The Unsleeping City Gets a Season Two!

 Dimension 20, the College Humor-based D&D "actual play" show, has had several seasons, most exploring new characters and concepts. They did return to the original campaign, Fantasy High (which is awesome and hilarious) and it looks like now they will be returning to the Unsleeping City.

The Unsleeping City takes place in a version of New York City where the effects of the Dreaming World allow magic to exist in the Waking World. It's an epic D&D campaign built on themes of American ideas and the nature of the very idiosyncratic NYC, and I highly recommend checking it out (the first season of it is releasing weekly on YouTube, or you can watch it all immediately on Dropout.tv for a subscription fee.)

I am super, super excited to hear that there's more of this, as I absolutely love the alternate-style fantasy that is deeply rooted in NYC history.

The basic premise is this:

New York is the home of a special phenomenon called the Umbral Arcana. You know how New Yorkers have a reputation for ignoring bizarre things happening around them, given how jaded the city makes them? Well, in this case, that kind of attitude has created a sort of psychic shroud for supernatural beings to get about without being noticed as long as it's within NYC.

Additionally, New York has a "Sixth Borough" known as Nod, which is the realm of dreams. Less a physical location than a plane unto itself (with a dream-version of all of New York in it,) this is the place where dreamers literally go when they sleep and also is the source of all potential and possibility for aspirations and ideas.

At the center of the setting is the relationship (and often conflict) between the Waking World and the Dreaming World. Sometimes, an individual is imbued with powerful magic by one or the other, becoming the Vox Phantasma, if empowered by the dreaming, or the Vox Populi, when empowered by the waking world. And as it turns out, two of the player characters occupy these roles.

It's the sort of game where you can get a bagel with schmear with an orthodox Jewish golem, attend a wedding with the pixie mafia, find out that Elaine Stritch (or her equivalent) is a body-surfing ageless fairy, or face down literal bloodsucking monsters from Wall Street.

I haven't caught up on the original season (because I'm a cheapskate who hasn't subscribed to Dropout) but I absolutely adore the modern setting and surreal fantasy on which the show is based.

If you're caught up on Critical Role, or perhaps want something a little more unconventional in tone (or something a little tighter - seasons go only about 16ish episodes and each episode is only 2 hours long) I really cannot recommend Dimension 20 enough.

Shadowlands' New Launch Date: November 23rd

 Well folks, it's a month late, but the new expansion is coming out on November 23rd.

Honestly, this was a shorter delay than I expected. But while in the original timeline, we'd have been traipsing through the afterlife by now (and probably a lot of us would be level 60 on our mains) we'll be heading out there in less than a month.

I haven't actually been playing on the Beta much, so I can't comment too much on how well they've ironed out the kinks, but while my stomach is in knots about a certain major real-world event coming next week (Americans, please vote!) I'm very excited to be able to head into the Shadowlands.

Presumably, the pre-expansion quests and events should be starting relatively soon. (EDIT: November 10th - they announced the date and I just missed it.)

Also of note, according to Anne Stickney's twitter, this will be the 26th anniversary of the first Warcraft game, and the 16th of WoW, which is fun.

Weapon Balance and Firearms in 5E

 It appears to be confirmed that one of the new feats coming in Tasha's Cauldron of Everything will be "Gunner." This does a few things: it grants you +1 to Dexterity, proficiency in firearms, removes disadvantage for having an enemy within 5 feet of you, and allows you to ignore the loading property (which would normally cost a bonus action to load your weapon after firing it.) In a lot of ways, this is similar to the Crossbow Expert feat, but in lieu of getting to shoot a hand crossbow with your off-hand, it explicitly empowers you to use firearms.

Guns in D&D 5E are only found in the Dungeon Master's Guide and in specific adventure NPCs. Many people read "fantasy" to be explicitly set in a pre-industrial world, and as such feel that the existence of firearms would break the immersion in the standard fantasy timeframe, which is classically the realm of knights on horseback fighting dragons and such.

As a huge Dark Tower fan, though, and who generally likes mixing up genres (I also came to it only with the Remake from last year, but FFVII's general aesthetic is absolutely up my alley) I'm eager to allow these more modern weapons to be used in my setting.

So let's talk about those firearms. The DMG has a list of them in the Dungeon Master's Workshop chapter, separating them into Renaissance, Modern, and Futuristic.

Renaissance weapons are what I'd say fit well in a swashbuckling pirate adventure, or possibly a classic gothic monster-hunting adventure (Ravenloft springs to mind). These are also the only ones with a listed cost in gold, and the fact that they use a single die puts them in line with most existing D&D weapons.

Pistols do 1d10 damage, and have the loading property, requiring a reload after every shot (making that feat very attractive, especially if you're playing any class that gets multiple attacks). They have a range of 30/90, which means you'll need to get in pretty close range unless you get the Sharpshooter feat. Pistols cost 250 g, which is far more than any of the base PHB weapons.

Muskets do 1d12 damage, also have the loading property, and a range of 40/120, and are two-handed weapons. At the cost of a shield (if your class can even use those,) you get a bit more damage and range, which is probably worth it. Muskets are 500 g, which is certainly the most expensive a nonmagic weapon can get (though the more advanced ones are effectively priceless.)

Already, the renaissance firearms are on par with melee weapons, with the one-handed pistol doing just as much as a heavy crossbow. These do seem to come at the cost of range, though - the Heavy Crossbow's range is 100/300 - so to use these, you do have to get close to the monsters.

Modern firearms are, I think, meant to represent anything from the second half of the 20th century to actually now. These start to do multiple dice of damage, which really causes it climb high.

Automatic Pistols do 2d6 damage, have a range of 50/150, and have the reload 15 property, which means you only need to reload the thing after 15 shots, which becomes far less of a burden (it's very unlikely you'll fire over 15 shots in a single combat.) Again, the range could make bows and crossbows more attractive, but you're getting a lot of bang out of a one-handed weapon here.

Automatic Rifles do 2d8 damage, have a range of 80/240, reload 30, are two handed, and have the special burst-fire property. At this point, the range is far enough to probably be fine in almost any combat situation, the damage is huge, and unless you use the special property a ton, you're almost certainly not going to have to reload in combat. Burst fire lets you target a 10-ft cube within the normal range (so within 80 feet) and have every creature there make a DC 15 Dexterity saving throw, taking your normal weapon damage on a failure. This burns up 10 bullets, but it lets martial classes do some AoE, which is pretty cool. This does seem to take up an action, not just an attack, but if you can get three or more in the range, you can do some nice splash damage.

Hunting Rifles do 2d10 damage, have a range of 80/240, and reload 5, and are two-handed. While one would think the range would be a little higher than the Automatic Rifle, this is going to do a bit more damage at the cost of all those bells and whistles, and with the relatively small clip, you're much more likely to need to reload.

Shotguns do 2d8 damage, have a range of 30/90, reload 2, and are two-handed. They're definitely a step down from the Automatic Rifle

Finally, we have the futuristic firearms. These are full-on sci-fi, and have the advantage of doing non-piercing damage, so even if it's not magical, you should be able to damage most monsters.

Laser Pistols do 3d6 radiant damage, have a range of 30/120, and reload 50. This is just plain nasty, and with a reload of 50, you'll basically never have to reload in combat (the published adventure these appear in limits them by never letting you reload them - you get your shots and then the thing is useless.) It's short range, but still pretty darn good.

Laser Rifles do 3d8 radiant damage, with a range of 100/300, two-handed, and reload 50. This is just insane.

Antimatter Rifles, though, are the pinnacle, doing a whopping 6d8 necrotic damage, with a range of 120/360, two-handed, and a reload of 2. While yes, you'll have to reload this far more frequently, doing 3/4 of a fireball's worth of damage on every hit is just ludicrous (and if you get an artificer to give it Repeating Shot, dear lord.)

    So, as we can see, firearms throw a lot of the balance of weapon types into total disarray.

Of the PHB weapons, there's a clear skew toward melee, which makes sense, as melee characters put themselves in greater danger (it's also probably more realistic. If an arrow hits you in the leg, you could probably survive if it doesn't hit any major blood vessels. If a greatsword takes you in the leg, that leg's probably going to just come off).

That being said, in the long run, in a magic-item-heavy campaign, ranged builds get the advantage of magical ammunition along with magical weapons. While it'll be limited by the availability of +X arrows or bolts, you'll still get to kind of double-dip.

If we look at two 17th-or-higher level characters with their weapon stat maxed and +3 weapons and ammo, I suspect the ranged character overtakes the melee in damage potential.

Let's look at a Strength-based Fighter and a Dexterity-based Fighter. If the Strength one goes with Great Weapon Fighting as their fighting style, and uses a Maul or Greatsword (the base weapons with the highest average damage,) they're going to be rolling an average damage roll of 8 1/3. Now, we assume they have +5 Strength at this point and a +3 weapon, so each hit is going to do an average of 16 1/3 damage. Also, their attacks have a +14 to hit.

Let's say that the Dex fighter has taken the Archery fighting style. If they use a Longbow, their average damage roll is going to be 4.5, but with a +3 bow and +3 arrows, and +5 Dex, their arrows are going to hit 15.5, which is just a little under the Strength guy. That being said, their attacks have a +19 to hit, which means they need to roll 5 or lower to miss the highest-AC monsters in 5E. If they've gone Crossbow Expert, using a Heavy Crossbow, the damage jumps to 16.5, thus edging out the strength fighter. Granted, this does all ignore a couple things: first, that +3 ammo isn't just lying around everywhere, and also that there are a lot more legendary melee weapons that do more than just base weapon damage on a hit (especially when you get artifact-level weapons.) But if we're looking at the basic stuff, that's what you get.

Now, if we throw firearms into the mix, things get skewed a lot more toward Dexterity-based classes. In the renaissance era, the average damage of a musket is 6.5, already putting it in line with the Greataxe.

By the modern era, the weakest type of firearm already has the same damage dice as the most powerful melee weapons. If we repeat that scenario above, the Dex fighter with an automatic rifle is getting 9 as their average damage roll, which then becomes 20 average damage if they get a +3 automatic rifle and +3 bullets.

    Of course, in D&D, you can always ask whether balance is really that crucially important. And again, I think that you could place limits on how easy it is to get magical ammo (the automatic rifle will still out-damage a maul, but only by a little bit.)

My best suggestion on how to balance things - making sure that, absent of magical ammo, ranged characters get a slight damage penalty to account for how much less they put themselves at risk - is to make magical firearms harder to come by. My general ruling is that a +1 firearm should be about as easy to find as a +2 weapon - not impossible, but probably not showing up until at least the mid levels.

I do also think that using some limitations on proficiency can make it a little trickier. While I think it makes sense for Artificers to automatically have proficiency in firearms, I think making other classes take a feat to use them does mean they've got to really commit.

Now, on futuristic weapons, particularly the antimatter rifle, I think that you can be very careful about whether you use those in your campaign. In my original campaign, the Rogue found a laser pistol, and is the only ranged-weapon user in the party. Given that the extra 2d6 over his shortbow pretty much just meant a little bonus to his sneak-attack, it was never terribly disruptive, and the player thought it was freaking awesome.

Even if it might create balance anxiety on the part of the DM, I really think these can be fun additions to the game if you want to break out of the standard fantasy medievalism. I'm very eager to start a new campaign with a freeway chase involving a group of bad guys shooting automatic rifles at the players' car as they try to stop them from getting away with some MacGuffin.

Possible Full List of Tasha's Cauldron of Everything Subclasses and More

 So, before we begin, I don't feel too bad about spoilers here because WotC has already confirmed that all the class and subclass stuff in Tasha's has shown up in Unearthed Arcana, so a lot of this we could predict. However, with various previews going out and digital publishers getting their hands on the book, we've got what looks to be a full list.

Let's start with subclasses, going class-by-class:

Artificer:

Artificers are being introduced as a setting-agnostic class (including suggestions of how they could fit in Faerun, Oerth, and other canon D&D settings.) This will include a reprint of the Alchemist, Artillerist, and Battle-Smith subclasses, but will also add the Armorer.

The Armorer is basically the Iron Man subclass, which lets you turn a suit of heavy armor (which you get proficiency in and don't even need high strength for it) into a crazy magical suit that shoots lightning and such. It's super-cool.

Barbarian:

We already had the Path of Wild Magic confirmed, which is sort of the Barbarian equivalent of the Wild Magic sorcerer, complete with random table (though different from the Sorcerer one.) Additionally, the Path of the Beast lets your rage give you some kind of animalistic qualities, which I think you could very easily re-skin as just a type of lycanthropy that only takes effect when you are consumed with rage, and thus sound freaking awesome (if I could literally be a werewolf, I'd be totally down to play a Barbarian.)

Bard:

The College of Eloquence from Mythic Odysseys of Theros is getting reprinted. In addition, the College of Creation is being added. Creation Bards are both primal and whimsical, gaining the ability to sing (or perform) into being various things.

Cleric:

The Order domain from Guildmaster's Guide to Ravnica is getting reprinted. Additionally, the Twilight and Peace domains are getting added.

Twilight Domain seems to play around a lot with light and darkness, and if it's like the UA version, can even grant you infinite-range darkvision.

Peace Domain is, I'd expect, some sort of evolution of Unity Domain (which I think started as Love Domain) though I can't really say anything very confidently about what its mechanics will look like, other than probably having tools to prevent violence.

Druid:

The Circle of Spores from Guildmaster's Guide to Ravnica is getting reprinted. Also, the Circle of Wildfire and the Circle of Stars will be added. Wildfire is all about the cycle of destruction and creation, and I'd be super-eager to play a creepy-as-hell wickerman druid. If it's like the UA article, you'll get a bunch of fire spells (including Fireball,) as well as a battle companion you can summon using Wild Shape charges, as well as a fair number of healing abilities.

Circle of Stars will, I believe, focus a bit more on star-based magic, and allows you to turn into a constellation, which grants different effects based on the form you choose.

Fighter:

The Psi Knight will be a psionic fighter subclass - I don't know if we have any confirmations on how much the "psi die" will remain a part of the psionic subclasses, but all three of them do show up.

Also, the Rune Knight, which has kind of giant magic and runes you use to gain bonuses, is going to be there. Apparently, at a certain level you can become Huge in size, which is pretty bananas.

Monk:

The Way of Mercy and Way of the Astral Self are being added. The Way of Mercy allows you Monk to be a healer, but also gives you a few ways to do necrotic damage, and seems awesomely creepy (there's a whole thing about having a mask you wear.)

Way of the Astral Self allows you to conjure a sort of astral image of yourself that enhances various attacks and abilities - kind of attacking with your soul rather than your physical body.

Paladin:

Oath of Glory, from Mythic Odysseys of Theros, is getting reprinted.

Additionally, the Oath of the Watchers, which is built around vigilance against otherworldly threats like aberrations, is going to be added.

Ranger:

Fey Wanderers are going to be added, which is all about fey magic, with charm and fear effects baked into the subclass.

Swarmkeeper is going to let you have a swarm of creatures act as an extension of your power, which is awesomely creepy and cool.

Rogue:

The Phantom has a strong connection to dead spirits, whose knowledge and skills the rogue can call upon.

The Soulknife is the psionic rogue subclass, which includes the ability to conjure daggers made of psionic energy, and is actually super cool.

Sorcerer:

Aberrant Mind is the psionic-themed sorcerer subclass, with a lot of cosmic-horror goodness.

Then, there's also the Clockwork Soul, which has your power come from the plane of Law (so, Mechanus, unless you're eschewing the canon outer planes) and involves various ways to cut down on chaos and even eventually summon a swarm of Modrons to fix everything.

Warlock:

Already confirmed, the Genie Patron will give you a genie's vessel that you can actually hide in eventually, and also grants access to the Wish spell (if you're a Genie Warlock and don't take Wish as your 9th level Mystic Arcanum, you are doing it wrong.)

Also, the Fathomless grants a patron that is some deep-sea creature. This could be a primal kraken or some sort of eldritch horror (which, to be fair, krakens arguably are.) If it's like the UA version, a major feature is the ability to summon a big tentacle that aids you in combat.

Wizard:

The Bladesinger from Sword Coast Adventurer's Guide is going to be revised (if nothing else, then to make it so non-elves can be one.)

Additionally, the Order of Scribes will allow you to have a sentient, magical spellbook that gives you various benefits.

    So all in all, some really cool things. I'm a little sad not to see the College of Spirits or Undead Patron, but those could also mean a Ravenloft book, so that might be for the best.

Notably, there are also some new class feature options being introduced. Class spell lists are getting expanded (including new spells) as well as new Eldritch Invocations and Fighting Styles. Some classes are getting new abilities that can either swap out with existing ones (like a more universally-useful terrain ability for Rangers) or some that simply get added to the class.

There are also new feats, including several that are sort of "multiclass light" like gaining a fighting style or some tool proficiencies and a couple of artificer spells. As someone whose homebrew setting certainly has firearms in it (something I'm oddly excited about for someone who's pretty anti-gun in real life) I'm happy to see the Gunner feat, which is a bit like Crossbow Expert and would also be great for the Western-themed region in my setting.

I'm sure I'll be writing more about this as we get more confirmations, but I'm very excited for this book to come out.

Briefly Killing a PC and then Giving Him a Bit of a Solo RP Mission

 When I was 3, my sister (who was 5) and I watched the 1959 Disney (I think) movie Darby O'Gill and the Little People, starring a young Sean Connery. In it, the thing that stuck with us the most was the Banshee, the figure of Irish folklore that terrified us to our very cores (our mom was largely Irish American, and so I think we're genetically susceptible to scary "sidh.") Banshee is a bastardization of "bean sidh," which translates to "spirit woman" in Irish Gaelic (S's are often an "SH" sound and dh is often either silent or a kind of Y sound.)

Anyway, the party found themselves in a burned-our ruin of a Boros Fire Station (I figure the Boros seem like the most likely to act as the city's fire brigade) which, as they discovered, was burned down and cursed by a Rakdos blood witch to punish the fire fighters for stopping his arson performance-art productions. The curse trapped the spirits in the station and essentially kept them in a constant inferno, with the fire elementals as kind of spirits conjured by the curse to torment them in their Flameskull forms.

The party fought a reasonably balanced assortment of Fire Elementals and Flameskulls (they're level 11) but on the first floor, thrown in just for some more ghostly fun, I added a banshee to the mix (I figure this elf lady had been the captain of the station.)

Thing is, Banshees have the nastiest freaking ability, which they can use once a day. Their wail makes anyone nearby who can hear it make a Wisdom saving throw. On a success, they take 3d6 psychic damage. On a failure, they drop to 0 hit points.

Everyone but the Rakdos goblin bard succeeded. And then, almost immediately, one of the Flameskulls showed up and tossed a fireball into the party, giving the bard a failed save. Then, when the druid or maybe the barbarian stepped away to fight the banshee, a fire elemental burst through a door and saw the bard. I rolled a die to determine if it went after him, and even with the advantage for hitting an unconscious person, the first attack missed, but the second hit, and for the second time (and the first in an actual long-running campaign,) I killed a PC (who happens to be played by one of my closest and oldest friends.)

The good news is that Artificers have Revivfy on their spell list and I've ruled that Artificers can use a Mizzium Apparatus, so the group's Izzet Artificer used their next turn to attempt to cast Revivify... and failed the check, thus resulting in a fireball cast directly on the body (it had been hit with gentle repose, and given that fireball's just fire damage and not a concussive force (which thunder damage would signify), I didn't have this blow the body apart, so in fact the goblin was essentially fine - he couldn't get more dead,) so the next turn, the Artificer was able to actually make the roll and after 12 very tense seconds, the group's chaotic evil bard was, thankfully, brought back.

Once the party fought their way through to the top floor, they came to the roof and found the manifestation of the curse in the form of a jack-in-the-box. The bard, worried that ending a Rakdos curse could get him in trouble with his guild, made use of his renown to journey to Rix-Maadi and speak with Judith, the Scourge Diva, who in my headcanon (and thus the campaign's canon) is the head of the Blood Witches.

So though I had killed his character early that session, I managed to give that player a nice little solo trip where I dropped some hints at future adventures, some character lore, and got to describe Gore House (which I imagine as a sort of fucked-up version of the Los Angeles House of Blues,) the Demon's Vestibule, and Rix-Maadi itself, which was super fun.

Anyway, it was actually a really fun session to DM, and while there was a bit of repetitiveness to the combat, I think it went fairly smoothly.

Our next game is on Halloween, so I've got to make a facebook poll to see if people want a spooky one-shot or to stick with the regular campaign.

Draconic Subclasses for Monks and Rangers in the Latest Unearthed Arcana

 If you like Dexterity and Wisdom, as well as all things draconic, you'll be excited to see the latest Unearthed Arcana, which introduces the Way of the Ascendant Dragon for Monks and the Drakewarden for Rangers.

Both of these are dragon-themed subclasses, which means breath weapons, damage resistances, and yet another better iteration of the Beast Master Ranger.

Let's start with the Monks:

The theme here is that your Monastic tradition is based on some kind of draconic influence - maybe your monastery was founded by a dragon, or perhaps your learned ancient draconic techniques, or perhaps you learned how to channel your ki from a dragon.

At 3rd level, you get two features: Draconic Disciple and Breath of the Dragon

Draconic Disciple: Channeling your draconic ki into your unarmed strikes, you get the following benefits:

When you damage a target with an unarmed strike, you can change the damage type to acid, cold, fire, lightning, or poison.

If you can't already, you learn to speak, read, and write Draconic.

If you fail a Charisma (Intimidation) or Charisma (Persuasion) check, you can use your reaction to reroll the check. Once this feature turns failure into a success, you can't use it again until you finish a long rest.

    So first off, while the damage-type change becomes less relevant when you hit level 6 and you're doing magical bludgeoning damage (which almost nothing is resistant to,) this will help you out in early levels with any nasty, resistant monsters, and of course let you take advantage of vulnerabilities. The language thing is cool flavor (and more languages is always fun.) The reroll for those Charisma checks reminds me of the College of Eloquence Bard, where you get to keep the feature until it actually succeeds, which is pretty damn cool.

Breath of the Dragon:

You can channel your ki into destructive waves like the dragons you emulate. When you take the attack action on your turn, you can replace one of those attacks with an exhalation of draconic energy in either a 20-ft cone or a 30 foot line that is 5 feet wide (your choice.) Choose acid, cold, fire, lightning, or poison. Each creature in the breath must make a Dexterity saving throw against your Ki save DC or take two rolls of your martial arts dice of the chosen damage type on a failure, or half as much on a success. At 11th level, this become three dice.

You can use this a number of times equal to your proficiency bonus, regaining all expended uses when you finish a long rest. You can also spend 1 ki to use it when you have no other uses available.

    This is probably the real headliner for the subclass. While the damage isn't enormous (even 3d8 at level 11 is only an average of 13.5, compared to 9.5 for a hit with an unarmed strike assuming you have +5 Dexterity) the fact that this replaces not the full action, but simply one attack (though it's limited to one per turn,) it's an AoE that can hit multiple targets, and you can use it many times, this is a really good ability. Plus, being able to shape the breath and change its damage type on a whim makes my poor Blue Dragonborn very jealous (I really wish he could do some kind of forked lightning attack in a cone. It'd be way, way more useful.)

At 6th Level, you get Wings Unfurled

When you use Step of the Wind, you can unfurl draconic wings that vanish at the end of the turn. While you have these wings, you get a flying speed equal to your walking speed. You can use this a number of times equal to your proficiency bonus, regaining uses on a long rest. If you don't have any uses yet, you can spend 1 ki point (in addition to the one you spend for step of the wind) to use it again.

    This is a pretty cool utility feature, and depending on how much verticality you're working with, might allow you to escape from some nasty situations. Outside of combat, it'll let you travel pretty far (your movement speed is already pretty high as a monk, so dashing with both action and bonus action will mean you can fly a pretty long distance.)

At 11th level, you get Aspect of the Wyrm:

You now radiate draconic ki, which allows you create a protective aura.

As a bonus action, you create an aura that radiates 30 feet from you for 1 minute. You choose acid, cold, fire, lightning, or poison and gain the following effects:

You and your allies gain resistance to the chosen damage type.

When you or an ally is hit with an attack made by a creature in the aura, the target that was hit can use its reaction to deal an amount of damage of the chosen type equal to a roll of your Martial Arts die to the attacker.

Once you use this bonus action, can't until you finish a long rest or you spend 4 ki points.

    An on-demand aura of resistance can be very useful, especially if fighting, oh, say, a dragon! (Though dragons' immunity would make the aura less useful for retaliation.) But this definitely brings some useful utility for the party.

Finally, at 17th level, you get Ascendant Aspect:

You gain blindsight out to 30 ft, with all the benefits that entails.

When you damage a creature with your Breath of the Dragon, the energy clings to the target, dealing them one Martial Arts die of damage at the start of its turn, and can repeat the saving throw to end this effect at the end of its turn.

When you activate Aspect of the Wyrm, you can choose any number of creatures within the aura, and they take 4d10 acid, cold, fire, lightning, or poison damage.

    So this primarily buffs the previous two abilities (blindsight, though, is awesome. Get yourself a Devil's Sight/Darkness Warlock buddy and you can go to town on some monsters.) I'd probably change the Breath of the Dragon residual damage to only work if they fail the original save. The automatic damage on the Aura is also pretty cool, and while I don't know how many super-low health monster you'll be facing at level 17, but an average of 22 damage guaranteed on a swarm of monsters is pretty darn nice.

Overall, I think the Way of the Ascendant Dragon has some fun flash to it, and depending on how into dragons you are as a piece of lore, can have some really fun RP potential. Now let's look at the Drakewarden:

The Drakewarden's main feature is a drake companion who fights with you in battle.

At 3rd level, you get Draconic Gift and Drake Companion:

Draconic Gift: You learn to speak, read, and write Draconic if you didn't already. Also, you learn the thaumaturgy cantrip, which is a ranger spell for you.

Drake Companion: You get a drake creature bound to you, which is a small, wingless dragon (though keep reading on that last part.) You can summon it as an action, and each time you do, you choose a damage type (the standard dragon ones.) The drake follows you commands and is friendly to you.

Like a lot of combat pets, it shares your initiative and acts right after you do. It can move and use its reaction, but only takes the Dodge action unless you use a bonus action to command it. The drake remains for a number of hours equal to your proficiency bonus or until it drops to 0 hit points, or if you use this feature to summon the drake again, or until you die. Once you summon it, you can't again until you finish a long rest or expend a spell slot to do so.

The drake has a scaling stat block (like the Artificer's Steel Defender) and can bite for a mix of piercing and its draconic essence damage, and it can use its reaction to add 1d6 of its chosen damage type when a creature within 30 feet of it hits with a weapon attack.

At 7th level, you get Bond of Fang and Scale:

While the drake is summoned:

You gain resistance to the damage type chosen for its Draconic Essence.

Choose one: either the drake gets a 40 ft swim speed and can breathe both air and water, or it grows wings and gains a flying speed of 40 ft.

Finally, the drake's bite attack deals an extra 1d6 of its draconic essence damage type. (this brings the bite up to 1d6 piercing and 1d6 plus your proficiency bonus of its draconic essence damage.)

At 11th level, you gain Drake's Breath

As an action, you or your summoned drake exhales a 30-ft cone of damaging breath. Choose acid, cold, fire, lightning, or poison damage. Each creature in the cone must make a Dex save against your spell save DC, taking 6d6 damage on a fail, or half on a success. This damage goes up to 8d6 when you reach 15th level in this class.

Once you use this feature, you can't use it again until you finish a long rest or expend a 3rd level or higher spell slot to use it again.

At 15th level, you gain Perfected Bond

The drake grows to large in size (from small)

The drake's bite deals an additional 1d6 draconic essence damage (so it's now 1d6 piercing and 2d6 + your proficiency bonus of draconic essence damage).

When either you or the drake takes damage while you're within 30 feet of each other, you can use your reaction to give yourself or the drake resistance to that instance of damage.

    So, overall, I think this is pretty great. While the Drake's attack bonus caps out at +9, for a pet that isn't bad. The Drake's Breath ability is also some serious AoE damage for a half-caster. I think as a DM I'd also allow the ranger to ride their drake once they get Perfected Bond. The drake's reaction is also a nice Hunter's Mark-like damage bonus that you can spread around to others (if a party member crits, for example, you can toss them an extra 2d6 damage.)

I don't think it's logistically possible that we'll see these show up in Tasha's Cauldron of Everything, but I'm always excited to see new ideas go up for testing, and both of these would, I think, be fun to play.

Reading Old D&D Books

 Given that it was on sale for 7 bucks, I picked up the 2nd Edition Ravenloft campaign setting guide on DM's Guild.

Now, I really don't actually understand a lot of the 2nd Edition systems - I started playing in an era of attack bonuses and saving throws, and I haven't even begun to wrap my head around THAC0 (for one thing, as a 5th Editioner, the concept of something having an AC of 0 is utterly alien.)

But I'm there for the flavor, trying to rebuild what I can should I want to play around with these classic settings (in the absence of a 5th Edition release.)

So I've got the Planescape and Ravenloft books from 2nd Edition and the 4th Edition Shadowfell: Gloomwrought and Beyond books.

Planescape's focus is a lot more on lore, which makes it feel like it'd be a lot easier to run 5th Edition adventures in Sigil and the Outlands. While it's not as comprehensive as I'd want it to be (it only details some of the Gate-Towns, skipping I believe all the ones attached to Upper Planes) there's still a lot of really cool information there.

Planescape also leans into the "weird fantasy" feel of the setting, which I love. Don't get me wrong, I love Lord of the Rings. But the kind of fantasy I like to (or would like to) craft has a bit more oddness to it. Planescape actually gives me some very Jim Henson-y vibes, with the surreal landscapes and bizarre armor and uniforms of the representatives of the various "Factols" and the Gate-Towns.

While I think that the numbers and dice can be a really great tool, I've found that I like handling broader narrative arcs with a sort of "mechanics-light" approach. This has been a major lesson in running a Ravnica campaign - one in which I've been admittedly liberal in giving players renown.

As such, I think I could handle some of Planescape's odd planar mechanics in more of a narrative-without-rolls way, or have important moments resolved with simple dice rolls (one thing I'm trying to work on as a DM is to not get too attached to a particular outcome and try to force it to happen.) I love the idea that the planes can effectively steal land by concentrating enough of a philosophical alignment there - a quest idea I had was a group of monks from Arcadia needing to be defended from a bunch of demons as they try to liberate a former stronghold of theirs that was corrupted, simply by meditating really hard while the party fights.

As someone who started with 5th Edition, I was somewhat shocked to discover that the Shadowfell is a super-recent addition to the canon, showing up only in 4th Edition (and 4th Edition being one in which the whole Great Wheel cosmology was smashed, which 5E seems to have just kind of swept under the rug, decision-wise.)

I definitely noticed some odd retcons, like the fact that Shadar-Kai were humans in 4E, but are emphatically elves in 5E.

The Shadowfell book places a lot of emphasis on the city of Gloomwrought, which is very cool, but I'd be more interested in a general way flavor Shadowfell locations. I'm really interested in the "dark reflection" aspect of the Shadowfell, where every location has a corresponding one in the Material Plane (and the Feywild, for that matter.)

Ravenloft comes with a lot of lore on various Dark Lords and NPCs, and a lot of suggestions on building the tone of gothic horror. It is also, I must say, the most obviously dated of the books. Not only does it frequently use an outdated term for the Romani people (which, you know, I get, as I think that term was considered fairly neutral in the 1990s by most people, though the stereotypes were never really "ok,") but it also seem to really, really assume that players are male (again, to be fair, there is some language that acknowledges that it won't always be the case, but the choice is still to always default to male pronouns, which might not bother you, but to me feels, well, dated.)

Of the three, the Planescape guide lights up my imagination the most. Naturally, as it's only one book, the focus remains fixated on Sigil and the Outlands. I think I'd need some other book (I want to say "Manual of the Planes") to get more info on the rest of the multiverse, but I think there's a ton of potential for an interesting Planescape campaign that you can get just from this.

Also, I know that a lot of older players pronounce Sigil with a hard g. I don't care if that's the "canon." Sigil is a word in English and it's not pronounced that way. Harumph.

Anyway, these books are interesting, but I don't really understand the older editions' mechanics enough to convert things like stat blocks over to 5th Edition. I'm really hoping we get some releases in the coming years bringing these cool settings into 5th Edition.

Madness at the Darkmoon Faire - New Hearthstone Expansion Announced

 The cinematics team for Hearthstone freaking kills it every time.

I love the use of the Darkmoon Faire carousel theme, which already struck that eerie chord of "hey, am I going insane here?" Ever since the Darkmoon Faire was revamped way back in 4.3, I've loved the whole dark aesthetic, and in this Hearthstone expansion, the sinister nature of the faire is made explicit, as this links the place with the Old Gods.

Giving us something of a sequel to Whispers of the Old Gods, this expansion will give Azeroth's four Old Gods new legendary creature cards to build a deck around.

There's also a new mechanic called Corrupt, which upgrades spells if you cast a higher-cost card while it's in your hand.

In addition, a new game mode called Duels is being added, which is being pitched as a sort of PvP version of the deck-building solo content like Dungeon Run. This has its own trailer.

Homebrewing Up a Storm

 I think I'm in the midst of a severe bout of quarantine-induced cabin fever. While I'm currently involved in four D&D campaigns (player in 3, DMing the other) I've been feeling a strong urge these past weeks to plan out another campaign.

It's tricky, though, as my original campaign sort of trailed off due to a bit of social drama, and while I get that these things happen, I'm also sad that some of my players (with whom I play other campaigns) haven't been able to play their old characters for so long.

So, on one hand, I feel a certain urge/obligation to continue that campaign, but I've also met so many new, fun players (many of whom are currently playing in my Ravnica campaign) that I'd love to bring them into my homebrew world at a fresh level, rather than jumping in at level 8 or 9, which is where things left off with the old campaign.

While I wrestle with the complexity of that issue, however, I've been getting home-brewy.

My setting is called Sarkon, and it's a world that is undergoing a rapid technological revolution, with social changes coming at the same time. While in the original campaign the world is still largely medieval in feel, but with trains and airships (not to mention super-futuristic technology from the long-dead civilization whose relics are spurring this industrial revolution) starting to shake things up.

Having never owned a PS1 (I seem to only own even-numbered Playstations) I did not previously have a great pop-culture reference for the kind of setting I want, but then, this year, we got Final Fantasy VII Remake, and I have glimpsed the encapsulation of my aesthetic - a magic knight riding down a freeway on an armored motorcycle. FFVII's thoroughly modern (or at least some weird blend of 20th-century and near-future technology) feel seems really close to where I want my adventures to be set.

To be fair, I've already hit that somewhat - for about a year in my original campaign, the players were in a region in the Shadowlands called Red Scar Plains, that, among other things, included the Taheen. Stolen from Stephen King's Dark Tower series (one of my biggest fantasy influences,) the Taheen are animal-headed people (think like an Egyptian god but in khakis and a cheap white button-up) who, in my setting, are native inhabitants to the Shadowlands. The Taheen in particular use a lot of modern technology, and so in that Red Scar Plains adventure, the party had a truck that served as their primary transportation, and also carried around a couple assault rifles (the rogue, who was the only party member who tended toward ranged weapons, already had an ancient laser pistol as his main weapon, so the rifles mostly fell to the strength-based fighter and paladin).

I love the idea of mixing magic with a bit of that open-highway, secret government facility out in the desert aesthetic, and so the Taheen in my world fill an archetype role of the working stiffs who guard Area 51.

Tying them in to existing D&D lore, I've determined that the Taheen are basically a people ruled by the Nagpa - perhaps the Nagpa are their creators or original ancestors of the Taheen (the Nagpa, which to be fair are kind of obscure, are these creepy vulture-people from the Shadowfell who are likely based on the Skesis from the Dark Crystal.)

Anyway, I came up with a set of resistances and immunities that define the Taheen (resistant to poison and necrotic damage, and immune to being frightened) and built a few stat blocks that emphasize their use of modern weaponry - all but the warlock-like spellcasters use modern firearms and sometimes fragmentation grenades.

All of this stuff is in the DMG, so I don't feel like I'm breaking too many rules.

I can envision an early adventure - maybe even a session 1 - that has the party chase after a group of Taheen who have attacked some secure location to steal a powerful artifact, and are now trying to get away with said artifact while the party chases after them. The inherent power of firearms (a modern pistol does the equivalent damage of a greatsword, while being a one-handed, ranged weapon) means that there could be some heightened threat from these creatures to raise the stakes early on.

Now, in order to have such a chase scene, I came up with some car-combat rules.

Essentially, the way I treat it, is that there are three speed categories - 1 is 30 mph - still fast enough to make crashes or falling out of a car pretty dangerous. 2 is 60 mph, and requires a more open road, and 3 is 90 mph, which is a crazy, desperate chase on an open freeway. (Damage for crashes or getting thrown from a vehicle is multiplied by the speed category.)

We then treat the vehicles like they're all going at about the rate of the speed category, but a vehicle has a maneuvering speed rather than a movement speed - though in practice this looks pretty much the same on a battle grid. Essentially, maneuvering speed measures not a vehicle's raw power but its ability to zip around on the road. A zippy motorcycle can blast ahead or skid to the side pretty easily while a massive truck is going to be slower to move into a desired position.

Because land vehicle proficiency in the PHB is, I believe, only granted by the soldier background, the way we handle the ability to use vehicles is that most people in this modern-ish world know the basics of driving, but those with proficiency in it have been specially trained in things like pit maneuvers and the like.

In addition to the Taheen, I made a couple stat blocks for the Reapers. The Reapers in my setting are an elite corps that answers directly to the Emperor (this all makes them sound like bad guys, but my setting's big empire is highly open to interpretation - you might balk at its imperialist, colonialist way of conducting itself, but also like its emphasis on civil liberties and personal freedom - and the Reapers, likewise, explicitly draw members of any alignment.)

The Reaper Knight stat block is something of a Cloud Strife impression - they fight with greatswords, wear plate armor, and have a number of paladin spells (also, they do a little extra force damage with their weapons) as well as having a generalized trait I've created for creatures that can easily fight while driving.

This trait, combat driver, lets them maneuver their vehicle as a bonus action and then also allows them to use two-handed melee weapons and firearms one-handed as long as their other hand is steering the vehicle. (The vehicle has to be Large or smaller, which I think would emphasize this as a trait to use while on a motorcycle and not while driving some massive truck or a tank.

Then, I took that trait and turned it into a feat for players to pick up, which includes land vehicle proficiency.

All of this meaning that I hope that I can some day, not too long from now, run a crazy freeway shootout combat encounter between players and a group of Taheen.

All the Heritage Armor!

 Taking advantage of the level squish, I've now gotten my Mechagnome, Zandalari Troll, and Mag'har Orc up to level 50, which means that I have now unlocked heritage armor for every allied race.

The Mag'har Monk was the lowest-level one, sitting at I believe 72-ish before the squish, which put him in the low 30s (possibly high 20s?) when the patch came out. Given the freedom of Chromie Time, I figured I'd play time paradox and have him level through Draenor. It was also kind of fun that I was able to do the zones in a totally different order than usual - going Gorgrond (he's Blackrock, so I felt I had to do that one,) Nagrand, Frostfire Ridge, and then Spires of Arak.

I am skeptical that you can really just level up all the way through one expansion - while I wasn't clearing every side quest, I did get through most of if not the whole main story quests for each of those zones, meaning Talador would have been the only one left if I'd started from level 10.

Still, I'm not complaining, as it's totally less of a burden to hop over and do, say, Pandaria or the Broken Isles for your last little leg of the leveling journey.

One thing I did notice in doing Zandalar on my Zandalari Troll Shaman was that you don't actually get the quest to pick up the Heart of Azeroth until you hit level 50 - meaning that Azerite Armor will essentially be a completely irrelevant thing for any future character that levels through those zones. You just get normal gear for chest, shoulder, and helm slots, and... man, maybe BFA would have been a better-remembered expansion if that had been the case from the start.

This is not really the intended topic of the post, but as a tangent: I think Artifact Weapons were a lot of fun, but I also think Blizzard should consider ditching the "borrowed power" idea for future expansions. The main thing I loved about the artifacts was the story and aesthetics of them. I think that gearing, gems, and enchantments, not to mention talents, are enough to keep the game interesting. But that's just my two cents.

Anyway, Mag'har actually get three color variants on their heritage armor, with blue, black, and red representing the Frostwolves, Blackrock, and Warsong, respectively. The models are the same, but with just some different overall color schemes, though all have a very rugged, rough, orcish design.

Now, however, that this project is complete, I'm not sure what I'll be doing while we wait for the expansion. Might just take it easy.

Dimension 20 and Modern-Style D&D

I first heard about Dimension 20 when they were doing their New York-set campaign called The Unsleeping City. Created for College Humor's Dropout streaming service, it's a D&D webseries played by various funny folks out of the now-defunct College Humor comedy site (though it appears Dimension 20 is still around.)

If you've watched Critical Role, Dimension 20 is a somewhat more carefully produced version of D&D "real play." Rather than live-streaming, the show is recorded and edited somewhat (though not scripted) to allow for sound effects and various close-up shots of the really excellent minis they use.

The comparison with Critical Role is tempting to make, as it's a show that benefits from the fact that its cast is composed of professional performers. However, while Critical Role gets into the long-haul, years-long campaigns, Dimension 20 has done several shorter-term campaigns over its two years.

And the premises for these campaigns are, in a word, heightened. While they've had other players come in for some of its 6 seasons, they've had a regular cast for three of those (I believe the other campaigns have been separated out as "side quests.")

Anyway, the two that I've watched a lot of (though I realized that I never finished the latter) are Fantasy High and The Unsleeping City. The former has the following pitch: D&D meets John Hughs teen movies. The latter is a sort of hidden-fantasy-world-within-the-real-world magical-not-so-realism kind of premise.

The point is, both of these series set high-magic fantasy stories in a world with cars, subways, cell phones, and modern concerns and environments.

Ever since I read the Dark Tower series by Stephen King, I've always been kind of obsessed with the idea of taking Tolkienesque fantasy tropes and using them in a modern setting (admittedly, that's really the jumping-off point - like King, I'm very into surreal weirdness.)

The way that Dimension 20 approaches the modern settings in these two campaigns is somewhat different. Fantasy High is set, essentially, in a classic D&D fantasy world, but in which some combination of technological, sociological, and magical progress has created a world that appears quite similar to the latter half of the 20th century and the early 21st. This world is explicitly within the standard D&D cosmos - there are references to Acheron, the Nine Hells, and the distinction between Devils and Demons (though the major devil NPC, who turns out to not be that bad of a guy, actually, is still mostly referred to as a demon for the benefit of people who aren't giant nerdy lore sticklers.) But the player characters are all high school freshmen who have been sent to the Aguefort Adventuring Academy, where the insanely violent life of fantasy adventurers is thrown in up in relief against the reality of teenage life.

Certainly, fantasy stories in high school are nothing new (see: Buffy the Vampire Slayer,) but the series derives a lot of humor from the fact that the sort of person who would run such a school for actual children would have to be a violent psychopath.

The Unsleeping City does something I find really fascinating by taking elements of the real world and interpreting them as if they were the deep lore of a fantasy world. Robert Moses, for example, is a real historical figure who did a lot to shape the way that the city of New York developed, and he plays a key role in the campaign.

I used to live in a neighborhood of Los Angeles called Eagle Rock, and I remember wanting to come up with some sort of fantasy equivalent of the city in which there was some majestic, ancient, intelligent eagle that was a kind of oracle there.

Actually, if you've ever read Neil Gaiman's Neverwhere, I'd say there's a similar vibe to the Unsleeping City.

Anyway, if you find yourself looking for an online D&D show, I definitely think this is worth checking out.

Level Squish Impressions

 With 9.0 live today, I decided to take my Mechagnome out for a spin and see how quickly he'd level up. Before the patch came out, he was level 93 or so, I believe, and so when I logged in he was level 38. Dropping out of Draenor immediately, I went back to Stormwind and got the Chromie-time quests to head to the Broken Isles.

I played through the Broken Shore intro quests and then headed to Dalaran. I then proceeded to do all the main story quests in Val'sharah - no side quests and no bonus objectives. I ran Darkheart Thicket and have only gotten one artifact weapon.

Doing so, I've gotten from 38 to 44, which is half the leveling he had left before being ready for Shadowlands content.

Now, while there are only four leveling zones in Legion, there are also a number of class-hall quests that you can do while leveling, as well as the rather extensive Exodar scenario. So I wouldn't say that the content I've done would constitute a full quarter of what I'd expect to be doing.

A brand-new character would be arriving in the Broken Isles (or at least starting the intro quests) at level 10, meaning that you'd expect to get 40 levels out of the Broken Isles, ending up 50 by the end of it. If a zone's quests and dungeon got you a proportionate amount through it, a 4-zone leveling experience should give you ten levels per zone.

Again, I think you could argue that there's still a lot of other things one is expected to do while leveling. But I do wonder if you truly can just do a single expansion's main story quests and really hit level 50.

Obviously, it wouldn't be the end of the world to have to do a few quests in a different expansion as well - it's still going to be a lot faster to level now than it was.

I'm curious how older expansions will feel - there are definitely more zones and I'd wager more quests to do in an expansion like Wrath of the Lich King, and I wonder how it feels, proportionately.

Anyway, all that for a day's play isn't too bad.

What Happens Tomorrow in World of Warcraft?

 Tomorrow brings with it the 9.0 pre-expansion patch for Shadowlands. While the expansion itself was originally slated to release two weeks later, on the 27th, its launch has been pushed back due to the need for additional testing and polish (something that, as a beta player, I can attest to as a wise decision - the expansion has the potential to be amazing, but it's not ready to launch just yet, and another month or so could really make things way, way better.)

Given that the expansion launch is no longer imminent, the 9.0 patch won't immediately bring the pre-expansion events, which I believe are designed to keep us entertained and hyped for about two weeks before the launch of the expansion.

So: what actually comes with 9.0?

Exile's Reach:

    Exile's Reach is the new 1-10 starting zone for all characters (except those who start at higher levels, such as allied races and hero classes.) Notably, you are only forced to run this experience once per account. Afterward, you can choose to go through the old starting zones like Elwynn Forest or Durotar. I also believe that veteran players will be able to skip it as well, though having run it on the PTR, I'd actually recommend even players who are full up on alts to check it out, as it's a pretty quick and streamlined little experience, which ends with a pretty cool simulated dungeon with NPC party members (I don't believe you can choose any role other than DPS, but it's still a decent introduction to the idea of how dungeons work.)

The Level Squish:

    Your level 120 characters will find themselves now level 50, and other characters will be proportionately squished to lower levels as well. Likewise, the scaling of the world will also adjust appropriately.

    New players will need to do Exile's Reach and then level from 10-50 within the Battle for Azeroth zones - and experience gains should mean that doing these quests will be enough to get you up all those 40 levels. So, over the course of a zone like Drustvar, you should be getting roughly 13 levels.

    Veterans can choose "Chromie Time," which will allow you to choose an expansion's content to level through. Say you loved the Broken Isles or Pandaria, you can choose your 10-50 experience to take place in those continents.

    Upon hitting level 50, you'll be sent to start Shadowlands content, and the old content will become, well, "old content," which allows you to do things like soloing raids and such.

Character Customization Options:

    Vastly more options will open up in the barbershop for you to recustomize your character with new hair-styles, separated components of facial hair, picking your eye color, in many cases tattoos and/or war paint, and perhaps most notably, giving humans new facial shape options to more accurately reflect the diversity of, you know, actual humans.

    Also, both Void Elves and Blood Elves will get new eye-color and skin-tone options to effectively let us have High Elves on both the Alliance and Horde.

Class Changes:

    As with any X.0 patch, we're seeing some changes to the mechanics of various classes. Certainly some are getting more dramatic changes than others, but the overall trend here is to allow greater access to "out of spec" abilities that were pared down in Warlords of Draenor and Legion.

    Ultimately, this will largely mean a lot of new buttons to potentially put on your action bars. I have yet to read any 9.0+ class guides, so I don't know, for example, if Death and Decay will be good for Frost Death Knights, but your options are going to get a lot broader.

    Some of the odd consequences of this are going to be that some abilities actually come later - as in, you'll need to be a few levels into Shadowlands (Paladins getting to use Hammer of Wrath during Avenging Wrath regardless of the target's health, for example.) Some specs are going to experience only some small changes, while others (DPS Shamans, I'm looking at you) are going to experience serious re-works.

And that more or less covers it - I suspect we'll be in 9.0 for a good while, perhaps a month to around a month and a half, before the expansion proper launches.

I'll eagerly go on my various toons and do some barbershopping (I'm sure that my Undead Rogue is far too vain not to go with the concealed bone options) and then I think I'll finish leveling up the rest of my Allied Race characters and get them their heritage armor.

Oh, there's another note: you no longer need exalted reputations to unlock allied races, which should make things like Mechagnomes a lot easier to get.

D&D and a World Not Designed for Players

 Ok, this title might be a bit more inflammatory than I mean it to be, but I had the following thought:

I spend a lot of time as a dungeon master tuning whatever monsters or hostile NPCs my players come across to be balanced for them to fight. And while I enjoy building encounters, it's also a lot of prep work that generally has to account for how many players show up and what level they're at.

So this thought suggested to me a new idea (and maybe it's not a "new" idea, but one that hadn't really occurred to me before): namely, to build a world that is not balanced around my particular party.

Consider, for example, that the party finds themselves in some valley ruled over by a dangerous monster - a lich, for example. The party is only level 4 or so, meaning they'll need to get a lot stronger before they have a chance at facing down this big villain.

Normally, the way I'd run such an adventure would be to have a lot of side-quests and things for the party to discover that are balanced for wherever they're at in the current moment. Maybe they save a village from a rampaging flesh golem with a few skeletons or zombies backing it up at level 4, and then they fight their way into the fort commanded by the lich's vampire lieutenant, facing him as a kind of miniboss once they're around level 9 or 10.

In my DM tendencies, I'd tend to give them branching pathways, but still more or less guide them to this overall arc. I'd strongly discourage players from trying to get into the lich's lair early on, making it clear that they're not ready for it.

But I'm sort of tempted to try a different way - to not worry about scaling the encounters at all and just letting the players feel they've got to do some scouting and exploration before they commit to a full-on attack. And there's risk, as the level 5 rogue with a +10 to Stealth is certainly pretty sneaky, but not the kind of reliably invisible assassin she'll be at level 11, never rolling below a 23 thanks to Reliable Talent and her +13 bonus.

This cuts both ways, though, as well. Some brutal knight - a low-level enforcer who lords over a village under the lich's thumb would be a significant challenge if the party finds him at level 1 or 2, but if they encounter him after they've already wiped out the vampire mid-point boss, he'll be a total joke.

This doesn't mean the world needs to be static. The actions of the party could provoke a response on the part of the lich. Maybe the lich moves troops around to better protect key interests - doubling the guards at a keep or a town would mean twice as many enemies to fight for the party if they want to attack.

It could also allow the players to be very strategic, perhaps feinting as if they were going to attack one place and draw the attention of guards from some other place.

The key to DMing such an adventure would be restraint - letting the dice determine how things go. It can be very tempting to have the villains anticipate every move on the part of the players, to ensure that there are challenges around every corner, but at the same time, it can be very rewarding for your players if they truly can outthink and out-maneuver the bad guy.

This post started as a vague idea about DMing, but I'm now getting excited about it as the model for a future campaign.

So, here are a couple ideas of how I think you could run it:

First off, have a map with clear key locations - these don't need to all be towns or forts, but they should be points of interest where stuff can happen.

Avoid plot coupons - if you've played a Zelda game, you'll recognize that most of them have you go from dungeon to dungeon, collecting some group of magical objects that let you progress through the game - usually with a set of three or so early on and then a larger set that gets you to the final boss. However, we're not going to have magical barriers that require you to do things in a certain order here - the final dungeon is there to explore from the start, it's just a question of whether you stand any chance of actually getting to it and through it alive.

Next, I'd recommend taking your villain (and possibly your villain's main lieutenants) and working out their resources - how much gold do they have, how many spell components, and most importantly, how many minions. As the players hit their assets, resources get depleted. Now, the villains might be able to summon in more minions (perhaps conjuring them from other planes) but this will cost them in other resources.

Just because the players are higher level doesn't mean that the villain can suddenly just bring in better-equipped and more experience troops. Your lich bad guy (it doesn't have to be a lich, but it could be) will have to weigh whether they want to spend the gold on hiring a ton of mercenary Veterans or hire ten times as many fresh or undisciplined Guards and Thugs. Likewise, even a lich is going to be able to cast Animate Dead, getting Skeletons and Zombies, a lot more frequently than Create Undead for tougher Ghouls and Ghasts.

So if I were to run this sort of campaign, I'd track the villain's resources over the course of the campaign - the party could choose whether to wear the big bad down over time and thus grow more powerful via experience, but also risk the bad guy taking measures like hiring assassins to kill them - though again, it's something that would be a risk for the villain, as if the assassin failed, it would mean a lot of lost resources, as CR 9 creatures don't come cheap.

I realize this more or less just means running something like a hardcover adventure, and this means a lot of up-front planning. But I think the key would be to play fair as best as you can, forcing the villain to play with what they've got, but also making it clear to the players that there are no guardrails, and if they make reckless decisions, they might pay a steep price.

MTG Races and Pre-Established Monsters as Playable Races

 While certainly overlapping in many ways, the worlds of Magic the Gathering and Dungeons & Dragons do have some pretty big differences.

We've now had two major crossover Campaign Setting books set in MTG worlds - Ravnica and Theros. While the vagaries of planar travel, alignment, and other rather fiddly concepts do come up, at a much simpler level, there are some inconsistencies with playable races.

In Magic worlds, Minotaurs are a common go-to race to affiliate with Red Mana. While they sometimes co-exist with Goblins (as they do on Ravnica,) in other worlds, Minotaurs take on the "proud warrior race" role that is sometimes filled by Orcs (actually, Minotaurs are more common in Magic than Orcs.) No color of mana in Magic is explicitly evil, and the only one that strongly skews that way is Black (though again, there's potential for good guys affiliated with Black mana.) The main thing is that Minotaurs are associated with rage and passion, on top of being brave and tough warriors. But fundamentally, they're just another type of humanoid.

This is a pretty big contrast with the way that Minotaurs are used in D&D. The Dungeons & Dragons Minotaur is a large monstrosity and is chaotic evil. While not demonic themselves, Minotaurs in D&D are affiliated with the demon lord Baphomet, as well as Goristros, one of the tougher types of demons in the Monster Manual. Baphomet is effectively the ultimate minotaur, and his layer of the Abyss is a giant labyrinthine slaughterhouse where he hunts down anything that stumbles in there for fun.

One of the core abilities for all minotaurs - both the standard monstrosity ones as well as the demonic varieties, is their labyrinthine recall.

Of course, in myth, the Minotaur was an individual monster that... well, worked a lot like the way I just described Baphomet, killing anyone inside his labyrinth. In the Theros setting, Minotaurs are, naturally, a playable race option, and the major Minotaur city, Skophos, is built as a giant maze. Yet the playable minotaur race (identical to its Ravnica version) does not have the labyrinthine recall ability that monster stat blocks have. Playable Minotaurs are also smaller, at medium size (keeping playable races to only medium and small) and count as humanoids, even though their Monster Manual brethren are considered monstrosities.

The Ravnica book added a bunch of creatures never seen before in D&D as playable race options - between Simic Hybrids, Loxodons, and Vedalken. But the Centaur was, likewise, already seen in the Monster Manual.

Here, things get even weirder.

Like the Minotaur, the Centaur is a classic creature from Greek myth. Also like the Minotaur, the monster manual entry for it is a large monstrosity. Unlike the humanoid playable Minotaur, the Centaur gets a different creature type, but it is inexplicably fey, rather than monstrosity.

In terms of game mechanics, there aren't as many odd omissions. The Monster Manual version is a pretty basic creature, with just a little charge ability similar to that found on most creatures, but with humanoid-style weapons. While not directly translated, the spirit, more or less, of how the Centaur monster works is inherited by the playable race. I just cannot understand why they decided Centaurs ought to be fey.

While Satyrs are also found in Theros, they do not appear in Ravnica. Here, things make a bit more sense. Satyrs remain medium, and they are also both fey creatures as Monster Manual entries and as a playable race. (Side note, I went to Greece two years ago and saw a ton of illustrated pottery, and I was always kind of shocked to see how Satyrs are actually pretty frequently depicted as having human legs - they're just horny - both literally and figuratively - bald dudes.) Furthermore, the playable Satyr inherits the Monster Manual version's magic resistance, which is arguably insanely overpowered for a playable race. Of the three MTG races that represent classic monsters found in the Monster Manual, the Satyr is the most direct translation.

Of course, we've seen this before, when Volo's Guide to Monsters, in addition to pretty extensive write-ups of new races like Firbolgs and Tabaxi, gave us stats for classic monsters (particularly those that the book focused on - well, except hags and mind flayers, because that's probably not something anyone should be playing.)

The main shared trait for Orcs in the Monster Manual is the Aggressive feature, which lets them move faster toward an enemy as a bonus action. The playable race recreates this nearly verbatim (with just a little more clarification.) While this is a pretty excellent translation of the monster stats to the playable race, the oddity is the way that Half-Orcs are so different from their Orcish parents. Where do the Half-Orc's Savage Attacker and Relentless Endurance come from? I suspect it's that the design of the Half-Orc was not intended to mirror what was then just a monster stat, so we don't see the kind of hybridity of racial features as found in the Half Elf.

Goblins are another fairly direct translation, gaining the monster-defining Nimble Escape trait, with the added playable race bonus of Fury of the Small to give goblins a bit of extra oomph.

Moving onto the next goblinoid race, the Bugbear inherits the Surprise Attack trait from its monstrous antecedent. Oddly, though, rather than the Brute feature (which, to be fair, could be overpowered,) they instead get Long-Limbed, which extends the reach of their melee attacks - which is not something the monster ever got.

Hobgoblins don't have anything really resembling Martial Advantage, which is found in its Monster Manual entries (and a variant called Arcane Advantage for Hobgoblin Devastators found in Volo's, though nothing comparable for Hobgoblin Iron Shadows, also in Volo's.) To be fair, that would probably work in practice as a less flexible version of a Rogue's sneak attack, but if all Half-Orcs can get a minor version of Brutal Critical, I don't see why Hobgoblins didn't get Martial Advantage.

Kobolds inherit the main defining monster traits with Pack Tactics and Sunlight Sensitivity, so this seems like a pretty decent direct translation.

The final monster-translation in Volo's is the Yuan-Ti Pureblood. There's literally a stat block for Yuan-Ti Purebloods, and the playable race retains the ability to cast Animal Friendship on snakes, the Magic Resistance (I guess Satyrs have precedent) and immunity to poison damage (I think this makes them the only playable race with a damage immunity - you'd think Warforged would also have poison immunity, but their feature is more akin to a dwarf's.)

Now, I had actually forgotten, but there are also some playable races in Volo's that have Monster Manual precedence (oh boy, we'll also have to touch of the Gith.)

Kenku just have a single entry in the Monster Manual, but were made a playable race in Volo's. They retain the Mimickry trait and the inability to speak conventionally (a real challenge for RP) but the Ambusher trait is replaced with more broadly applicable rogue-y and deceptive bonuses.

Lizardfolk, as seems typical with these monster-race translations, retain a lot of the defining abilities, such as a swim speed and the Hold Breath trait, as well as Natural Armor. There are a few additional things tossed in, mostly playing into the idea of Lizardfolk as rugged survivors, again, as typical with these.

Finally, we come to the Gith. The main thing that the race inherits from the stat blocks is its Innate Spellcasting (Psionics,) which has historically been treated in 5th Edition as spellcasting that doesn't require any components (as a DM, I rule that this means that you can't tell when they're casting a spell and thus can't do things like Counterspell in response to it - best case scenario the spell take effect before you can respond, but if it's one with a subtle effect, you might not even realize it's taken place.)

It seems that all NPC Githzerai are monks, gaining armor from Psychic Defense, which works exactly as a Monk's Unarmored Defense, but the subrace does not automatically gain this benefit.

Githyanki really just retain the psionic innate spellcasting spells associated with their subrace, which makes sense as I'd argue one of the real defining githyanki monster traits is their silver greatswords - a piece of equipment, rather than something they possess innately.

Many Eberron races evoke classic monsters/creatures, but they make a point to give them different names - Changelings rather than Doppelgangers, Warforged rather than Golems - and so I think they've really taken a license to not be tied down to the precedent set by entries in the Monster Manual.

Contemplating a Wildemount-Style Campaign

 While my roommate has been reading through my copy of Explorer's Guide to Wildemount, he and I have been discussing the structure of Critical Role's second campaign, and how remarkably player-driven the campaign is.

While it's one of now four (5 if you count SCAG) campaign setting books for 5th Edition, Wildemount distinguishes itself less in high concept - in fact, of all the setting's it's probably the most conventionally D&D-ish - but in the overall attitude and style of the campaign that it's designed to help you run.

In my general experience, I've run things with a plan. I know more or less the arc of the campaign, and generally figure out how things are going to go before I even know who all my players are going to be.

To tell the story that you, as a DM, wish to tell, this is, I think, the standard approach. And it fits with a lot of the published adventures, which naturally can't be designed for specific characters given that they're meant to be, well, modular (in old school terms, published adventures are called modules.)

The thing is, one of the things that makes D&D (well, and TTRPGs in general) so cool compared to something like a video game is that they can be custom-tailored to the players.

If you haven't watched Critical Role's second campaign (which I highly recommend, though I also know that it's a huge time commitment - I suggest listening to it in podcast form while exercising or if you have a job that doesn't require a lot of linguistic processing; I got through all of the first campaign while working on product photography) the structure has been remarkable, in that it all seems to flow from what the characters want to do.

While Matt Mercer, the DM and creator of the world of Exandria in which Wildemount is one of a few continents, certainly leaves hints and breadcrumbs to direct players toward certain plots, there is very little railroading. For example, at one point, the party discovers that the hometown of one of its members was recently attacked by one of the other major powers in Wildemount, and chose to follow the retreating attacks through their subterranean tunnels - something Mercer had clearly not anticipated, and which wound up changing the course of the campaign. But their choice led to some very interesting developments, and the the world was detailed and vibrant enough that things could continue with relative ease (or at least it looked that way.)

The Wildemount book is dense with regional details. Every village and town has at least one story hook that you could use for a local quest, and that means that when your party arrives there, you have something for them to do.

So why not just set them loose?

Player-specific plots are hard to work into a pre-planned arc. But the Wildemount book has a lot of methods and tools for ensuring that the player characters are fully enmeshed in the setting, and thus bought into the overall major plots there. There are also some guidelines on building arcs for your players, considering what goals and steps along the way need to happen for that character to have a satisfying story - should they survive (and spoilers for recent episodes: even if a character dies, it doesn't mean that their plot has to.)

Anyway, the other thing that got me thinking about this is that a friend introduced me to Inkarnate, which is a web-based map-making system. As someone who has plenty of imagination but limited skills as a visual artist, it's really great to have a system that lets you make pretty gorgeous maps. While I'm a little overwhelmed by the options to make battle maps (and I think I'll stick to the basic editor in Roll20) the ability to make maps for continents and other large areas has got me totally hooks.

In my homebrew world of Sarkon, there's a region called Nephimala, which is inspired by the period of western expansion in the United States during the 19th Century. Redwood forests, snowy mountains, wide prairies and vast deserts are the stage set for a young republic that seeks to expand into a sparsely populated land while the indigenous people struggle to maintain their autonomy and culture in the face of this massive conquest. And on top of this is a rush for ancient technology, a menacing army of bandits secretly controlled by an archdevil, fey crossings in the forests, and a bit of cosmic horror out on the coasts make it a place ripe for adventure.

Making a map will always inspire me to fill in more details - while I came up with five cities for Nephimala when I first came up with the Sarkon setting, building the mountain ranges, rivers, forests, and deserts inspired me to place new locations on the map, giving me a whole lot of additional locations, which in turn has made the place feel a bit more real and also given me a better sense of its history and the kinds of adventures that could occur there.

While still probably not as dense with detail as Wildemount, I could really see myself working on a few favorite regions of my setting and detailing everything from major cities to minor villages and remote shrines.

Now that my Ravnica campaign has hit tier 3 (though I don't know if it's truly halfway through - there are still nine guilds with Phyrexian cultists or their pawns subverting the plane's safety, and then a big interplanar treasure hunt to go on before taking the fight to New Phyrexia, not to mention player-specific plots) I've been thinking a lot about what I want to do next, and I definitely want to set it in Sarkon. While I have a few ideas for things to set there, one new idea cropping up is to really be pretty hands-off on the initial design and just start with in-depth character building, and take stuff from their stories to link to the overall campaign.

Having a place like Nephimala very thoroughly mapped out would probably do a lot to make that work.

Shadowlands Delayed to "Later This Year"

 So, Shadowlands is, I think, going to be a really cool expansion. But playing on the Beta, I've felt a bit worried. There are bugs and issues that really should have been ironed out a while ago, and with only about 4 weeks until their announced release date, without even the 9.0 patch live yet, I've been nervous that the expansion was going to drop with a lot of problems as yet unsolved.

And it seems Blizzard agrees with me. Shadowlands is going to be delayed until later in the year.

This is an exceptional year, and while Blizzard has claimed that their progress hasn't been slowed much by the pandemic and quarantine, I suspect that it has made work on the expansion at least a little slower.

So, what does this mean?

Well, really it just means that Shadowlands is dropping later. I still expect we'll get it by the end of the year, but perhaps a month or even two later.

This is disappointing, of course, but frankly, I'm not going anywhere, and I think those of us who have been testing the expansion likely have a similar attitude: this expansion has the potential to be off-the-walls bananas awesome, but it also needs a lot of polish - polish it probably wouldn't have gotten in the 4 weeks left until its original release date.

Still, it does mean that BFA will soldier on for a while longer. I'm hoping we can at least get the pre-patch in relatively soon so we can take advantage of the faster leveling and such.

EDIT:

While the expansion release has been delayed we have gotten a confirmation that the pre-patch will be arriving on October 13th!

So, big things coming on the 13th:

The level squish will reduce 120 characters to level 50, and other characters will be reduced to a proportionate level.

Class changes go into effect - 2H Frost returns, Prot and Holy Paladins use Holy Power once again (and from my experience on the beta, Prot is actually pretty decent for soloing,) DPS Shamans lose Maelstrom and work differently.

Maybe the most exciting change is that all the new character customization options will be available, allowing for more realistic-looking human characters of non-white ethnicities, tons of war paints and tattoos, new hairstyles and facial features that can be customized independently. Seriously, you're going to have fun playing around in the barber shop.

Corruption on gear will no longer have any effect - so you lose the positives, but you can also now equip all your most corrupted gear with no ill effect either! Azerite Armor and Essences will continue to work until we go to the Shadowlands.

And, of course, the current PvP season will be ending and you'll no longer be able to purchase the auction house mount (aka the Longboy.)

Heirlooms will no longer boost XP gained (though the overall leveling speed will be a lot faster) but will instead gain new set bonuses good for questing and leveling.

I, personally, will probably take the opportunity to finish leveling all my allied race alts, which should be a lot faster now.

We'll, of course, also get the pre-launch expansion event, including zombie plague 2.0 and quests that send us to Icecrown to battle the now-leaderless Scourge.

Into the Tier 3 Frontier

My Ravnica campaign has made it to tier 3, and that means players are level 11. Several players decided to try out alts, so I made a less plot-intensive adventure before they pick their new headquarters (and prepare to clear out monsters from their choice) in which they traveled to a remote district to deal with what turned out to be an adult white dragon who had frozen the whole place.

It's the first time I've run a legendary dragon, and I'll be honest, kind of shocked at how quickly they took it down. Four characters, three of whom literally had no magic items (except some healing potions they bought.) But there was an Open Fist Monk, a Chronurgist Wizard, an Undead Warlock, and the veteran character, an Ancestral Guardian Barbarian.

Even between only four characters (though the Warlock did use the Conjure Undead Spirit spell, which is freaking powerful) the party took the dragon down before he got a second turn - the dragon only got two legendary tail swipes, two legendary wing buffets, and a single frost breath before he was taken down.

A group of four level 11 characters is supposed to be balanced for a CR 13 legendary monster, but this felt like a cakewalk (though the Wizard was down to about 5 health after the breath attack.)

So as I see it, I think I either need to build in environmental disadvantages or I really need to make sure that any big encounter (even if it's not a plot-focused "boss") has the legendary creature's health maximized.

I do think that a lot of the difficulty scaling for encounters is based on an assumption of a lot more combat per day - more of a dungeon crawl experience. If you're having six fights before a long rest, with maybe time for one short rest in the middle, even fights that go quickly will deplete resources and health.

Something to think about.

But yeah, an adult white dragon only has 200 health on average. And when you have players at level 11, it's not terribly unusual for them to do over 25 damage in a round, so between 4 players, it'll only take them two rounds to kill it.