Armorer Damage Optimization

 I think I've come around to the opinion that the Battle Smith is probably a more powerful subclass than the Armorer, but I still have a deep love and affection for the Armorer, and I suspect that if I ever get a chance to play one in an ongoing campaign (boy, I wish I had more friends eager to DM - if I could be playing four nights a week I'd consider that really great) I might stick to the Armorer as my subclass of choice.

Now, I was first drawn to the Armorer for their tanking capabilities, and the Guardian model certainly gives you a bit of that semi-taunt ability on your weapon attacks.

But D&D is a game that doesn't necessarily need tanks and healers the way a game like WoW does, and I think there's a strong argument to be made that maximizing damage is the better strategy - indeed, it can even help with a game's pacing by ending combat encounters faster (I love combat, but it's by far the slowest aspect of the game).

So, I wanted to figure out what the best options for maximizing damage on an Armorer would be. Naturally, there are some arguments to be made that multiclassing would be the best choice - perhaps getting enough Wizard levels to get insane spells like Conjure Minor Elementals. But at a certain point, we start to lose that Artificer identity, so I'm planning on doing what I generally prefer with any character and do a single-class build.

Let's talk about some of the challenges we run into:

First off, the Armorer is limited to basically one kind of weapon at a time. All count as Simple weapons, so that the armorer doesn't need to get new weapon proficiencies (like the Battle Smith or Artillerist) and lack some of the other limiting properties that might cause problems for a character relying on Intelligence for their attacks.

What this means, though, is that a lot of the weapon-focused feats that can really boost damage are left out of reach for us: None of our weapons are Heavy, so we can't use Great Weapon Master. None are covered in Polearm Master's categories (which are Quarterstaffs, Spears, and then Heavy Reach weapons - the Force Demolisher has Reach, but not Heavy). None are Light, either, so no Dual-Wielder.

The Dueling fighting style could work for us, as each of our weapons are one-handed and we won't have a weapon in the off-hand, but taking a Fighitng Style feat doesn't boost any ability scores.

Thus, I think we really need to lean into the fact that we're an Int-based spellcaster for our damage boosts.

Again, sadly, some of the spells that work great with characters that make attacks aren't available to us - Spirt Shroud and Conjure Minor Elementals. We can get the latter if we are playing specifically in Eberron - taking the House Lyrandar Heir background, and thus getting Mark of the Storm, and then taking Potent Dragonmark at level 4 would allow us to get CME at level 7. The downside is that this background doesn't boost Intelligence. (I actually think this is amazing on a Monk, who can even Flurry of Blows on the same turn they cast the spell - though there's a little ambiguity over whether a non-caster gets the Mark of the Storm spell list.)

Starting at level 5, having a Homunculus Servant and casting Dragon's Breath on it at the start of combat (a bonus action) is probably going to be standard practice for most 5.5 Artificers. At 11, we'll pack Lightning Bolt into our Spell-Storing Item and hand it to the Homunculus, who should be able to cast it every turn in combat unless we have a very long day of fights.

But the Homunculus stuff is, honestly, probably just going to be the standard for every Artificer (sorry Alchemists and Cartographers, who don't get a good 3rd level damage spell).

What of ourselves?

    Armor Models:

Well, of our three armor modes, we have a ranged and two melee options. Obviously, going Infiltrator is going to be the safest route. I'll say if we want to prioritize damage-dealing, we might skip the Guardian. So, the question becomes who deals more damage: Infiltrator or Juggernaut?

The Juggernaut's Force Demolisher does have a higher damage die, but the Infiltrator's Lightning Launcher also has some riders that might change that math.

The Force Demolisher does 1d10 Force damage, so if we're looking at a +4 to Int (which we'll probably have by level 4) we're talking about 9.5 damage on average per hit. At level 15, this changes to 2d6, and we probably have +5 to Int, so we're talking probably 12 damage on a hit.

The Lightning Launcher does 1d6 damage, but that's not strictly true: once per turn, we can add 1d6. Thus, at levels 3 and 4, it effectively does 2d6, or 11 on average with a +4 to Int. Then, at level 15, the damage increases to 2d6, but we still get that extra 1d6. Clearly, at levels 3-4, and then levels 15+, the damage is strictly better than the Force Demolisher. But at levels 5-14 (where we're most likely to spend the most time playing unless it's a high-level campaign) who wins? Well, 1d10 twice is basically 11 on average. 1d6 twice is 7, but then we have an additional 3.5, which is 10.5 - however, we're more likely to get that bonus d6 than either specific attack, because even if we miss on the first attack, we might be able to add it to the second. Thus, if we have, say, a 60% chance to hit, we've then got an 84% chance to get that extra d6 (because the 40% chance to miss becomes a 16% chance to miss on both shots).

So, 11x60% is 6.6, and then 7x60% is 4.2, plus 3.5x84% is 2.94, so the Lightning Launcher is actually doing 7.14.

Ah, but I forgot Crits!

Well, it's basically 5.5/20 times 2 (which is .55) versus 3.5/20 times 2 (which is .35) (oh duh, dividing by 20 and then multiplying by 2 is just dividing by 10) and then some really complicated math regarding whether the bonus d6 crits (because we can't know ahead of time if we're going to crit on our second attack after we make our first... do we just add the .175? Let's say that and if someone sees a flaw in the math, they can sue me). Ok, so we're just saying that .525. That means that the crit bonus is still better for the Force Demolisher, but only by .025, which does not make up for it.

    Spells:

So, the Lightning Launcher seems to be the highest-damage option here, at least in raw output, at all levels. But how can we enhance it further? (And might the Force Demolisher wind up having some extra edges because of its forced movement?)

Again, by level 5, my guess is that we'll mostly be casting Dragon's Breath on our Homunculus Servant to get a quick burst of 3d6 damage in a cone each turn. So, if we have spells we want to use to increase our damage, they've got to beat that (and remember that AoE spells are going to get tons more value if we have a target-rich environment).

Web is a solid spell that can play nicely with the Juggernaut's ability to knock enemies around the battlefield - if they get out, you can knock them back in. But it's hard to quantify precisely how much damage that translates to.

Heat Metal is a solid choice, especially if you use it on an item that the foe cannot quickly discard, like metallic armor. 2d8 damage is 9 on average, which is a little less than 3d6 (10.5 average) but there's no save against it. One of the really great benefits, though, of Dragon's Breath is that it's a bonus action to cast, and if we're doing it on our Homunculus, we don't need to worry about any action economy loss after that.

Once we get 3rd level spells at level 9, we get a few more options. Naturally, we can use our own spell slots to cast Lightning Bolt, which is pretty solid even against a single target, but best if we can get a bunch of enemies together in a line. (If the targets have a 50% chance to save, it's an average of 21 damage per target. Compare that with our attacks: with a 60% chance to hit, we're talking 1d6+5 (possibly still only +4 at this level depending on which feats we grab) or 8.5x.6, or 5.1 twice (10.2) plus 3.5x84% (2.94) and then we'll say 3.5/20x3, or .525, giving us a total average of 13.665 damage. So, yeah, the Lightning Bolt is definitely out-damaging that even in single-target situations, but it's a precious 3rd level spell slot.

Haste is adding an extra attack each turn (naturally, we might cast it on someone who hits harder in our party, but we're doing this in a vacuum). That means that we've got another chance for our bonus d6 if we miss twice with our normal action (making it a 93.6% chance to happen) and then an additional 13.14 damage - which does out-do our Dragon's Breath from the Homunuclus (in single-target) and also frees up the Homunculus to use its own attack, which only does a little damage, but hey, it's something.

Now, we haven't talked about Magic Weapon and Elemental Weapon. The rules are slightly ambiguous as to whether you can separately replicate your built-in weapons to get +1 versions of them. Also, if the armor is magical (if you've got, say, +1 Plate) does that mean the weapons are magical as well, and thus not suitable for these spells?

But let's take a look at how, Elemental Weapon would affect our damage:

At 3rd level, we're getting a +1 bonus to attack and damage rolls and an extra d4 damage on a hit.

Thus, in our standard scenario, we now have a 65% chance to hit, and our hits land for 1d6+1d4+5 (we'll assume we're just taking General feats and won't cap Int until 12). So, our average damage is 11 on a hit. We have a 65% chance to hit, so 11x65% is 7.15, and then 14.3 over two attacks. Now, we have an 87.75% chance to land our bonus d6, so that's 3.5x87.75%, or 3.07 (roughly) per turn. So we get basically 17.37 damage per round. But the part of that coming from the spell, compared to just attacking without it, 13.67 (ish) as we determined earlier, means that this spell is only increasing our damage per turn by about 3.7. By contrast, a 3rd level Dragon's Breath with a 50% chance to fail on saves is 10.5 damage per turn.

So I don't think these weapon-enhancing spells are worth it (the one time I found it clutch was when we were in Curse of Strahd and I cast Magic Weapon on our Gunslinger's non-magic guns, which were doing nothing against the Amber Golems in the Amber Temple).

Ok, now, while I'm focusing mostly on tier 2, if we get up to level 13 and can cast 4th level spells, we should talk about Summon Construct. This will get two attacks that do 1d8+8 (average 12.5) on a hit, so with a 60% hit chance, we're looking at 7.5, and then .225 for crits, doubled to 15.45 damage. How is that? a 4th level Dragon's Breath would let our Homunculus do 5d6 damage on a breath, so with a 50% success rate, we're talking 13.125 - so yeah, this is actually a bit better. While the Construct is vulnerable to getting destroyed, so is the Homunculus, and the Golem's beefier. And hey, the Homunculus is probably shooting lightning bolts with the spell-storing item anyway.

And then, of course for 5th level spells, you can get something like Bigby's Hand, which does decent damage (22.5 average, so with a 60% chance to hit, basically 14.625 including crits, but with some nice utility). But that's not until tier 4, so we won't worry too much about it.

For our Armorer-specific spells that aren't Lightning Bolt, we have a few options - Thunderwave and Fire Shield might help if we're going a melee route. Shatter can be an all right poor-man's Fireball (though it's only a little more damage than Dragon's Breath, and we can get that each round if our Homunculus survives).

    Feats:

Ok, because we have weird, unique weapons, we won't really be able to benefit from any major damage-increasing feats. But what of the more Intelligence-focused ones?

Again, I'm going to leave out the ones from Forge of the Artificer just because they're a bit more setting-specific. So we'll stick to the PHB ones. And I'll stick to those that can increase our Intelligence, as we'll probably be doing that at 4, 8, and 12 (though we can take an ASI if we want to move onto others, like Heavy Armor Master).

Fey Touched is, of course, a classically great one - Misty Step is a fantastic spell. We could pick up Hunter's Mark, though we will probably want to concentrate on a different spell pretty early on (Dragon's Breath, again, as a prime example - this is a spell that wouldn't be so good if we didn't have a little Homunculus to be its recipient).

Ritual Caster, actually, would let us get Find Familiar, and thus have a back-up if someone takes down your Homunculus Servant.

Shadow Touched is probably not as popular as Fey Touched, but you could use it to grab Hex, like Fey can get Hunter's Mark, though it has the same problems.

Spell Sniper unfortunately doesn't prevent disadvantage with attacks from your Lightning Launcher, though it does let you ignore partial cover. Unfortunately, Sharpshooter (which could be a good alternative) doesn't boost Intelligence. A decent choice after we've capped our Int (though a pretty big commitment to the Infiltrator mode).

Telekinetic is a pretty great one, actually - especially given that we don't really need our bonus action for much, and the shoving can combine with the Force Demolisher to give us a bit more battlefield control.

Telepathic is also solid, though it's a little less combat-focused.

War Caster, of course, is always a great choice, and especially if we're in melee more. We'll want to make sure we've got some single-target spells. I think that as long as you only choose the creature provoking the opportunity attack, you should be able to use Magic Missile.

    Replicated Magic Items:

Ah yes, a core element of the Artificer.

First, let's talk weapons. My interpretation of the rules is that you can replicate the weapons built into your armor, and that they're separate from the armor itself, so you could have a +1 Lightning Launcher and +1 Plate. If that's the case, these will be high priorities:

+1 Weapons are going to be the obvious choice once you get your subclass. We don't need a Repeating Shot given that the Lightning Launcher doesn't have ammo. Now: there's another matter of interpretation: does having "Weapon, +1" give you the ability to replicate any +1 weapon when you finish a long rest, or just one you choose the plans for? And if you swap your armor model, does that mean you can't make the right weapon for it? D&D Beyond is no help here because it doesn't even list a "Dazzling Force Demolisher" as an option. If I were the DM, I'd grandfather the old version of the Armorer that lets the Infusion transfer between weapons when you swap your armor model, and thus let you at the very least learn "+1 Armorer weapon," though I'd probably just say you have plans for "any +1 weapon."

At level 6, we get some new options. Unless we're struggling with how many plans we're swapping out (we'll want to get +1 Plate at this level, swapping from, like, Gleaming Plate) we can easily grab Dazzling Weapon and replace the +1 version, as you get the +1 bonus with that anyway along with other stuff. Weapon of Warning will sacrifice the +1 bonus, but you do get advantage on initiative, which is nice.

At 10, we probably want to upgrade to a +2 weapon - it's not actually that big of a jump in power, and so we might stick with one of the others we got at level 6 potentially.

At 14, though, we hit a point where we actually need to seriously reconsider our Armor Model, because we can get a Flame Tongue Force Demolisher. Flame Tongues can only be melee weapons, so this will work for that or the Thunder Pulse weapon, but not the Lightning Launcher. A Flame Tongue grants no bonus to attacks, but it does add 2d6 fire damage on a hit (you need to activate it with a bonus action). That extra damage is enormous, and will wipe out any damage you'd be losing from the lower chance to hit. Basically, by level 15, if we have this, the Force Demolisher is going to be landing for 4d6+5 damage on a hit, which is serious damage.

Now, what about other stuff?

Items with charges can be really great thanks to Magic Item Tinker, which lets us charge them up with spell slots, or more likely, to drain them for spell slots. Indeed, if you have two plans for items with charges, just use the first one up, transmute it into the other, and then drain it for peak efficiency.

Some good options here are Wand of Web, Pipes of Haunting, Mind Sharpener. Necklace of Fireballs doesn't technically have "charges," but given that you can just use it up and then transmute it into something else is pretty great.

So, let's imagine a scenario and see how much damage we're going to be putting out.

Let's imagine a big boss fight at level 10 - the conclusion of some major arc. I think a Death Knight functions pretty well (if it's on its own, otherwise it's too difficult) as a tier 2 big bad.

So, at this level we don't have the final slew of replicated magic items, but we can get a +2 weapon. We also don't have Replicate Magic Item yet (we're very close). If we're grabbing all the General Feats we can, we're talking still a +4 to Int.

Our Death Knight has an AC of 20 and a Dex save bonus of +6. 

If we have +4 to Int, we're looking at a spell save DC of 16, and we're rocking a +2 Lightning Launcher and thus have a +10 to hit. We have a Homunculus Servant.

If we're not worrying about battlefield control and just trying to zap as much damage as we can, here's a gameplan:

We cast Dragon's Breath with a bonus action, upcasting to 3rd level, on our Homunculus. Then, we make two attacks with our Lightning Launcher.

Each attack has a 55% chance to hit. They deal 1d6+6 damage, or 9.5 damage on average, on a hit, and add 3.5 on a crit. So, 55%x9.5 (which is 5.225) plus 5%x3.5 (.175) gives us 5.4 per attack, or 10.8.

We then have our bonus d6, with a 79.75% chance to land on our turn. That gives us 3.5x79.75%, or 2.79125.

Now, to get really crunchy, the crit chance on that bonus d6 is 5% on the first attack, but then, the chance of it critting on the second attack is only 5% x 45% (as we'd only get to crit with it if we hadn't hit on the second attack) so we're talking 5%x145%, which comes to 7.25%, which we then apply to our 3.5 from the d6, giving us .25375 damage.

Thus, from our Lightning Launcher, we're doing a total of 13.845 damage per turn. Not... amazing, but continuing on:

We can cast Dragon's Breath on our Homunculus Servant at 3rd level, which means it will be doing 4d6 damage on a failed save, or 14 average, and then 7 average on a successful save. This should happen every turn, so we can easily just add it to the damage turn-by-turn. The Death Knight has a 55% chance to succeed, so 55% of the time we're doing 7 damage and 45% of the time, we're doing 14. 14x45% is 6.3 and 7x55% is 3.85, so the spell nets us an average of 10.15.

Thus, that brings our total damage per turn to 23.995, which is better, but not amazing.

However, if this is a serious boss fight, it stands to reason that we're going whole hog. At level 10, we only have 2 3rd level spell slots. Should we just blow them on Lightning Bolt?

Lighting Bolt does 8d6, or 28 average damage on a failure. But our DK foe has a pretty good saving throw bonus, so again, 55% of the time they're only taking 14. 14x55% is 7.7 and 28x45% is 12.6, so on average our Lightning Bolt is doing 20.3 damage.

Now, we could do this twice, but this would mean downgrading our Dragon's Breath to a 2nd level (and we'd only be able to start casting Lightining Bolt on turn 2, as we still need to cast Dragon's Breath on the first turn). I believe we can just take our average 3rd level Dragon's Breath damage and cut it to 75% (because it's 3d6 instead of 4d6) so that should give us 7.6125 damage per turn.

Thus, if we do it this way, we can do 21.4575 damage on turn 1, and then on turns 2 and 3, we can do 27.9125 damage. I'd say we're now talking at least respectable, if not insane damage.

Notably, one level later, things change profoundly: we'll be having our Homunculus flying off at a safe distance and shooting a Lightining Bolt probably every round of combat with the Spell-Storing Item, which does take Dragon's Breath out of the equation, but that's doubling what Dragon's Breath was doing, and we can just start things off with our own Lightning Bolts as well, so that's basically 40.6 damage on turns 1 and 2 and then dropping to 34.145 after that, which I honestly think is quite solid.

Revisiting the Mysteries of Expedition 33

 Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 is a game that tells a story utterly drenched in mysteries. There are multiple massive twists in the story that left players deeply conflicted as to what the better of the two endings you can choose for the game really is.

Diving into the game when it first came out with no sense of what the story held (not even knowing that Verso was going to be a party member, and so not really thinking much of his many, many mentions by NPCs before he shows up for real) the game's massive twists really shook me - particularly after finishing Act Two, I had to just step away and take the rest of the day to recover.

But while those big reveals in the main plot do totally reframe the way you think about the story, there are subtler mysteries and hints at some of the background that aren't really answered in a straightforward way.

We're going to go deep into spoiler territory here.

Returning to Expedition 33

 I'd thought for a long while about whether I wanted to do New Game Plus or just start a new save file in Expedition 33. Indeed, I'd worried for a bit that one couldn't even make a separate save file (Oh, apparently Control Resonant will have a NG+, but no word on retroactively implementing that for the first game or if there will be a conventional "multiple save files" for Control Resonant, but it's something).

Anyway, having ground all the way to level 99 on all characters on my original save file (and still hitting brick walls on the DLC bosses) I decided I wanted a return to the simple, early levels of the game, and so just started a brand new save file.

Knowing what I know now, I found the Mime to fight in Lumiere (which gets you a record you can get at the end of the game). The game takes a fair amount of time before you actually get into the meat of it - though I suppose you can skip a lot of dialogue if you really don't care about the stuff in Lumiere at the beginning - I think you'll miss out on some materials, but it's not like you can't find Chroma Catalysts, Recoats, and Chroma out in the world.

The Gommage scene still yanks at your heartstrings, though it's also kind of fascinating seeing all the subtle hints at what's to come now that I know the real story. (For one thing, the fact that Lumiere Harbor is flanked by statues of Verso is kind of crazy). It's pretty nuts to think that, as devastating and horrific as this moment is, it's not even the most emotionally devastating moment.

When I first played the game, I truly knew nothing of the coming story, so it didn't occur to me to think of Lune and Sciel as anything special in the send-off party the night after the Gommage. While, again, the plot takes even darker and more painful turns, there's this constant juxtaposition of beauty with all the existential horror. Even the Nevrons (especially in these early areas) are kind of beautiful. The more terrifying designs like the Marionette are a ways off, and so the Lanciers and such that we encounter in Spring Meadows honestly look like they could have been whimsical guardians and protectors rather than human-exterminating death-constructs.

Because this is a game where good timing can prevent all damage, and the Nevrons you encounter at the start of the game rarely do more than a single attack in a turn, I've done a pretty decent job of getting no-damage encounters, which then gives you bonus XP. With only a pair of weapons for Gustave and Lune each, there's very little "build" going on here, which is kind of refreshing. I think, knowing the mechanics of the game a lot better, I'm going to try to lean into making my own builds for the characters, though again, I kind of prefer when it's more just taking what you can get.

AP is a lot more plentiful later in the game, so I'm getting used to the rhythm of having to do regular attacks every other turn or so - though of course, if you're really good at parrying, you can generate a ton of AP that way.

But yeah, I'm not executing everything perfectly, but these early levels are also a lot more forgiving - I think I only got all the parries on Eveque's "casting a spell" attack once or twice, but getting hit only did like 25 damage or something when Gustave was at like 400 HP and Lune at maybe 250. Very different than when, at high levels, you basically go down if you miss like two dodges/parries in a monster's 7-hit combo.

I do remember finding the game plenty challenging even before the post-game stuff - I remember dying several times in the first Renoir fight. But so far, it's been relatively smooth sailing (Lune went down during the Chromatic Lancier fight - which you might be intended to skip initially. I think Chromatic foes are usually there to give you an excuse to return to zones, but I felt confident I could handle it, and seem to have been right.

Indeed, I think the only thing I have left to do in Spring Meadows is to come back when I can break those paint-spikes.

Ok, just in case people who want to try this game but never got around to it are reading, let's do a spoiler cut.

Darklords of Ravenloft

 We're now a little over a month (though less, I think, for people with D&D Beyond subscriptions) from the release of Ravenloft: Horrors Within.

I've said many-a-time here on my blog that Van Richten's Guide to Ravenloft is my favorite 5E book. It's kind of the last of the big, beefy campaign setting books - we would later get the disappointing Spelljammer and Planescape box sets, the latter of which was not as bad, but still not nearly as comprehensive as I had hoped.

But Ravenloft is also kind of tied with Planescape as my favorite D&D setting - I guess because I think I'm too good for just a normal fantasy world with kingdoms and castles and stuff.

I know that there are some, especially old school D&D players, who really disliked Van Richten's. Many of the reasons they cite are things I just flat-out disagree with: core amongst them (pun intended) is the excision of the idea of "The Core," which in the original Ravenloft placed each domain of dread in geographical relation to one another. For example, Borca was just northwest of Barovia, and there was a road that led from Krezk in Barovia to Levkarest in Borca. The Mists could become an impenetrable border if either of the Darklords of these respective domains decided to make them so, but that was the geographic relationship.

Now, this could be just what I was first exposed to, but my first brush with Barovia was Curse of Strahd, the very first adventure module I bought for the game after getting the core books (and maybe Volo's Guide to Monsters, if that was out yet) but starting in that beloved adventure, Barovia and the domains of dread in general were presented, as they are in Van Richten's, as being demiplanar bubbles afloat within the Mists. Spatially, they were cut off from one another, meaning that travel between domains was not a matter of getting on the correct road but instead of getting your hands on the right Mist Talisman - a magically-charged artifact from that domain that could act as a lodestone to guide you there.

Likewise, as presented in Curse of Strahd as well as in Van Richten's, the domains function on nightmare logic - even if you get a map of the Svalich Woods, the woods can shift and stretch according to the will (conscious or not) of Strahd in order to terrorize those passing through it. I think the hazy isolation of free-floating domains fits that idea better.

I will concede, though, that if you want to play Ravenloft less as a series of nightmare-prisons and more as a contentious land of evil powers seeking to undermine and defeat one another, this geographical connection makes more sense. It is more conventional, as a D&D setting. If you want to send your party on a quest that requires them go from Barovia to Lamordia, they'll likely have to pass through Borca and Falkovnia along the way.

That being said, I think that you could also do this in the free-floating 5E Ravenloft, where you only get Mist Talismans that allow for travel to the "in-between" domains of your choice.

Another change, of course, that was somewhat controversial, was the changing of some Darklords. In some cases, the change itself was canonical, where you had Valachan's Ulrik von Kharkov overthrown by Chakuna. Others were more like retcons - Viktor Mordenheim was reimagined as Viktra Mordenheim, and her relationship with her flesh golem creation was also changed significantly - Viktor's Adam was a pretty direct parallel with the Frankenstein story with an absentee father and wrathful son, whereas Viktra's relationship with her creation, Elise, was one of a lover desperate to re-create her lost love.

I do think that some of these changes were really important to give the Darklords more distinctive characters - Vlad Drakov was kind of vaguely just "another vampire," inspired more by the historical Vlad Tsepes more than the literary Count Dracula, while Vladeska Drakov is a tyrant warrior who has brought disaster upon herself and her kingdom (and also gives us the "zombie apocalypse" domain).

So, again, I get that the book was controversial, even if I freaking loved it. My love for it was also less about the specific details and more about the structure of the book - its discussion of horror as a genre and the way that it was more about presenting ideas for adventures than strictly laying out how things would have to be.

But one thing I will concede is that it would have been cool to get bespoke stat blocks for the Darklords.

In the case of Harkon Lukas, his stat block was in the book, though presented as a general Loup-Garou that could represent other characters. And while I do think it's fun to give Strahd his own specific features and abilities (as we saw in both Curse of Strahd and Vecna: Eve of Ruin) it's also kind of fitting that, as the first vampire in the D&D cosmos, he should have the standard CR 13 legendary vampire stat block - almost as if to invite players, when looking at that block in the Monster Manual, to consider that any use of a vampire statblock should aspire at least to have a character as rich and thought-out as Strahd.

But then you have something like Viktra Mordenheim, and the suggested stat block for them is a Spy, which is a CR 1, non-legendary creature that also, you know, doesn't really have any of the kind of mad-scientist abilities that you'd expect someone like Mordenheim to have.

Now, I understand the ethos of having low-CR Darklords. A Darklord need not always be the final boss at the end of a big dungeon like Strahd is for Castle Ravenloft (though again, even he need not serve that function). But I think tossing them all these generic stat blocks (I think Spy is used for several of them) puts a lot of burden on the DM to ensure that an encounter with them is, well, interesting. A Spy just has a +1 to Intelligence, and surely Mordenheim would be smarter than that? Again, even if she's not meant to be much of a fighter, couldn't she at least have some kind of lightning-weapon, or the ability to summon, say, a Flesh Golem to defend her?

Like, I think that a "Viktra Mordenheim boss fight" is probably one in which she's behind some impenetrable barrier overseeing a workshop/factory of flesh golems and other constructs as they attack the party that must be defeated before we can gain access to her control room, after which taking out the good doctor is a formality.

But I do still think that it's more fun if the villains can play that "final boss" role.

Now, I'm given to understand that this is one of the issues that Horrors Within intends to address - I've seen a screenshot from the digital Maps assets from the book that include a Wilfred Godefroy that appears to be CR 6 (unlike the CR 4 Ghost he's presented as in Van Richten's) and Saidra d'Honaire as CR 7 or something (in Van Richten's, she's a Wraith, though also one with an effectively unlimited Disintegrate spell with a crazy high CR of 18, which I'd think would bump her up a fair bit from a Wraith's normal CR 5).

Thus, I suspect that we're getting a bunch of Darklord statblocks (we've already seen on for Cthulhu).

I do wonder, though, if they intend to roll back any of the controversial changes from Van Richten's - I hope not, as I'm very happy with the way that the setting is presented in that book - but we'll see.

Racing Through Pragmata's Post-Game

 After you beat Pragmata, you get an option to start a new save file that basically backs you up to before the final boss fight, with all the upgrades an unlocks that you've got, and a new area appears on the map. It's not a full zone, but instead is basically another Shelter-like space that has ten simulation beds like the one you use for your Training Missions.

When I showed up, several of them were already open. I believe this is because, in the course of the main game, I had collected all the items, boxes, etc., in each zone - I suspect that these open training pods would have been closed if I had not yet completed that element of the game. Four others can be unlocked by going back and fighting upgraded versions of each of the four major bosses from the zones (prior to the central tower).

Maybe because of my thoroughness and upgrades I'd already gotten, I didn't find these bosses terribly challenging. I don't think I died to any of them (in fairness, I think the only bosses I died to in the initial run of the game were the one in the Terra Dome and the final boss). Still, it was fun to come back to them (and I hope that you can just re-fight them as much as you like, though I haven't tried to).

Each opens up another simulated mission, which are all somewhat similar to the challenges in the Training Mode from the base game, but none had time limits or bonus objectives, so while there were some tough combat challenges, it wasn't anything to break your controller over (the final challenge is a gauntlet of fights, eventually pitting you against two of those Dead Filament-corrupted kind of Ninja-like robot minibosses, the first of which you have to fend off while Diana is being repaired at the Cradle, though there's an incinerator you can lure them into, and I was able to wipe out one very quickly).

I've completed all the challenges in the hidden room, which opens up a vault containing new costumes for Hugh and Diana, a new weapon that lets you shoot Lunafilament (yes, you can turn what is essentially your XP/money into ammo,) and a Mod that I believe doesn't actually do anything for you mechanically, but notably seems to help people infected with Dead Filament survive.

UPDATE: I beat the game again - there are few enough changes that I'm just going to add to this post instead of making a whole new one.

Uh, spoilers:

Pragmata Completed

 Pragmata is a good game.

I think that's been the general critical consensus. I've now finished it, and while in true Capcom fashion, there's some bonus content I've unlocked for having beaten the story, I've got the main thing packed up. Indeed, I even 100% all of the items in each zone (though I think there were like one or two Mini-Cabins I didn't find - but the "map complete" percentages were all 100%).

I don't want to get too much into spoilers here, but it is really interesting to me that there are only really four major characters in the story, and one is dead by the time the game starts.

As charming as the game's central relationship between Hugh and Diana is (and it really is charming,) there's a certain melancholy to the story, born in part by the fact that it all takes place on a moon base where everyone's dead. Shortly after the game begins, Hugh is the only living person on the base. (There's not a lot of talk about the actual name of the base - I think it is, hubristically enough, called Babel, and run by the Delphi corporation.)

I guess we should get into spoilers now:

Building an Alucard for Ravenloft's Strahd von Zarovich

 A couple years ago, my friend ran The House of Lament, the starter adventure in Van Richten's Guide to Ravenloft. As a joke, initially, the character I came up with for it was Alexander von Zarovich, a dhampir rogue who was the son of infamous Darklord Strahd von Zarovich. His backstory was that he had been initially born as a means for Strahd to escape the Domains of Dread (back during Strahd's collaborations with Azalin) by essentially creating a suitable vessel to transfer his soul into while leaving his soulless body behind to remain trapped as Darklord. The experiment failed, and so Strahd transformed his son into an assassin, sent to terrorize his enemies. When Alexander accidentally killed the current incarnation of Tatyana, Strahd cast him out, banishing him to the Mists. Finding himself in Lamordia, he lived as an orphan but was taken in by a kindly adult who helped rehabilitate and de-program him, allowing him to grow into a (relatively) well-adjusted adult.

While the idea of a dhampir son of Strahd was the kind of one-shot joke character, I actually realized the concept had legs (hence the extensive backstory). I haven't had an opportunity to play this character in a larger campaign, but I could see myself doing so.

Naturally, there's some precedent from the Castlevania series, with the character of Alucard, aka Adrian Tepes, the son of Dracula and his human wife Lisa. As a Dhampir, Alucard heroically opposes his monstrous father while also being a bit of an edgelord himself.

Initially, my idea for Xander would be as a Rogue - that's how I played him in the House of Lament - but while I like that conceptually, I think A: a little frustration with the Rogue as a class and B: a desire for a more effective melee fighter has led me to consider an alternative.

Initially I thought maybe a fighter, probably a Dexterity-based one using a Rapier or perhaps dual-wielding. And then it struck me:

Bladesinger.

While I tend to prefer my Battlemages heavily armored, the Bladesinger does satisfy that definition of being a character who can use both spells and weapons (I know that "Battlemage" means other things to different people - to me I think it's kind of the less IP-specific "Gish" idea, which is best embodied in D&D with the Eldritch Knight Fighter subclass).

Not only is the Bladesinger a cool and powerful subclass, but it also, I think, fits well with the aesthetic of a vampiric warrior - vampires are rarely seen wearing armor, for example. They also tend to have magic powers, and we're going to be looking at a lot of the spells I'd choose to fit in with these themes (which also happen to go together for the most part).

I've got a build here that goes to level 10.

The 5.5 Bladesinger, from Heroes of Faerun, makes them a little less dependent on having high Dexterity, because you can now use Intelligence to attack while in your Bladesong. I do think you'll still want at least decent Dex, as it still raises your AC, initiative bonus, and of course helps with Dex saves. Potentially you could go with 15s in Int, Dex, and Con, though I tend to prefer starting with a 17 in my top stat at level 1 in 5.5 so that I can put it to 18 at level 4 with a General Feat.

Naturally, we'll be grabbing War Caster at level 4, which A: is basically what every spellcaster should take at level 4, but B: also really good given that we'll be mixing it up in melee and being able to Booming Blade as an opportunity attack.

Given the desire to have some feats in tier 3 to boost Dex and/or Con, I'm going to actually say we just push Int to 20 at level 8, rather than taking another Int-based General feat. Shadow Touched would certainly be thematic here, and there are some other Int-based feats to consider, but I have an OCD thing about capping stats.

For weapon choice, there are lots of options, because you're basically going to get a d8 weapon at best - even if you fight with a longsword, you can't use its versatile property without ending Bladesong, and given that you don't get weapon masteries, it's really just a choice of damage types. Thematically, I really feel like we've got to go with the Rapier, which just feels like the elegant vampiric weapon to pick. I could see a Whip also working, which sacrifices 2 damage on average for extra reach. That reach could be very helpful as a (somewhat) squishy Wizard, but I'm going to say let's risk it.

Now, spells:

For cantrips, the must-haves are Booming Blade and Green-Flame Blade. The former is particularly good as an opportunity attack with War Caster (unless your DM is an insane stickler and says that the spell targets the weapon, rather than the target of the attack). We can start off with True Strike if we're beginning at level 1 in order to be able to attack with a weapon before we get our subclass, but we might want to just stick to the back until then. We might consider having a ranged cantrip (Mind Sliver feels on-theme and is also good) but these are going to be our bread-and-butter. Blade Ward is also a decent choice, as once we get to level 6 and get our special Extra Attack, we can pop this up to effectively increase our AC by 1d4 on each hit (though it does eat up our concentration, so this might be better if we're in a big dungeon crawl with a lot of smaller fights where we don't want to blow a high-level spell slot on something).

First level, we want to grab Shield and Mage Armor. We cannot wear armor in the Bladesong (a change from the old version) so this will be our best option for armor unless we can get something like a Robe of the Archmagi or something far later on. Remember that Bladesong doesn't change the math of how we determine our armor - it just adds our Int modifier to AC, so if we have a +2 to Dex, Mage Armor, and +3 to Int at level 3, that's a healthy 18 AC, which will be better than even heavy-armor wearers unless they have a shield or somehow snagged plate this early. I'd also take Absorb Elements, another staple. Staples like Find Familiar (feels like it should be a bat) and Identify/Detect Magic are also good - we will still be a Wizard, and people will rely on us for stuff like that. I also like Jump here, which helps with our mobility as a melee wizard and again, feels very much like a vampire thing to do.

Second level, another spell I'd take on any character, Misty Step feels particularly good for our vampire theme (doesn't Alucard have an ability in Symphony of the Night where he turns into mist to go through barred barriers?) This is such a staple spell that I have zero hesitation putting it in there. It'll also potentially help us get to foes faster. Invisibility is another good utility spell that, again, lends itself to our spooky vibes.

Third level, there are a few standard choices (I'll never not take Fireball on a Wizard,) and Fear is a really good and again, thematic choice for our big Crowd Control spell. However, we now have an interesting question: Do we take Spirit Shroud? I made a post last fall comparing this spell to Conjure Minor Elementals. The short story: Spirit Shroud is more convenient, but doesn't scale as well. Each adds damage to attacks you make if the target is within a relatively close emanation, which is really powerful when you can make lots of attacks (it pairs well with Scorching Ray,) and given that our Bladesinger can regularly make two attacks per turn starting at level 6, we can often benefit from this. Spirit Shroud is less damage, but I do think it's way more thematically on-point than CME. It also only requires a bonus action to cast it, so we can start attacking on the same turn. That said, we also need our bonus action to activate Bladesong, so we probably won't be casting it until turn 2 in combat. Now, that's not really a downside given that if we have CME, we'll probably be activating Bladesong and then casting that on turn 1 and not attacking until turn 2 anyway - with Spirit Shroud we can at least attack in a non-augmented way on turn 1. So, it really depends on A: how long your combat lasts and B: how much you can upcast your spells. While I took CME on my D&D Beyond build of the character, I might actually argue that you should go Spirit Shroud if for no other reason than it feels way more on-theme. For other 3rd level spells, I like Summon Undead - all the Summon spells are pretty good, and both add a body to the field and do pretty decent damage (Summon Undead also has great utility, as the Ghost can automatically frighten anyone they hit, and the Putrid spirit requires some set-up and for monsters that aren't immune to being poisoned, but can paralyze things).

Fourth level, Polymorph is a key one - being able to turn into a Wolf or a Bat (talk with your DM about re-skinning higher-CR beasts so you can stay on-theme) is another big vampire trope. Conjure Minor Elementals is less thematic but still great for any Wizard who makes attack rolls. Greater Invisibility can be a really strong spell for both attack and defense if you can spare the concentration.

Rounding things out at 5th level, I think we've got to take Steel Wind Strike, which is a weird sort of pseudo-AOE spell that works very well with the idea of a weapon-wielding Wizard. It plays well with Spirit Shroud/CME, and while it's limited to 5 targets, how often do you get 5 targets in a Fireball? I also grabbed Danse Macabre, which is mostly just fun but I also think not all that bad - considering that Skeletons in 5.5 now have a base attack bonus of +5, if your Int is maxed out, they'll have a +10 to hit and deal 1d6+8 damage on each attack. With five skeletons shooting bows, that's 5d6+40 damage. Against an AC of 18, that's 38.25 average damage per turn. It is dependent on how many skeletons you have access to.

In terms of gameplay, there are some arguments that even a Bladesinger should mostly play like a standard Wizard most of the time, holding back from the fray. But to that, I say: why don't you want to have fun? Truly, by level 10, we're going to be pretty resilient - with +5 to Int, Mage Armor, and still just +2 to Dex, we're going to have an AC of 20 during Bladesong that can then be bumped to 25 if we get hit thanks to the Shield spell. If we get Bracers of Defense, raise those by 2. We might even consider starting with a +3 in Dex, though I generally think a Wizard should favor Con more than Dex, as not all damage requires them to hit you with an attack, and you still only have a d6 hit die. At level 10, we can expend spell slots as a reaction to reduce incoming damage by 5 times the spell's level. I think judicious use of that feature is an important challenge for the Wizard using it - reducing the damage of a dragon's breath, for example, could make it possible for you to maintain concentration on a spell.

One of the fun things about playing this as a Dhampir is that you could, in theory, have a fight along walls and ceilings, which does feel like a fun idea for a rapier-wielding warrior. Being based in Con, and with very few ways to increase the damage, I don't think you'll be using the bite attack all that much, but that's kind of true for all dhampirs.

We will be getting an update to the Dhampir in Ravenloft: Horrors Within, though I don't know how much is likely to change (I suspect not a ton, though they seem to be presenting the Gothic Lineages as more just full-on species in their own right, so we might have some changes to Ancestral Legacy).

At level 10, we get 5 Bladesongs per long rest, so we can probably expect to have it active every fight unless we're in serious dungeon-crawl mode. If we do run out, I think we just hurl spells from afar or focus on buffing allies.

When we want to bring our A-game, we spend the first turn activating Bladesong and then going in for the attack (if we're close enough - we should have a 45-foot movement speed) with a Booming Blade on single targets or Green-Flame Blade if we can hit a secondary target. On turn two, we'll want to activate Spirit Shroud at 5th level (we always want to cast it at odd levels, given how it scales) and then attack again, now dealing 2d8 extra damage (our choice of radiant, necrotic, or cold - radiant's probably the most reliable, but thematically we might go necrotic more often than not) per hit. Again, if we are using CME instead (also at 5th level, this now adding 3d8 to our attacks - I feel like Fire damage would be the thematically appropriate one, though Cold also works. Just pick the right one for the monsters you're fighting), we'll spend our first turn setting up, getting Bladesong and CME running, and then turn two we'll use our action to either attack or if we have a target-rich environment, we can do Steel Wind Strike, hitting each foe for both the spell's 6d10 and the bonus d8s. Note that this will blow both our 5th level slots, so we should only burn both of these spells if we want to burn a lot of gas.

If we want to be a little more conservative, casting either Spirit Shroud or CME at base level is an option. Greater Invisibility is also a decent choice (assuming your foes don't have Blindsight/Truesight).

Again, we are a Wizard, so we have tons of alternatives given the situation. Fear, for example, can seriously thin the ranks if we're facing a massive horde of foes.

When facing a hard-hitting foe, we can run in, attack, and then Misty Step to avoid their strikes if we're not sure Shield will be enough to keep us safe. Also, if you want to play it extra-safe and conservative, consider Blade Ward as your concentration spell, which you can cast on turn 1 after Spirit Shrouding with your Extra Attack. This feels ideal for minor fights in a dungeon room - I'm thinking specifically the vineyard in Curse of Strahd that is overrun with Blights - each fight is trivial, but there are so many little fights there that they can chip away at your HP and resources.

Anyway, I think this could be a very fun archetype - while the Bladesinger can work in any campaign, I do think that it's a strong choice for a lithe, elegant dhampir warrior in a very gothic campaign.