Circle of Titans (v2)

 The previous Unearthed Arcana gave us several "villainous" subclasses and character options. They've now come back with a revision to a few of these.

We'll start with the Druid's Circle of Titans. In the "One D&D" playtest, they briefly experimented with the idea of having the Circle of the Moon use three broad templates (similar to the stat blocks for the Beast Master Ranger's pets) rather than having you search through beast stat blocks. I actually far preferred this as a design idea, because it made the subclass more consistent, but the problem was that the templates sucked. A lot of people also didn't like the lack of versatility. But I think they abandoned the idea too quickly. Thankfully, the Circle of Titans revisits this concept. And while the previous UA version of it replicated some of the same mistakes (the Insectoid form more or less capped its AC at 13) the new one seems poised to fix these problems and then some.

Indeed, on first glance, I'm excited for this version of the subclass, but is it too powerful?

Let's do a full preview.

Circle Spells:

Cantrip: Thaumaturgy

1st: Thunderwave

2nd: Enlarge/Reduce

3rd: Fear

4th: Fire Shield

5th: Destructive Wave

    Notably, you can cast these spells while in your Titan Form. I think these are pretty solid spell options - Fear is a great crowd control spell, and while you can buff your own attacks with Enlarge/Reduce, you might start getting absurdly big.

Level 3:

Titan Form:

When you use Wild Shape, you can adopt a Titan Form, choosing from Behemoth, Leviathan, or Insectoid stat blocks. You can only stay in a Titan Form for up to 10 minutes.

Each Titan Form gains new abilities and features as you gain Druid levels. Broadly, each one uses your spell attack modifier for its attack rolls, gets Extra Attack at level 5, has Strength and Dexterity equal to your Wisdom scores (other stats remain the same,) has a 40 foot speed and a 40-foot alternate speed depending on the form. Each has an AC equal to 13+ your Wisdom modifier, Darkvision out to 60 feet, and grants Temp HP equal to 4 times your Druid level. Also, each form is a Siege Monster, dealing double damage to objects and structures.

    Notably, that's now more temp HP than Moon Druids get, but the form is also, of course, much more limited in duration. Basically, it'll be like a Barbarian's Rage, certainly usable in a whole combat, but maybe not two fights.

Lastly, each form's Rend attack (its primary melee attack) deals 1d8+Wisdom damage - slashing, bludgeoning, and piercing damage for the Behemoth, Leviathan, and Insectoid respectively. This damage scales up as you level up, going to 2d8 at level 6 and 3d8 at level 12. (Also, Rend has a 10-foot reach.)

    That's actually a pretty big deal - you effectively have a somewhat better Vicious weapon (adding 2d8 rather than 2d6) automatically by level 12, and you can still benefit from magic items that boost your spell attack modifier.

Here are specific things each form gets:

Behemoth:

This one gets a climb speed. Incandescent Breath lets you, as an action, expend a spell slot to do a big 60-foot line breath weapon attack. This deals 2d10 radiant damage per spell level, with a Dex save for half. As a bonus action, Rampager (which requires level 10) lets you expend a spell slot to move up to half your speed without provoking opportunity attacks. When you enter the space of an enemy at least two sizes smaller than you for the first time on a turn, that creature has to make a Strength saving throw or be knocked prone, and if they're already prone, they take 1d10 bludgeoning per spell level expended.

    Compared to, say, a Lightning Bolt, a 3rd level Incandescent Breath would deal 6d10, or about 33 damage, which is more than the 28 you get on average for Lightning Bolt (though a shorter line). And it scales better with upcasting. Rampager is one I suspect I'd rarely upcast, as I'd mainly want it to knock targets prone.

Leviathan:

This one has a swim speed and Amphibious, to let you breathe underwater. Toxic Deluge (requires level 10) lets you expend a spell slot as a bonus action, forcing each creature of your choice in a 10-foot emanation to make a Con save, taking 2d4 poison damage per spell level and becoming Poisoned until the start of your next turn on a failure.

    The emanation does get bigger the bigger you get, but I'm less excited by this - 5 average damage per spell level and save for none. Still, in a crowd it could do a lot, and given how big we get, we can often occupy the same spaces as other creatures. Once again, though, I think that the aquatic form is probably only going to be used when you're fighting underwater.

Insectoid:

This one has a fly speed. At level 10, it get Flyby. Energizing Pollen lets you, as an action, expend a spell slot to move up to half your speed without provoking opportunity attacks, and when you move within 5 feet of a creature during this movement, you can restore HP to them equal to 2d6 per spell slot expended. (They can only receive this once per use of this feature).

    So, Flyby is going to be pretty helpful given that you can still only attack in melee. Energizing Pollen isn't going to keep pace with a Cure Wounds, but it can potentially hit a few of your allies, so the better point of comparison is something like Mass Cure Wounds. At 5th level, Mass Cure Wounds heals for 5d8+Wisdom (we'd guess 4 if you're 9th level) so around 27.5. This would do 10d6 when used at 5th level, so 35 average - but it'd be harder to hit your entire party with it.

Level 6:

Oh right, there are more features.

Dire Impact:

You gain the following benefits:

Elemental Rend: When you hit with your Titan Form's Rend, you can cause it to deal Acid, Cold, Fire, Lightning, or Thunder damage rather than its normal damage type.

    This is a standard level 6 feature for any subclass that has special/built-in weapons. Less important with the reduction in resistance/immunity to physical damage, but not a bad thing to have.

Shock Wave: Once per turn, immediately after you move at least half your speed, youc an create a shockwave in a 10 foot emanation around you. Each creature in the emanation makes a Con save, falling prone on a failure.

    My first thought was that this was redundant with a Behemoth's Rampager, but it's actually more synergistic with it. Indeed, this is actually kind of crazy, because this just happens if you happen to move on your turn, requiring nothing like a bonus action or anything like that.

Level 10:

Primal Havoc:

You gain the following benefits:

Huge Size: You can choose to become Huge when assuming your Titan Form if there's enough space.

    The reasons to do this (other than because it's freaking awesome) are that it can increase the size of your emanations, and also you can potentially grapple Gargantuan monsters.

Toughened Hide: Immediately after you assume a Huge or larger Titan Form, you can expend a spell slot. While in the form, you gain a bonus to your AC equal to half the expended spell slot's level (rounded up).

    Ok, so this is interesting. By 10 I figure you either have a +4 or +5 to Wisdom, meaning you're at a 17 or 18 AC. If you want to go whole-hog, you could expend a 5th level spell slot to add 3 to that. I'm not sure what, exactly, the ideal expenditure here is, but certainly when you hit a point where you're barely ever using your lower-level spell slots, getting a +1 bonus from a 1st level slot or a +2 bonus from a 3rd level slot is... decent, I guess? Depends a bit on what you're expecting to fight. Probably always want to use an odd-numbered slot for this, thanks to the way it rounds.

Above It All: When you are Huge or larger in your Titan form, difficult terrain caused by heavy snow, ice, rubble, or undergrowth doesn't cost you extra movement.

    Weirdly specific, but there's a logic to it.

Level 14:

Monstrous Appetite:

You gain the following:

Gargantuan Size: You can choose to become Gargantuan when you assume your Titan form if there's space.

    Mainly this is just very cool, fulfilling the promise of the subclass.

Grappling Rend: Once per turn, when you are Huge or larger and hit a creature with your Rend attack, you can grapple the target (escape DC is your spell save DC). You can only have one creature grappled this way at a time.

    Notably, this is a way for a player to get a no-save Grapple on a target. Lots of monsters do this, but typically if a PC wants to do this, the target gets a saving throw even when the grapple is initiated.

Swallow: As a bonus action when you are Gargantuan, you can choose a Large or smaller creature you are grappling. The target makes a Strength saving throw. On a failure, the creature is no longer Grappled but is instead Restrained and Blinded, has total cover against attacks outside your stomach, and takes Acid damage at the start of each of your turns - the damage is a number of d12s equal to your Wisdom modifier.

You can have a number of creatures swallowed up to your Wisdom modifier (minimum 1) at a time. You must maintain concentration to hold a swallowed creature in your stomach. If you lose concentration, you regurgitate all swallowed creatures in a space within 10 feet of you, and each has the prone condition.

    Ok, so let's consider this: While there are two d20 tests that need to go your way for this to work, this is pretty powerful crowd control and damage over time. At this level, it's probably 5d12 damage per turn (or around 33.5) to up to 5 creatures. Sure, you'll really need to protect your concentration somehow. But there's no resource expenditure (other than Wild Shape,) and just takes a bonus action.

Overall Thoughts:

    I want to play this subclass. This fulfills such a great fantasy. Is it too powerful? It might be. I think some of the scaling on the spell-like effects the forms get might be too high. But I think this could just be insanely cool to play.

I think that this is something people would eagerly pick as their subclass, and so the only real problem I could see arising is that people might not want to do Circle of the Moon anymore. That is a problem - power creep isn't good for modular games.

But broadly, I think that the design here has the right idea, and now it's just a matter of trimming things back without breaking the thing. Truly, the Druid subclass I'd be most eager to play.

Adjustments to the Inner Shadow Barbarian

 So, iteration is always important in design.

Generally speaking, I think that good design in something out of D&D is when you get something cool and new but it's rendered in the simplest, most elegant way.

The Inner Shadow Barbarian is my design for a character I'd want to play. It's pretty important, though, for me, to make it balanced and also coherent. So often, I think, 3rd party and/or homebrew design can veer into wish fulfillment, being either overpowered or trying to force a scenario that could potentially play out in other ways.

I presented this in an earlier post, but I had two goals for this subclass:

First, to make a viable Barbarian subclass focused on Unarmed Strikes. Second, to make a subclass that flavored Rage as more of a transformation.

Since getting into the games from Remedy, specifically the Alan Wake series, I've been really interesting in the Jungian idea of the Shadow. Jung, of course, studied with Freud, who came up with the idea of a threefold psyche composed of the Ego, Superego, and Id. The Id (whose potency as an idea is really aided by its simple two-letter spelling) is the impulse and unchecked drive and desire, which I think relates well to the idea of Rage - a kind of submission to the Id and the abandonment of any of the checks or restraints the Ego and Superego place upon the Id.

Jung's idea of the Shadow is not really the same, but they could be related - it's basically the aspects of our selves that we aren't aware of - an unconscious self-perception or desire that might even contradict the image we have of ourselves.

So, the concept here is that Rage unleashes a suppressed or even just unconscious part of the Barbarian's psyche as a separate persona.

Now, I'll concede here that the connection between that and the mechanical theming of an unarmed Barbarian isn't inherent to the concept. But I do think we need a good unarmed Barbarian subclass, and I think that this fits with multiple Barbarian character concepts I've had. Given how much Gothic Horror is about that Jungian shadow (describing it before he defined it in the 20th century,) I think both the folklore of the Werewolf and also the Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde story both sort of fit with this idea. I had really wanted to make a werewolf Barbarian, but the Path of the Beast didn't really do it for me (I'll concede that at least on a conceptual level, there's certainly overlap here).

But later, I had a more elaborate character concept of a man who becomes trapped in the Shadowfell for several years (yes, like Alan Wake getting trapped in the Dark Place) and manifests this shadowy persona called "Mr. Teeth" in order to survive there, though he erroneously (or I guess it'd be up to my DM) thinks that Mr. Teeth is a separate being who terrorized him (but also just happened to slaughter anyone who threatened him in the Shadowfell). Having returned to the Material Plane, he's brought Mr. Teeth along with him, and becomes the monster when he needs to protect himself.

But all that preamble aside, what changes have I made since that first post? And what other changes might be called for? For reference, here's a link to the initial post.

First off: damage scaling.

I think one of the things we have to do with any unarmed-focused subclass is not step on anyone's toes. It sucks when one class is better at doing the thing that another class is entirely built around. Thus, I've changed the scaling of the Inner Shadow's Unarmed Strike damage to be at best equal to an equivalent-level Monk, never better than it. Thus, when you get the subclass at level 3, your unarmed strikes deal 1d6 damage. At level 6, a level after Monks get their first upgrade, your unarmed strikes go up to a d8. Finally, at level 14 (three levels after Monks get this) you go up to a d10, and that's where it stops. A d10 is fine - it's the equivalent of a Glaive or Halberd. Thanks to the Wraps of Unarmed Prowess, unarmed strikes will at least be able to get the most basic scaling with items (though I do think we need some items that let you add extra dice to your unarmed strikes, like a Vicious Weapon).

Next, we look at the Flurry of Claws element of Monstrous Claws (which is now Monstrous Swipes). This is a buff primarily to avoid some awkwardness - your bonus action unarmed strike still gets to add your Strength to it. Mainly, this felt necessary if we were going to let your unarmed strikes benefit from Graze - why should you get to add your Strength only if you miss?

We're going to come back to Shadow Manifestation, which I think might need a redesign for clarity.

Vicious Swipes (the new Nightmare Claws because we're saving the "Nightmare" term for later, and also swipes allows for non-slashing damage) is unchanged.

Ok, now, Raging Hurl was cool, but we were trying too hard to do what we can already kind of handle with Shoves. So, we replaced it (as I already mentioned in the subsequent post) with Enraged Manipulation, which gives foes disadvantage on their saving throws against Shoves and Grapples if we're raging. The intent here is to recreate the benefits that Rage gave to these actions in 5.0, essentially, when they took an Athletics check.

Vicious Claws got renamed to Nightmare Swipes, because "nightmare" feels like it should be more powerful than "vicious." I will say that I'm now wondering if we should get a once-a-turn Fear effect on our attacks, like an Undead Warlock. I also bumped it to level 14 to make it fair to Monks, and as mentioned before, it bumps you to a d10 rather than 2d6.

Secrets of the Id was a feature I liked, but it also felt potentially like not enough for your level 10 features (especially when putting Nightmare Swipes at level 14). I didn't want to directly replicate anything from another Barbarian subclass, so you don't get full immunity to Charm and Fear, but you get advantage on saves against them while raging. It's strictly worse, of course, than Mindless Rage for Berserkers, but I think we have enough unique stuff going on here that it's probably ok. You still get those extra skills with Primal Knowledge.

Metamorphic Manifestation is unchanged.

    So, let's come back to Shadow Manifestation.

The real problem I have here is just wording it clearly. The idea is that if you're raging and you get hit with any damage, you deal a bit of extra damage on any attacks until the end of your next turn. But while this idea isn't hard to communicate, it's surprisingly hard to put into strict and clear language. I considered saying "when you take damage, you enter a state of shadowy fury. While in this state, your Rage bonus damage to your attacks is doubled." That's a bit awkward, but the older phrasing "when you take damage your rage bonus is doubled until the end of your next turn" could lead people to think this is exponential - get hit three times at level 10 and you're dealing 24 extra damage per hit. That's obviously not the intent.

So, we could keep hunting for a new way to phrase this, or we could just come up with a different mechanic for Shadow Manifestation.

I still have this design in my "version 3" document, but I do think there's a reasonably similar feature: we could just say that "when a creature within 30 feet of you deals damage to you while you are raging, they take Force damage (could be psychic) equal to your Rage bonus." This could give us more or less damage depending on how many times they hit us. But one thing I like that's kind of elegant here is that it's not rolled, just a flat amount, which means that it can be shouted out easily during combat without pausing much.

If we go with this, maybe when we hit level 10 (which still feels a little thin) we might get to start to add our Strength modifier to this, helping it scale better into higher levels.

It's admittedly maybe an imperfect design - Barbarians usually don't disincentivize monsters from attacking them because it's better for them to get attacked than their allies - but it could still be good.

Staff-And-Board Eldritch Knight Build

 So, there are a couple things that I hadn't really considered until recently.

First off: as an Eldritch Knight, you have an odd conundrum. You can use an Arcane Focus for your spells, which is great, but you don't get to use your weapons as arcane foci. It seems like an insane oversight that in 2024, the updated EK didn't change War Bond to let you use the bonded weapon as a spell focus. The feature is almost never relevant.

Why do we need an arcane focus? Well, if you have any kind of set-up where you've got both hands occupied, you technically can't perform the somatic components of spells. As such, my old Dragonborn EK Jax would constantly have to drop his +1 Battleaxe when he wanted to cast Shield, and then pick it up on his next turn.

There is some ambiguity over whether you can still use somatic components in a hand that is holding a spell focus when the spell itself doesn't have a material component, but I think the reasonable common-sense reading is that you could.

And so, we come to the Staff - an Arcane Focus option. It costs more than a Quarterstaff (5 gold rather than 2 silver) but it also pretty explicitly states that the Staff can also be used as a Quarterstaff.

And that solves Jax's problem.

Despite their size, Quarterstaffs (quarterstaves?) are one-handed weapons. You can bump them up to a d8 damage die if you wield them with two hands, but you don't have to.

The second thing I realized is that, 99% of the time when I think about the Polearm Master feat, I imagine using it with a Heavy Reach weapon - the Halberd, Glaive, Lance, or Pike. But it actually works fine with both Spears and Quarterstaffs - both its Pole Strike and Reactive Strike features can work with those weapons as well. (Screw Tridents, I guess).

So, I thought I'd try a build that uses this to allow the Fighter to focus on feats that boost Strength and doesn't need to worry about picking up War Caster. Notably, using a two-handed weapon actually also makes this less of an issue because we have a hand free when we're not in the middle of an attack. But if we truly wanted to never have to worry about material components or somatic components at all, or we wanted to go for a "sword"-and-board build, this does work for us.

And while we won't be hitting as hard with a Quarterstaff as we would with a Glaive (and more importantly miss out on Graze,) the addition of that Pole Strike attack could make this do pretty decent damage. I think.

    Now, I've been doing a lot of calculations for these builds when fighting a Death Knight, which feels like a pretty epic final boss of a campaign that ends at level 10. But I think the Death Knight's super-high armor, damage immunities, and other things might be skewing some of my results a little.

As such, I'm going to calculate this against a more typical enemy. The key takeaway is that we shouldn't compare this damage output with the various builds we've been doing for the last month. This is going to be higher than it would be against a Death Knight.

What monster to fight, though? Well, a level 10 character accounts for an XP budget of 1600, 2300, or 3100 xp in a low, medium, or high difficulty encounter, respectively. That'd be a CR 6 monster at medium difficulty. Chimeras, Wyverns, and Medusas all fit in that CR range, though I think probably the former and latter are more likely to be encountered on their own, so we'll use Wyverns, which feel like pretty standard fantasy monsters that can fit in tons of campaigns.

So, that's what we'll use for our standard monster example (they all have similar ACs, which is encouraging).

Now, the build!

    Weapons:

I think I laid this out pretty clearly - we're using a Staff in our main hand and a shield in our off hand. This will deal 1d6 damage and has the topple mastery (which could be amazing if we're fighting the monster mid-air, but we'll assume we're on the ground).

    Spells:

Naturally, as an Eldritch Knight, we're going to want Booming Blade and Green-Flame Blade. If the Wyvern has a rider, GFB is a great option here, but we're going to focus on the primary target.

Once again, I think the only really clear spell to boost our damage at this level (I did say we were level 10, right?) is going to be Enlarge/Reduce, making us big to add a d4 to each attack. We can burn our Action Surge to cast it and then get our normal attacks.

Beyond that, I'd probably save spells for Shield and such.

    Feats:

Ok, because we've got our spell focus in hand, we don't need to grab War Caster (the advantage on concentration saves would be great, as would the opp attack spells, but we can afford to delay it).

So, to start off, for our Fighting Style we'll grab Dueling. Yeah, maybe if we're going sword-and-board we'd want to go Defensive for ourselves or Interception for our friends, but I think we can stand to push a little more into damage (and this will help mitigate the low damage of the quarterstaff as well). If we want to leave the option open to go for a two-handed weapon, we could take something like Defensive or Blind Fighting, or again, Interception. but for the purposes of this build, we'll assume Dueling.

Then, we grab Polearm Master at level 4, boosting Strength to 18 and giving us mainly our Pole Strike bonus action (Reactive Strike can be all well and good, but we're not going to factor it into our calculations). This lets us just make a bonus action d4 attack every turn as long as we're attacking, which is nearly as much damage as the quarterstaff normally gets.

For level 6, I'd grab Mage Slayer, which feels like it should be a martial staple from now on, though it doesn't increase our damage.

At level 8, if we want to fully commit to sword-and-board for the rest of our career, we could go Shield Master. Alternatively, if we want a bit more survivability, we could grab Heavy Armor Master. Sentinel might be the better option, and gets better if we want to keep open the option that we might use a two-handed polearm instead (though Dueling doesn't really work with that) but is still great for us as-is. So, I think we'll stick to Sentinel.

    Game Plan:

So, pretty simple: we Enlarge ourselves and then whack them with the staff twice, weaving in Booming Blade or Green-Flame Blade as appropriate.

There is one nuance we need to address, though:

If we knock them prone with the Topple Mastery, we can assume they'll spend half their movement to stand up. But does this count as moving to trigger Booming Blade? Thanks to Tactical Master, we can always swap our mastery to something else if we've already knocked them prone, so we could force that thunder damage if they want to get up and attack us again. There'll be some weird math to take into account, but the main thing is we can assume our first attack doesn't get advantage one way or another because they'll have stood up by the time it comes back to our turn.

As such, we'll save Booming Blade for our second attack.

Ok, so first attack is simple:

We have a +5 to Strength, and thus we have a +9 to hit with our attacks. Against the Wyvern's AC of 14, that means that we're going to be hitting 80% of the time. A hit deals 1d6+1d4+7 damage, or 13 on average, with an extra 6 on a crit. So, that's 10.4 plus .65 for a total of 11.05 average on this first attack.

Now:

If we do hit, the Wyvern needs to make a Con save against our Topple DC. That's going to be 17 at this level. With a +3 to Con saves, the Wyvern has to roll a 14 or higher to avoid falling prone. Thus, that's a 65% chance that they do fall prone. However, that only happens if we hit, which is 80%, meaning the total chance that the target is prone and thus giving us advantage on our next attack is 80%x65%, or 52%.

Now, I believe your Pole Strike has to come after your Attack Action, so we'll say the Booming Blade attack comes next.

If we don't have advantage, we'll have the same 80% chance to hit. This hit will, however, deal 1d6+1d8+1d4+7, or an average of 17.5, and an extra 10.5 on a crit. So, when we don't have advantage, we'll deal 17.5x80% plus 10.5x5%, which gives us 14 plus .525. That's pretty easy to add together. However, this only happens 48% of the time (which is fine because it'll be higher when we add the advantage version) so this contributes 14.525x48%, or 6.972.

If we do have advantage, that 80% chance becomes 96%, and the crit chance becomes 9.75%, so 17.5x96% is 16.8 and 10.5x9.75% is about 1.02375, so we're looking at about 17.82. This, then, is going to be 52% of the time, so it's roughly 9.3 damage.

Thus, our Booming Blade attack does about 16.3 damage on average.

(For future stuff here, we'll need to also figure out the average chance Booming Blade hits, which is 80%x48% plus 96%x52%, which gives us 38.4% plus 49.92%, or a total of 88.32%. We'll just hold onto this).

Now, our bonus action Pole Strike is where this gets more complicated.

If we successfully knocked the Wyvern prone on our first attack, we'd just swap to something like Sap on the Booming Blade attack. But if we hadn't, we'll still try to knock them prone. I actually think this winds up just being the same as if we were figuring out if they fell on either of two attacks - we don't need to consider how getting advantage on the second attack would have affected this because, well, we wouldn't have had it. So I think this becomes the inverse of 48% squared. Thus, we wind up with a roughly 77% chance to have them prone by the time we make our Pole Strike.

For the Pole Strike, we're going to use Tactical Master now to swap to Push, in an effort to trigger Booming Blade's extra damage.

Once again, we're looking at 80%/5% and 96%/9.75% for hits/crits, just in different ultimate proportions.

Our hits are less, though, here. On a hit, we deal 2d4+7, or 12 average, and 5 extra on a crit.

Without advantage, that's 12x80%, or 9.6, plus .25 for crits, so 9.85 overall. However, we only don't have advantage 23% of the time, so this contributes roughly 2.27.

With advantage, it's 12x96%, or 11.52, plus 5x9.75%, which is .4875, so we get almost exactly 12. And this happens 77% of the time, so it contributes 9.24.

Thus, the Pole Strike gives us an average of 11.51 damage.

Ok! So! On our turn, we should thus do 38.86 damage (this looks incredible compared to the Death Knight builds, but remember that this is a way lower AC monster).

However, there are two other things to consider:

Reaction strikes and Booming Blade bonus damage.

A few things have to happen for Booming Blade's extra damage to go off. We'll assume that if we do push the Wyvern that we're going to push them out of reach of us and any of our allies, and that they will need to move in some way. I think it's reasonable to say that "standing up" doesn't trigger Booming Blade's extra damage, so we're really just seeing if we A: hit with Booming Blade and B: successfully push the Wyvern away.

We figured out the chance to hit with Booming Blade earlier, which is 88.32%. Great. But we only get that damage if the Wyvern moves (on its own,) so we also need to land the Push attack with our Pole Strike.

23% of the time, we have an 80% chance to have advantage, and 77% of the time, we have a 96% chance to hit. Thankfully, there's no save versus Push. So, 80%x23% is 18.4%, and 96%x77% is 73.92%, so this winds up being a 92.32% chance we've been able to push them.

Oh no.

See, hitting them with the Booming Blade is also part of the math on determining if we topple them.

Uh, screw it, I'm going to keep going. I don't know how much that would change the math here, but it's probably not huge.

Actually, wait, no, it's fine, because we're going to try to push them anyway to get a reactive strike, so we'll be doing this whether or not the Booming Blade hit.

So, basically, we get the 2d8 (9 average) thunder damage from Booming Blade's secondary damage if we hit first with Booming Blade and then again with Pole Strike, so it's 88.32% times 92.32%, or about 81.54%. So, we add 9x81.54% to our total damage per round, giving us about 7.34 more damage.

That brings us up to 46.2 damage per round.

Lastly, we have our reaction strike.

Now, thanks to Sentinel and Polearm Master, there are a lot of ways for us to get a reaction attack. It is a bit dependent on enemy behavior. The worst case is if we fail to push them and they just attack us, which means no attack. But if they go after a nearby ally (we'll be out of range if we did push them, though) or if they do come back toward us after we push them, we can nail them with an attack.

There are too many factors at play here to get a strict probability, but for our "white room" scenario here, we'll assume that if our Push landed, we'll get to make this attack. We'll also assume they're not crawling toward us, so we won't have advantage.

Thus, it's our normal 80%/5% chance. In fact, I think all the math is the same as our first attack, so we can just add 11.05 damage - but only if we did get to Push them, which, as we determined earlier, is a 92.32%. Thus, this adds about 10.2 damage per round.

And that gives us an average of 56.4 damage per round.

Once again, I need to emphasize that we can't compare this to the earlier builds because the hit chance is so much higher than all our "vs Death Knight" ones.

Still, I'm inclined to think that this is pretty good.

The Mystery of Azalin Rex (And How to Use Him)

 The Domains of Dread are perfect prisons. The Darklords find themselves in positions of unrivaled power, not realizing that the domains are actually their cages.

Azalin Rex, though, is an exception. More than any other Darklord, he sought to understand the nature of the Mists, and somehow wrenched his mind away from the soporific influence of the Dark Powers that causes the Darklords (and many other inhabitants of Ravenloft) to rationalize the incongruities of their nightmare reality.

Azalin has, it seems, escaped from Ravenloft.

Now, there is precedence. Vecna, the ancient Lich who even succeeded in becoming a deity (if perhaps a lesser one,) was able to escape his domain and even attempt a ritual at becoming a greater deity within the city of Sigil (which is not supposed to be possible given the Lady of Pain). Liches, after all, must acquire immense arcane knowledge.

Still, Azalin's story is somewhat surprising. Metanarratively, I believe he was introduced specifically for the Ravenloft setting, and so figures like Vecna or Lord Soth, who came from the Greyhawk and Dragonlance settings, respectively, sort of "had other places to be," which is why it makes sense that WotC (and I think WotC did own D&D by the time that Die, Vecna, Die! came out) allowed them to escape (well, it was also a bit of a rights issue for Lord Soth). (Actually, no, scratch all this: Azalin's from Greyhawk originally.)

But it's interesting: while you could just run an adventure (or a whole campaign) in Darkon with Azalin back there before the Hour of Acension, I think that an Azalin-focused campaign is one that might go outside the traditional claustrophobic horror genre and veer more into traditional heroic D&D fantasy.

Let's talk about his stat block:

To a great extent, Azalin's stats are similar to that of a Lich, which makes sense given that he is a Lich. He's CR 23 (up from 21). He loses the At Will 5th level Fireball, but gets a 2/day Modify Memory. He's got more HP and while he can't cast Shield, his Counterspell lets him cast the spells that he counters. Also, his legendary actions are a little different.

But I think to a large extent, he's just a slightly tougher Lich, which is fine - Liches got way easier to run in 5.5 and also have enough HP to actually stick around for a few rounds.

One of the funny things, though, about both Liches and Darklords is that both have a thing that causes them to come back if slain. In Azalin's case, he's got multiple spirit jars, one that is outside of Darkon and one that is his old throne back in the ruins of Castle Avernus, which he'll default to if his preferred jar is destroyed.

If you're doing a story pre-Hour of Ascension, you could just have him respawn at the castle.

But yeah, let's talk about Azalin in a post-Hour of Ascension role.

First off, I think he might just not be in the Domains of Dread anymore at all. Perhaps he's in the broader Shadowfell, or he's back on the Prime Material Plane.

The possibilities for these scenarios are endless: a powerful ancient Lich unleashed upon the world. Now, I think you could have some fun with the fact that no one outside of the Domains of Dread has likely heard of him (though I guess some people do escape the Mists). I think that in this case, you might have some of the elements of Ravenloft kind of cling to him as he journeys across the multiverse.

One broad scenario could be that the Dark Powers reach out to the party to give them the campaign-spanning quest of capturing Azalin and delivering him back to Darkon. Perhaps as an alternative, and even an option for the players to consider aiding him, would be that Azalin, having finally escaped and thus escaped his inability to learn new magic (I think he and Hazlik have similar torments,) he has now figured out a plan that could unravel the Demiplane of Dread in its entirety. This would result in every living soul in Ravenloft dying, but Azalin might dismiss this concern and claim he's doing them a mercy, even if his main motivation is to never be trapped there again.

Now, one of the oddities of the 5E Ravenloft books is the presence of Firan Zal'honen. Presented as an evil-but-potentially-friendly archmage in Van Richten's, those with familiarity with the old lore (or who can connect some elements even in Van Richten's itself, like the name of his imp familiar) will know that this is actually Azalin's real, mortal name.

Horrors Within isn't coy about this, but adds some wrinkles - that Azalin may have been shattered or sealed away, and that this Firan could either be him in disguise or a fragment of him.

Since Van Richten's came out, I've had a concept in which Azalin's plan required the creation of a double to distract or appease the Dark Powers and let him escape, a sacrifice, essentially. But this copy, the living Firan Zal'Honen, assumes himself to be the real Azalin, and that the plan was only a partial success, getting him out of Darkon but leaving him still trapped in Ravenloft, unaware that his fate was always part of the plan. (The campaign would probably conclude with the Dark Powers offering the party a similar option: that a copy of each of them be made, and then one of the two versions of them would be allowed to escape while the other would remain trapped, and there would be no way of knowing which was which).

Azalin as an adversary in combat is powerful, so a low-level party would have a very hard time fighting him. But beyond simply his CR, I also think that, as the one guy who really understands the Domains of Dread (Strahd strives toward this, but my interpretation is that he gets distracted by his obsession over Tatyana, and probably forgets the nature of his torment and imprisonment periodically) he's the villain (whether antagonist or not) that really lends himself to a higher-level campaign that deals with the more metaphysical aspects of the setting, and therefore suits higher-level, more powerful PCs.

Screw It: Let's Optimize a Bladelock

 I have a love/hate relationship with the very idea of optimizing in D&D. I think the game works fine if you're just doing straightforward builds - even a Champion Fighter who does nothing but take ASIs will still... no, hold on, that's insane. Even a Devotion Paladin who takes nothing but ASIs will still perform just fine, and a party of simple, straightforward characters will be able to overcome the challenges balanced with the encounter math in the Dungeon Master's Guide. There might be some hairy situations here and there, but they'll probably be fine.

And I also think that optimization can sometimes come at the expense of immersing yourself in a character. Indeed, I think far worse than picking off-theme options to ensure your character is powerful, the worse thing is when you want to pick thematic choices that wind up sabotaging your character. Like, a Cleric/Paladin multiclass would make a ton of sense for a character who wants to live in the overlap between those classes, but the mechanics don't support it very well, splitting your spellcasting between two ability scores.

And yet...

I also think that with games that are lighter on rules, like my experience with Kids on Bikes, there's a certain flatness to them, where there's no real way to "play well" in a mechanical sense.

And maybe that's an unresolvable issue - a game that is perfectly balanced and allows you to pick any character options that is guaranteed to allow you to be just as effective as any other array of choices must sort of undercut the effectiveness of rules mastery and system analysis.

So, here I am, someone who really loves the potential for original storytelling in D&D, but also who really wants my numbers to be big.

And I think part of why there's an industry of optimization discourse online is that it's just something that can actually be calculated. While there's plenty of scholarship on what makes good storytelling work, it's also subjective, whereas you can back up an optimized build with math.

I wrote recently about comparing Warlocks that go with Pact of the Blade and really focus on fighting with a melee weapon versus a more "classic" Warlock that fights from afar, primarily using Eldritch Blast.

Perhaps moreso when 5E was new, but I do see a lot of people are drawn to the Warlock to play a kind of dark spellcaster, and wind up disappointed when they realize how limited the class is in terms of the amount of spellcasting you can do. I realized pretty early on, though, that the trick to the Warlock is to think of them not as a limited spellcaster, but as a very versatile martial class.

Any character in D&D can weaponize their magic, but a Warlock is one that really treats its magic (especially Eldritch Blast) as a weapon, and thus their gameplay in combat really resembles a martial character.

Pact of the Blade, then, makes that basically literal.

Now, I have generally been inclined more toward the "Blastlock" style of Warlock, and my very first character was built along those lines (though only made it to level 2, as it was for a limited campaign where my best friend was first trying out DMing - something he now does professionally). But I then played one in a Descent into Avernus game (yes, I played a Hexblade but did not go Pact of the Blade. Is that weird?)

So I do sort of feel like I'd want to go Bladelock just to do something new.

But beyond that, what kind of Bladelock do we want to be?

5.5 made a giant improvement to Pact of the Blade by allowing you to use Charisma as your ability to attack with that weapon. This had previously only been a feature for the Hexblade subclass, which made it the obvious option for any Bladelock.

But there are other issues.

Warlocks only gain access to Light Armor. Even if you are a Dex-based class like a Rogue or most Rangers, it takes a while to actually get a decent AC with light armor (I'd generally take medium armor instead on a Ranger). The best mundane light armor simply gives you an AC of 12+Dex, which means that capping it out will get you 17, and even for a Rogue that's not likely to happen until level 8 or even level 10 (when Rogues get their third feat). For Bards, Druids, and Warlocks, who are probably not going to be able to focus very much on Dex, even if they start off with a +3 to Dex, they're unlikely to be able to raise their AC above 15 or so until maybe level 16 (barring, of course, magic armor). Now, in the case of Bards, if you're playing a melee-focused Bard subclass, you typically get either medium armor training or unarmored defense. And Druids can pick the Warden Primal Order at level 1 to get medium armor training, or will get the new Moon Druid armor bonus when in their Wild Shape.

The Hexblade came with training in medium armor and shields along with martial weapon proficiency (the latter of which is irrelevant if we're getting Pact of the Blade). So, rather than struggling with an AC of, like 13 at level 1, you could very quickly get an AC of 16 or 18 (with a shield in the latter case).

For Blastlocks, this isn't as big of an issue - having a low AC as a ranged character isn't too bad because most of what comes at you from range are effects that call for saving throws, and you're generally playing around making sure that you keep some distance from foes that could hit you.

But the whole idea of a Bladelock is to be able to close in with your foes.

Sadly, there's not an obvious solution within the class itself (other than the Xanathar's version of the Hexblade, which is probably getting an update without any armor training in the Arcana Unleashed book). You could take Moderately Armored, though frustratingly, if you also wanted shield training, you'd have to also get Lightly Armored, half of which is redundant for you. These feats don't increase Charisma, so you'd also be penalizing your Charisma progression.

And furthermore, you're also probably going to want to pick up some kind of weapon-focused feat the increase your damage, which will also not improve your Charisma, so it's sort of extra costly.

Thus, as much of an improvement as the 5.5 Pact of the Blade is compared to the 5.0 version, I think that any reasonable build is going to do some multiclassing.

Boo! Hiss!

Yeah, I've said many times that I am not a fan of multiclassing. I love subclasses that can incorporate elements of another class into your class to give you that kind of hybrid identity, like the Eldritch Knight as the "Wizard-like Fighter," but I think multiclassing can melt down class identities.

But just to make a Bladelock build work, it's just so effective at fixing some of these issues that it's hard to pass up.

Now, how and what to multiclass into?

As I see it, one of the top priorities is to get something with some armor training. While a Sorcerer/Warlock build can work fantastically, that's going to be great if you are really focusing on spells. We'd want to grab something with either medium or heavy armor training, but I'd also say we probably don't want to introduce any more ability requirements, especially as we're already going to be stretched a little thin.

Thus, I think that the Fighter and the Paladin are the clear best options here.

Let's talk about why for each:

First off, both give you Medium and Heavy armor training - though the latter only if you start off with that class. Weirdly, the only class that can give you Heavy Armor with a single-level dip after you've already started with Warlocks is the Cleric, thanks to the Divine Order choice, but that would also mean we'd be splitting our spellcasting between Charisma and Wisdom.

If we're fine with just Medium armor, then it's ok, but I think we're going to want to get Heavy armor instead for two main reasons:

One is that it just caps out a little higher, letting us get an AC of 18 with just mundane equipment (or 20 if we have a shield). But more importantly, we need to figure out our weapon choice.

As I see it, melee builds in 5.5 are going to want to grab one of four feats: Dual Wielder, Great Weapon Master, Polearm Master, or Shield Master (actually, Grappler is another possibility, though I think that's not going to be one that Warlocks pick). Dual Wielder isn't going to work for us, because we only get the one Pact Weapon, and even if we get a great off-hand weapon, we won't be able to bond with it to make our attacks with Charisma. So we really want to focus on a single weapon.

Shield Master is also questionable. First off, we don't inherently get Shield training, though again, we're assuming starting with a level of Fighter or Paladin, so we will get it. But its Shield Bash option scales only with Strength. That actually might not be a terrible problem because we're actually going to likely be getting our Strength reasonably high anyway, but I think we've got some other options that can be better.

Great Weapon Master, generally when I've calculated things, gives you the most overall damage for any martial build. Given the nerf to Sharpshooter in 5.5, it's even a pretty good thing to take on a ranged martial build.

However, Polearm Master is also a very solid, and importantly, a very versatile feat to build around. While I usually think of builds with this feat as using just those d10 heavy reach weapons, both of its components (Pole Strike and Reactive Strike) actually work just as well with Spears and Quarterstaves. While none such weapons are Finesse weapons, you can also choose to boost your Dexterity with this feat. I assume that's to make it usable with Monks (though the Pole Strike feature is less exciting for a Monk who always gets a bonus action attack anyway).

Still, if we want to take Great Weapon Master (which I do think still gives the most damage of all of these) you'll need a minimum 13 in Strength. Pushing Strength and using Heavy Armor will then allow you to worry less about Dex as you can get a decent AC without it. Now, this also commits us a bit - Chain Mail won't slow you down if you have a 13 or higher Strength, but to move unimpeded with Splint or Plate, you need 15.

If you do want to go this route, then, you might consider starting off with a 14 in Strength (either taking it with Point Buy or using a background that lets you get there from 13) so that simply taking Great Weapon Master will get you to the place where you can wear any heavy armor and you'll never have to worry about it again (though if you also hate having odd-numbered ability scores, you might consider rounding that out after you've capped you Charisma later on).

Something you'll get from both classes as well is Weapon Mastery. Generally, I think Graze beats just about all other options, but having Cleave or Topple or Push can be great as well. As good as Graze is, it's not something you need to build around like Nick, so if your DM gives the party a really awesome Greataxe, you can still feel comfortable taking it.

Now, between Fighter and Paladin, which is the one to go with?

I think there are good arguments for both, but I'll say this: it's going to be pretty hard to resist putting several levels into Paladin. Aura of Protection is among the best class features in the game, and as a Charisma-focused character, it'll be even better for us than it would be for a traditional Paladin who might not have more than a +3 to Charisma until tier 3.

Depending on how far your campaign goes, this might mean that you wind up being more of a Paladin than a Warlock. Now, you don't have to do this - you could just grab a single level to get the armor training and such, and then have two more spell slots that you can use on spells that don't scale all that well.

For Fighters, it's a bit easier to just do a single-level dip. One of the big things here is that you'll get here is a change to your saving throw proficiencies (Warlocks and Paladins I believe get the same ones, Wisdom and Charisma). By getting Con save proficiency, you'll be protecting your concentration spells, which will be precious given how few spell slots you have. Also, with just one dip, you'll already get a Fighting Style feat. I actually think that the Great Weapon Fighting style is pretty bad compared to what dual-wielders or sword-and-board people can get, but you can also pick up something like Defensive to just be a bit harder to hit, or Blindsight (though this is less exciting if we get Devil's Sight). Interception is actually great, and doesn't require you to specifically have a shield like Protection does.

Now, I think eventually getting a second level of Fighter to pick up Action Surge is probably worth it eventually, but it's also pretty easy to just dip in once and then focus on Warlocking it up.

Notably, because Pact Magic and Spellcasting are different features, the spellcasting of a Paladin doesn't actually help at all with your spellcasting progression as a Warlock, which I think moves the needle a little away from them.

And lastly, picking either class first is going to give you a tiny bonus to your max HP. At level 1, you'll have 10+Con, whereas a Warlock will get just 8+Con. Taking average rolls, subsequent levels of Warlocks will give you 5+Con while levels of Paladin or Fighter give you 6+Con, meaning that by starting off Fighter/Paladin, you get 1 more HP!

    Ok, but now that we've made a truly foul bargain with the mysterious entities behind the mechanical design of the game (multiclassing is the true devil's bargain we take for power,) we're going to commit to Warlock.

Obviously, at level 1, our biggest decision to make is that first Eldritch Invocation, and the whole point of this was to go Pact of the Blade. So that's what we do.

For spells, honestly, I don't think any of this is going to be very shocking. We'll still want Eldritch Blast because it's nice to have a ranged option. We actually don't really want to pick up Booming Blade or Green-Flame Blade because eventually we'll do more damage just by attacking multiple times.

As much as I complain about Hex, it's still going to be great at this level and for a little while to come. Armor of Agathys is also good, though it's less exciting at 1st level, as it can be wiped out by a single attack pretty easily.

Broadly speaking, I'd then try to stick to Warlock until we're level 12 - Fighter 1/Warlock 11.

We have several Invocations that are basically non-negotiable. Thirsting Blade will come at level 6 (Warlock 5) and give us Extra Attack. That does mean that while our full Fighter/Paladin/Monk/Barbarian/Ranger friends are getting their second attack, we'll be sadly crying in the corner with the Rogue. However, just like Valor Bards and Bladesinger Wizards, we'll then get that extra attack a single level later (sorry Rogues). Then, at Warlock 11, we'll take Devouring Blade, which gives us a third attack, which is huge.

Other less mandatory but still interesting options are Eldritch Smite, which lets us use a Pact Slot to add 1d8 force damage for each level of the spell slot. Notably, this didn't get turned into a bonus action or count as casting a spell, unlike Divine Smite. I would still save this for crits, though. Lifedrinker is ok, giving us an extra d6 of damage per turn and potentially let us do some emergency healing, though it won't scale with our attacks, unfortunately.

For spells, there's kind of an interesting question:

I do like Spirit Shroud, which lets us add a d8 of damage to each of our hits, and scales up to 2d8 when we have 5th level slots. Once we have Devouring Blade, that can mean an extra 6d8 damage per turn (around 27 average). It is for sure more damage than Hex (though it doesn't last as long). However, a Summon spell can potentially get you some more. At 5th level, a Summon Undead spell with, say, the Skeletal Spirit, will get you two attacks that each do 2d4+8, which is slightly less. Summon Fey requires you minion to get into melee, but it can deal 2d6+8, which winds up being a little more.

However, if we do get to 11 levels in Warlock, we can pick up Summon Fiend. Unfortunately, we can't just upcast any of our 1-5 spells any higher, but as a natively 6th level spell, Summon Fiend will give us a fiend that gets to make three attacks. The Devil version hits for 2d6+9 on three attacks, meaning potential damage of 48 damage per turn, which is going to do better than we can with Spirit Shroud.

The downside to these spells, of course, is that you need to protect both your concentration and your minion's HP. But I think particularly the Skeletal Undead, the Beholderkin Aberration, and the Devil Fiend are solid options here because they can stand at pretty far range (the Beholderkin and Devil can also fly and thus stay away from melee-oriented monsters).

Pretty much any spell that any Warlock would like will work with a Bladelock, but apart from Spirit Shroud, are there any that really reinforce the melee combatant toolkit? The truth is... not really? Armor of Agathys, which by the time you can cast it at level 5, is going to be pretty sweet, and probably net you 50 damage or more (if you have a way to recharge your Temp HP, that can extend the life and thus the damage of that spell). 

Ok, so what about subclasses?

Archfey's emphasis on Misty Step will certainly help you be a bit more of a "hit and run" melee combatant, allowing you to A: get away from foes when you get into trouble and B: get to far-away foes.

Celestial honestly doesn't offer a ton that's melee-specific. It's thematically cool if you are multiclassing with Paladin, of course, and the healing can help with the fact that you're probably taking more damage.

Fiend has a pretty big survivability feature in Dark One's Blessing (remember when I mentioned Armor of Agathys being better if you can recharge your Temp HP?) And if you get 10 levels, you could potentially give yourself resistance to one of the common melee types of damage (though you have to kind of guess if you're more likely to encounter bludgeoning, piercing, or slashing damage). Fiend does get Scorching Ray, which will scale very well with something like Spirit Shroud, but doesn't, you know, really help with our melee theme.

Great Old One sort of encourages you to get closer to your enemies for Clairvoyant Combatant, though only with 30 feet (and I think if it works, you can then back off. Still, if you can give a foe disadvantage on all attacks against you while you get advantage, that's pretty nice.

Undead (which is the one I'd do a Bladelock with, mainly for thematic/aesthetic reasons) gives you some extra Temp Hp with Form of Dread, and the ability to frighten foes can also effectively improve your survivability and give you some battlefield control. Thanks to the fact that your Pact Blade can do Necrotic damage, you can thus apply the Dreaded Necrosis bonus from Grave Touched to your weapon attacks. This might make you consider a Greataxe to get a full extra d12 each turn rather than just another d6.

    What Does This Get You?

The real question here is this: do you wind up being more powerful than a normal martial character?

I think the answer is probably "maybe a little." Indeed, a lot of what we're doing with the build is kind of just making sure we can do with Charisma what a comparable Fighter would do with Strength. We do have various magical abilities, which inherently give us a bit more versatility. But we're not going to be the grand toolbox that is a Wizard or the damage-dealing powerhouse that is the Sorcerer.

But I also think you'll hold your own decently. I'm sure there are some more narrowly optimized builds out there that can squeeze a ton out the class, but outside of dipping into more classes and further-deemphasizing the Warlock of it all (and I don't even know what specifically I'd do to get that) I think this is about all I can figure out at this point.

Taking the build past level 12, I think it's actually a pretty reasonable breakpoint where we could consider going outside of Warlock again. Maybe one more level in Warlock to get the feat at level 12, though putting another 5 in Fighter will get us two additional feats along with unlocking a subclass for the Fighter. In fact, if we went Eldritch Knight and put a full six more levels (this would have us at level 18 at this point, so that's pretty high up) we could get War Magic and start weaving in either Booming Blade or Green-Flame Blade, or even starting off with an Eldritch Blast and then making two more attacks, and then we could Action Surge for another Eldritch Blast and two attacks because we'd be casting it as part of the Attack Action rather than the Magic Action and thus get around the restriction on Action Surge. That means that, yes, again, at level 18, we'd be able to effectively make 12 attacks in a single turn (which would make that Spirit Shroud scaling start to look real good) and even after we Action Surge, we could still do 6 per turn (we might want Spell Sniper to ensure we can cast in melee without problems, though if we start using a Glaive or other Heavy Reach weapon we could try to always stay exactly 10 feet away).

(Brief) Overview of Crooked Moon Subclasses

 I realize I'm a bit late to the party here, but having just gotten the Crooked Moon book set on D&D Beyond, I've been reading through it and absorbing the many elements.

Largely, the second book revolves around its adventure campaign, and all the monsters therein are used in that campaign, though it's a broad enough bestiary that I think you could certainly use a lot of its parts in other campaigns.

The first book, though, has a ton of species, backgrounds, feats, spells, and, of course, the most exciting thing: subclasses.

Let's address two things before we get into the specifics:

First, some of the subclasses are fairly setting- (and even campaign-) specific, such as the two Warlock patrons. That being said, the archetypes that the subclasses embody do feel pretty broadly applicable to any setting that shares vibes with Crooked Moon's Drustvald.

Second, I think you could argue that some of the subclasses are a little over-engineered. You often find this with 3rd party content, but I think that's largely because 3rd party content is trying to get at something a little more specific and also different than what you get out of WotC-developed stuff. Indeed, sometimes it feels like official WotC stuff is too conservative in its design, which can make certain options feel either underpowered or just kind of conceptually thin.

I haven't really formed an opinion on the power level of these subclasses. Naturally, we tend to want our characters to be more powerful, but I think the real marks of a good subclass are A: that the mechanics reflect the theme and concept of the subclass and B: you get to regularly do what the subclass does, allowing the subclass to really color your experience in play.

Unlike my WotC subclass reviews, I'm not going to go feature by feature with these. Instead, I'll just go through the subclasses and give a general sense of its vibe.

Barbarian Path of the Experiment:

We're starting off a little off from the broader Dark Americana vibe that seems the most prominent in Crooked Moon. This is a sort of Mr. Hyde-like, Gothic Horror subclass where you're transformed by weird science when you rage. I actually just designed an unarmed Barbarian subclass, which this can be (though it's not designed around it).

Bard College of Whistles:

This is the one that inspired me the most: it is the Hobo Bard subclass. Well, the Haunted Hobo Bard. A little like the Creation Bard, you can give those you give Bardic Inspiration to a helpful spirit, which have the wonderfully evocative names of "Grump," "Sad Sack," and "Scamp." You also get a magic Bindle that acts as a Handy Haversack (or Heward's Handy Haversack if you don't just want the SRD version). Best of all, you can call upon a ghostly train for you and your party to ride the rails and escape from dangerous foes or teleport back to a familiar location.

Cleric Harvest Domain:

Now, I think you could argue that a Harvest/Grain/Farming Deity could be represented by something like the Life or Nature domain, but this has an interesting mechanical idea, which is that you have different seasons that provide different features, including domain spells, and you can pick between Sowing, Growing, and Reaping.

Druid Circle of the Old Ways:

The Old Ways is one of the religious traditions of the Crooked Moon setting (there are I think five major traditions, which kind of take the place of its "gods," but aren't about worshipping a particular anthropomorphic figure). The Old Ways Druid is there for your to focus on Shillelagh and make a real melee combatant Druid who doesn't necessarily turn into animals.

Druid Circle of Wicker:

Ok, now, full disclosure, I'm usually not much of a Druid player, but I've generally thought that if I were to play a Druid, I'd want to go with a scary pagan Wicker Man vibe. While this could pretty explicitly link me to such an aesthetic, it perhaps goes in a different direction (honestly, Circle of Wildfire has tended to be the closest I get to it). Here, you can create effigies that you can place on the battlefield to create certain effects, and definitely has a kind of witchcraft/voodoo doll feel.

Fighter Barrow Guard:

There are elements of Druskenvald that, at least to my eyes, are a bit more dark fantasy than folk horror, much less the kind of Dark Americana that I think is its most distinctive feel. Barrow Guards give you a bit of that Death Knight archetype, and also gives you dice similar to a Battle Master's superiority dice to fuel certain abilities (though there is not some giant list of options for how to use them). A big part of the class is the ability to summon an undead Warhorse in combat to ride around the battlefield on.

Monk Warrior of the Pestilent Haze:

This is the "plague monk." Basically, if you liked all the necrotic and poison theming of the Warrior of Mercy Monk but didn't want to ever be asked by your party to heal anyone, this might be the one for you. You're basically a walking carrier of a deadly plague, and you use that as part of your martial arts.

Paladin Oath of Castigation:

Now, I think you could flavor a lot of Paladin subclasses as a kind of vampire/monster/witch-hunter (Vengeance certainly feels like an option for that) but this one leans in pretty hard to the "burn the witch" aesthetic, with prevalent fire theme. Such characters for sure work in Folk Horror, though it's a different vibe than the "Dark Americana" vibe that I'm kind of fixated on with these books. Mechanically, there are themes of battlefield control and fire damage.

Ranger Grim Harbinger:

This is built around summoning a Grim, basically a black dog that symbolizes and portends death. Mechanically, it works a bit like a cross between the Beast Mastery Hunter and the Xanathar's version of the Shadow Sorcerer's Hound of Ill Omen, summoning the Grim while dooming a particular creature, with the Grim vanishing if the creature is killed. The Grim has, I think, more scaling than the Beast Mastery companions do, but you have limited uses of the ability that summons them per day (though they come back on a short rest and can last up to an hour. Bizarrely, I think it might actually be reasonable to target an ally you don't intend to attack with the Omen of Doom feature that summons the Grim just to keep the pet around).

Rogue Sinner:

Giving a real Wild West vibe, or Riverboat Gambler, if you prefer, this Rogue can use some of its Sneak Attack dice (I think without reducing the damage they deal) to get a randomized additional effect when they deal damage. It is a limited-use feature (though comes back on a short rest).

Sorcerer Crimson Sorcery:

This is kind of your vampire sorcerer, which gives you a Blood Well that can be spent in various ways and regained in various ways. Among other things, you can turn into a pool of blood to creep around. You broadly get various ways to redistribute health, with some healing spells and health-draining spells.

Warlock Great Fool Patron:

Clown Warlock. Ok, specifically, the Great Fool is a fiend that features in the Crooked Moon adventure, but basically this is the creepy carnival warlock. Actually, this would make an excellent subclass for a Rakdos Cultist in Ravnica. Mechanically, the subclass allows you to inflict curses and otherwise punish foes.

Warlock Horned King Patron:

Again, a specific monster from the adventure. The Horned King is very clearly inspired by... er, to avoid spoilers I'll just say the figure who embodies the Devil in Robert Egger's The Witch (or the VVitch, if you prefer). In a lot of ways, this is kind of the classic "scary witchcraft" stuff, placing curses on enemies.

Wizard Occultist:

If you want some of that forbidden magic but want the mechanics of a Wizard, this might be the one for you, with a real kind of Lovecraftian vibe to it. Mechanically, you can Risk Intrusion by otherworldly entities to augment your spellcasting. Intrusions are randomized effects that are largely detrimental, though they can sometimes harm foes as well as you or even just wind up helping you.

Wizard Philosopher:

This is the classical esoteric alchemist subclass (which I'd argue the Transmuter also kind of gestures toward). While the Artificer Alchemist focuses on the protoscientific elements of Alchemy, this is the one that's all about grand, ambitious exploration of alchemy to fundamentally change reality. Mechanically, this means that you get a new resource called Quintessence that can be used to replace spell components or spell-copying materials (hey, are you sick of being constantly broke as a Wizard?) and such. Truly, this one might be really overpowered, because you could theoretically cast a spell at 6th level as early as level 7 (it'd still have to be a natively 4th level spell).

    And there you have it. There's at least one for each class (except for the Artificer, still the non-SRD black sheep of 5E).

Under a Crooked Moon

 Well, I had a bit of a splurge today on 3rd party D&D content.

Having been entranced by the animated trailer, I decided to just grab the Crooked Moon set on D&D Beyond. I've actually been kind of obsessing over Legends of Avantris' next big project (which just broke some crowdfunding records,) Neon Odyssey, which is a huge 5.5e overhaul to go full space opera (something I've really been wanting as a more committed alternative to Spelljammer) but I'm always really into horror elements in D&D, and while I've enjoyed Ravenloft: Horrors Within, the 5.5 update to Ravenloft unfortunately has a huge amount of overlap with Van Richten's Guide to Ravenloft, and while the new stuff in the book is great, there's also a lot of stuff that's only tweaked or just fully reprinted.

Crooked Moon provides a new campaign setting - which, honestly, is the part I'm least likely to actually use, as I tend to prefer doing stuff in my own homebrew settings - but also has a ton of new subclasses, species, feats, backgrounds, and monsters.

What has pleasantly surprised me, though, in its focus on Folk Horror, is a particular focus on a kind of Americana. There's for sure plenty here you could use for a more traditional European Folk Horror, but there are elements here that recall the aesthetic of the United States in that 1880s-1930s era that feels oddly homey to me (no, I'm not a hundred years old, but I grew up in a house built in 1896 down the street from a little Main Street-like area that still looks a bit like it did at the turn of the 20th Century).

As a few examples:

There's a Bard subclass themed entirely around Hobo culture from the 1930s, including inscribing things with Hobo Code, the ability to create a magic bindle that works like a Heward's Handy Haversack, and summoning a ghost train to give you and your party a ride across the battlefield.

There's also a Rogue subclass themed around gambling (which I feel gives it a bit of a Wild West vibe) in which you can set two of your Sneak Attack dice aside to roll for extra bonus effects (and you can also fight with a magical deck of cards).

There's also a high-level boss monster (who can also be a Warlock patron) that looks like a big, monstrous clown balloon like something out of Over the Garden Wall.

And, of course, there's a legendary ghost train you can fight (it's only CR 4, but then, the Phantom Train in FFVI comes pretty early on in that game too).

The two volumes aren't cheap even in digital form, but they're also pretty hefty, and I've only really skimmed it so far.

One of the coolest ideas in it is that, at least for the non-legendary monsters, every one of them has a secret weakness. It's sort of up to the DM to determine how easy it is to figure out that weakness, but the weaknesses can really transform a battle. For example, there's an undead ferryman who sails around in a coffin (which can go over land as well as water,) and if you pay his toll, he'll immediately be charmed by you and offer you and others a ride.

In terms of presentation, the art here is just as good if not even more ambitious than stuff WotC publishes. Now, sure, that's superficial, and I haven't delved super deep into how balanced and well-designed everything is.

Still, my initial look over the subclasses and species options leads me to conclude that, while some might lean toward being over-designed a bit, they have really solid concepts, basically without exception. There's a Wizard subclass that lets you play a real (esoteric) alchemist, which would be 100% perfect for members of a specific faction in my homebrew world.

While I'll certainly go through the specifics of its Druskenvald setting, I'm mainly thinking of how I can pillage this all for my own setting. My setting, Sarkon, has a bit of a technologically anachronistic feel to it because of an insane rate of progress (basically compressing the real world's technological developments from, like 1750 to 2000 into the span of forty or fifty years,) but there are regions that really work perfectly with this stuff, particularly one area that is meant to feel like the American West, and while a lot of that Western genre focuses a lot on the initial expansion, I do think there's a lot of interesting stuff to be set in that Dust Bowl-era West as well (I was a big fan of Carnivale way back in the day).

It'll likely be a while before I get to really implement this stuff in a game I run, as my current campaign is super-high-level and has a ton of epic stuff the party needs to get through before we can conclude the story (I'm trying to hold myself to no more than 6 months at level 19 and 6 months at level 20, but we'll see).

But given that I've been itching to get back to my homebrew world, and that I always love spooky vibes, I think I can get a ton out of these books.

(I also have a futuristic version of my setting that the Neon Odyssey books will serve well, so if I like what I use out of this, I'll probably get those if and when they go on D&D Beyond.)