Draconians

 Fizban's Treasury of Dragons gives us a ton of new monsters. Many of these are new dragon types - like the major dragons in the Monster Manual, we get wyrmling, young, adult, and ancient versions of all the gem dragons, as well as a few other types.

But it's not all just dragons. One group that really fascinate me, and feel ripe to use as a major threat in a future campaign, are the Draconians.

Now, I know very little about Dragonlance as a setting, but I do think they were introduced for that setting.

Draconians are humanoid-like monstrosities that are created through the corruption of dragon eggs, producing dragon-like soldiers than have various specialties. They look very vaguely like dragonborn, but are not just normal people. The trait they all share, other than being sort of draconic in appearance, is that upon death, they explode, unleashing violent magic that can damage or debilitate the foe that struck the killing blow (and anyone else nearby).

While their alignment is listed as "any" (likely reflecting more modern sensibilities when it comes to intelligent beings - notably, I believe that even fiends like demons will in the future be listed as "typically chaotic evil" rather than as a blanket statement, allowing a DM who wants to tell a certain kind of story to produce outlier NPCs) these guys very much seem like bad, bad news.

In particular, I find the Draconian Dreadnought to have immense story potential, and might give its unique ability to others. While it's the biggest of the Draconians, and is built primarily as a melee bruiser, it can also steal the appearance of a creature it slays, and the disguise lasts indefinitely.

Draconians are mass-produced - a single dragon egg will yield multiple draconians - and their universal "Death Throes" trait marks them as, it seems, kind of disposable to their masters - a fire-and-forget weapon that will, at the very least, do some damage on the way out.

So, in my mind, the Draconians represent a hidden threat - highly dangerous monsters that are intelligent enough to infiltrate society - but even after the grand conspiracy emerges into the open, the draconians are still fearsome foes to meet on the battlefield. An evil, secret army could be building up beneath everyone's notice.

Draconians range in CR from 1/2 to 6, which means that nothing here is going to be a boss-level threat. They seem to be designed to be minions. But I could imagine that some evil dragon, perhaps plotting a return to power or some kind of conquest, might send these out as their henchmen - maybe the party encounters some bandtis who are better-armed than they ought to be, and when they fight them, it turns out their leader is actually a disguised Draconian Dreadnought - only revealed when they are struck dead and explode with fiery force.

Notably, the Death Throes ability says that it triggers when the draconian is reduced to 0 hit points - not when it dies (though the effect will surely kill it). That means that there's no knocking these guys out with nonlethal blows. Thus, you have some terrifying foot soldiers for an evil mastermind that are going to be practically impossible to get any information out of.

While I have so many campaign ideas in my head, reading through Fizban's has given me some ideas for one set in my own world that would likely center around the return of a long-dead draconic tyrant - and these monsters would be a great first sign of the threat to come.

Draconic Spirit and other Spells out of Fizban's

 The "Summon" spells from Tasha's Cauldron of Everything are some of my favorite spells added to the game. They take a lot of the complexity out of other creature-conjuring spells while bringing a whole lot of power in terms of damage output.

Fizban's adds another to that list: Summon Draconic Spirit. It's a 5th level spell that works the same as the others, but this one conjures, well, a dragon (we just need a Summon Ooze, Summon Plant, and Summon Humanoid and we'll have the full set!)

The Draconic Spirit in question, however, will play a somewhat different role. Its attacks are going to be a little less powerful than, say, the Fiend or the Shadowspawn, but they also have a breath weapon.

First off, this spell is available to Druids, Sorcerers, and Wizards. This is actually some great news for Sorcerers, who tend not to get these spells (the Tasha's subclasses each get their appropriate ones - Aberration and Construct - through their expanded spells).

Let's get the stats:

The draconic spirit is a large dragon. Its armor class is 14 + the spell's level, which means at baseline, it'll have an AC of 19 (and can hit 23 if you cast it at 9th level, which is huge). This actually gives them the highest AC of any of these conjured creatures (even the defender Celestial).

Its hit points are 50 plus 10 for each level above 5th. This is fairly standard scaling, which means it falls behind the Shadowspawn, Fiend, and Construct, and also seems to start at a lower baseline - but of course it will not be hit quite as often given its high AC. (Also, the spell specifies that the dragon has a number of d10 hit dice equal to the spell level).

The dragon has a normal 30 ft movement speed, but also a 30 ft. swim speed and a 60 ft. fly speed - so it's fast.

When you summon it, you pick metallic, chromatic, or gem. The spirit basically covers all of that family's damage types and gets resistances to all its types - Metallic and Chromatic get acid, cold, fire, lightning, and poison resistance (yeah, metallic dragons don't breathe poison, but this is easier) while Gem dragons get force, necrotic, psychic, radiant, and thunder resistance.

Additionally, when you summon it, you choose one of the damage resistances it has and you get that resistance as well.

The dragon is immune to charm, fear, and being poisoned. It has 30 ft. blindsight, and 60 ft. darkvision.

Now, its attacks:

First off, its Rend attack scales just like the others - you get a number of attacks equal to half the spell's level rounded down (as a 5th level spell, that means a base of 2). Rend uses your spell attack modifier, has a 10 foot reach, and does 1d6 + 4 + the spell's level in damage. While the +4 (based on its strength modifier) is better than a lot of the creatures, the 1d6 is low, though not terrible.

However, in addition to the attacks, you also get a Breath Weapon once a turn. This is a 30-foot cone that deals 2d6 damage of one of the types the dragon has resistance to (your choice), with a dexterity save to reduce the damage by half.

While 2d6 isn't a massive amount of damage, this is the only summoned creature with a reliable AoE ability, and that's gravy on top of the regular attacks (while the 1d6 is definitely lower than, say, a summoned slaad's 1d10, it's not that far off - the Slaad's average damage if 1d10+3+the spell's level, while the dragon's is 1d6+4+the spell's level. If both cast at 5th level, that goes out to 13.5 versus 12.5 damage per hit. With the breath attack, even on a single target the dragon comes out ahead - even if the monster succeeds on its save, actually).

Point being - this might be the strongest of all the summon creature spells. Actually, real quick, I think the previous winner was the Avenger Celestial. Let's do the math real quick:

We'll look at both cast at the base level. Celestial does 2d6+2+spell's level, on its radiant bow attacks. That comes to 14 damage, and thus 28 damage per turn.

Dragon does 1d6+4+spell's level, or 12.5 per attack, coming to 25 damage per turn. But then we have the breath, giving us 2d6 additional damage on a failed save, making it 32 damage per turn.

Though Rend is non-magical piercing, so unless you're a Shepherd Druid, situationally it'll be less powerful.

Phew. It's a good spell.

But that's not all the spells in Fizban's!

There aren't a ton of spells, but I don't think I'm going to go through all of them. Let me just touch on the really interesting ones to me:

Ashardalon's Stride is the only one that is available to Artificers (also Rangers, Sorcerers, and Wizards). It's primarily a movement boost, giving you 20 additional feet of movement, and your movement doesn't provoke opportunity attacks. Any creature you skate by (for some reason I picture this as "flame rollerblades") takes 1d6 fire damage. At higher levels (it's a 3rd level spell) the speed increases by 5 feet per level and the damage increases by 1d6 per level.

I think the movement speed thing is the real buff here - you go way faster and can get away from (or move between) foes with ease.

Nathair's Mischief is another I really like. It's a 2nd level illusion spell that fills a 20-ft cube with fey and draconic magic, on each of your turns for a minute, you roll randomly for some whimsical crowd-control ability. This includes a smell of apple pie that charms creatures, flowers that spray water in peoples' faces to blind them, infectious giggling that incapacitates foes and sends them in random directions, and drops of molasses that hover in the air and make it difficult terrain. Since none of this can harm a person on its own, this seems like something for a friendly if mischievous character to cast on the party - it is a bit unpredictable to use reliably, but super fun.

Anyway, I'm playing a wizard in a campaign that is due to start up next week, and I'm keeping an eye open for any good-looking spells.

Making Rangers Work in 5.5

 The Ranger has been in a kind of sad position for much of 5th Edition. As I've examined the class, I've found that the real power of the class comes from its subclasses, and the first two - the Beastmaster and the Hunter - were not quite powerful enough to pull the Ranger up out of the muck.

But I think the other issue was always that the two level 1 features, Favored Enemy and Natural Explorer, leaned too heavily into flavor and not heavily enough into mechanics. For a class that was likely to have low or even negative intelligence modifiers, getting advantage on checks to recall information about particular creature types is pretty underwhelming.

They also were two features that only did anything some of the time - if you had a ranger who was really good in swamps, you got nothing when your party found itself in the desert.

Now, Tasha's Cauldron of Everything made some big changes, creating alternatives to these features that were more broadly useful. Natural Explorer can be swapped out in favor of Deft Explorer, which gives you much more broadly applicable skills like increased movement speed, a climb and swim speed, expertise in a skill, and a way to avoid exhaustion, regardless of what environment you were in.

These replacement features are mostly very good, and I think almost pull the Ranger out of its pit.

However, the central one - the one that I think is most crucial to rehabilitating the class, which swaps Favored Enemy for Favored Foe, is underwhelming.

Favored Foe reads (italics are my own)

When you hit a creature with an attack roll, you can call on your mystical bond with nature to mark the target as your favored enemy for 1 minute or until you lose concentration.

The first time you on each of your turns that you hit the favored enemy and deal damage to it, including when you mark it, you can increase that damage by 1d4.

You can use this feature to mark a favored enemy a number of times equal to your proficiency bonus and regain all expended uses when you finish a long rest.

The extra damage increases to 1d6 at 6th level and 1d8 at 14th level.

My issue with this is that it basically recreates a worse Hunter's Mark. Unlike, say, a Monster Slayer's "Slayer's Prey," this can never stack with Hunter's Mark (because of concentration) and so by level 2, when you pick up the spell that basically all Rangers are going to get, this feature becomes useless. (Yes, it upgrades to 1d8 at level 14, but it's still only for one attack - 1d8 is definitely less than 2d6 - and by that level you've probably got better spells to concentrate on).

So the first problem with Favored Foe is that it's just bad.

The second problem is that it removes all the flavor of the original thing it was meant to replace.

What, after all, is the fantasy of a Ranger?

To me, it's someone who is a master of surviving in the wild. Part of that survival is being able to fight well, but the Ranger is not a Fighter. The Ranger's whole deal is knowing what is out there, and being ready for it. They're the person you want to have in your party who will be able to tell you what is safe to eat, but also what that freaking monster you're facing is.

So let me propose something very different:

And to be clear, this is a first draft of the ability. What I want to capture is the notion that the Ranger can, with enough preparation, get a significant edge against their foes.

Let's name it:

The Hunt:

At 1st level, thanks to your experiences traveling the wilds, you can call upon your wide breadth of knowledge of monsters to prepare yourself mentally and physically to face certain kinds of foes. When you finish a long rest, you can choose aberrations, beasts, celestials, constructs, fey, fiends, monstrosities, oozes, plants, or undead. You can also choose a type of humanoid (such as orc, goblinoid, or human).

Until you finish your next long rest, when you hit a creature of the chosen type, you deal additional damage equal to your proficiency bonus.

    Naturally, this might be subject to tuning, but I think it's within the realm of what is reasonable. One option to change it would be to make the damage equal to your Wisdom modifier, which would be more flavorful (reflecting your familiarity with the foe) though it would scale up slower.

This would help make all that investigating and identification of monsters play a real part in increasing the party's effectiveness (so often intelligence checks wind up basically being "cool, there's a bunch of mind flayers here. We'll proceed exactly as if we had no idea.")

I honestly think this one change could make the Ranger a far more appealing class. They need something big to make them keep up with the other martial classes, and I submit this concept as one that is in keeping with the flavor of the class.

100% Hard Mode Completed in Metroid Dread (6 hours)

 Well, I played it through a 3rd time (I must like this game). This time, I did Hard Mode.

Hard mode is... well, after beating the game twice on normal, it honestly didn't seem that much harder. I think the only real difference is that the enemies hit harder - maybe 150% or even 200% of the ordinary damage. Still, the main skill you develop over multiple playthroughs is dodging attacks. My recollection of playing Super Metroid was that I'd tend to worry more about getting damage in when I could and hoping I killed the boss before it killed me - avoiding attacks if I could, but focusing on damage outputs.

I think that the ease with which Samus controls, especially in the way it allows you to quickly and precisely aim your attacks, means that if the damage the bosses did was the same they did in Super Metroid, it'd be too easy.

In a lot of ways, the bosses feel a bit more like World of Warcraft or Dark Souls/Bloodborne designs. What I mean by that is that the first time you face one of them, you're going to be blindsided by tons of devastating attacks. Mastery, then, is mostly about reading tells and knowing how to dodge the attacks. For example, I've gotten way better at letting the latter two Elite Chozo Warriors, in their second phase, aim at me with their goo-spit and then Aeion Flash out of the way right as it goes off. (It's a bit harder to do so with Raven Beak's charge beam in his final phase, as if you stay on the ground no place on the ground will be safe when it goes off).

Item collection is of course the same in Hard Mode (I shocked myself by getting the Burenia Shinespark puzzle in what was effectively the first attempt). One thing about this game is that even if you collect everything, you'll sometimes be surprised at how what seemed like the only route on an earlier run is in fact just one of many.

For example, I almost accidentally skipped the Chozo Robot duo in Burenia beacause I just happened not to go into that room. I think I ultimately had to in order to get the missile expansion in that room, but if I weren't going for 100% I probably never would have fought them (also, for some reason on this run those fights went way, way faster and easier).

I certainly did not remember some of the rooms and puzzles for the items even having gotten 100% on my first run. Also, I think there were some teleporters that I hadn't found in the first or second run. I remember hearing that at some point you'd be able to use the teleporters to go to any other one as a sort of fast-travel, but that appears to be incorrect unless I'm missing something.

Anyway, I want to praise the final Raven Beak fight as a really fantastic boss fight. Even though my first go around I was incredibly frustrated before I realized you had to actually shoot in order to get the parry animation to play on the second phase (the first run he must have had that gold armor for a solid 10 minutes while I tried to figure out how to push him into the next phase).

I also realize I could parry one of his more aggressive melee attacks, which I always used to just dodge, which not only supplied me with some missiles and health, but also helped me push him farther into the fight faster. (Just gotta be very careful that you don't try to parry him when he gets Shinespark, which looks similar, as that will take off like 4 or 5 energy tanks with one hit).

On Hard Mode it only took me three attempts to down Raven Beak, and all three saw me getting to the final stage. My sense is that he's immune to the wave beam in phase 1, and of course immune to everything except in the parry-animation in phase 2, but after that point, you can just hit him with the beam, and I think it's actually more efficient to spam the beam in the parry-cutscenes than to hit him with missiles, though it's hell on your hands (the last time I did it on my kill I just wound up spamming ice missiles to keep my hand from cramping up - ah, aging!)

The EMMIs are practically identical on Hard Mode. The only difference I'd imagine is that the light blue EMMI (the one with the ice missiles) deals more damage when it freezes you - most of the EMMIs don't actually do damage, so there's not much of a difference.

Man, I wish there were just more of this game, though I also recognize that "leaving you wanting more" is a sign that they did a good job.

One thing I would be really into would be if they were to do a Zero Mission/Samus Returns-style remake of Super Metroid using Dread's engine. While a nearly unchanged remake would probably please a lot of old school fans, the game's presence on the Super Nintendo Collection makes that a bit redundant, and I think you could take advantage of some of the changes brought with Dread.

The thing I always hated about Super Metroid was having to fumble with the select button to choose missile types and other equipment. With modern controllers having way more buttons, you could fix that issue.

I'd go a bit further and make it so that the controls were basically identical to Metroid Dread, but I'd then make Super Missiles the kind of "charge beam" for missiles (kind of the way Storm Missiles work in Dread). They could still be kept as a separate ammunition if you wanted to totally preserve the flow of Super Metroid, but I think it'd also be ok to remix things slightly - maybe putting Super Missiles later in the game.

I'd also love to see the bosses of Super Metroid given the complexity and cinematic treatment that bosses in Dread have. You get the Morph Ball early enough in Super Metroid that I think you could also preserve Samus' slide from Dread (which was honestly a major selling point) and just make the route to the Bombs one square higher to keep you from getting in there early.

I just want to play more Metroid, Nintendo! Which means you did a freaking amazing job on Dread.

Way of the Ascendant Dragon Monk in Fizban's Treasury of Dragons

 Monks got a new subclass in Fizban's as well. With Bahamut as well as several gold dragons depicted as monks or running monasteries where martial artists could learn their disciplines, it makes sense to me to have an explicitly draconic monastic tradition.

D&D's dragons tend more toward a Western version of the dragon myth, but dragons are also a huge part of East Asian culture, which is, of course, where D&D's monk class finds its inspiration.

The Way of the Ascendant Dragon has the monk take on various draconic features and techniques, channeling draconic power into their fighting style.

Let's take a look:

At 3rd level, you get Draconic Disciple. You get a few benefits from this. Draconic Presence lets you re-roll a failed Charisma (Intimidation) or Charisma (Persuasion) check with a reaction. Once it succeeds, you cannot use it again until you finish a long rest. I really like these "use it until it actually works" features, which make things that would be pretty underwhelming into a more solid bonus.

Also part of this feature is Draconic Strike. When you hit a target with an unarmed strike, you can change the damage to acid, cold, fire, lightning, or poison. Granted, this becomes less useful at level 6 because there's basically no damage type with fewer monsters that can resist it than magical bludgeoning. Still, this will give you three levels of bypassing resistance to nonmagical damage, can take advantage of vulnerabilities, and of course make for some cool flavor.

Finally, you get Tongue of Dragons, letting you speak, read, and write Draconic, or some other language (presumably this clause, like with the Drakewarden, is in case you've already picked up Draconic).

Also at 3rd level, you get Breath of the Dragon. When you take the attack action on your turn, you can replace one of your attacks with an exhalation of draconic energy in either a 20-foot cone or a 30x5 foot line (your choice). You choose acid, cold, fire, lightning, or poison, and each creature in that cone or line must make a Dex save against your ki save DC, taking damage of that type equal to two rolls of your Martial Arts die on a failure, or half on a success. At level 11, this increases to three rolls of your Martial Arts die.

You can use this a number of times equal to your proficiency bonus, regaining all uses when you finish a long rest, but you can also spend 2 ki to use it if you're out of charges.

So let's do some math here: the damage of the breath is going to probably be a little low for single-target until you hit level 11. Levels 3 and 4 it's going to do 2d4 (5) damage, when you're probably going to be doing 1d8+3 or +4 (7.5 or 8.5)  with a regular attack if you've got a quarterstaff. Of course, not only will this get around damage resistance in most cases, but it's obviously designed to hit multiple enemies - something that a Monk generally can't do (I still really wish the Drunken Master could do some kind of flaming booze cone attack like a Brewmaster Monk in World of Warcraft). At levels 5-10, it's going to do 2d6 (7) damage, which, again, is not quite as good as a single melee strike.

But at level 11, the damage hits 3d8, or 13.5, which starts to look pretty good in single-target. And then, by tier 4, it's 16.5. Even if you had a +3 weapon at that point (these are taking the place of your regular attacks, recall, so it could be with a weapon) the average damage of a single +3 monk weapon attack at level 17+ is going to be 1d10+8, or 13.5 - which is less than the 16.5 damage you'll be doing on average with the breath.

And, much as I was discussing the new Dragonborn breath weapons, any misgivings go out the window the moment you can get a second target in there.

At level 6, you get Wings Unfurled. When you use Step of the Wind, you can get spectral wings that appear on your back and then vanish at the end of your turn. While you have those wings, you have a flying speed equal to your walking speed (and you're a monk, so it's pretty fast). You can use this a number of times equal to your proficiency bonus. So, yeah, you can't just burn Ki every round to fly constantly, but this seems really useful for moments where you really need it. Maybe not the most mind-blowing (Monks have pretty good mobility in general) but still pretty cool.

At level 11, you get Aspect of the Wyrm. As a bonus action, you can create an aura around yourself that radiates 10 feet from you for 1 minute. While it's up, you gain either Frightful Presence or Resistance. Frightful Presence allows you to, when you create the aura, and as a bonus action on subsequent turns, choose a creature within the aura. They must succeed on a Wisdom saving throw against your ki save DC or become frightened of you for 1 minute. They can repeat the saving throw at the end of each turn, ending the fear on a success. If you pick Resistance, you choose acid, cold, fire, lightning, or poison damage, and you and any allies within the aura have resistance to that damage type.

Once you create the aura, you can't do so again until you finish a long rest or spend 3 ki points.

So. Frightening Presence has one issue, which is that it takes up your bonus action, which Monks generally want to use for their unarmed strikes or flurry of blows. Granted, because the fear leasts 1 minute, you might only have to actually use the bonus action every couple turns. Resistance, on the other hand, is pretty straightforward and seems broadly useful (and great for keeping the front lines a bit safer from fireballs and other aoe effects.)

At level 17, you get Ascendant Aspect. This does three things. The first is Augment Breath. When you use Breath of the Dragon, you can spend 1 ki point to augment its shape and power. This makes it either a 60-foot cone or 90x5 foot line, and each creature takes damage equal to 4 rolls of your Martial Arts die on a failed save or half as much on a success (so, 4d10).

Next, you get Blindsight, out to a range of 10 feet.

Finally, you get Explosive Fury - when you activate Aspect of the Wyrm, you can choose any creatuers you can see within the aura, and they have to make a Dexterity saving throw against your ki save DC or take 3d10 acid, cold, fire, lightning, or poison damage (your choice of damage type).

Ok, so this improves Breath of the Dragon, but only if you spend some ki to improve it - at level 17 and higher 1 ki is not too bad for a much bigger area and more damage. Explosive Fury, honestly, I think is a bit underwhelming - a one-time possible bit of damage (that foes can save against to take nothing) is somewhat meh. Blindsight is fairly cool, though of course with a 10-foot range it's limited.

I think it's pretty clear that Breath of the Dragon is the real headliner feature of this subclass, and that one is probably the most successful aspect of it. While that's certain to be a very useful ability, I don't think there's anything here that totally wows me. Comparing it with the Drakewarden, it's a bit odd - the Drakewarden is simple and straightforward, but to me it seems to nail the fantasy of the subclass completely. Ascendant Dragon feels like some of its concepts are being held back in the name of balance, which waters down the possibilities.

To be clear, I don't think this is a bad subclass, per se. But I think I'm just more impressed by the execution with the Drakewarden.

The Drakewarden Ranger in Fizban's

 Fizban's Treasury of Dragons has two draconic-themed subclasses. These also happen to both be for classes that haven't gotten any new subclasses outside of rules-expansion books (with the exception of the two for Monks out of SCAG, which is almost one of those and also not very good).

Rangers have a bit of a poor reputation in 5th Edition, though as I suggested in my subclass review, the real power of the class is in its subclasses - the two in the PHB were not sufficiently powerful to make the class good, but subsequent efforts have introduced some concepts and mechanics with a lot of potential in them. I'm a bit skeptical about the rework of the core class in Tasha's (while it does a lot to make Rangers more versatile, with features that are pretty much always usable, the power level isn't particularly increased) the subclasses in Xanathar's and Tasha's at least seem to me to help make the class competitive.

The Drakewarden takes a concept that didn't work very well in the PHB, but which got improved in Tasha's, and makes a new subclass that could potentially be quite good. Let's review:

As a Drakewarden, you've formed a deep, mystical bond with a drake - a sort of beast-like version of a dragon (though it's still the dragon type). The drake is your companion and ally in combat, and the subclass revolves around the drake's ability to fight for you and the synergies you develop with it.

At 3rd level you get Draconic Gift: this first grants you the Thaumaturgy cantrip, which is a ranger spell for you. You also learn to speak, read, and write Draconic, or another language of your choice (oddly you could be a Drakewarden who doesn't speak draconic, but the choice option I assume is in case you already know it).

These are mostly flavorful, but obviously both give you some of a dragon's gravitas.

Also at 3, and at the core of the subclass, you get Drake Companion.

As an action, you can magically summon your drake within 30 feet of you. It's friendly to you and obeys your commands. Like a lot of combat pets, it goes right after your turn and can move and use its reaction on its own, but will only take the dodge action unless you use a bonus action to command it, and if you're incapacitated, it doesn't have to wait for your command.

If it's reduced to 0 hit points, or if you summon it again, or if you die, it vanishes. You can summon it once per long rest for free, and you can summon it again if you expend a spell slot of 1st level or higher.

So, broadly, this is pretty similar to the Battle Smith's Steel Defender. Your drake will never be permanently dead, and you can get it back with ease. Works great.

But now, let's talk about its stat block.

The drake has an AC of 14 + your Proficiency Bonus, which means its baseline is 16, and it'll eventually go up to 20. It has HP equal to 5 + five times your Ranger level (and has d10 hit dice equal to your ranger level). So, 20 HP to start, scaling up eventually to 105.

And it has a 40 ft movement speed.

When you summon the drake, you choose one of the damage types of the Chromatic/Metallic dragons, which determines its damage immunity and the damage of its Infused Strikes trait (which we'll get to).

Its bite attack has a +3 plus PB to hit (so +5 when you first get it, eventually scaling to +9) and deals 1d6 + PB piercing damage (5.5 on average at level 3).

It also has a reaction to use Infused Strikes - this lets the drake add 1d6 of its draconic essence damage type to the damage done by an attack made by a creature within 30 feet of it. (It can presumably use this on itself as well).

So, first off, while it's probably not quite as beefy as the Ranger, it's got decent AC and decent HP to mess it up in melee. In addition to your attacks, it's effectively adding 2d6+PB damage each round. You can't max out its strength to make its bite more likely to land, but it's not going to far too much behind.

Now, back to subclass features:

At 7th level, you get Bond of Fang and Scale. The drake grows wings, gaining a flying speed equal to its walking speed (which is 40 feet). Also, the drake grows to medium size, and you can ride the drake as a mount if your size is medium or smaller, though the drake cannot fly when carrying you.

This also adds 1d6 to the drake's bite attack of the damage type chosen for the drake's Draconic Essence. So, each bite is now doing 2d6+PB, with some of it magical damage.

Finally, you also gain resistance to the damage type chosen for its Draconic Essence.

Letting a Ranger use their animal (not beast, but still kind of an animal) companion as a mount is very cool, and the boost in damage here starts to make its output pretty significant for just part of your suite of abilities. Also, while it's supposed to be the same drake, being able to adjust the damage type for when you face some foe that uses that type is pretty great, and letting the ranger get in on that is pretty nice.

At level 11, you get Drake's Breath. As an action, you can exhale a 30-foot cone of damaging breath, or you can have your drake exhale it. You choose acid, cold, fire, lightning, or poison damage (and this does not have to be the same as the drake's Draconic Essence,) and each creature in the cone has to make a Dexterity saving throw, taking 8d6 damage of that type on a failure or half on a success.

So, to be clear, this is a fireball's worth of damage, which is impressive even at this level. And the damage scales up to 10d6 when you hit level 15.

You can use this once for free per long rest, but you can also expend 3rd or higher level spell slots to do it again. A 3rd level slot for an 8d6 aoe attack is definitely a good bargain, so you'll probably be using this a lot. Also, your (now flying) drake will be in a great position to angle this to hit the maximum number of foes.

Finally, at 15th level, you get Perfected Bond:

The drake's bite attack now deals another 1d6 damage of the Draconic Essence type (so a total of 1d6+PB piercing and 2d6 elemental damage).

The drake also becomes large in size, and when you ride it, you are no longer prohibited from flying.

Finally, when either you or the drake takes damage while you're within 30 feet of it, you can use your reaction to give yourself or the drake resistance to that instance of damage. And you can do this a number of times equal to your proficiency bonus per long rest.

So!

I think this is pretty strong. Not only does it really hit the fantasy pretty effectively (and man do I now want to fly around on my drake shooting things in an aerial battle) but I think that the features here provide enough oomph to make the subclass worth it.

Perhaps most importantly, getting the drake back is cheap. Hell, it could drop in the middle of the fight and you don't even need to wait for the fight to be over to get the drake back into the thick of it. That means that the drake can absolutely make sacrificial plays to protect the party - maybe even barring a deadly monster from following you or even grappling a foe in the middle of a harmful AoE.

The subclass isn't doing anything terribly shocking, but that's fine - it hits the fantasy effectively and I think would make for a powerful character with a pet that could easily become a beloved party mascot. (The art for the subclass is also adorable, with a dragonborn ranger getting their face licked by their drake pet just like an affectionate dog who doesn't realize how big they are.)

Worlds Beyond in Fizban's And Maybe Hints for the Future?

 Wizards of the Coast publishes its new 5th edition books with the only requirement being that you have the three core rulebooks as prerequisites. But that hasn't stopped them from drawing some connections between said books when it's not mechanically imperative.

Consider, for example, the Carnival, a domain of dread within the Ravenloft setting. While it dates back to 2nd Edition, the Carnival got fleshed out a lot more in Van Richten's Guide to Ravenloft, giving us a backstory about its leader (though not its darklord) Isolde and her flight from the Feywild and a deal made with a pair of Shadar-Kai to trade her fey carnival for their shadowfell one. And then, we got The Wild Beyond the Witchlight, which introduced the Witchlight Carnival - the very one that Isolde traded to the elves now going as Mr. Witch and Mr. Light.

One of the new concepts introduce in Fizban's is the idea that each individual dragon we encounter is actually a facet of a pre-existing singular dragon that existed on the long-lost "First World" (which was first mentioned in Tasha's Cauldron of Everything). Created by Bahamut and Tiamat (when the two of them were on better terms and Tiamat seemed to only have the one head,) the First World was the original world of the Prime Material Plane, but conflicts between dragons and the gods led to it, as well as Sardior, the first gem dragon and effectively Bahamut and Tiamat's first child, being shattered. The other worlds (or at least most of them) of the material plane are sort of echoes of that First World, and each dragon has echoes scattered across many worlds.

A dragon who connects with and potentially merges with all of its echoes becomes far more powerful, near god-like.

As such, the book has many adventure hooks and premises that involve travel between worlds of the material plane.

There has been plenty of precedent for interplanar travel in D&D. The Planescape setting concerns itself primarily with the Outer Planes, and going into the Feywild or the Shadowfell is not uncommon. But while in theory ordinary teleportation magic can take you from one world to another, I think it's pretty uncommon for campaigns to do so - usually, people bounce from their own world to the other planes and then back to their own world.

But Fizban's seems to encourage players to journey between these other worlds. Dragon lairs sometimes have portals to the lairs of a dragon's echo on another world, and a draconic questgiver might send adventurers to another world in order to deal with some issue their echo is experiencing. There's even a modified lair action in which two parties of adventurers fighting different echoes of a dragon on their respective worlds might get swapped to the other world in the middle of a fight.

Overall, I think this is basically just cool. I like the surreal quality of other planes, but a focus on traveling to other material plane worlds gives you the opportunity to either go more alien and original or to go subtle and play out different fantasy tropes. For instance, my homebrew setting has a continent-spanning empire, which makes for epic stakes, but also means that you're generally not going to encounter a ton of independent, warring kingdoms. But a campaign could take you to another world in which things are more provincial. A premise in the book I've mentioned before but I think is really cool is where a group of dragons open a permanent, massive gateway between two worlds, and the cultures of those worlds are now suddenly in contact. The two worlds have effectively just become one (something that the dragons looking to restore the First World would consider progress) and now both sides have to rethink their entire position - for better or worse.

However, the nerdy clue-hunter in me is not going to sit back and consider this just simply a cool thing this book brings up.

I think we're getting hints of things to come.

The most obvious meaning of these hints, and the one that I think is actually what they're going for, is Spelljammer, which is about 95% confirmed thanks to the recent Unearthed Arcana, Travelers of the Multiverse.

Spelljammer is primarily known as the space-based, science-fantasy (emphasis still on the fantasy side) setting for D&D, introduced in the late 80s. But beyond allowing you to have a fun Star War in your D&D campaign, it's also the primary setting used to link existing settings.

Spelljammer has outer-space like worlds that correspond to each of the famous D&D settings. The Forgotten Realms exist in Realmspace. Greyhawk exists in Greyspace. Dragonlance is in Krynnspace. These "spaces" are the crystal spheres that are linked through the "phlogiston" that exists beyond them. But a party with a spelljammer ship can take off from Waterdeep, fly off into the sky, travel along a current in the phlogiston, and emerge into a new inky black space before landing in the city of Greyhawk.

Given dragons' interest in connecting with their echoes, it seems to me that they would have a keen interest in spelljammers, eager to spend some considerable portion of their hoards on funding the construction of such ships in order to link up with their echoes - and hiring adventurers to do the legwork.

I mean, it writes itself, right? A spelljammer campaign could start with the party getting a group patron in the form of an ancient dragon who wants them to fly off to other worlds and make connections with their echoes on as many worlds as possible.

So, you know, this seems like another hint that we'll be getting a Spelljammer book sometime next year.

But I also think it's a great opportunity for DMs to have parties journey to other worlds. Indeed, I really want to run a campaign now in which the party goes to any homebrew worlds that the players have created for when they DM. I was fairly jealous of Matt Mercer playing in Exandria Unlimited, able to be a player in a campaign set in his own world. This would be a great excuse to allow other sometime DMs to have that experience.

Napkin Math: Why Fizban's Dragonborn Breath Weapon is Amazing

 I know I went into it in pretty substantial detail in the previous post, but I wanted to show my calculations for why the new version of the dragonborn breath weapon is going to change the way that I play my Eldritch Knight Fighter.

The PHB version of the Dragonborn takes an action to use their breath weapon, which they can do once per short rest. It starts off at 2d6 damage, scaling up with each tier of play (levels 5, 11, and 17) by 1d6. Fizban's version scales differently, going from 1d10 at level 1 and adding 1d10 to that every tier. This means that in tier 1 it actually does less damage, but at level 5 and higher, it does more. Far more importantly, your breath weapon does not take an action, but rather counts for one of your attacks. If you don't have the extra attack feature, that more or less means the same thing, but Barbarians, Fighters, Monks, Paladins, Rangers, and some Artificers, Bards, Warlocks, and Wizards, that makes a huge difference.

Being not just a Fighter but an Eldritch Knight Fighter, I have a few options when it comes to attacking.

At level 12, I have three attacks when I take the Attack action. With a +1 Battleaxe, my attacks deal 1d8+6 on a hit, or an average of 10.5 damage (if we don't factor in the chance to crit, and we're also putting aside missing).

So, if I just take the Attack action and hit with all three attacks, my average damage per round is 31.5.

My next option is just for Eldritch Knights. At level 7, you get War Magic, which allows you to make a single attack as a bonus action after you cast a cantrip. EKs would be well-advised to pick up Green Flame Blade or Booming Blade (or both) as cantrips. Each of these add some magical damage on top of the initial strike starting at level 5 (and do more damage as a secondary effect, which we're going to ignore for the time being). At 5, 11, and 17 you add an extra d8 on top of the normal weapon damage - fire for Green Flame Blade and thunder for Booming Blade.

So, if my fighter hits with one of these (getting 2d8 extra damage from the cantrip, or an average of 9 extra damage) that hit will land for 19.5, and then I get another normal attack as a bonus action, for an extra 10.5

Which comes to 30.

Basically, unless I can get the secondary target damage from Green Flame Blade or if I'm convinced the target's going to move and take the secondary damage from Booming Blade, I'm better off just making my three attacks (though only by a little - and critting with one of these cantrips scales better as more of the damage is coming from dice rolls - so if the target is paralyzed or I otherwise have a heightened chance for a crit it's probably better to go with the cantrip attack).

But now, let's talk about that breath weapon.

I only swap one of my attacks out for the breath weapon. The breath weapon deals 3d10 damage at this level. That's an average of 16.5 damage, which you'll note is better than one of my attacks. It can't crit, but on the other hand, the target's guaranteed to take at least half of it (barring immunities or features like evasion/avoidance.)

Thus, a single attack action would give me one breath (16.5) and two normal attacks (10.5 each) for a total of 37.5 damage. That's well above the average damage for both the other scenarios.

Now, of course, there are other possibilities here.

Let's imagine a paladin fighting with a greatsword. We'll just imagine that my Aasimar paladin with the +2 greatsword is now a dragonborn. They're level 8 and have the Great Weapon fighting style. Thus, the 2d6 they roll averages out to 8.33 (repeating). With a +5 Strength and +2 from the weapon, they're hitting for an average of 15.33 damage (ignoring when they go great weapon master, which is a feat they just got at level 8).

At this level, their breath weapon only does 2d10, or an average of 11 damage. So, admittedly, here it seems in a single-target scenario, they really ought to stick to the weapon (though if they can hit multiple targets, the breath weapon pulls ahead sharply).

Let's imagine that we finish Curse of Strahd and hit level 11. Now, as a Paladin, they're doing an extra 1d8 radiant damage with every hit. But their breath weapon also goes up by 1d10, now doing (as we saw earlier) 16.5.

One thing to consider is whether the fighting style applies to the extra d8. If it doesn't, it's just 4.5 added to the attack, but if it is, it's 5.25. Either way, it still actually pulls out ahead, dealing either about 20.5 or slightly less. So, ok.

Now, at level 17, the breath weapon scales up to 22 damage, while the Paladin's attacks do not (though they have more spell slots to smite with).

And in basically any scenario where you could potentially hit multiple targets, the breath weapon is better.

What about a paladin who goes sword-and-board? We'll use Enoch, my friend's paladin from the campaign with my Fighter, Jax. Enoch has the Dueling fighting style, so he does an extra 2 damage on a hit, but typically uses a longsword. We'll say it's a +1 longsword for our purposes (I think it's actually not magical because of sentimental reasons, but he uses sacred weapon to make it hit for full damage).

So, with +5 to Strength, he's got the same damage bonus as Jax. But at level 12 (my friend became a dad before his character hit 11, so he hasn't had a chance to play this yet as he's been taking an extended leave of absence for very reasonable reasons) he also has that Improved Divine Smite, so his longsword is doing 2d8 (1d8 slashing and 1d8 radiant) + 8 (5 for strength, 1 for the weapon, 2 for dueling), for a total of 17. Therefore, the breath weapon is just slightly under his average weapon damage, though only by half a point.

Paladin might be a bad example, though - they're more about hitting harder with fewer attacks. I think a Barbarian could have some of the same issues (give a Barbarian my Paladin's sword and they're doing, while raging, an average of 17 damage per hit - 7 from the 2d6, 5 from strength, 2 from the sword, and 3 from rage - though a sword-and-board Barbarian would be doing less). But Monks, Rangers, and others that don't boost the damage of their attacks quite as much will seriously benefit from this, making a breath attack standard operating procedure in single-target situations.

And remember, all of this has been just talking about single-target situations.

The power of the breath weapon utterly explodes as soon as you're hitting a second target, not to mention a 3rd or 4th.

I did more of this napkin math earlier and figured out that even though Green Flame Blade is designed for two-target scenarios, if I can angle myself around so that I can hit those two targets with the Breath Weapon and then follow up with two attacks (what I termed "BWAA," an abbreviation that amuses me) it actually outpaces Green Flame Blade... by, like, a lot.

Now, the breath weapon is, of course, a limited resource. But while my PHB breath weapon often winds up sitting on my character sheet unused because it takes a full action (and it is pretty hard to line up two, let alone three or more targets, which is what I'd need to make the old version worth using) I'm finding myself feeling extremely excited to play Jax again and make this a regular thing for me to use in combat.

Fizban's Dragonborn

 The Dragonborn is one of the playable races in the Player's Handbook. While it's very cool in concept, mechanically it's a little lacking. You get resistance to your lineage's damage types, and a breath weapon that does that damage type.

Fizban's gives us a re-work of the race, transforming it into three new races - Chromatic, Gem, and Metallic dragonborn. Interestingly, these are not presented as variants or sub-races, but independently (the Astral Elf from the new UA makes me think they might be dispensing with the notion of "sub-race" altogether, but we'll see).

So, what are the changes?

First off, these new ones work in the same way that the Gothic Lineages and Feywild races from previous publications have, going along with the new race rules established in Tasha's. That means that you can pick your ability score increases and languages independently of your race - something I've been a big champion of since they were first introduced. Dragonborn in the PHB were clearly well-suited for Paladins given their Strength and Charisma bonuses, but now it really doesn't matter.

The changes here aren't huge, but the subtle differences will have major ramifications.

First off, you still get resistance to the damage type associated with your heritage. This remains the same for Chromatic and Metallic dragons. Gem dragons (which are new to 5th Edition, though showed up in earlier ones) are the following: Amethyst (Force), Crystal (Radiant), Emerald (Psychic), Sapphire (Thunder), and Topaz (Necrotic). Honestly, these are all pretty great - while you might have reason to use your resistance less, you'll also be far less likely to encounter creatures resistant to your damage type (actually, despite being possibly the third-most common magical damage type, I think I've only ever been hit with lightning damage once on my blue dragonborn - though I wonder if the DM just never picks any monsters that deal that damage because of that...)

Paranoia aside, let's move on:

The breath weapon has been pretty thoroughly redesigned. Chromatic Dragonborn now all do a 30x5 line, while Gem and Metallic Dragonborn do 15-ft cones. The efficacy of these is debatable. It's definitely easier to hit more foes with a cone, but it's also easier to avoid hitting friends with a line.

The damage also scales differently. In the PHB, it begins as 2d6, then goes to 3d6 at level 5, 4d6 at 11, and 5d6 at 17. In Fizban's, it is instead 1d10, then 2d10, then 3d10, then 4d10.

This means that the damage is actually a bit lower in tier 1, but starts to pull ahead on average by level 5. By tier 4, you're doing 22 damage with a breath, compared to 17.5 with the PHB version.

But that's not all:

The next change is the action economy, and this is where the new breath weapon pulls way ahead for any martial class. Rather than taking a full action, your breath weapon is considered a single attack. So, if you have the Extra Attack feature, you can breathe and then use your weapon as part of the same action.

This makes the scaling past level 5 even better. As a level 12 Fighter, my dragonborn character can choose between a single breath for an average of 14 damage (2d6) or can use his +1 battleaxe to make three attacks (1d8+6, which comes to 10.5, x3, which is 31.5). Even if he hit two targets, on average the three attacks do more damage (yes, given that the breath will always do at least some damage this gets a bit muddled, but you get the idea.) Now, however, he can just swap in a breath to do 3d10 (16.5 on average) lightning damage, potentially to multiple targets, and then make two attacks (21 damage) for a total per-turn damage of 37.5 - a step up. (I'm not going to get into the nuances of War Magic and Green Flame Blade, as that's more of a class thing than a racial thing).

But it gets better!

Rather than being able to use the breath once per short rest, you can now use it a number of times equal to your proficiency bonus every long rest.

It's somewhat rare for people to take more than one short rest per day, so even in tier 1, you're probably about even when it comes to uses per day. But as you level up, you get far more uses of it (by my level, I've got four uses a day. I don't think we've ever had three short rests in a day).

So I would count this redesign as a pure win (except possibly if you were a Red dragonborn that preferred a cone breath).

Now, the final piece:

The resistance and breath weapon are all you get with the PHB dragonborn, but the Fizban ones give you an additional feature depending on your dragon family - Chromatic, Metallic, or Gem.

Chromatic Dragonborn get Chromatic Warding. Starting at 5th level, as an action, you can give yourself full immunity rather than resistance to the damage type associated with your draconic heritage. You can do this once a day. Admittedly, a full action is a steep price if you're taken by surprise, and unless you're up against a foe you know will be using that type of damage a lot (like, say, a dragon that has the same heritage) it might not feel worth it to spend a whole turn doing this. Still, full immunity is somewhat rare for player characters, and being able to, say, swim in lava for a full minute or grab onto an electrical cable (if you're in a somewhat more sci-fi/steampunk setting) could be pretty useful.

Gem Dragonborn get two things. The first is Psionic Mind, which lets you send telepathic messages to creatures you can see within 30 feet as long as they know at least one language (you don't need to know the same ones.) It looks like, similar to the Great Old One Warlock's Awakened Mind, this only lets you send, not receive, but it could still be very useful.

Additionally, Gem Dragonborn get Gem Flight. Once per long rest, after you hit 5th level, you can use a bonus action to manifest wings for 1 minute that give you a flying speed equal to your walking speed, and you can hover (like the gem dragons do). Flight is a nice ability to have (especially a hover-style flight) and the fact that it's activated with a bonus action makes it easy to use.

Metallic Dragonborn, at level 5, get an alternative use of their breath weapon, which they can only use once per long rest. (I think it also consumes a use of your normal breath weapon). You can choose between two different options: Enervating Breath causes creatures in the cone to be forced to succeed on a Constitution saving throw or be incapacitated until the start of your next turn. Repulsion Breath forces them to succeed on a Strength saving throw or be pushed 20 feet away from you and knocked prone. Both pretty strong effects, especially given the improve action economy of the breath weapon (you could use repulsion breath and then run up and hit them with melee attacks while they're prone.) Also, let's appreciate that this lets you Fus Ro Dah, as another kind of dragonborn would do.

The upshot of all of this is that Dragonborn become a lot more appealing as a race from a mechanical standpoint and a flavor one.

I've already spoken with the DM of the campaign I play in with the Dragonborn, and got pre-approved to convert my character to this new version, so once she gets Fizban's on DND Beyond (and shares it in her campaign) I'm going to be able to actually use my breath weapon! (And grab hold of the aforementioned live electrical cables).

First Look at Fizban's Treasury of Dragons

 I picked up my copy of Fizban's Treasury of Dragons today.

Dragons are right there in the title of D&D, but many campaigns don't really involve them in a serious way. Mythologically, dragons are the ultimate fantasy monster - there's something particularly iconic about them. I think that might actually be the reason why people are reluctant to use them - they're too obvious.

What Fizban's does is introduce some new lore to dragons, along with plenty of new ideas about dragon-based adventures, dragon stat blocks (there are a lot of dragons to be found here - not just the five types of gem dragons, but a full wyrmling-to-ancient array for Deep Dragons, Moonstone Dragons, Dragon Turtles - counting the existing one in the Monster Manual as its "adult" version - as well as a lot of other dragon-related stat blocks.

If you're looking for high-CR monsters, this has some particularly mythic ones. The Tarrasque now has some new CR 30 contenders in the Aspect of Bahamut (who, among other things, has a breath ability that can restore any number of dead creatures in a 300-ft cone to life with full hit points) and the Aspect of Tiamat (which works differently than her stat block in Tyranny of Dragons). There are also three Greatwyrm stat blocks for Metallic, Gem, and Chromatic dragons (relevant damage types swap based on the type of dragon it is, but is otherwise the same) which range from CR 28 to 26. (Arguably, these represent a sort of higher order than Ancient Dragons, though becoming a Greatwrym takes way more than just living long enough and amassing a large enough hoard.)

Actually, the book goes into a lot of detail describing the reasons for and the things you can do with a dragon's hoard. The book frames the Prime Material Plane as the creation of Bahamut and Tiamat, who are not exactly gods in the same way that folks like Tyr or Gruumsh are. The gods with their humanoid creations flooded into the First World created by the two dragon progenitors (and their first creation, the original Gem dragon Sardior) and the conflict destroyed the First World, its shards becoming other worlds of the material plane and scattering the fractured draconic inhabitants into various echoes of themselves across those worlds.

Essentially, Bahamut made peace with the good-aligned gods, seeking harmony, while Tiamat decided to go homicidal and focus on revenge. But all dragons consider the Material Plane to be fundamentally theirs, with the humanoid races essentially guests (welcome or unwelcome depending on the dragon). Thus, their greed is kind of also just the not unreasonable belief that all the stuff in the world really belongs to them.

Hoards take on a certain magic of their own - one of the coolest ways they do is through new "hoard items," which have a progression somewhat similar to the Vestiges of Divergence from the Exandria setting. Essentially, by default, these items start off in a "slumbering" state that makes them a simple uncommon magic item. They can then be "steeped" in a dragon's hoard, and depending on the power of the dragon, they'll eventually grow in power, with a young dragon's hoard allowing it to become "stirring" (rare), an adult's allowing it to be "wakened" (very rare) and an ancient dragon bringing it to "ascendant" (legendary). While this process usually takes a year, if you kill a dragon, its magic seeps into its hoard for about a day, letting the transformation happen over 8 hours. So, you kill a big dragon boss, stick your sword in a pile of treasure, and take it out after you finish a long rest.

It even describes how if you sufficiently diminish a legendary dragon's hoard without killing it, you can rob it of its legendary properties.

This book is going to be a great basis for a dragon-focused campaign, obviously. If that doesn't appeal to you, I think you can still get some nice things out of it - it has a new and improved dragonborn playable race, along with new Ranger and Monk subclasses. And while a huge chunk of its bestiary is about the Gem dragons and the aforementioned dragons of varying ages, there's also plenty of really cool stuff like Hoard Scarabs (which feel like they'd be great to use in Har'akir in Ravenloft, maybe allowing its dust to let mummies track you rather than a dragon).

One thing I think is really interesting is that there's a lot of emphasis on travel between worlds of the Prime Material Plane. While planar travel is a pretty common thing in D&D campaigns, usually when you say you're doing a "Forgotten Realms" campaign, you aren't going to travel to, say, Krynn (the world of the Dragonlance setting). But thanks to the interconnectedness of dragons with the worlds of the material plane, there are many adventure prompts that encourage you to journey between worlds. Indeed, there's even one scenario in which a group of dragons establish a permanent portal between two different worlds, which could make for a really cool setting overall - two previously unconnected worlds now suddenly in contact.

There's a ton of material here. That being said, I think you would need to structure a fully dragon-themed campaign carefully to avoid a certain degree of monotony. The book's Draconomicon (a chapter that I haven't actually read through yet) goes into serious detail about each type of true dragon (all five of each of metallic, chromatic, and gem dragons,) as well as dragon turtles, deep dragons, moonstone dragons, and I believe dracoliches and maybe shadow dragons as well, which should help in giving these villains (or allies) distinct enough strategies and personalities that you could do very different things with them.

Some mechanical concepts here (like hoard items) would encourage a campaign to focus on tracking down dragons' hoards and slaying the dragons multiple times over a campaign.

Also, this book finally introduces Sea Serpents as a monster, which feels like it should have been there in the Monster Manual (surely Sea Serpents are a more traditional monster than Dragon Turtles?) While the CR even of an ancient Sea Serpent is slightly underwhelming (it's like 10 or 11,) I do appreciate that it can coil around a ship and do significant damage to it (it's a siege monster, so it's all doubled.)

If you want the real nasty stuff, look to Dragonflesh Grafters (humanoids who transform themselves by grafting draconic bodyparts onto themselves) or an Eye Drake (a beholderkin born from a Beholder's obsession with a dragon, with a vaguely draconic form) or, almost certainly the nastiest of them all, the Elder Brain Dragon, which is when a Mind Flayer Elder Brain takes over the body of a dragon, making the usually-immobile horrible brain monster into a flying nightmare that can breathe a blast of ilithid tadpoles all over a huge group of people (thus potentially making a whole bunch of new mind flayers if no one is around to extract the parasites).

There's also a few non-hoard-based magic items, including what I think might be the first Monk-only magic item (a dragonhide belt in +1, +2, and +3 varieties that increases the save DC of your ki abilities and also lets you get back a few ki points once a day). Also, a magic gun! That can let you cast Disintegrate once a day!

Anyway, I'm always happy for more sourcebooks.

As a note, I have not yet gotten the PDF-only Domains of Delight or Minsc and Boo's Journal of Villainy, the latter of which seems to contain a lot of stat blocks for potential high-level campaign bosses (including a couple archdevils that didn't get featured in Mordenkainen's Tome of Foes) along with mid-level henchman who can serve as major villains for the earlier parts of the campaign (usually associated with a particular big bad). Domains of Delight is less stat-block oriented, and seems more designed to help you build the eponymous Domains of Delight along the same lines as the instructions on creating Domains of Dread in Van Richten's Guide to Ravenloft.

I'll likely get those soon and do a write-up.

Critical Role and Campaign Three: Continuity?

 This past Thursday, Critical Role launched its third campaign, introducing us to a new* party and a new setting - the spire-city of Jrusar on the continent of Marquet.

(As a note, there are some spoilers in here for the first two campaigns.)

As someone who has been a big fan, having watched/listened to the entirety of the first two campaigns and the other Exandria-set one-shots and mini-arcs, this is a lot to be excited for. While I play plenty of D&D on a weekly basis, Critical Role is so well-produced and entertaining that I'm happy to be an audience member.

Critical Role's campaigns take place on the world of Exandria, which has become a canonical setting for D&D thanks to the show's popularity (to be fair, in a certain way, every homebrew world is "canonical" thanks to the limitlessness of the game's meta-settings).

The first campaign mostly took place on the continent of Tal'dorei, though the party, Vox Machina, did go through a few arcs visiting the other major continents. The second campaign, with the Mighty Nein, was set almost exclusively on and around the continent of Wildemount (which was probably the one they spent the least time on in the first campaign.)

One thing I noted during Campaign Two was that DM Matt Mercer was very reluctant to make reference to the events or characters of the first campaign. There seemed to be a kind of rule in place that it was to be pretty fully-separate. Now, to be fair, there was a bit of overlap. For one thing, a memorable NPC from the first campaign was brought back in a much more prominent role as the quasi-god for one of the party's clerics to worship (behind-the-scenes, Laura Bailey had initially intended to make a Warlock character, for whom Artagan would be a pretty classic Archfey patron, but when her husband Travis Willingham decided to make a Warlock, she chose to rework the concept as a Cleric, though even if it was mechanically a cleric character, flavor-wise it really blurred the line.) Apart from a brief meeting with a major NPC from the first campaign toward the end of the second - which was mostly just "we need to talk to a powerful wizard" - there was a pretty solid separation between the campaigns - no one watching the Mighty Nein adventures would feel any sense of continuity lockout.

Campaign Three looks to be relaxing some of those restrictions.

First off: this summer, Critical Role had a short mini-campaign called Exandria Unlimited. This was DM'd by guest Aabria Iyengar, letting Matt Mercer play alongside Liam O'Brien and Ashley Johnson, along with other guests Robbie Daymond and Aimee Carrero. The whole thing was I believe eight episodes, and while it resolved one story, it left things very much in the air.

However, when players were being brought to the table to introduce their characters, it turned out that Liam O'Brien's Orym, Ashley Johnson's Fearne, and Robbie Daymond's Dorian are also going to be part of the third campaign. (I don't know if Daymond is permanently joining the cast or not, but it seems highly possible.)

Already, this means that there's a bit of backstory from EXU for viewers to perhaps want to go back to in order to fill out what they know of these characters. But also, EXU was set on Tal'dorei, and as a result, was more firmly tied into the events of the first campaign. In fact, Orym is a member of the Air Ashari, a society that is led by Keyleth, Marisha Ray's character from that first campaign. Indeed, Orym appears to have been sent on his quest by Keyleth herself, which creates a firm line connecting his story with that of the first campaign.

But beyond even that, after these three were introduced, Travis Willingham wasn't even there when the first combat began. However, when he arrived, there was another surprise - his character was also familiar.

Sir Bertrand Bell was a character created for The Search for Grog, a post-campaign one-shot (though it became a two-shot) that was made possible after Willingham's infamously low-intelligence goliath Barbarian Grog drew a particularly disastrous card from the Deck of Many Things. Given that Grog's soul had been sucked out and hidden away in Pandemonium while his body was left in a catatonic state, Willingham naturally needed a different character to play, thus giving us the braggart and charlatan (but nevertheless capable) Bell.

Sir Bertrand was at a fairly high level for the Search for Grog, in order to match the rest of the party (some of whom were even level 20) but was de-leveled to 5 (still more than the rest of the party, who are all level 3) for this campaign. I'm not sure how that will work in the long run.

Indeed, I'm not really sure how the "long run" will work for this campaign. EXU ended with what I thought was the implication that it would be just one season of an ongoing campaign that would pick up perhaps next year. But with 3/5 of the party joining CR's primary campaign, I wonder how that will work.

We've only had one episode with the other half of the party - Ashton, FCG, Imogen, and Laudna. Laudna does seem to be encouraging a lot of speculation. We know she is a Warlock and Sorcerer, and on the Warlock side at least has the Undead patron (her use of Form of Dread would seem to confirm that,) but as with any warlock, there's room to speculate on who her patron is.

Fueling that speculation is the fact that Laudna is apparently from Whitestone, which was the home of Vox Machina's Percy de Rolo (and would, after the initial defeat of the Briarwoods, become the party's de facto home base.) Given that the Briarwoods (servants of Vecna who initially killed off almost all of Percy's family) were a vampire and a necromancer, there has been some speculation that Laudna's patron might be them, or perhaps Vecna himself. The Briarwoods are dead, which would make it difficult for them to be warlock patrons (Silas Briarwood was finally destroyed permanently in the final Vox Machina one-shot, which also happened to take place on Marquet) but hey, this is fantasy. The rules can always be bent.

Technically we don't even know what Laudna is. Her art depicts some slightly hidden pointed ears, which could indicate she's an elf, though pointed ears are also sometimes associated with vampires, which could suggest she's a Dhampir (I've even seen it suggested she could be the Briarwoods' daughter, which would be a pretty straightforward origin for a half-vampire).

The point is, this campaign is clearly not cordoned off the way that the second campaign was. If that's the case, I'm hoping that there's also some connection to be seen with the Mighty Nein's adventures.

That being said, I'm very content (and would in fact prefer it) if the third campaign has plenty of time to develop on its own terms.

Sci-Fi D&D, Spelljammer, and Thoughts Coming from Starfinder

 While I've said it before on this blog, I'm not going to assume you've read all my stuff, so here's my background: I've played D&D 5th Edition for about six years. I recently picked up the Starfinder Core Rulebook and Alien Archive, and have been reading the book back and forth to learn the system. I've never played Pathfinder.

The most recent D&D Unearthed Arcana seems to imply that we'll be seeing a Spelljammer campaign setting sourcebook some time next year (I'd guess around early spring).

I've never officially played in a Spelljammer campaign, though I did play in a one-shot my friend ran that took place in Realmspace (it was an all-Warforged party, but with one player who didn't get the memo and played a human.)

While I've never read an actual Spelljammer sourcebook, my basic sense of the setting is the following: it does involve spaceships and interplanetary space, but the physical laws of reality are still very much within a fantasy context. Gravity on the setting's spaceships, known as Spelljammers (though there's also a legendary vessel called The Spelljammer) simply treats the middle of the ship as a plane of gravity, which carries an atmosphere with it. So you can fight on the deck of a ship in open space because your pocket of air will simply stick to the ship (you can also go to the underside of the ship and be stuck to the bottom, as the other side of that plane also attracts things).

Each canonical world in D&D (at least those in the Prime Material Plane) exists within a "crystal sphere" that serves as the bounds of that physical realm. So, places like Krynn (Dragonlance,) Toril (Forgotten Realms,) and Oerth (Greyhawk) are planets that float within their own crystal sphere. These spheres can contain other planets and such, but are relatively small compared to the grand expanse of the universe. As I understand it, simple teleportation magic like the Teleport spell can allow transit between those worlds, as they are still on the same plane of existence, but an individual would be unlikely to have the familiarity to make such transit safe. The Dream of the Blue Veil is a reliable and safe way to travel these worlds.

However, one can also do so in a Spelljammer, which requires you to use magic to open a portal in the Crystal Sphere and enter the Phlogiston, which is a sort of endless ocean of magical matter with currents that can be navigated to take you to other worlds. One of the oddities of the Phlogiston is that, while arcane magic works normally there, the gods are unable to have any effect on it, meaning that divine magic is nullified while in it.

The concept of Spelljammer was meant to evoke archaic models of the universe. Generally, when we look at space travel, it's usually within a science fiction context - even works where the supernatural is a powerful force (such as Star Wars) often treat space-travel as something to be solved with technology. Spelljammer, on the other hand, seems to firmly push things into the magical and fantastical realm. As I understand it (and I could be wrong,) the world of Spelljammer is not one of jump-drives, plasma blasters, and scrappy rust-buckets outfitted with illegal technology, but rather the magical equivalent thereof.

Starfinder (which, having the actual book, I'm obviously a bit more familiar with) mostly plays in a sci-fi context. However, it's also distinctly science-fantasy - it has gods that are not just theoretical, as well as magic and other planes of existence from which outsiders (such as angels, devils, and demons) come. It's also got elves, dwarves, and other such stock fantasy races on top of more original, otherworldly aliens.

But while magic exists, there's less of an emphasis on it. For example, The Drift, which is the most common from of faster-than-light travel, does happen to be another plane, but it can only be reached via technological means (the technology happened to be gifted to the various mortal races by a god, but on the other hand, it was the god/goddess of artificial intelligence, so we get a bit of a ping-pong effect here.)

The ships in Starfinder reflect a diverse number of alien homeworlds and designs, but they look more compatible with Star Trek, Star Wars, and Battlestar Galactica than Spelljammer's "sailing ship but in space" looks.

Starfinder is based on the Pathfinder rules system (and to be fair, as someone who has not played Pathfinder, I don't really know how much has changed) but it's clearly been overhauled to accommodate a more sci-fi genre experience. For example, there are skills one can learn like "Computers" and "Engineering," and "Piloting."

Class design is also very in-universe. The Mechanic could arguably be likened to the Artificer, but it has many abilities that only make sense in a sci-fi setting where there are computers to hack. The Technomancer, which is Starfinder's Wizard/Sorcerer equivalent, does focus on spellcasting, but you also get abilities that, for instance, draw on the power of an ordinary battery (which is usually used to power various technological devices or serve as ammunition for energy weapons).

Clearly, Paizo was not willing to just slap on some new races and subclasses can call it a day in designing Starfinder. However, this does carry with it the consequence that, while you can convert a Pathfinder character to work in Starfinder, it is pretty much a separate product line.

When it comes to Spelljammer, I don't think that Wizards of the Coast would want to break it off as a truly separate game, and I think as a result it has to bow to the demands of the fantasy genre.

On one hand, I get that - and I would really benefit from the ability to use my huge library of 5E books to provide content for a potential Spelljammer campaign.

I guess the question I then have is if Spelljammer must give up some of the sci-fi tropes that I enjoy. Even though I think of myself as more of a fantasy guy than a sci-fi guy at this point, I grew up obsessed with spaceships and robots. While Starfinder has a whole dedicated system to hacking computers or building starships or running vehicle chases, I suspect that at least some of that would require a bit of homebrewing.

Of course, this is all speculative until we actually get an updated Spelljammer book - and that's not actually confirmed yet.

Starfinder has a default setting written into its core rulebook, but I think the system is easily versatile enough to let a GM homebrew a new setting. While I know some people really prefer a rules system to have the setting and specificity built in (I think that Matt Colville talked about how he had designed a class that was specific to its setting, and how this was good practice,) I sort of feel differently. Especially for rules systems, but even for something as broad as a class, I think giving them a great deal of flexibility in the lore allows people to do with them what they want. I like that, for example, various Colleges for Bards are just a broad sense of their vibe and style, rather than specific places in a specific setting (though giving examples from various worlds is fine).

I don't know what the ratio of DMs/GMs is between people who run things in established versus homebrew settings, but I feel like part of what makes TTRPGs so fun is that you get to be so inventive. While I've enjoyed running my Ravnica-based game (and at some point want to run a Ravenloft one - though that's much more homebrew-friendly) I do really miss having full control over the setting and letting myself build the world to serve the kind of adventures I want to run (and add in things the players come up with as canonical to the world.)

That's getting a bit off-track. I do really appreciate the way that WotC (and predecessors) handle the kind of meta-settings. The Prime Material Plane is large enough to allow everyone's homebrew world to be "canonical," just as the Demiplane of Dread allows every homebrew domain to be.

But, the question is: within those settings, can you make significant shifts to the genre?

I Kinda Just Want There to be More Metroid Dread

 Metroid Dread is a good game. It's hard to get a total aggregate of players' opinions, but I think most people have been very positive on the game.

The second time around, the density of bosses didn't bother me so much, though I suppose when you're blazing through the game you're going to hit a whole bunch of them in a row anyway. I still think the music doesn't really have the iconic quality Super Metroid did. Is that just the benefit of almost 30 years of familiarity? Possibly. The thing is, the musical moments that excited me the most were the ones that were updates of those familiar tunes - the prologue is just a rearrangement of the Super Metroid prologue music, and the lengthy cutscene around the middle of Dread uses a rearrangement of the Lower Brinstar/Red Soil theme from Super Metroid (which, to be fair, is one of the best tracks from that soundtrack.)

The only new piece of music that I think really got stuck in my head was the Ferenia music, which does have an ominousness to it, but I also think that the electronic instrumentation they've chosen reflects an issue I've had with a lot of Nintendo music in the past couple decades - there's a kind of tininess to it that makes it seem less grand than it could.

Granted, I think it's fully appropriate for Metroid to have a somewhat electronic sound - we don't need to go fully symphonic for it - but I think there could have been something a bit bigger about the sound. I'm not a music theorist, so I don't really have suggestions on how one would improve it.

I think the game's most profound victory is the feel of its controls. While it took a little time to get used to holding down the various shoulder buttons and such, once you're comfortable with the free-aim system, it makes you feel extremely precise. Samus is also so much more agile than she felt in Super Metroid (the wall-jump, which was not so ubiquitous an ability in 1994, was always this kind of super-special technique that was very difficult to pull off. I'm glad that Metroid Dread makes it very easy.

I do think that the graph-paper-y layout of the environments feels a little odd in this modern day of video games. Even supposedly natural cavern systems look as if they're constructed out of evenly-sized blocks, though I appreciate how the game nods to the idea of a more natural three-dimensional space, such as how the backgrounds in Ferenia show staircases that would allow someone who isn't hopping around like a lunatic to access its floors.

Dread is hardly small for a Metroid game. Indeed, I think it's likely that its whole map is actually significantly larger than that of Super Metroid (I'd like to see ZDR overlaid on Zebes to compare them - should google that). But I guess just in this day and age (when I'm a more practiced gamer and also less likely to give up for a play session if I die to a boss) it couldn't last super-long. Metroid Dread is decidedly old-school, and was built in part as a new playground for people who have been speed-running Super Metroid for nearly 30 years. While my second run (a sort of "foot off the brake but not always on the gas" attempt) reduced my time from 12 to 5 hours, I've seen people pulling off runs that go under two hours already.

I'm not really someone who wants to dedicate himself to shaving off seconds from a completion time, and if anything, I'd love to do another run where I stop to smell the roses. (In a way, I almost regret going for 100% on my first run).

One thing I think could be cool is if there were to fully remake Super Metroid with the mechanics of Metroid Dread. You'd certainly have to tweak a few things (for one, having Missiles and Super Missiles as a separate attack in Super Metroid allows them to introduce the latter far earlier.) But most of the items you gain in Super Metroid already exist in Dread, so I think the biggest challenges would just be creating the proper assets (and hey, you've already got Kraid!)

As I've said earlier, creating DLC for Dread could be difficult, as ZDR is kind of a self-contained labyrinth. But I wouldn't mind having some kind of shorter, mini-metroid game that maybe allows you to carry over your abilities from the main game and pick up a couple new ones.

The big hope is that this game's sales numbers (which I think have been quite high) will reinvigorate the brand, meaning we could get more 2D Metroid games without waiting another 19 years. We'll see.

Critical Role Campaign 3 Begins!

 Well, after months away, we finally have the third campaign of Critical Role running!

Oh, and it's spoilers from here on out, FYI.

5.5 Ideas: Fighters

 5.5 is about three years off, but its eventuality is an opportunity to talk about the kinds of changes I'd like to see moving forward with D&D.

We can probably safely assume that the existing PHB classes will be reprinted in the new PHB (though I'm hoping the Artificer sees print there as well.) The Fighter is a staple of the game, and has existed in one form or another since the beginning (I believe it was originally a "Fighting Man" or something - never understood why they didn't just call it a Warrior, but oh well.)

While a powerful class, I think the Fighter in 5th Edition is a bit lacking. Ultimately, your sublcass gives you the far more interesting features than the class itself.

If you set aside subclass features, the fighter really only gets three unique features - Second Wind, Action Surge, and Indomitable. Action Surge and Indomitable get improved as you level up, allowing you to use them more frequently. Meanwhile, the only other features you get with the class are Fighting Style (which Paladins and Rangers also get - albeit with fewer options,) Extra Attack (which you get more of than any other class, but not until level 11) and Ability Score Improvement (of which you get two extra compared to most classes.)

Now, Fighters also get subclass features at five different levels, which is the most of any class (I think Clerics do as well). Subclasses vary greatly in terms of the things they provide.

Philosophically, we might decide that it's fine that the base fighter is fine as it is - a bare scaffold on which to hang a more interesting subclass. But let's say we disagree.

WotC has made it pretty clear that they're very happy with the Battlemaster, one of the three subclasses from the PHB, and they've added new maneuvers to use with it, along with feats that allow other classes (or non-Battlemaster Fighters) to get a lesser version of the subclass' defining feature.

To me, the obvious thing would be to redesign the Fighter so that they all get Maneuvers fueled by superiority dice.

In order to balance this out, you might need to nerf or even remove things like Indomitable or Action Surge. The former I wouldn't terribly mind, but I do think that the latter would probably cause an outcry - Action Surge is just cool, while, in my experience, Indomitable is just a fancy way to fail the saving throw a second time.

So I'd say keeping Action Surge (maybe nerfing it to only ever being a once-a-rest ability to make room) would be the right call.

But I think that giving all Fighters a choice of maneuvers in the early levels - maybe 2 (and perhaps holding Action Surge for a later level) would be really cool. The whole concept of a Fighter is that they're a disciplined and skilled warrior, and I think maneuvers really reflect that concept well.

Now, there is an argument to be made that Fighters' simplicity should be preserved. For example, for a brand new player that wants a very simple class to play, I always recommend the Champion Fighter as the absolute simplest class/subclass, and adding maneuvers to the class would mean that everyone is at least operating on a Battlemaster level of complexity.

Still, I think it could energize the Fighter. On top of that, if this were a base feature, you would have another thing for subclasses to interact with - maybe a redesigned Eldritch Knight can produce various magical effects when they use a maneuver. Or you could redesign the Arcane Archer to use maneuvers rather than a separate-but-very-similar feature with its Arcane Shots.

Overall, I think this would give the Fighter a clearer mechanical identity.

Now, what would happen to the Battlemaster? It might mean just eliminating it as a subclass - as it would basically have become the class class. In general, I think that the PHB should have at least three subclasses per class, so what ought to replace it? The Arcane Archer, if it were redesigned to use maneuvers, might be a possibility, as I think making it clear that Fighters can be ranged and use ranged weapons would be good. On the other hand, it might be a little too similar to the Eldritch Knight.

I actually like the idea of a battlefield-commander subclass. Currently, the Purple Dragon Knight (aka Banneret) technically fills that role, though the mechanical design is... utter crap. So I'd just make a new subclass (maybe call it a Commander) that perhaps places an emphasis on using maneuvers to aid allies - maybe have a way to let your allies use your maneuvers.

Now, getting into subclasses - among the PHB ones, I've basically eliminated one of the three already. The Champion I think should remain simple and easy, and doesn't need huge changes.

So let's talk Eldritch Knights.

My EK is the character I've played longer than any other class or subclass. It's very cool, but I think there are a few things that could be improved.

First off, I wonder if it would be possible to make it (and the Arcane Trickster Rogue) into half-casters like Paladins, Artificers, and Rangers. I think this would likely not be too powerful. Really, just having to get to level 7 to even get 2nd level spells is a huge burden.

I'd also add the following feature at level 3 when taking the subclass - "You can use a weapon or shield as a spellcasting focus for the spells granted by this subclass." Without this, EKs are more or less forced to take Warcaster (or drop their weapon every time they want to cast Shield or other spells) and I think this would just help you play the fantasy of being a battlemage.

I also kind of think it would be cool for the EK to have its own dedicated spell list, but maybe that's overkill.

7 Hours Shaved off of My Second Metroid Dread Run - Still Not Fast Enough

 My initial run of Metroid Dread took about 12 hours. My second (still on normal mode) took just over 5. Now, the second time around I basically did zero backtracking. I paused in a few places to collect some scattered hidden items (I did the Burenia Shinespark Puzzle again I think just to prove to myself I could, which probably added a good ten minutes,) though it also let me skip a whole bunch of Burenia en route to the Gravity Suit).

I don't know exactly how time is tracked - as I understand, pausing also pauses the stopwatch, as it were. But I also suspect that multiple attempts on a boss will count toward it.

Some of the latter bosses still gave me some trouble - I think Escue took me like 4 or 5 attempts. Raven Beak took I believe 4 attempts.

Actually, on Raven Beak - first off, what a cool fight (though the second phase seems very dependent on RNG). I found that just spamming the wave beam was actually faster than missiles during the counter animation in the second phase - I was able to get him to phase 3 in just two counters, rather than 3.

I also found that 4 Power Bombs was not quite enough to wipe out every big "sun" ability he used in the final phase, so I was forced to dodge (the penultimate attempt I made I got the sun and his charged shots at the same time, which wiped me out).

Under 8 hours but over 4 meant that I got the Samus Returns image for the gallery. I did this on a new file, so my Chozo Archives unlocked on the first file are not filled in (I think I got the Hanubia one, though, as there are like two items to find there, and I got them both.)

One thing that I read is that when you unlock all the teleporters, you can choose which one you go to, which would have been very useful for backtracking to get items, but I haven't yet confirmed that.

Other than just never dying to bosses, I'm not really sure what I could do to shave off that extra hour and ten minutes I'd need to get the under 4 hour ending reward. I don't know that I'm going to really work too hard to do so - after two full runs, I think I should probably let Metroid Dread sit for a while so I don't totally burn out on it.

I do still really hope that Nintendo either finds a way to add some DLC content or comes out with another Metroid game in the next couple years. Of course, in theory Metroid Prime 4 is still in the works. I'm very curious to see what future Metroid games will be about. Supposedly Dread is the culmination of the story that started with the original game, though I kind of feel like it's more of a sequel to Metroid Fusion, which was sort of the start of a new story after Super Metroid.

We'll see.

5.5 Wishlist: Warlocks

 Conceptually, I love the Warlock. It inherently creates a story for your character - what did you do to contact your patron (or did they contact you?) What were the terms of your pact? Is the deal complete, or do you have further responsibilities?

Mechanically, Warlocks are pretty unique. I do think that on the surface, a lot of players might be disappointed to find that Warlocks don't have the same versatility as a Wizard. You might expect that the deal you made gives you deep and broad knowledge on how to use magic, but the gameplay focus on one very good cantrip and a lot of features that aren't really spells might feel like it's missing the class fantasy.

One thing I would highly recommend is that you can "re-skin" the wizard as a warlock. You can play your wizard as if you made a dark deal (or not even dark - not every patron is scary and evil) with your patron to unlock the secrets of magic, and then you can basically treat your spellbook as something that your patron gave to you - to go farther, you could even flavor your "research" and other additions to your spellbook as things that your patron has granted to you.

But mechanically, I want to talk about the Warlock as it is.

In terms of tactical gameplay, I think the Warlocks is basically the magical recreation of a martial class. If you think of Eldritch Blast as a weapon (which it looks a lot like if you get Agonizing Blast,) you can basically compare it to a Fighter who uses a heavy crossbow as their main attack - only that you get your four attacks per turn three levels earlier.

The rest of the class is sort of supplemental to that, but if you set aside the desire to be a super-versatile spellcaster like a Wizard or Sorcerer (and honestly, given the small number of spells they learn, I don't even know that we can really call Sorcerers super-versatile) what you wind up with is a very strong damage-dealer that has a ton of powerful abilities on top of that.

Still, we're not here to laud every aspect of the current design - we're here to see what could be improved.

Another thing to bear in mind here is that the intent is not solely to make the classes more powerful. The intent is to improve gameplay, and just making every class a lot stronger could potentially make the game less fun when every encounter is a pushover.

But, we've got to look at what could be improved with the Warlock.

First and foremost, I want to address the big old elephant in the room: the Hexblade.

The Hexblade is simultaneously very powerful mechanically and very odd flavorfully.

The official story is that your patron is a sentient weapon. While it bears some connection to the Shadowfell (maybe specifically the Raven Queen,) that connection is only implied. Unlike the other patrons, the driving theme of a Hexblade's mechanics are, well, a mechanical focus on melee combat.

In two prominent actual-play streams, we've seen the Hexblade at best tangentially connect with the true patron and in other cases not even remotely. Fjord in Critical Role's campaign 2 did at least have a connection to a magical weapon, but the actual patron would fit much better with the Great Old One, or even closer, the Fathomless (which didn't exist yet when the campaign started.) Really, the "blade" element of the pact was really the pact boon. In Dimension 20's the Unsleeping City, Sofia, the drunken master monk, multiclasses into Warlock and gets a hexblade patron, though the patron itself is a sort of avatar of all bodega cats, which I'd say makes more sense as a Fey patron. (I haven't seen the second Unsleeping City season, but I also understand that their pure Hexblade warlock character actually has a pact with a devil, which pretty clearly means it should be a Fiend patron, unless there are other plot elements I'm unaware of.)

The point is, the flavor of the Hexblade is so oddly specific that no one seems to want to actually use it, while its mechanics are so strong that people will ignore the flavor in order to take the subclass.

I would like to see the Hexblade's mechanics broken up like a big company violating antitrust laws. Hexblade's Curse is fine, but the existence of Hex Warrior - with your hex weapon (allowing you to use charisma for weapon attacks and damage rolls) and the addition of medium armor proficiency and shield proficiency - is just too good.

The Pact of the Blade is there to let any warlock wield a weapon and use it in place of cantrips like eldritch blast. But at this point, anyone who actually wants to play that way would basically be a fool not to go with the Hexblade.

So, the first thing I'd do is make any summoned weapons with Pact of the Blade get those Hex Weapon features, regardless of your patron. Next, I'd make the ability to get medium armor and shields an eldritch invocation - perhaps one that requires Pact of the Blade.

This would certainly have consequences. It would make it a little less convenient to do a multiclass dip into Warlock on, say, your paladin. But I think it would also make other Blade Pact playstyles much more viable.

Next, I think you could revisit expanded spell lists. For most classes, if a subclass grants new spells, you simply get them always. I think that this should apply to Warlocks as well. Generally, having a bunch of spells available isn't really game-breaking as long as you're limited by spell slots.

I think I'd also have all Warlocks automatically learn Eldritch Blast. Not having it seems like a trap.

Now, what about those spell slots?

I'm a little torn here. On one hand, I'd love to get more spell slots to work with as a warlock. But I also think that they serve as an important limitation. Having just one at level 1 sucks, but that pain fades fairly quickly. I might look into seeing if you could get 3 at tier 2, 4 at tier 3, and 5 at tier 4 and see if that didn't make them too powerful.

A part of me also feels like perhaps Mystic Arcanum could work a little differently. I get the desire/need to keep them from refreshing on a short rest - two 9th level spells per day would be a bit much. But I think it would be cool to let you learn multiples at each level and swap them out - maybe you can only "prepare" one per day of each level.

Now, in terms of subclasses:

I think that the options in the PHB are a great baseline for Otherworldly Patrons in terms of flavor. Naturally, the Fiend makes a ton of sense as the sort of classic Faustian Warlock patron. I do wonder if perhaps they could even make separate subclasses for devils and demons, though, which could be interesting - taking the basics of the current Fiend patron and making it specifically a Devil.

Mechanically, I think that all of the PHB sublcasses suffer a bit from overcautious conservatism on the part of the designers. The Great Old One, which is my favorite patron flavor-wise, suffers tremendously from a number of supremely underwhelming features. What does Entropic Ward even have to do with ancient alien monstrosities? And Create Thrall is cool but profoundly situational.

I'd like to see the Great Old One get a full redesign around cosmic horror tropes - perhaps something like an aura that causes foes fear and maybe psychic damage. We did, of course, see similar ideas at work with the Aberrant Mind sorcerer, but I think that we could deal more in hidden knowledge and madness than the Aberrant Mind's focus on body horror.

Of the three originals, I think that the Fiend probably holds up the best, but each subclass in there could use at least a new coat of paint (though seriously, give me a totally redesigned Great Old One warlock.)

There might be some eldritch invocations from later books that might be good to work into the new PHB, but I think that the overall mechanic of invocations should 100% be kept - it's one of the things that makes Warlocks so cool (if you've never taken Repelling Blast, I highly recommend it - potentially multiple pushbacks per turn that have no save against them are very, very good. I neutralized a Glabrezu in one turn by knocking it into the River Styx.)

Now, regarding pact boons. I don't know if the Talisman boon from Tasha's has been terribly popular - it seems a bit underpowered. Pact Boons might be fine the way they are - less a powerful feature in their own right than something of a scaffold on which to build more powerful abilities (such as the various eldritch invocations that require one of the boons).

One thing I'd like to see the book talk a bit about is the nature of the Patron-Warlock relationship. This can take many forms, but maybe some discussion of the nature of how that power is granted could be interesting.

Anyway, I don't know if I'm going to do this sort of post for every class, but I thought I'd start here.