concerned over whether the Demon Hunter will be appealing to play in an Azeroth-set game. But we shall see.

Expedition 33 and the Use of Levity and Relief to Just Make the Gut-Punch Harder

 Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 lets you know very early on that you're in for an emotionally devastating ride. Our time with Sophie, Gustave's ex-girlfriend, is brief and more or less just a tutorial, but she stands in to represent the utter agony that is living in Lumiere with the Gommage.

It's a remarkable feat: before you really get to the actual meat of the game, you're already bawling your eyes out (unless you're some kind of robot).

But even in that segment, there's a bit of silliness: you can find a guy hiding in a trash can, somehow thinking that the mystical power that erases people above a certain age will just pass him by if he's hidden. It's dark, sure, but it's really silly.

And while we go from profound grief and sorrow to horror when the expedition arrives at the beach, and then see as Gustave, our optimistic hero, contemplates just getting it over with and shooting himself, the tone starts to lift once we get to Falling Waters. Finding the Manor and the Curator gives us mystery, rather than despair, and some relief at finding Maelle alive. But we also meet our first Gestral, Noco, and suddenly, in this deeply sad game, there's something profoundly silly.

It doesn't hurt that Flying Waters is a gorgeous area, and while Spring Meadows has plenty of beautiful vistas (also, the Mime fight does introduce some of that silliness earlier than Noco,) the surreal beauty of Flying Waters really was the thing that wowed me.

The beauty of the world of Expedition 33 is one thing - I think tragic stories often incorporate stunning beauty. But I think it's the humor of the game that really works to disarm you.

Let's go into deep spoiler space. It's crazy to think the game came out only last year, when it feels like it so quickly cemented itself into the canon of the medium. Spoilers Ahead. Er... actually, spoilers for both this and Christopher Nolan's film The Prestige

Baseless Speculation on the Oath of the Ebon Blade Paladin

 As I've documented on this blog many a time, I have a deep love for the "dark is not evil" trope, where you have heroic people who nevertheless give off scary, sinister, macabre vibes. And WoW's Death Knights are... well, it's complicated.

At least prior to Shadowlands, when post-Cataclysm races weren't able to be Death Knights, all members of the class went through the "Death Knight Starting Experience," starting you at level 55 (you needed to have a character of at least level 55 to make one, but it's still a fully separate character - I just happened to delete my Draenei Shaman to make room on my server for my Death Knight, and re-created his appearance and name, flavoring it as the Shaman being raised as a Death Knight). Anyway, the DKSE, as I don't think anyone has abbreviated it, had you fighting for the Scourge (the iconic undead villain faction, led by the Lich King) against the Scarlet Crusade (who are basically the evil fundamentalist zealots, though they do have civilians among them). Most of your quest-givers here are actually bosses from the Naxxramas raid (which originally released as the final raid of Vanilla WoW, but was revamped for level 80 when Wrath of the Lich King came out to serve as the expansion's starter raid).

The quests here actually have you do some real nasty things, including killing fleeing civilians (while you were high-level, some of the people fleeing you were like, level 15). It's only after you defeat the Crusaders and turn your attention to the Argent Dawn (the good-guy faction focused on combating the Scourge) that events play out that both break your Death Knight's loyalty to the Lich King (upon finding you you've been sent basically as cannon fodder for the paladins of the Argent Dawn to kill and hopefully draw out Tirion Fordring, who was basically the greatest living paladin) but also, it's implied at least, that the holy power of the location severs the mental control the Lich King has over you. You then go to your faction's capital with a letter of introduction from Tirion that basically says "hey, I know this is a Death Knight, but they've broken free of the Scourge and could reintegrate into society). From then on, you're basically just another adventurer, and can be a real hero, even if your methods are... dark (well, I don't know, Frost Death Knights aren't too bad, except for the occasional undead dragon they summon to breath frost in a big line).

When Shadowlands came out, they opened up the class to all playable races, but given that many of these joined the game after the events of that starting experience, they instead had these Death Knight begin as lieutenants of Bolvar Fordragon, who heroically took on the role of Lich King after we defeated Arthas and, with some notable exceptions, mostly used his power to restrain the Scourge and protect the world. So, these Death Knights were basically heroes from the start, albeit using, you know, dark methods.

All that preamble aside:

Death Knights, of course, as precedented in D&D, had a lot of shared flavor with Paladins. Indeed, back in the original talent system, Retribution Paladins had a set of talents called Conviction, which increased their critical strike chance, while Blood Death Knights had Dark Conviction, which did the same. And, of course, in Warcraft III, it was the former paladin Arthas Menethil who served as the primary death knight character, with mirrored abilities.

Thus, it makes plenty of sense that D&D's approach to the Death Knight would be to make it a Paladin subclass. There's even some precedence, with the Oathbreaker Paladin functioning as a sort of proto-Death Knight.

But given that they've explicitly said this is a brand-new subclass, we have to wonder what it will look like as expressed as a 5E subclass, using the existing chassis of the Paladin.

That said, in an interview with James Wyatt, he mentioned that, true to the "hero class" origins of the Death Knight and Demon Hunter (an ironic term given that they're more like "anti-hero classes," though this was mainly that they started at higher level, which was also true for the Evoker,) you're expected to start these characters at level 3, as the subclass sort of needs to be there from the start for the character to make sense. He mentioned that the subclasses will go back to level 1 and 2 features for the classes and alter some features.

I suspect that one such thing might be that Divine Smite might be altered, giving us something like "Rune Strike" or maybe "Rune Smite" (to keep it in line with such spell names. Death Knights doing radiant damage feels weird, so we might get a version that does necrotic damage.

I also wonder if these two subclasses in particular will have a larger set of subclass spells - while I think you could reflavor something like Bone Shield to just be Armor of Agathys, there are so many iconic abilities that it might be weird to give to all Paladins.

Another challenge is going to be to allow for all three specs of Death Knight to find representation in a single subclass. In WoW, Death Knights have Blood, Frost, and Unholy as their three specs. Blood is the tanking spec, which is all about healing yourself by striking your foes (primarily through an ability called Death Strike) and maintaining a protective Bone Shield. Frost is all about lining up massive strikes, hitting like a truck with an attack called Obliterate, and radiating frost damage or sending waves of frost (and as a big cooldown ability, they can send a Frostwyrm - think Dracolich - to breathe on all foes in front of them). Unholy is WoW's closest equivalent to a Necromancer, having a permanent ghoul pet and summoning additional temporary ghouls and skeletal mages frequently over the course of combat.

I suspect we'll probably be able to distinguish the specs mainly via spell choice (and possibly using dual-wielding to go Frost - a spec that allows dual-wielding or using a two-handed weapon, while the other two are exclusively designed around using a single big weapon).

While Unholy gets a permanent ghoul pet, the other two specs can still summon a temporary one, and this ghoul actually lasts a minute, with a two-minute cooldown on the ability that summons it, so it can be up around 50% of the time.

Thus, I'm sort of inclined to imagine that we might get something like the UA Oathbreaker, which can use Channel Divinity to summon a skeleton or zombie as a pet. The one thing I'd really hope they do is make the summoned undead minion scale with our level. A zombie's +3 to hit is going to be pretty useless if you're in Icecrown Citadel at level 19 fighting Sindragosa (the mother, kind of literally, of all Frostwyrms, late consort to the Blue Dragon Aspect, Malygos).

Usually Paladins don't get much beyond a Channel Divinity option and Oath spells at level 3, though as we mentioned earlier, we might get more extensive changes with this.

For a level 7 feature, we often get some kind of additional benefit to our Aura of Protection. This isn't universal, but many paladin subclasses do this. Again, if they want to lean into the "necromancer"/Unholy vibes of this subclass, we could potentially get something like the Oathbreaker's Aura of Hate, which buffs the damage of undead creatures in the aura (which did get fixed to only buff friendly creatures in the UA). We'd probably leave fiends out of it, given that Death/Necromancy is fairly distinct from Demonic/Fel magic in WoW (the lore on the Scourge is a bit complex and somewhat subject to retcons - while initially it was presented as being created by the demonic Burning Legion, in Shadowlands we learned that the power behind it was totally separate, and even in Warcraft III, the Lich King very quickly started plotting against the Legion).

We don't actually get a third paladin subclass feature until level 15. Usually this is some sort of defensive or group-support feature. Again, while they were pretty explicit about the Ebon Blade being a wholly original option here, I'm tempted to say we call this Icebound Fortitude (the main all-specs defensive cooldown ability) and just let them get the Oathbreaker's resistance to Bludgeoning, Piercing, and Slashing damage. (Actually, in WoW, this ability both reduces incoming damage and also gives you immunity to being stunned. Maybe the latter could be part of this? The flavor is that you freeze your own blood).

Finally, all Paladin subclasses have their level 20 "ult." The only class with a subclass feature as its capstone, these basically have to be flashy. While it's now an Unholy-only ability, the real show-stopper Death Knights have had since 2008 (it's even featured in the Wrath of the Lich King announcement trailer) is Army of the Dead, where you summon like a dozen ghouls to attack your foes.

Here's how I'd handle it in D&D: make the Army work more like the "Conjure" spells in 5.5, filling your Aura of Protection emanation (which is now 30 feet) with undead creatures and have them do damage and other effects to anyone that's inside of the aura. While the WoW ability is just damage, I think for D&D it might also be difficult terrain, maybe even potentially restrain foes inside of it, and maybe you get cover from them.

Now, last thing to cover: spells.

I don't know if we're going to get a massive number of Death Knight abilities as spells, but I think the following might be iconic enough to make them in. They might also be presented as Wizard/Warlock spells that we get as Oath spells.

Death and Decay: This is a spell where you place an area of nasty shadow damage that ticks on any foes standing inside of it for a few seconds. In D&D, this could be maybe a cylinder spell that lasts for a minute and does damage to creatures starting in it. Indeed, in WoW, you can often take talents to make foes inside of it slowed, which could be covered by just making it Difficult Terrain inside.

Death Coil: A bolt of shadow energy that damages foes but also heals friendly undead. It's a bit like Negative Energy Flood, to be fair, but maybe it'd be balanced a little differently.

Lichborne: A sort of odd defensive cooldown, this actually turns your creature type to Undead for a short duration and also makes you immune to things like fear. (Notably, it lets you cast Death Coil on yourself to heal). I think this could be a fun bit of utility.

Death Strike: I'm curious to see how the book handles the various "strike" abilities that characters in WoW have. Death Strike is used by all three specs, though for Unholy and Frost, it's more of a situational thing to help recover while soloing (you get to use it for free after you kill a foe of reasonable level,) while Blood uses it constantly.

Rune Strike: This one's a bit odd, because it's not in the game anymore, but it was called out explicitly in the announcement. In WoW, Death Knights have a kind of two-part resource system. They have six runes that take 10 seconds each to recharge (though this is reduced if you get more of the Haste stat on your gear) and every Rune you spend on abilities generates 10 Runic Power, which you typically spend on a smaller number of abilities, like Death Coil or Death Strike. In earlier expansions, Death Strike cost two runes (originally, it was more complicated, because you specifically had two runes each of Blood, Frost, and Unholy, and different abilities used different specific runes) and so Blood Death Knights would spend their Runic Power on Rune Strike, which was mostly just a physical damage attack (I think it couldn't be dodged or parried). So, yeah, no real idea of how this will work, but we know it will be in there.

Death Grip: A really iconic ability, Death Grip lets Death Knights grab a target from afar and pull them to them, which is pretty nice for a melee-only class. Notably, before Wrath of the Lich King, I don't think any classes had any spells or abilities that could forcibly move enemy targets, so this felt incredible (and naturally got a lot of people to macro the ability to also have their character yell "Get Over Here!" like Scorpion from Mortal Kombat). I could see this being maybe a 2nd level spell (though if it can only pull them toward you, maybe it should be 1st level, as Vortex Warp is 2nd level). Make it a bonus action, too, please (and that might justify making it 2nd level).

    Anyway, I'm really very excited to see how they handle the Death Knight and Demon Hunter in the WoW book. If I can get my best friend and fellow long-term WoW player to run an Azeroth-based adventure, I'd probably be more eager to play my Death Knight than my main Paladin, given that the Paladin is sort of not that different from someone I could have always played in D&D. My Death Knight has, since 2008, been kind of my "Vice Main," and actually hit 80 before the paladin back in the day because it was so fun to play Blood DPS (an option that vanished in the next expansion, though these days soloing as a tank spec is much less painful than it used to be). Also, I think that the very dark backstory I've got for him would contrast very much with my current very naive and innocent young Wizard I'm playing. (A 22-year-old Triton versus a 30,000-year-old undead Draenei. Hm, it'd also continue my ongoing tendency to always play blue people.)

Baseless Speculation on the Path of Elements Barbarian from the WoW Book

 So, while technically not my first WoW character, my Tauren Shaman was the first I actually made on the correct server, so while there's a weird little level 7 (or at least he was 7 before the level squish in Shadowlands) human paladin that I then replicated on a different server and who has been my main since early 2008, that shaman has jockeyed with my Undead Rogue as my "Horde Main" since 2006.

I've always chased this idea of a Battlemage in RPGs, a class I'd for some reason assumed was a standard fantasy RPG class, but which doesn't actually seem to exist under that name in any, as far as I can tell. Truthfully, the Eldritch Knight Fighter in D&D is more or less exactly what I picture when I think of a Battlemage. But when I first encountered the Paladin class in Quest for Glory V, I imagined them as being more wizardly in nature, rather than the more religiously-affiliated version we actually see.

In vanilla WoW, Paladins were only available to the Alliance (specifically only humans and dwarves could be them,) and so when I found out my roommate was playing on the Horde side, I tried to pick the next best Battlemage-like class, which to me looked like the Shaman.

I didn't really get the talent system initially, so I actually think I invested more in the Elemental tree early on, but eventually I figured it out and realized that Enhancement was the spec I really wanted.

It's a bit of a weird name, but the idea, I think, is that the elemental magic that the Shaman uses enhances their melee abilities, focusing (at least early on) on the Shaman "weapon imbue" spells, and later giving us melee attacks like Storm Strike and Lava Lash that are sort of flavored as if we are empowering those strikes with elemental magic each time we make them.

In Unearthed Arcana, they initially gave us a revised version of the Storm Herald Barbarian, but while the flavor of that subclass was always cool, and also fits decently with the idea of an Enhancement Shaman, it's just mechanically a mess, and even with some very smart changes (like letting you pick a different storm each time you raged, rather than effectively narrowing you down to just one third of the subclass) it just wasn't living up to its promise, and I'm given to understand that the Path of Elements is going to be a totally separate subclass.

Given that another elemental subclass, the Way of the Four Elements, was demolished and replaced with the quite decent Warrior of Elements, maybe we can hope that we'll see a similar glow-up.

It is a little strange to see the WoW Shaman represented in D&D by the Barbarian, but I will say that there's some logic to it: both are tied to a kind of primordial, ancient power. Words like "Primal," "Ancestral," and "Storm" are keywords that fit quite well with either class. It's only strange because in WoW, two of the Shamans' three specializations are spellcasters. I could imagine that we might get guidance in the book that suggests that if we want to do this, we might instead look to the Druid class, maybe going for Circle of the Land or Circle of the Sea.

That said, even though the Enhancement Shaman does have mana as a resource (though in WoW, if you're not a healer or an Arcane Mage, mana is mainly there to limit only specific utility spells, as they figured out long ago that damage-focused characters don't find managing mana a fun challenge) I do think that it's actually a pretty good fit. If Fighters are the D&D equivalent of Warriors, then that kind of leaves Barbarians up for grabs (though Fury Warriors are pretty Barbarian-coded).

So, let's talk about the core abilities of an Enhancement Shaman.

The real central mechanic is Maelstrom Weapon - as you attack in melee (and in WoW, in addition to your melee abilities, melee characters will auto-attack a target, doing minor damage but also triggering things like this) you get a stacking buff that reduces the cost and casting time and increasing the damage (the latter being more relevant) of your next Lightning Bolt or Chain Lightning spell (the latter doing less damage but chaining out to additional targets, so you use it in AoE/Cleave situations). Maelstrom Weapon stacks up to 10 times, each stack doing 20%. So, if you have 5 or more, these spells will cast instantly, and if it gets up to 10, it'll hit for 300% of its normal damage. Because most spells have a casting time, it's not really practical to cast them if you're a melee character, as this will interrupt your auto-attacks, so this is a way to let a melee shaman use the class' iconic central damage spell.

(Interestingly, Lighting Bolt is an Elemental Shaman's filler spell while they wait for other spells to come off cooldown, kind of like a cantrip, but for Enhancement, it becomes one of their hardest-hitting spells through Maelstrom Weapon.)

Given the pacing of D&D combat compared to WoW, building up stacking buffs on each hit doesn't really work - there's a good chance that a Barbarian will only make 4 attacks in an entire encounter, so even if you said that after 5 hits, you could send out a jolt of lightning, there's a chance that you wouldn't even get to do that.

Depending on the subclass, some Barbarians get a boost to damage output at level 3, usually adding damage to one attack per turn, like Berserkers and Zealots. Other subclasses don't get this boost, and are focused a bit more on survival/tankiness (World Soul, and potentially Wildeheart, though the latter is more of a choice between various utility options).

Especially given the existence of the Spiritual Guardian, which I do think is Shaman-coded, though oddly more aligned with one of the "Hero Talent" trees shared by Elemental and Restoration but not Enhancement, I think Path of the Elements is probably going to be more damage-focused.

The actual math of how damage is added might be hard to predict - Berserkers add d6s equal to their rage bonus (so 2d6, then 3d6, then 4d6) while Zealots add a d6 plus half their Barbarian level - but I could imagine that they get something like the ability to add some amount of Lightning, Fire, or Thunder damage to one of their attacks each turn.

WoW is much more equal-opportunity when it comes to characters being good at single-target versus multiple-target-focused. Every class has abilities that work for both, and you might tweak your talents a bit to focus your build on one or the other, but typically there are some AoE abilities you get regardless.

I don't know if that's something they want to replicate in D&D, but I do like the idea of a Path of Elements Barbarian being able to do things like Crash Lightning, which is an Enhancement ability that strikes everyone in front of them with some nature damage (in WoW, nature is a massive catch-all for anything from lightning and thunder to poison to even beams of sunlight cast by Balance Druids). It has some knock-on effects, making some of your melee strikes hit additional targets, but that's not really how D&D is designed.

I could imagine having something like a limited-times-per-day cone-effect thing we either do as a bonus action or in place of an attack. If it's just any time we rage, it might have to be pretty weak for balance reasons, but if it's limited-use, then it has to hit really hard.

One of the major themes of Shamans in WoW (admittedly less emphasized in modern WoW, though one of the Hero Talent trees Enhancement can get brings it back in a big way) is Totems, where Shamans place an object on the ground that has some kind of effect. The Totemic hero talents I just mentioned center around putting a big Tremor Totem down at your feet, which pulses damage to nearby foes and activates again based on abilities you use. Admittedly, this might not tie into the themes they're going for with this subclass, especially if they want to see it be a little more setting-agnostic (though certainly the Demon Hunter Ranger and Oath of the Ebon Blade Paladin are going to be very setting-specific).

Anyway, I don't have a full level 3/6/10/14 breakdown here, because that seems like it would be far too specific. Still, I have high hopes for the subclass, not only letting me replicate my venerable WoW character, but also potentially giving us an actually-good elemental subclass for Barbarians.

Hold Up, Where Are the Hallowfall Arathi Actually From?

 We have a new patch that has nothing whatsoever to do with the Arathi Empire - indeed, we're presented with a different question regarding what the hell Ula'tek is, but I'm hesitant to speculate much on it because I figure that question might be answered pretty soon.

But going back to the previous expansion, there's an element to the War Within that was very, very weird:

The Hallowfall Arathi.

The Arathi (using this term for short, though part of what's weird about them is the ambiguity this creates) came to Hallowfall on some kind of holy mission, and they're our allies throughout the expansion, and are on pretty good terms with the Khaz Algar Earthen.

But so much of their story doesn't really make any sense.

In the ancient backstory of World of Warcraft, the first human civilization was the Arathi Empire, which was centered in the Arathi Highlands, a region in the southeast of the subcontinent of Lordaeron (which I realized today, looking at the updated Midnight map, is actually larger than the southern part of the Eastern Kingdoms, when in Vanilla it was only about a third of the Eastern Kingdoms area).

We know thanks to Wrath of the Lich King that humanity itself is descended from the Vrykul, created initially by the Titans as warriors to defend their installations across Azeroth. But while the once-metallic Vrykul suffered the Curse of Flesh just like the Earthen, Mechagnomes, and Mogu, they seemed to be hit by a double whammy, having many years to develop their own culture and then being struck with an epidemic of children being born far smaller and weaker (but still healthy enough to live to adulthood and reproduce).

We then know that after Tyr discovered Loken's corruption, he fled to the Eastern Kingdoms (I assume this happened after the Sundering, though if not, this might have been a journey toward "lands to the south") he traveled with several Vrykul, including those who were defying Ymiron's edicts that these tiny children be put to death. These humans would gradually forget what, exactly, Tyr was, but they would continue to revere him after he died in what is now called Tirisfal (literally "Tyr's Fall.")

So, humans have been in what would come to be called Lordaeron for a long time, but had limited contact with the elves of Quel'thalas and unfortunately a lot of contact with the Trolls of Zul'Aman, which mostly took the form of warfare.

The Arathi Highlands were where humanity carved out their first real civilization, a nation called Arathor. The humans made a deal with the High Elves to help fight off their mutual Troll adversaries - the elves taught 100 humans the secrets of Arcane Magic, and in exchange, humanity offered to help the elves fend off the Amani. Those 100 mages became the Kirin Tor, and founded Dalaran.

Now, at some point (and here my lore knowledge grows fuzzy,) Arathor broke up into several different kingdoms - the seven human kingdoms. Stromgarde occupied the heart of the old empire, and then Alterac, Gilneas, and Lordaeron took other parts of the subcontinent (Lordaeron, being the largest of these, became the name of the subcontinent as well). The descendants of the Arathi kings traveled south and founded Stormwind beyond the dwarven realm of Khaz Modan (I don't know when the humans allied with the dwarves and gnomes, but possibly due to being former Titanforged, they were inclined toward cordial relations). Some Gilneans sailed out to the islands of Kul Tiras and founded their kingdom there, and the Kirin Tor established Dalaran as a powerful city-state.

Now, Arathor was an empire, of sorts, though arguably it sort of went the opposite direction of most empires, beginning as one unified regime and then breaking up. I don't know if there's much history of conflict between the human kingdoms, though - it seems that there were enough other threats to keep them from fighting each other.

So, centuries, maybe millennia later, we encounter these people from the Arathi Empire. But... we've been to Arathi Highlands, and even recently in-lore (Arator - whose name, yes, sounds like Arathor - goes there on his soul-searching journey after the events in Eversong Woods with his father) and there ain't any weird super-religious empire there with airships flying around.

What gives?

Let's consider what we know of the Arathi (and here I again mean the ones we meet in Hallowfall).

First off, they seem to be a mix of human and elvish heritage. Most use the standard human models, but with pointed ears, though we do meet Great Kyron, who appears more elvish in anatomical expression. Why they are "Great" Kyron isn't really explained, except that they seem to be well-respected in their society.

Half-elves are actually somewhat unusual in WoW, though to be fair, that might be in part due to the lack (until War Within) of half-elf models. There certainly have always been some: Arator, for example, used a standard High Elf model when first introduced in The Burning Crusade (just remember that he's not as young as, like, Anduin. While the in-game timeline is a little ambiguous, he was an adult during BC, so he's got to be in his late 30s at least) and even his bespoke Midnight model still mostly leans toward an elvish look. We also know that Alodi, the first Guardian of Tirisfal, was a half-elf. But Outside of him, the only half-elves we got before War Within were, I think, the children of the Windrunner sisters (man, all three of them had human husbands/boyfriends, though Sylvanas and Nathanos never had kids - which is probably for the best).

Now, the humans of Arathor did have an alliance with the High Elves, one that would be formally part of the Alliance in the Second War (though the Third War and its aftermath really ruined that,) so it stands to reason that Alodi wasn't unique. But the Hallowfall Arathi seem to be basically all half-elves, suggesting that there was a far broader integration of humans and elves in their society.

Next, we have to address someone with a very important last name: Faerin Lothar.

Anduin Lothar was the best friend of King Llane Wrynn, Varian's father, who was assassinated by Garona Halforcen (under a magical compulsion, but try telling that to a traumatized young Varian seeing the woman you'd started thinking of as an honorary aunt carving the heart out of your father's chest). In the Warcraft movie, Anduin Lothar is actually King Llane's brother-in-law, and Varian's uncle by blood, and while the game hasn't confirmed that, Varian looked up to Lothar as if he were an uncle.

But it also goes beyond that: while the Wrynns have been the kings of Stormwind for many generations, it was actually the Lothars who were directly descended from the monarchs of Arathor. I don't know how Anduin Lothar wound up not being king, but politics are complicated.

Still, Lothar is a name that carries the legacy of the kings of Arathor.

And the Arathi friend we meet is Faerin Lothar.

Now, Faerin tells us that she snuck in with the Hallowfall Expedition as a child, deciding she didn't want to live the life that her family had set out for her. To me, that seems to really suggest that she was in a family that placed a lot of pressure on her to play a very important role.

We know that the Hallowfall Arathi hail from an Arathi Empire, and so to me, this oblique way of talking about her family suggests the following: I think Faerin Lothar is the heir to the imperial Arathi throne. I think she's a princess in self-imposed exile.

But exile from where?

As my best friend pointed out, the Arathi have plenty of dealings with the Khaz Algar Earthen, and trade with them. That means that they can reach the surface of the Isle of Dorn easily enough. If that's the case, why aren't they in contact with the Empire? Sure, they sort of appeared in the vast underground sea to the west of Hallowfall, but if the Empire is on the surface somewhere, couldn't they just launch their airships and restore contact?

And again, again, contact with where? Where the hell is this evidently powerful, technologically advanced, somewhat off-puttingly pious empire? Why do they call themselves Arathi when we haven't seen any tiny trace of them anywhere near the Arathi Highlands?

How do they fit into the entire story of humanity we've gotten since the Warcraft series began?

Well, they don't. And I think that's intentional.

Let me take a moment here to kind of split by thesis into two: one idea I'm presenting is something I feel very confident about, something like an 85%, 90% certainty. The next is more tin-foil-hat.

So, to stop beating around the bush:

I think the Hallowfall Arathi are from an alternate universe.

I think that the Arathi are from a timeline in which the original nation of Arathor never broke up, and that humanity remained unified under a singular emperor. I think that this empire probably expanded and absorbed Quel'thalas, integrating the high elves as equal citizens. I have no confident claims about what happened to the Trolls, Dwarves, or Gnomes who shared their continent, though I think it's possible that it won't be the most pleasant answer.

I think the Empire likely spans the Eastern Kingdoms in its timeline, and might be larger even than that. I think that the evidently magical way in which the Hallowfall Expedition arrived in Hallowfall was probably not just spatial transportation, but truly a journey to another universe - ours.

I think it's possible that Faerin left home because the Empire is not... great. I mean, "Empire" tends to have a negative connotation, given it's built on, you know, imperialism. And the piety of the Hallowfall Arathi seems to mostly be in service to fighting some truly scary foes, it also seems that it sometimes overwhelms people and turns them into dangerous zealots. (We've already seen how the Light can drive people to do bad things in Midnight - perhaps Wrath has become a major part of Arathi society). Again, the Hallowfall Arathi seem to be pretty decent, and I don't think the Empire is pure evil, but I do think that there's going to be a lot about the way that they do things that is not going to be quite the way that things work in Stormwind.

This, by the way, is the part I'm very confident in. I think that if they were truly on just some as-yet-undiscovered continent on Azeroth, they would have called them something else. Indeed, it wouldn't be that crazy for humanity to arise elsewhere on Azeroth, as there could have been other groups of Vrykul who left Northrend and went elsewhere (such as the Broken Isles. It's also pretty strongly implied that the Drust of Kul Tiras were at least originally Vrykul).

What's the more out-there theory, though?

Well, let me take you back to 2014, when we got the most conceptually bizarre World of Warcraft expansion, Warlords of Draenor. Evidently, when breaking the story for Warlords, they wanted Garrosh to somehow resurrect the leaders of the Old Horde, but they didn't want to do this via something like necromancy, to draw a distinction between this and, like, the Scourge.

So, naturally, the simpler thing to do was to have him travel A: to another planet (ok, not that crazy, we had been to Outland already,) B: decades into the past (ok, so it's like a time travel expansion with weird paradoxes?) and C: in an alternate timeline so that we don't have to address any of the weird time-travel questions, except, you know, how there are alternate timelines.

The point is, Garrosh, with the help of Kairozdormu, travels to an alternate timeline. It's not one he creates by his actions: there are differences here that that couldn't account for, such as the fact that he was never born in it. But there, he intervenes in the formation of the original Horde and persuades Grom, sort of his father but not really his father, to reject the Burning Legion and the Blood of Mannoroth, replacing this demonic power with technology from 35 years in the future. The Iron Horde, from this alternate timeline, then invades our timeline, hijacking the Dark Portal.

Now, did this make any sense as a threat? Why is this version of the Old Horde that has modern technology necessarily going to be overwhelmingly dangerous when we, also, you know, have modern technology? Eh, whatever. It was kind of a mess of an expansion.

But it did raise the following weird question:

If the Iron Horde invades our Azeroth, does that mean that there's an Azeroth out there that never got invaded by the Horde?

At the time, I think Blizzard tried to just put their hands up and say that this timeline was really just a bubble around Draenor. Perhaps less elegantly, they explained that the Archimonde we fought at the end of the expansion was, in fact, the one and only Archimonde, and that demons have a kind of special uniqueness among timelines (like Mr. Door?)

But let's set aside all that weird effort to backpedal from the weirdness of that expansion's premise: what would Azeroth look like if the Horde had never invaded?

Well, I don't know that you'd inherently have a theocratic human empire. But again, we're told that the Warlords timeline wasn't just a branch off of our own that split when Grom didn't drink the demon blood - that it was always a separate one.

And thus, perhaps its Azeroth was one in which Arathor never split up. And maybe, lacking the humbling pressures that humanity has had to bear in our timeline, the Arathi Empire became more aggressive, more rigid, more authoritarian.

The thing is, I don't think we're going to get any answers on the Arathi Empire until after the Worldsoul Saga concludes, which means probably not until around 2030 (which isn't as far away as you'd think!)

But truly, the more I think about the Hallowfall Arathi, the more I think it's one of the most bizarre curveballs that Blizzard has thrown at us, lore-wise, in the entire history of the game.

What's next? Are they going to address that girl in Blade's Edge Mountains who claims to be from England?

The Effect of Magical Ammo on Ranged Martial Builds

 D&D's 5.5 edition for the most part empowered player characters, but also made tougher monsters (and tougher combat encounter balancing,) to the point where I'm not actually sure if the game is "easier" or "harder" than it was.

But I think one archetype that truly got a nerf was ranged weapon users. In 5.0, Great Weapon Master and Sharpshooter were basically the equivalents of one another for melee and ranged builds, respectively. Each allowed you to, on each attack, choose to take a -5 penalty to your attack rolls in order to get a +10 bonus to your damage. In the vast majority of cases, this wound up giving you more damage on average, and I'd argue was even more appealing to Rangers and Fighters that picked up the Archery fighting style, as you'd already have a higher-than-usual chance to hit anyway.

Now, I don't think you can't build a ranged-weapon-focused character with 5.5 rules, but it requires taking some odd paths. Weirdly, Great Weapon Master actually works pretty well if you use a Longbow or Heavy Crossbow, which are the only two ranged weapons with the Heavy property. (It feels frustrating that Muskets don't have this,) but the feat is awkward because it buffs Strength, a stat you're not going to be worried much about if you are focusing on ranged weapons, and its Hew feature won't work with ranged attacks.

Generally, when I go into this math-heavy theory-crafting, I tend to assume that we don't have any magic items, unless it's about an Artificer (whose easy access to magic items is a class feature - which is honestly a bit tricky as a bit of design because the class becomes far more powerful the stingier a DM is with magic items).

But realistically, most campaigns I play in have plenty of magic items, and it's basically an assumption that by level 5 or 6, you should at least have a +1 weapon.

+X weapons do flatten out the difference between weapon types a bit - if you have +4 to Strength and are comparing a Longbow and a Glaive, you're looking at 1d8+4 versus 1d10+4, which is 8.5 average versus 9.5 average, or a difference of about 12%. But if you have +3 versions of those weapons, it's now 11.5 versus 12.5, which is a difference of about 9%.

Ranged weapons tend to have lower damage dice than melee weapons, but that difference becomes less meaningful the more flat damage you add to both.

The thing is, ranged weapon users actually can, potentially, double-dip with these +X bonuses, because not only can you get a +3 Longbow, you can also fire +3 Arrows with that bow, which means that overall, you're getting a +6 bonus to both attack and damage rolls.

And I think that starts to make a pretty significant difference, especially because it's affecting both attacks and damage.

If we took some character with no class features other than martial weapon proficiency and had them make attacks against the Tarrasque (an AC of 25,) someone using a +3 Greatsword who had a +5 to Strength and +6 PB would be hitting on a roll of 11 or higher, and so they'd hit 50% of the time, with a 5% chance to do an extra 2d6 with a crit. So, the normal damage of 2d6+8 (or 15) gets cut in half to 7.5, and then we add in that 5% of doing 7 more to give us an extra .35, so it's doing 7.85.

Our ranged character with a +3 Longbow and +3 Arrows is going to hit for 1d8+11, or 15.5 on average, but they're also getting a +17 to hit, so they only need to roll an 8 or higher, meaning a 65% hit chance. So, 15.5x65% is 9.75, with a 5% chance to get an extra 4.5, so toss in .225, meaning they do an average of 9.975.

Obviously, this is a bit of a vacuum. Maybe our melee person has Great Weapon Master, which adds 6 damage to each of their hits. So, that means the average goes up by 3, giving them 10.85 average damage. They're now on top.

But if our ranged character has the Archery fighting style, they now actually have a +19 to hit, so they only need to roll a 6 or higher, meaning an additional 10% of that hit damage to their average, bringing them up to 10.95, meaning they're now on top, if only by a little bit.

The rub, here, though, is that magical ammunition is not something I see a lot of DMs giving out, and I think there's a good reason for that: players are often very hesitant to use consumable magic items. It's a classic problem: if something isn't easy to replenish, players won't want to use it, saving it for when its impact is going to be biggest, but that can also lead them to actually forget they have it when they're, say, fighting the Tarrasque.

There isn't an item like "+X Quiver of Infinite Arrows," which would just allow you to count on always having such ammo available to you - though maybe there should be.

I think it's actually ideal for ranged characters to be somewhat less powerful than melee characters simply because you're not taking as big of a risk if you can fight from 120 feet away. I think the design problem in D&D with that, though, is that in a game where most classes are spellcasters, there's none of that downside if you're 120 feet away and tossing fireballs and hypnotic patterns.

Star Wars Could Give Us the Science Fantasy D&D Spelljammer Failed To

 My relationship with Star Wars is kind of funny:

When I was a kid, we were the only family I knew of that had a Laser Disc player. Laser Discs, for those of you too young to remember (though plenty of people my age might have never encountered one) were a video format that were an alternative to VHS, and basically consisted of vinyl-record-sized optical discs. This pre-dated DVDs, of course, and became totally obsolete once that technology caught on, but the point is, it was higher-quality than VHS (which was honestly kind of crap, and worse than Betamax, a different magnetic tape format that only failed to catch on because Sony made it proprietary to their own players, a mistake they learned from and thus made BluRay open source).

Anyway, that was the format on which my dad got the original Star Wars trilogy. There were several versions that came out - I think the remastered VHS set came out after these ones (the last format, I believe, before the Special Editions came out).

While I was terrified of the series after seeing the scene where the dancing girl was dumped into the Rancor pit from Return of the Jedi (and in my childlike imagination, I exaggerated the details of that scene, thinking that her liquified remains were bubbling up from the vent in the floor - something that categorically is not in any version of the movie) upon seeing it when I was maybe 6, I eventually watched the movies in full when I was maybe 9, and I became obsessed.

As I've probably written about before, I spent at least several days (I remember it being months, though I suspect it wasn't actually sustained for that long) watching and re-watching the trilogy in order, two movies per day.

I had already been a big Star Trek the Next Generation fan, growing up with that show, and I was nuts about cool spaceships (I actually remember finding Luke's confrontation with the Emperor and Vader at the climax of Jedi tedious, as I wanted to get back to the giant space battle - a very 9-year-old take on it).

Anyway, the special editions, which were released in theaters, were a big event that I went to see with my friends, and then, a few years later (though at that age, it felt like a big gap,) the Prequels came out. And... well... that was where my love of the series took a hit.

I know that there are younger Millennials and Gen Zers (and I guess even some older Millennials like me) who adore the prequels and consider it an indispensable part of the saga, but while I tried to like them at the time they came out, they just didn't have the same magic. Admittedly, I haven't re-watched them in decades, but I guess having the Lord of the Rings movies come out around the same time, I kind of moved on.

As a franchise, Star Wars is truly a mixed bag, and I think Disney's strategy of expanding it out into more and more properties using the MCU model hasn't served it very well - though there are some works within the Disney era that are quite remarkable (I have still not seen the second season of Andor, but I thought the first was incredible. I also thought the first season of The Mandalorian was cool, but the series started to suffer from being used as a platform for backdoor pilots).

Obviously, there's also the debacle of the sequel trilogy, which started out promising (while Force Awakens tread a lot of familiar territory, I liked the new characters it introduced) and its polarizing middle chapter, the Last Jedi, made some bold and interesting choices, the Rise of Skywalker basically seemed designed to please absolutely no one and kind of ruined the whole endeavor retroactively. (I don't think J. J. Abrams is interested in doing anything original, as I first learned after Star Trek Into Darkness.)

Now, I might be being kind of harsh to the Disney era of Star Wars. After all, long before the Mouse got their hands on Lucasfilm, there was a vast Expanded Universe that got retconned into its convenient "Legends" box (from which the Disney canon has sometimes plucked elements like Admiral Thrawn but not, like, Jacen, Jaina, and Anakin Solo). It's always been a world that people have wanted to play in, to flesh out.

Naturally, it's also been the setting for other TTRPGs, like Edge of Empire. So it's honestly not strange to see it as a property to be adapted for D&D. Indeed, D&D and Star Wars got their starts around the same time (D&D coming out three years before Star Wars).

But I think there's another element to Star Wars that makes it an exciting prospect for use with D&D: it is the definitive science-fantasy setting.

Now, yeah, at least in the movies, the only real "magic" of the Star Wars universe is the Force, and the only way we see that magic expressed is through the vaguely-defined powers of the Jedi and Sith, both of whom I'd argue are, well, closest to the Paladin class in D&D (I think that Darth Vader is the most iconic Death Knight in pop culture. Yes, he's not technically undead, but he's sustained by cybernetics and the Dark Side of the Force, which... is kind of close enough. And then, he's got a mask that looks like a skull and is a former champion of goodness who fell to darkness for selfish reasons... I mean, you see it, right?)

But if the World of Warcraft book is as thorough and innovative as it sounds from what I've heard in interviews, it stands to reason that the Star Wars book will also be pretty ambitious in playing with the 5E chassis to create something that works for its setting.

Indeed, I wouldn't be shocked if it turned out that by partnering with bigger companies like Blizzard and freaking Disney, the books have higher budgets than what WotC can produce on their own, and thus they might have more resources to pump into them, which could, potentially, allow them to go bigger.

Now, the World of Warcraft book is going to have a fairly easy time, given that WoW already has Paladins, Druids, Rogues, Monks, and Warlocks, and then has pretty 1:1 class equivalents like Priests, Hunters, and Mages. Even if there's no Bards in WoW, it's not like they wouldn't fit there (indeed, the Windrunner sisters' younger brother Lirath is said to have been a gifted musician, and I wouldn't be shocked if he had had some kind of magical ability with his music).

I think we could probably squeeze Fighters, Rogues, and Paladins (as Jedi/Sith) into the Warcraft setting, and maybe even broaden out the Jedi/Sith with stuff like "Jedi Knights" versus "Jedi Consular," where the Knights are more up-front melee characters and Consulars use their force powers more than their lightsabers (I think the Sith have different names, but equivalent classes in The Old Republic MMO). But, like, how do we use Druids?

I know that SW5E, the fan-made free Star Wars 5E hack, just presents and entirely separate roster of classes, some of which are more like altered versions of existing D&D classes. But you could imagine that in a true Star Wars D&D campaign, you might want to stick only to the options that are strictly for that setting.

That being said, what I'm really excited for is the opportunity to have true Science Fantasy stuff for D&D.

Spelljammer, in fairness, never really promised that. The concept was always "tall ships sailing across the stars," and while I do think there's a place for that whimsical, colorful notion, to me, the most compelling vision of space travel is one that aligns with that used future aesthetic of Star Wars.

Basically, I want my space ships to be enclosed and air-tight, but I'm fine with artificial gravity and faster-than-light travel (don't get me wrong, I loved The Expanse, but even that story eventually starts dealing with alien technology that breaks the hard-sci-fi rules it mostly restricts itself to.)

Vehicle combat in D&D is always a little tough: having a different kind of battle system for something that probably isn't going to be as central to the game as your normal battle system can, at one extreme, feel disconnected and undercooked, and at the other extreme, get in the way of the the characters' individual stories. (Another challenge is that if the whole party is in the same spaceship, that ship being destroyed means a TPK, so getting the stakes right is also tough).

But I think this would be a really good opportunity to come up with some good starship combat systems. I know that Legends of Avantris is working on that with Neon Odyssey (one solution is that the party might have multiple ships, which is honestly not unlike Luke flying around in his X-Wing while the rest of them are in the Millennium Falcon - they don't actually fly into battle that way, but you get the idea).

Beyond that, I also think that there's some fun to be had in using futuristic weapons. I'm 100% certain there will be Lightsabers in the Star Wars book. Might they just be a different weapon type, like Tridents or Whips? And might we also see Blasters, Bowcasters, and such?

Interestingly, there is, actually, armor in Star Wars, which you tend to see less of in modern/futuristic genres. That said, Jedi, despite being pretty close to Paladins as a class, are usually unarmored (I think there's an argument that they're also kind of Monks, except that they fight with a weapon. Maybe that's just the East Asian influence on the George Lucas' worldbuilding. Did you know that he originally wanted Toshiro Mifune for Obi-Wan?)

I honestly think that this is one of the weird challenges of adapting D&D to genres outside of medieval fantasy, because medieval armor is such a big part of the look of the game and how characters are imagined. (I like that in Dimension 20's Unsleeping City, they rationalized Ricky Matsui's "plate armor" as just being so hot that A: people had a hard time attacking him and B: he'd get disadvantage on Stealth checks because he drew attention because of how attractive he was.)

But yes, while I've gotten into the weeds on a lot of issues, I think we can acknowledge that, for the past 49 years, Star Wars has basically defined what space-faring sci fi is expected to look and feel like. Any space opera naturally invites comparisons to Star Wars. So, if this book doesn't get D&D to give us that quintessential sci-fi feeling, I don't know what will.