Science Fiction, Science Fantasy, and High Fantasy in Space: Spelljammer

 So, I'm very excited about Spelljammer, but I'll confess that I have some differences in opinion about how to approach fantasy in space. I grew up on Star Trek: The Next Generation, and when I was eight or nine, I discovered Star Wars and became totally obsessed with it (I had a few blessed years before the prequels came out, each of which I convinced myself I liked and then that opinion changed upon reflection).

Spelljammer's approach to space-faring, at least historically (and, given the ship that just straight up looks like a sailing ship in the reveal trailer, probably in 5th Edition as well) is very much based on the idea that this is a fantastical version of space travel. The original creators of the setting were concerned with how to justify people fighting with swords and shields and wearing wizard robes in a sci-fi setting and basically said "well, it's not sci fi. It's just fantasy in space."

For me, though, I really love the idea of combining the technological elements of science fiction with the magic and forces of fate, destiny, gods, and such of fantasy.

Star Wars is obviously the most popular and well-known example of this type of science-fantasy. There are starships that have to be airtight, technological explanations for things like faster-than-light travel (something that, if you read about the physics of hypothetical FTL is way more complicated than it seems intuitively, given the relationship between the speed of light and the nature of time and causality), along with robots and laser blasters. But Star Wars also has a deeply mystical aspect - the Force is this sort of non-anthropomorphic god and even as the average person has no access to anything supernatural, the fate of the galaxy is fundamentally shaped by the supernatural conflict at play and the individuals who stand as representatives of those supernatural forces.

Still, I think a lot of people file Star Wars away as simply science fiction. It's not at all "hard" sci-fi like The Martian or The Expanse, but the mere presence of modern or futuristic technologies disqualifies it from those who define fantasy as an inherently pre-industrial, pre-scientific revolution environment.

And to be fair, the line's blurry - actually I'd argue it's a spectrum rather than discrete categories. Consider Dune, which is one of the biggest classics of science fiction. This one, too, has a sense of broader forces at work steering humanity - but the means are, in theory, not mystical but the result of sociological and technological development. Those prophecies that Paul seems to fulfill on Arrakis were planted in that culture over ten thousand years ago by people who were planning to produce someone like Paul through their deeply creepy breeding programs. But if he (or his son) winds up effectively being that same messianic figure that the Fremen were hoping for, what difference does it make?

In the event (eventuality?) that I run a Spelljammer game, I would want to lean in more toward the sci-fi look and feel. I have a deep love of that genre, but I also have a deep comfort and familiarity with D&D.

And, in all honesty, I think the genre blend that Paizo went for with Starfinder is actually much closer to how I would want to run such a campaign. Starfinder has their default Pathfinder setting, which even in its fantasy RPG involves a bit of planetary romance (the old-school genre of space-faring sci fi like John Carter of Mars,) and imagines a far future in which there's a big historical gap in everyone's memory and the main "Earth"-like planet that serves as Pathfinder's central setting has disappeared and been replaced with a massive mega-city space station.

Starfinder still has magic. The Technomancer is sort of the equivalent of a Wizard while the Mystic is sort of the equivalent of a Cleric (with a bit of Druid thrown in). But most classes instead rely on technology - weapons are more complex, with the upgrading of weapons a major part of player progression (your starting dagger might only do 1d4 damage, but by higher level you'll easily be able to buy a non-magical dagger that deals 4d4 or more). There's a huge variety of guns to choose from, though also plenty of melee weapons (some of which do elemental damage, like a "flame doshko" which is somewhat like a spiked axe whose blades are actually superheated plasma pumped through jets on the hilt).

Starfinder, of course, is not the same system as Pathfinder. They had to rebuild a lot of the game from the ground up to support this more sci-fi setting. There are different classes. There is a conversion guide to transform Pathfinder characters into Starfinder ones (and even if they push for more sci-fi appropriate playable races, there are instructions on how to use fantasy races like elves and dwarves in it).

Spelljammer, by contrast, is still fundamentally part of the same game system as 5th Edition D&D. There's no "computers" skill in Spelljammer, because they want you to be able to use the same character sheet that you have in D&D games.

Honestly, I can see this being an easier way to get people into a game. At least in my game groups, I'm skeptical I'll be able to get people to play Starfinder simply because it require learning a new game system (one that, while similar to D&D, has, for example, a pretty different action economy in combat).

Still, there is a part of me that want WotC to take a page out of Paizo's book and create some alternate rules to handle a truly sci-fi conversion of D&D.

Down By the Darkmoon

 So, I went back to my original character in Elden Ring and beat the ending. While I had gone with the Age of Stars ending on the wretched character (who wound up with a strength/faith build dual-wielding greatswords) and I might have gone with a different one, the truth is that this character was always supposed to be the one that went with that ending.

Indeed, I decided to redo his cosmetic appearance to suggest that as he aligned more with Ranni, his skin turned blue like her doll. He'd always been an Int character, but rather than focusing so much on sorceries, I ultimately had him use the Darkmoon Greatsword and its weapon art, which causes your R2 attacks to toss a pretty massive arc of icy magic damage at the foe.

Unlike on the first character, I did die to Radagon once, and then I died I think twice to the Elden Beast, but it was pretty quick. Malikith took three attempts (though one was purely from me not realizing that when you first enter his arena there's actually a gap between the wall and the floor, and you're just on a little narrow bridge at first, so to dodge an attack I just rolled right off the world.)

Ofnir and Godfrey only took me the one try. Honestly, if you can down Malenia, you're ready to finish the game.

I can't actually remember if other Soulsborne games let you stick to the original playthrough after seeing the ending - I've held off on beating the Soul of Cinder because I wanted to finish the Ringed City, but if I could do so without having to get back through the DLC in New Game +, I'd probably go for it. I went for it in Bloodborne because I had beaten the whole Old Hunters DLC before I went to Gherman and the Moon Presence.

I must say that with Elden Ring they took the weapon arts from Dark Souls III and really made them feel worth it. Really, overall I think Elden Ring is such a fantastic evolution of the Soulsborne formula. I love that the co-op items are easily farmable, rather than being practically finite, and not needing them for NPC allies is great.

I will say though that I would love to see one of these games with NPC quest chains that you don't fail simply for playing too far forward. On this intelligence-based, magic-damage character, I wasn't able to get the Magic Scorpion Charm because I progressed too far in the Ranni quest chain before dealing with the creepy roofie potion he gives you.

As I see it, there's nothing really added to the game by cutting off these quest chains if you get too far ahead of them. I'm totally fine with quests where you need to make a choice - do you give Nepheli Loux the potion? Do you help Sellen or help take her down? (I have no idea why, story-wise, you'd attack Milicent at the end of her quest chain, but it's a choice).

Naturally, one of the refreshing things about Elden Ring in the open world genre is that you don't have a million quest trackers and completion meters to fill up. This isn't like finding all the eagle feathers in Assassin's Creed II. And I think it's fine that things are out of the way and in really obscure locations. I'm just not a fan of "well, you've screwed up this save file" especially in a game where you can't load an older save (not that being able to do so would be an ideal solution).

Given the game's success, I do really wonder if and when we'll get an Elden Ring II - if this is to be the big franchise that takes over now that the Dark Souls trilogy is done. There's a similar level of richness to this setting, and I think tons of potential to explore various mythological phenomena. Like, why the hell is Godwyn's body taking on piscine features? Zullie the Witch has a video that suggests it might tie him to the idea of a Ningyo. These games have always had this sort of interesting cultural lensing - taking a lot of Western imagery and traditions and filtering them through a Japanese cultural context.

Simultaneously, there's a fair amount of Cosmic horror in most of them (obviously Bloodborne most of all) and given George R. R. Martin's role in generating the broad mythos of Elden Ring, Godwyn seems to be transforming into something perhaps akin to his "Drowned God" in A Song of Ice and Fire, which the Iron Islanders worship instead of the Seven or the Old Gods. The Drowned God is, of course, very reminiscent of Cthulhu (or possibly Dagon... which was also a... oh hold on.)

Ok, so Dagon was a patriarchal deity worshipped in ancient Syria. In the early 20th century, archaeologists (likely erroneously) scholars thought that he was linked to a mer-man-like being called Kulullû... which, damn if that doesn't sound like Cthulhu.

Anyway, the form that Godwyn's body takes in the roots of the Erdtree in Deeproot Depths actually looks a lot like these depictions of Kulullû that were erroneously thought to depict Dagon. Godwyn's head has transformed in a far weirder way, seeming to become kind of clam-like in shape.

Godwyn's soul was killed while Ranni's body was - meaning Ranni retains her soul but has to live in that doll (which is not actually based on her appearance, but on Renna the witch. Not to go down the rabbit hole, but I actually think that when we first meet Ranni "masquerading" as Renna at the Church of Elleh, it might actually be Renna, as I feel like Ranni doesn't seem to recognize us when we show up at her tower later).

Anyway, while there is water (oddly white, milky water) in Deeproot Depths, there's not much you'd initially link between Godwyn, Those Who Live in Death (which seem to be undead thanks to Godwyn's soul-dead curse,) and the sort of oceanic motif that he's growing into.

But, in some ways, Godwyn's state brings to mind a certain rhyming couplet from Lovecraft: "That which is dead may eternal lie, and with strange aeons even death may die."

Godwyn sure seems to be lying in a deathly state (though again, his body is not dead - it's his soul that is dead.) The couplet from Lovecraft refers to Cthulhu, and meanwhile Godwyn looks a whole lot like the real-world mythological figure of Kulullû.

So...

Yeah, this is what I love about these games. We don't have any real answers, sure, but we have some really interesting questions.

Stat Generation and Feats in D&D

 Let's talk about the two games I'm currently playing in.

The one that has played far more consistently is set in Exandria. I'm playing a young Triton wizard who, fearing he was too meek and overhearing his beloved step-grandfather describing him that way, ran away with a magic, sentient book that used to be a powerful human archmage in the Age of Arcanum, technically stealing the book from the Cobalt Soul. Vodalos, the wizard, rolled pretty damn well on stats. I got a 17 and a 16, and so, using Tasha's rules to reassign his Triton ability score increases (and since then converting to the updated version of the race from Monsters of the Multiverse) he started off at +4 to Intelligence, +3 to Constitution, +2 to Dexterity and Charisma, +1 to Strength, and -1 to Wisdom (while my metagamey instincts think dumping Wisdom is a terrible idea, I wanted to reflect his naiveté and lack of worldliness - I also almost never roll insight against NPCs.)

The other game I'm in is a Spelljammer campaign - we've only had a handful of sessions in several months, so we're not even level 3 yet. But in this, I play a somewhat gruff artificer who works at the spaceport at Leira Trading Center (a city on the dark side of Toril's moon). By contrast, our DM had us use deterministic ability scores - we could do either point buy or standard array (I used point buy but just wound up with the standard array anyway,) so he's started off with +3 to Int, +2 to Dex and Con, +1 to Wisdom, +0 to Strength, and -1 to Charisma.

So, which way is better?

On my Wizard, it's been very freeing. We're level 4 at this point, and so he's got 20 Intelligence. With that squared away, I'm planning on taking Resilient: Constitution at level 8 - this will give him a +4 to Con and probably free up any future ASIs (at level 12, 16, and 19, should we get there) for feats, as I think +4 is probably plenty of Constitution for a ranged character.

However, there's also an element to it that doesn't feel quite fair - the party has two paladins, who each rolled poorly. We do have a house rule that if your rolled stats are worse than the standard array, you can just take the standard array instead, but this means that these two characters are forced to balance strength, charisma, and constitution (the tiefling seems to have taken the standard racial bonus, and then took Tavern Brawler at level 4, so they still only have a +2 to Strength). Thus, sometimes when I talk about the fun feats I'll take when we get into higher levels, I sometimes get a bit of wistfulness from other party members.

By contrast, while the Spelljammer campaign has barely gotten off the ground so far (we're supposed to play tonight, but I think the last three or four sessions have been canceled day of, so I'm trying to manage expectations) everyone is starting from the same point. The only reason I have a feat is that I'm the variant human in the party - we have two astral elves, a rock gnome, and a plasmoid. But I'm likely to just stick to ASIs as we level up - as I plan on being the group tank, I'm going to want to get my Intelligence and Constitution maxed out, which I could do by level 19. (Though I've been toying with the idea of instead making an Amulet of Health at level 14 and just grabbing feats at levels 12, 16, and 19, which would probably include Tough to make up for the lack of HP - only downside being that I'd be using up one of my infusions).

See, I think feats are more fun than ASIs, but I also have a sort of OCD compulsion to try to get at least my primary stats raised to 20.

As I often do, I'll compare this to the way that Starfinder does feats - it's the only other major, complex, class-based RPG I have the rules for. In Starfinder, feats are ubiquitous. Everyone gets a feat every other level, and several class features grant you feats. Whereas in 5th Edition D&D feats are an optional rule, in Starfinder they're pretty central to the game.

To be fair, though, some feats in Starfinder are very basic elements of the game. For example, every class in that gets a feat that lets them add their level to damage they do in any of the weapons the class is proficient in (numbers in Starfinder get a lot higher than in D&D - having an AC in the 30s is not that unusual). The action economy in Starfinder works quite differently, but you could imagine this as turning any feature that multiple classes get into a feat - essentially, it would be like making it so that all Barbarians, Fighters, Monks, Rangers, and Paladins would get the "Extra Attack" feat at level 5, rather than simply making those class features. It does open it up to other classes if they wanted to pick up the feature, though - so your Spores Druid might pick it up so that they could really focus on dealing poison damage with their Shillelagh.

Anyway, the reason I bring up feats is that I think that in D&D, it's a lot easier to consider feats if you roll high stats - because you're trading ASIs to get feats, you'll naturally feel a lot better about spending them if your main stat is already at 20.

With the Standard Array or Point Buy, you can't get any stat higher than 17 (+3) at level 1, which includes your racial (or really now "starting") ability score bonuses, which means that you'll need to spend at least two ASIs if you want to max it out. To get two of these maxed out, you'll need to spend three (or two if you used Point Buy to get two 15s at a severe cost to the rest of your ability scores).

That means five ASIs, which is all of them unless you're a Fighter or Rogue.

So, rolling stats, with the potential to get much higher, makes it less punishing to take feats. But it also creates inequality at the table.

Lots of people have come up with alternate ways to roll stats - adding flat amounts to a 2d6 roll, just simply rolling 3d6 (which is going to generally be lower than what you get in the PHB method,) or the like. But for the purposes of this, I'm going to instead look at a way to make this fair for the whole group.

On Critical Role, the rule they apparently use is that if you roll stats and you get less than a total of 70, you can re-roll. This means that your average ability score should be 11 2/3 or higher. This does ensure that no one gets totally screwed, but it's not going to do better than the standard array, and there's still potential for inequality. Indeed, while you might have a very well-rounded character, if you have 13s in all your ability scores, that's still going to mean a lot of catch-up on the stats that matter most to you.

Ideally, I'd want all the players to have the same average score.

Now, one way to do this is to give players a sort of point buy system, but change the way that the points work and how many they get. In D&D, point buy has diminishing returns for point investment - you need more points to get a higher score. This pushes players to have a more evenly distributed set of scores. But again, if we look at Starfinder, things are done a little differently.

There, I believe everything starts at 10 (though most races have negative score adjustments) and then you spend points in a linear fashion - if you're an android (who gets +2 to Dexterity) and you want to max out your Dex, you can put six more points in with the racial bonus to get to 18. In Starfinder, 18 is the highest you can start any stat out with, but it's actually very useful to start with something at 18 because later ASIs slow down starting at 17. (Like in D&D, the modifier is determined in the same way).

So, let's take the Standard Array and imagine this done in a linear fashion. 15, 14, 13, 12, 10, and 8 translates to a total of 12 points to spend - with the ability to gain up to two extra points by taking a negative 2 to one of your abilities. If we were to say we cap out what you can get with a single stat to 18, that would allow us to make, say, a Barbarian with 18 Strength and 14 Con and 10s in everything else. Or maybe we would take a -2 to Int and get 12 Dexterity.

If we then take our free +2 and +1, we could get a full 20 in Strength from the word go, and maybe give ourselves the +1 to Con so that we can get a +3 at level 4.

Clearly, some classes are going to have an easier time than others. If you're a Rogue, Sorcerer, or Wizard, you can probably stand to just max out your primary stat and then get some decent Constitution and leave most things at 10.

But, then, that's true of any of these systems.

Essentially, this system should allow you to re-create the Standard array, but it makes things more flexible if you want to specialize in certain abilities, at the cost of being less powerful in others. It will also allow a player who is willing to start with +3s to, for example, go for 15s in three stats (say, a Paladin with Strength, Con, and Charisma) and then use the racial/starting bonuses to put those to 16, with three left over to, say, make Strength 18 (or take a minus to something like Intelligence so they can get 18 in Charisma or Constitution as well).

If you want things a bit more randomized, but still fair, you could also do the following:

Everyone in the party rolls stats. Then, you simply take the best stats (determined by who rolls the highest total) and give everyone those values. Alternatively, you could take a hybrid approach to these two methods: everyone rolls, and you see who rolled the highest total. Then, you determine how many flat points that would be and everyone can spend those points as they wish. For example, my Paladin in Curse of Strahd rolled a 10, 7, 10, 17, 16, and 14, meaning she got to start with +4 to Strength and +3 to both Charisma and Constitution (with Scourge Aasimar bonuses). So, this would total out to 14 points to spend. A Rogue might then give themselves 18 in Dexterity and then 14 in Constitution and Wisdom while taking a -2 to, say, Strength (and then maybe max out Dex at level 1 with a +2 and then take +1 to Wisdom so they can grab observant and have amazing passive Perception at level 4). A Ranger could go for 16 Dexterity and 16 Constitution, and then 14 Wisdom, and maybe take a starting bonus of +2 to Wisdom and +1 to Dexterity, perhaps taking Gunner at level 4.

This gives the players the excitement of potentially having highly powerful characters, but doesn't leave anyone behind. And much as the 4d6 drop the lower skews things more powerful than the old school 3d6, but you'll also be selecting the very luckiest roller in the group to set the standard. Of course, this does mean the DM is potentially going to need to throw tougher fights at the party, but they can potentially balance things around that.

Now, this is all operating on the assumption that we want players to feel like they can take feats and have the chance to max out their ability scores. That sort of implies that we think that 5th Edition D&D characters are not powerful enough, which... I don't think is true.

So, there's another change we could make that makes feats more attractive by, instead, making ASIs less appealing.

Again, we're going to borrow an idea from Pathfinder. In Pathfinder, you get ability score improvements at levels 5, 10, 15, and 20. But rather than just raising one score by 2 or two by 1, you actually get to raise several scores at once. The key, though, is that if a score is 16 or lower, you get to increase it by 2 (unless it's 15... I don't have the book with me right now). Increasing a score beyond that point, you only raise the score by 1.

The result is that characters will naturally be more well-rounded, with plenty of decent scores, while raising a score to exceptional levels is much harder.

In D&D, we could implement a rule instead where once an ability score is 16, an ASI will only increase it by 1. Thus, to max out a score, you would need to put four full ASIs into it (or I guess 3 if you start with a 17). We'd also, naturally, remove the +1 to ability scores from feats that give those, or perhaps have them only grant that bonus if your score is lower than 16.

Thus, feats by comparison become a lot more appealing. Rather than rawly increasing the modifiers of our rolls, we're now getting more nuanced abilities. We might have a harder time succeeding on a Stealth check, but we might then consider something like Skulker to make those successes more impactful.

Feats are one of those "optional" rules that I've never seen anyone not use, but I also understand how they can make character builds that much more complicated. I'm very curious to see how they're treated in the 2024 PHB - given what we're seeing around the Giant UA and the revised Heroes of Krynn one, I think we might see them implemented as something to make character backgrounds a more impactful decision at character creation.

Giants Need a Mythological Niche in D&D

 Dragons are the most iconic fantasy monster, but between all the outer planes, the legacies of the mind flayers, the influence of the Shadowfell and the Feywild, and all the liches and beholders out there, you'd be forgiven for wondering where all the dragons are in Dungeons & Dragons.

Fizban's Treasury of Dragons actually did something very cool to address that - it gave dragons a really important role in the cosmos of D&D. Bahamut and Tiamat are now credited as the creators of the Prime Material Plane - and dragons are beings most closely tied to the plane. Humanoids are explained as creations of the gods who colonized the prime material.

This addition to the lore works on many levels - it explains why dragons are obsessed with hoarding material goods, even making that a key part of their essential nature, and it also makes the dragons' arrogance make that much more sense as well. Turns out we are, in fact, on their turf. It also creates some explanations for dragons to have a spiritually different experience, marking them as separate from simple monstrosities. Indeed, I've decided that in my games, dragons never go on to the outer planes, but are simply reincarnated on the Prime Material (extending the concept of Dragonsight not only to versions of themselves on other worlds, but also with past incarnations). Bahamut and Tiamat residing in the Outer Planes could thus be explained as a kind of compromise with the gods - and perhaps even create a potential agenda for the dragons operating in the outer planes - indeed, Fizban's even portrays Bahamut and Tiamat being not quite so antagonistic with each other as we might have suspected.

Giants are, arguably, the most prevalent myth in all of human civilization. Dragons are a widespread myth but basically every culture has thought of "people, but bigger." Giants also exist in D&D in a similar manner to dragons - there's a big variety of them.

D&D Giants are clearly inspired primarily by Norse myth. In Norse myth, two of the Nine Realms are populated by giants - Jotunheim has the frost giants, while Muspelheim has the fire giants. Generally I think of Hill Giants as being your classic fairy tale giants - kind of dumb and strong, always trying to eat you or your livestock. Of course, cloud giants fit a bit closer to the giant from Jack and the Beanstalk, at least in their choice of home. And then Stone Giants and Storm Giants have somewhat less easily identifiable origins - though for some reason I always imagine Storm Giants having more of a Grecian vibe to them.

What we know about the giants is that they are sort of mystically ordered in a system called the Ordning - there's a clear hierarchy of giants that is part of their culture. Each type of giant has its own god, but there's also Annam, who is god to all the giants.

Giant alignment seems to vary considerably - typically Hill and Frost giants are chaotic evil, while Fire giants are lawful evil. Stone giants are typically True Neutral. Cloud giants are 50/50 neutral good and neutral evil, while Storm giants are typically chaotic good.

Now, first things first: I fully expect these alignments to be less strict in the future. WotC's official policy these days is that stat blocks representing individuals will have a set alignment, but even beings that are born of a particular alignment, like Devils, will be labeled as "typically lawful evil" or the like. This does seem to apply to creatures of free will, such as a Crystal Dragon (typically chaotic neutral). Still, I suspect that giants will be lent a certain flexibility, similarly to how dragons were portrayed in Fizban's (I love the idea of a chaotic good black dragon archaeologist who helps the party uncover a plot by a nagpa to orchestrate the downfall of a nation).

Volo's Guide to Monsters gave us a variant of each of the major giants, though how useful these are and how much they add to the lore varies. The Frost Giant Everlasting One is more of a freak mix of frost giant and dire troll.

I'd love to see a deep dive into the cultures of the different kinds of giants, but I think I'd find it even more exciting to see how they are linked to the cosmic forces of D&D.

It does appear in the recent UA that they're drawing a connection between the elemental forces and the giants. Naturally, fire giants, stone giants, cloud giants, and storm giants all seem deeply connected to one of the four classical elements. The elemental planes are also sort of an interesting contrast to the Outer Planes and the Feywild and Shadowfell. While those ones are largely composed of thoughts, values, and emotions, the Elemental planes are concerned with the physical.

If giants are connected to the elements in a primordial way, that could give them a solid connection to the prime material - indeed, what if dragons were born out of the elements (which would explain their various breath weapons) and that, before the Prime Material Plane, Bahamut and Tiamat came from the Elemental Planes? (This would even work with the 4th Edition World Axis cosmology).

Now, of course, this would fit a lot more neatly if there were four primary giant types, rather than six.

Perhaps the giants are also a key part of the Prime Material Plane - their rivalry with dragons dates back before most can remember, and thus it feels like they should have real stakes.

I'd also be curious to get an explanation for lesser giants like Trolls and Ogres. Were they at one point part of the Ordning?

The giants in the Monster Manual leave a little to be desired. They hit hard, but that's about it. If this Giant UA is hinting at a Fizban's-like book about giants, I'd love to get a greater variety of each of the types of giants. For example, Storm Giants are supposed to be seers and prophets, but don't have any sort of divination magic beyond detect magic. I think it would be cool if we could get maybe a Storm Giant warrior similar to what's in the Monster Manual but also some kind of seer that uses divination in cool ways.

Giants are begging to be fleshed out as a class of creatures, and while this is just one UA, the implications behind it are exciting.

New Giant-themed Unearthed Arcana Brings Subclasses and Feats

 So, last year we got Fizban's Treasury of Dragons, which I thought was a great book with a ton of resources that really made me want to run a dragon-themed campaign. If this UA indicates anything, it seems possible we might get a similar giant-themed book some time in the future.

Giants are, I think after dragons, the most classic fantasy creature. Indeed, basically every culture on earth has giants - which, to be fair, might be because it's not that hard to come up with the idea. What's scarier than a hostile person? How about one who is bigger than your house?

In D&D, of course, the giant creature type covers not only the classical giants (Hill, Frost, Stone, Fire, Cloud, Storm) but also things like Ogres and Trolls. It's a broad and varied type.

Anyway, let's get to the good stuff:

The UA brings us subclasses for three classes, as well as a number of feats. I'm not going to fully transcribe them (here's a link) but I'll sum up and add my thoughts.

    The Barbarians get Path of the Giant, which is pretty straightforward. This is actually my favorite of the subclasses they present, though I'll note that it bears a striking similarity to the Fighter's Rune Knight. Here, when you rage, you grow to Large size (and later Huge) and get an extended reach (first 5 extra feet, and then 10.) Immediately, my mind went to making a Bugbear Polearm Master here to have a melee range of eventually 20 feet.

The subclass also has a cool theme of using thrown weapons - at level 3 you get to add your rage bonus to thrown weapon attacks, and then at 6 you can turn any melee weapon into a sort of elemental weapon that returns to your hand immediately after throwing it, in addition to doing your choice of acid, cold, fire, thunder, or lightning rather than its normal damage.

The most hilariously silly and awesome part of the class is that you can pick up and throw other creatures. They make a Strength save against a DC based on your Strength (or, if it's an ally, they can just let it happen) and you move them to a space within 30 feet. And yes, that can mean off a cliff.

    Druids get Circle of the Primeval. Here, the theme is based more around ancient behemoths like dinosaurs, or potentially wooly mammoths and other megafauna. Mechanically, the primary theme here is that you get a pet you can summon using your Wild Shape charges. The pet is fairly tanky. At higher levels, you can sink spell slots into summoning the companion to super-charge it, giving it extra damage, temp hit points, and a faster speed.

The notion of a druid summoning a giant beast is totally in-flavor, but I feel like this one is a little underbaked. Sure, Druids have plenty going on anyway, so maybe a subclass doesn't need to be all that complex, but I guess for me I'm just not quite as excited about this one.

    Wizards, then, get Rune Crafter. This subclass allows them to empower spells they cast with different runic effects. The effects here are things that I feel I'd have to see in play to really be able to get a sense of their worth.

Essentially, you're getting to add effects onto your leveled spells based on the level of the slot you expend. One nice alternate use you get for your rune charges is at level 6, when you can expend runes to turn a failed Strength, Dexterity, or Constitution saving throw into a success. The fact that this isn't just a chance to reroll but full-on makes it a success is pretty great - you could use this a bit like an Artificer's Mind Sharpener to make sure you never drop concentration on an important spell.

    Moving on, we have Feats.

Several of these feats are themed around the various True Giants. I particularly like Ember of the Fire Giant, which gives you fire resistance and allows you to replace one of your attacks with a burst of fire damage to creatures around you.

Runecarver Apprentice allows you to carve runes on items that give you a particular spell you can cast for a day. This is also a prerequisite for Runecarver Adept, which gives you more uses of these spells.

It does look like we're getting some iteration on feats - giving feats level requirements and sometimes having "feat trees" with prerequisites.

I'm very curious to see how feats are treated in the 2024 PHB - as 5th edition stands, feats are very costly to take, so I think it's unusual for a player to take more than one or two. On the other hand, this also makes building a character a less difficult thing to do.

Some of the lore text found in this document hints at some interesting things: beyond giants, there's discussion of titans and behemoths. I really feel like this could be a hint that we're getting some book in the future that's all about big, big things.

Mors Exponential Tokens

 Ok, I wrote earlier about a theoretical deck I wanted to make. Well, now I have. This deck takes advantage of the power of exponential growth, building up a small army of tokens that gets very, very big very, very fast.

It doesn't actually use Scute Swarm anymore, because while that's a great option in a ramp-heavy landfall deck, it doesn't play as synergistically with our other options.

The MVP of this deck is Rabble Rousing. This white enchantment for 4W gives you a white and green 1/1 citizen token for each creature you control that attacks. So, say you have two tokens out - now you get two more when those two attack. This includes any creatures you have that are attacking, so it could be your Prosperous Innkeeper or, most importantly, the very citizens that the enchantment created. If the opponent isn't killing the tokens, you've got a re-doubling army every turn, which can get out of hand very quickly.

Given how many creatures we're summoning, Prosperous Innkeeper is a very useful part of our deck. Even though it focuses on small creatures, this deck does take a little while to get set up. When all that exponentially-growing mob is coming into play each turn, we're getting a lot of life back from our Innkeeper, which helps us sustain. However, the treasure token the Innkeeper brings shouldn't be ignored - that will help us get the five mana we need without necessarily having to get to turn 5 (and get land drops on all of them).

Devilish Valet here is, I think, usually icing on the cake. If we get a token army and Rabble Rousing out, this guy is an utter menace - exponential upon exponential. If we have five tokens and we swing in with this thing, that means six more tokens, which means doubling the Valet's power six times, or 64 power if we're just starting at 1. Still, the Valet can potentially win the game for us even if the opponent has gone wide, thanks to his trample.

Jetmir, Nexus of Revels is actually a pretty strong part of the deck. While he doesn't really get insanely powerful until you have ten guys on the board, which even this deck only sometimes gets, getting up to six is not that difficult, and that means everyone getting +2/+0 along with vigilance and, importantly, trample. (Ten adds one more power and then double strike, and at that point you're basically winning immediately.) Jetmir is actually a great option for the Hideaway feature of Rabble Rousing, because when it triggers, you'll be getting Jetmir at his full power (the only downside is that you potentially warn your opponent - though if you have five creatures on the board when you plunk down Rabble Rousing with a Hideaway Jetmir, you can get it all in one turn. Even if they're only 1/1 tokens, with that play, you'll have five 4/1 double-strikers, which is 40 trampling damage that the opponent will have to deal with. And while an opponent should be nervous to see five creatures of any sort on the opponent's side of the board, they might not expect this massive of a threat.)

Wedding Invitation is naturally pretty useful here, pumping out tokens or potentially drawing you cards, and then paying off with an anthem effect that is always very good in go-wide decks.

We're actually going to get use of all three of the options of Cabaretti Charm - the direct damage can be crucial to destroy big threats, the creature pump (and again, importantly, giving them all trample) is great as a finishing move, and the token generation can be useful either to recover from a board wipe or to help enable Jetmir or the Devilish Valet.

So, lets talk about the deck's weaknesses.

The first is that it is extremely vulnerable to board wipes. Meathook Massacre usually doesn't have to be cast at a particularly high value for X to take out everything we have. Farewell (which, honestly, I think is a BS card) is a nightmare here, as it can also take out Rabble Rousing (there's another wiper from I want to say Strixhaven that takes out all nonland permanents that totally screw us).

This is also a bit of a feast or famine deck (which, to be fair, might just be the nature of the game). Ideally you'll be able to grow a big army and then swarm them down. But super-fast aggro decks might be hard to defend against, while permission decks will keep any of your best cards from ever actually hitting the table. The deck is a bit reliant on Rabble Rousing, and that enchantment is only useful if you also have some things in play.

Still, the strengths I think are that you can sometimes pull a victory from the jaws of defeat. Even without the crazy exponential possibilities of Rabble Rousing and Devilish Valet, you can catch a cocky foe off guard with cards like Jetmir and the group-pump of Cabaretti Charm.

Some of the cards in the deck that are kind of just filling slots here are Felidar Retreat (which might be a holdover from when we were doing more of a landfall thing) or Gala Greeters, which certainly benefit from all the creatures coming into play but might be too limited to really benefit from the huge number of tokens we're making. I'm also considering playing a bit with the lands - right now I have the Cabaretti "triome" lands and the pathways, but I might throw in some of the Innistrad dual lands as well to smooth things a bit.

Nuances and Considerations for the Monsters of the Multiverse Changes

 Monsters of the Multiverse, originally packaged with the Rules Expansion Box Set (which includes Xanathar's and Tasha's) is now available for individual purchase. The book is basically a revision and consolidation of the playable races and monster stat blocks from Volo's Guide to Monsters and Mordenkainen's Tome of Foes, along with a few races brought in from campaign setting books.

Some of the changes simply bring the races in line with new design philosophies - both in de-coupling ability score bonuses from race as well as presenting more nuanced race identities that are not bound to any particular moral alignment.

Monsters in the book have also been given revisions, the intent to make them more easily run in combat by DMs (particularly spellcasters) and also to bring the monsters better in line with their challenge ratings - many monsters have gotten more damage per round or have more hit points.

There are two broad changes that I've seen pointed out that will certainly make these monsters harder, and in ways that might seem to nerf certain player options.

First, let's address spellcasting.

Spellcasting NPC and monster stat blocks have been changed to give them a simpler means of dealing damage. Rather than having a whole array of spell slots and spells prepared or known that they can cast, most of these blocks primarily use a certain repeatable ability, often as a sort of multiattack spell attack.

As an example, the Archdruid, rather than simply having a lot of classic druid spells prepared and spell slots up to 9th level with which to cast them, now gets three attacks with either the "Wildfire" spell attack or a Staff weapon attack, and the option to cast one of their spells in place of an attack. Wildfire does 26 fire damage to a target it hits and blinds them for a round, and the staff does its normal bludgeoning but also adds 21 poison damage. These attacks are thus going to be the archdruid's main source of damage rather than spending spell slots on things like firestorm, sunbeam, or wall of fire.

From a DM's perspective, this is very appealing - these attacks do enough damage to make this CR 12 NPC feel like a real threat (or powerful ally for the party) but you won't have to keep a running tally of how many spell slots you've spent and whether to upcast something while you're running several other monsters at the same time.

Where I think this skews things, though, is on the player side.

First off, the obvious issue is Counterspell. While Wildfire and similar abilities are Spell Attacks, I don't believe this counts as "casting a spell." If the party Wizard has picked up counterspell as a major means of helping to protect the party, that spell just got a lot less powerful. Now, I'll concede that that might be intentional - counterspell can be a very frustrating spell, especially if you're running some spellcaster big bad and every turn they basically can't do anything because the party is countering everything. A lich ought to feel really scary and not someone who can get punked by a nearby sorcerer who's always keeping their reaction ready.

However, the odder consequence is how this shifts the power of AC versus saving throws. If (as our example) the Archdruid is using Wildfire in place of Firestorm or Sunbeam, this suddenly makes heavily-armored players a lot stronger. My poor 7-dexterity paladin is going to repeatedly get fried by Firestorm (good thing she has aura of protection!) but if she gets full plate (which, if we ever continue that campaign and get back from the Amber Temple, she should have the gold to buy it) she's going to be in much more decent shape.

Not everything has been made into an attack, mind you, but it does look like most spellcasters really have leaned that way. My Eldritch Knight, who can cast Shield to put his AC at 27, would be even more of a terror.

Another odd consequence of this plays into a subtle change with a lot of playable races - many "magic resistance" traits now specifically only apply to spells, rather than "spells and other magical effects." Your Yuan-Ti Pureblood, now simply a Yuan-Ti (which... yeah, that's probably for the best) now only gets advantage on saves against spells. Thus, if hit by an NPC Bard's "Cacophony" ability, they would not have advantage, even though the ability is identical to the spell Thunderwave, against which they would have advantage.

There are some of these caster stat blocks that do still use damaging spells, but typically their "spellcasting" action is focused more on utility.

The upshot of all of this is that I, as a DM, feel way more comfortable putting spellcasters into combat encounters I design. But it does change the landscape a bit, and takes some of the tools player characters use to defend against spellcasters away.

The other change of note is something of a nerf to non-Bear Totem Barbarians.

Many powerful monsters, rather than having weapons that do magical slashing, bludgeoning, or piercing damage, a lot of them instead simply do force damage.

As an example, a Green Abishai's Claw attack did slashing damage in Mordenkainen's Tome of Foes, but with a trait that explains that the weapon attacks are magical (in case the Abishai is attacking some other creature or maybe your party has Stoneskin or something up). Now, however, the attack does Force damage. This means that the whole magic/non-magic distinction is irrelevant, but it also means that your Barbarian won't be able to tank that damage as effectively - it'll be going fully through.

I recently ran a boss that used Zuggtmoy's stat block, using the new one, and the Barbarian was taking full damage on all those pseudopod hits (well, not fully full because the party had a Heroes' Feast, so the poison damage was ignored).

Ironically, this makes the Brooch of Shielding a very powerful item at high levels.

I'm very curious to see how these philosophical shifts will be reflected moving forward - and indeed, if we'll see some iteration on them. We're still two years away from the updated core books, and who knows what new nuances might be introduced in those? Perhaps all Barbarian rages will give the Bear Totem effect, and this damage type change won't mean much. We'll have to wait and see.

Cabaretti and Exponential Aggro

 First off:

I didn't play during Shards of Alara (I believe it came out my senior year of college, and thus I had moved onto WoW as my primary nerdy time-sink,) so getting used to the shorthand of Bant, Esper, Grixis, Jund, and Naya took me a while. I think I have even more trouble with the "wedges." (Let's see, taking the "enemy" color as the organizing principle, that's what: Mardu, Temur, Abzan, Jeskai, and Sultai, right?)

We get new "factions" with new sets. I got into Arena when Ikoria was a fairly recent set (it's when they made a Mac client) and so I had an easier time thinking of Savai, Ketria, Indatha, Raugrin, and Zagoth than the Tarkir ones. Similarly, we have new names for the "shards" with New Capenna thanks to the new factions of Brokers, Obscura, Maestros, Riveteers, and Cabaretti.

But hey, if we're going to stick with the first appearance of such a thing, I think that the "color and its two allies" should be named after some true legends: Elder Dragon Legends.

Thus, I think GWU should be "Sabboth," WUB should be "Chromium," UBR should be "Bolas," BRG should be "Asmadi," and RGW should be "Mors."

So I actually call this deck "Mors' Exponential Recursion."

It's not actually a full deck - I haven't burned the Wildcards to make it, so it exists in theory. What's the most powerful force in the universe? It's compound interest. So let's take a look at the three cards in here that, if they're allowed to go off, get freaking crazy.

Actually, before I get there, I have a story:

My maternal grandfather was a smoker (actually, both were, though my paternal one quit the moment the Surgeon General announced they were linked to lung cancer and never took another puff because he was a badass). His second wife asked him to quit, and he told her "I'll quit if you do the following for me. Take this chess board, and I want you to put a penny on the first square today. Tomorrow, put two pennies on the second square. Each day, I want you to put twice the number of pennies you put on the previous square on the next one. When you fill up the board, I'll quit."

My step-grandmother was not very mathematically-minded, and so she agreed.

On a 64-square chessboard, she would have needed 1.844 quintillion pennies, or 18.44 quadrillion dollars. To fill up the last square. She'd need practically as much as well to fill up the previous 63 squares.

Ok, so let's look at these cards:

The first is Devlish Valet. This is a 1/3 red devil warrior with trample and haste for 2R. It also has the ability word alliance - each time a creature enters the battlefield under your control, double Devilish Valet's power until end of turn.

Now, doubling its base power is not that scary - indeed, its trample ability isn't even meaningful until you do. However, if you have ways to put multiple creatures into play, this gets silly very fast. Five on one turn gets you to 32 power, and with trample, that's a big problem, because if your opponent can't just kill the valet or get over 12 toughness in front of that freight train, they're dead.

But five creatures into play in a single turn is tough, right?

Now we turn to the next piece in this madhouse: Scute Swarm.

Yes, Devilish Valet and Scute Swarm are on opposite ends of the Standard rotation, so this is the only period in which you can put both in a Standard deck (maybe I'm an old fogey, but Standard is still my default format). Scute Swarm is, of course, a 1/1 green insect for 2G. It has the Landfall ability keyword, so when a land enters the battlefield under your control, you create a 1/1 green insect token... unless you have six lands in play, in which case you instead create a copy of Scute Swarm.

Meaning that the next land you put out there, both will create a copy. And then the next time, all four will make copies - you see where we're going.

Scute Swarm is terrifying enough in a landfall-focused deck, as it goes wide very, very quickly. But if you put one of these into play, that's doubled our Valet's power once, then you play a land, and now you're doubling it again. Play something like Topiary Stomper on the same turn and now each of those is doubling and the Valet is up to 16 times its original power.

Basically, with these two out, there's an exponential growth on top of exponential growth. If one land gives us one copy and thus doubles the valet once, then a second (on that turn) means two more come into play, doubling the valet twice, so he's at 8. Does that mean we're basically cubing it? It has been a long time since high school algebra. No, I think it's more because a third land would be four new copies, and he's already at 8, so then we have 8 times two to the fourth power, which is 128, whereas 2 to the 4th power is just 16.

Yeah, don't remember how to layer exponents on exponents.

Finally, our third insane piece: Rabble Rousing, a white enchantment for 4W

This has hideaway 5, which is fine but not what we're really here for. Instead, its base effect is that when you attack, you create a 1/1 green and white citizen token for each creature that is attacking. Then, if you have ten or more creatures, you can cast the hideaway card without paying its mana cost.

So, let's imagine a scenario.

You've had Scute Swarm out and doubled it on a previous turn. Rabble Rousing is out, but you've avoided attacking because the opponent has things that can block. You have a Devilish Valet in hand and a land to drop.

So, you cast Devlish Valet. You then play the land. This triggers the two Scute Swarms, so the Valet's power is doubled twice to 4. Now, we attack with all three creatures. Rabble Rousing puts out three citizens. This means we double the Valet's power three more times - 8, 16, 32.

We can futz with this a bit to make it more effective.

Wedding Invitation gets more people on the board, but naturally its transformed state, giving all of our creatures +1/+1, is going to pay off tremendously when we double the Valet's power. With two of these active, the Valet starts at 3/5, and thus doubles to 6, 12, and then 24.

Felidar Retreat will let us either pack the board with more creatures or let us buff up the Valet (or our sizable horde of tokens).

Jetmir, Nexus of Revels of course rewards us significantly when we go wide, and given how quickly we can get a lot of creatures out there, getting his maximum bonus is not outside of the realm of possibility.

What I want to work on with this concept is seeing what spells support it the best - we're very vulnerable to board wipes - Farewell is particularly devastating, as it can take away things like Rabble Rousing or Felidar Retreat, which will allow us to rebuild after creature-specific ones like Meathook Massacre.

I think in play you also probably want to hold back the Devlish Valet until you can be sure to pump it up. If you let it sit on the board when the opponent gets a turn, they're going to probably blow it up ASAP. Thanks to its haste, you can wait for an opportune time to drop it in, though you'll also want to make sure you have all the other pieces in place to make sure you maximize the power.

Monsters of the Multiverse

 So, I bought my copy of Monsters of the Multiverse. In all honesty, I've been using the book since its release as part of the Rules Expansion bundle - through digital means as well as my roommate's copy - but I decided to legitimize my use (and support my local game store) by getting the actual book.

Monsters of the Multiverse is basically a consolidation and revision of Volo's Guide to Monsters and Mordekainen's Tome of Foes, so there is another layer of redundancy in adding this to my collection. However, the book has a somewhat different approach to the material.

Monsters of the Multiverse is, I think, one of the three books anyone just starting to build their 5th Edition D&D collection should have (hint: the other two are the two that it came packaged with - Tasha's and Xanathar's). In many respects, this book is the "Monster Manual 2" of 5th Edition. It dispenses with the lengthy chapters of lore that we got with Volo's and Mordenkainen's, instead cutting to the chase and giving us playable races and monster stat blocks with about as much of a description as you get in the Monster Manual for each creature.

The result is that you get a lot of meat without a lot of fat. If you are looking for inspiration via lengthy lore chapters, this might disappoint you a bit, but if you just want a quick sense of these creatures and a whole lot of them, this will be very helpful to have around.

I did a lengthy review of the playable races in the book when it first came out - almost every race is a strict improvement over its previous iteration, and there are a lot of quality-of-life features like allowing you to cast racial spells with spell slots after you've used your free use of the day, and picking your spellcasting ability (my Triton Wizard likes being able to cast Gust of Wind via Intelligence rather than Charisma, thank you very much).

Likewise, the (at least in my social and social media circles) universally praised changes from Tasha's, allowing the player to pick which ability score improvements you get from your race, have been made universal here - moving forward, those bonuses will be player's choice from the get-go.

The monsters, I think, have not gotten quite as extensive a re-work, except for the following really big change for spellcasters. While many will still be able to cast various utility spells, each a certain number of times per day, the monsters have been redesigned to have much clearer options for combat - often giving them some kind of spell-like multiattack.

For example: a Necromancer from Volo's versus a Necromancer Wizard from MotM look a little different.

The new version has far more HP - 110 versus 66, which makes sense for something that's CR 9. The old version had essentially the spell slots of a level 12 wizard, with a ton of spells prepared. Now, Animate Dead cast at 5th level (giving 5 undead minions) is turned into a one-a-day ability called "Summon Undead," which they can do as a bonus action.

The Necromancer Wizard (new version) can still cast spells like bestow curse, dimension door, mage armor, and web each twice a day, and circle of death once, but rather than all the various damage spells like ray of sickness, blight, cloudkill, etc., instead the new version gets to make three spell attacks (which work as either melee or ranged) called Arcane Burst, which deals 4d10+3 necrotic damage on a hit.

Essentially, this narrows the options down for the DM and makes it a lot easier to track. Basically, you can use the various utility spells if necessary, but if you just want to pump out some damage (potentially about 75 damage per turn if everything hits!) you have Arcane Burst as your "standard" action.

The one thing I think this does significantly change from a player perspective is that Counterspell is potentially a far less useful option. While a hostile Necromancer Wizard can certainly still be counterspelled when trying to hit the party with a big Circle of Death, or if they attempt to Dimension Door away, if the party's wizard wants to protect their friend from taking a nasty barrage of Arcane Bursts, they'll be out of luck.

Some stat blocks also give AoE abilities a similar treatment. The Evoker Wizard, for instance, has the same Arcane Burst attack (though it deals force instead of necrotic damage) but also has a recharge ability called Sculpted Explosion, which is essentially a 4th-level fireball where the wizard gets to pick three creatures to ignore the effects of the spell (similar to the Evocation Wizard's "Sculpt Spells" feature) and they get to pick between cold, fire, lightning, or thunder damage. Oh, and it knocks those who fail their save prone.

This is, basically, a souped-up Fireball. But unlike Fireball, you can't counterspell it.

Now, on a certain level, I love this as a DM. Counterspell keeps me from doing cool things my monster wants to do - the legendary Death Knight in the fight I was running the past few sessions could never use Destructive Wave because the Sorcerer was always saving his reaction and spell slots to counter anything the boss did. Of course, Death Knights have their Hellfire Orb, which I got to use anyway, so it's not like I didn't get to do anything scary.

Again, I should also note that the Evoker does get some standard damage spells - they can cast Lightning Bolt twice a day. So maybe it's actually fine.

Ultimately, I think these monsters are better-balanced, and it's nice to have them all in a big book.

One choice I have mixed feelings about is that they've broken up monster categories. Demons, for example, are in alphabetical order based on their individual names, instead of all being under "D." On one hand, if you're looking for a Babau, for example, you'll know where to find it. But if you want to have your players fight a demonic cult, it might not be quite as easy to just browse through the "demon" section to decide which fiend they've summoned.

In a way, it feels a bit like this is more of a preview of 5.5 or 6th edition than it is a supplement to 5th Edition, though of course it's still quite useful. If you are looking for brand-new creatures, you should be warned that there's maybe... one of those? (I don't remember if the Dolphin Delighter, which is a fey dolphin, was ever printed before) but everything else here is a revision of stuff that's already been printed.

The Blood Calls Me Back to Elden Ring

 Well... it was a good few days. I beat Elden Ring on my Strength/Faith greatsword dual-wielder and figured I would take a good long break before getting back into it.

And then I thought "hm, a bleed build might be fun."

Two hours in, I've put together the starting pieces of the build, inspired as usual by Fextralife's excellent guides. Taking the Warrior class, who starts with dual scimitars, the goal was basically this: get to Fort Haight as soon as possible and grab the Bloody Slash ash of war. With the standard Whetstone Blade you can apply the Blood affinity to one of your scimitars. So you're already able to inflict the bleed condition.

Bleed, if you don't know, works thusly: if you have a weapon with a bleed effect, it will build up a status effect on your target each time you hit it - different targets have different Robustness (I think that's the bleed defense stat) so depending on the foe, this can build faster or slower. When the (invisible) bleed bar builds to full, the target instantly loses a percentage of their total health - 15% plus an amount based on the weapon. This, of course, means that you can potentially get a ton of damage on high-health enemies if you can build up the blood loss effect. Notably, once this goes off, the meter simply resets, and can start building again, unlike, say, Frostbite, which does 10% of their health but can't be reapplied until the secondary effect falls off (which you can also force by doing fire damage to them). Frostbite can be very effective as well, but you'll probably build differently for it.

To get it to work on this build, you want to get that Bloody Slash on both your scimitars, doubling the rate at which you build this status effect. Thus, we need to head to the Weeping Peninsula and purchase a Lost Ash of War from the merchant in the shack near the Walking Mausoleum.

But we also need Hewg to duplicate Bloody Slash, and for that, we need to at least face Margit the Fell Omen so Melina can take us to Roundtable Hold.

Given that I've now beaten him on three characters, I wasn't shocked when I managed to take him down on the first try this time - having at least one Blood Scimitar allowed me to get a couple bleeds off.

With that accomplished, you can put the second Bloody Slash on the off-hand Scimitar, and then things really take off - attacking with L1 you'll hit targets several times in an attack-chain, and with two swords building the effect, the bleed goes off quite frequently. Thanks to the extra, non-percentage damage many lesser enemies will just drop dead almost immediately.

Per Fextralife's guidance, this build then uses the Dragon Communion seal along with Dragon Communion incantations, which does create a bit of an overlap with a previous character. I'll see whether I go that route or find a way to work in other Arcane-style weapons (perhaps poison-inflicting ones?) to deal with bleed-resistant foes. We'll see.

The Awaken Spell Blows My Mind

 Awaken is a 5th level transmutation spell available to Bards and Druids. It has a casting time of 8 hours, a range of touch, and consumes a 1000-gold agate as its material component. You can cast this spell on a beast or plant with an intelligence of 3 or lower. When the spell goes off, the creature gains an intelligence of 10 and gains the ability to speak one language you know. If the target is a plant, it also gains the ability to move its limbs, roots, vines, creepers, and so forth, and it gains senses similar to a human's. Plants can have stat blocks similar to an Awakened Shrub or Awakened Tree, whichever is appropriate as determined by the DM. The target is charmed by you for 30 days or until you or your companions harm it. When the charm condition ends, the creature can choose whether or not it wants to remain friendly to you, based on how you treated it.

So...

This is crazy.

A 10 intelligence is meant to represent average human intelligence. That means that the creatures go from being simple animals or mindless plants to... well, people.

And that's where I feel like the potential for this spell gets really crazy.

Once you have the ability to speak and the human capacity for abstract thought, I don't see any reason why a creature of this sort couldn't take class levels. It might be slow going at first if they go with something like Wizard or Artificer (it would take them until level 19 to max out Intelligence). But, like, a Deer has a Wisdom of 14 - meaning they could be a decent Druid. Or, indeed, with a 16 Dexterity, they could go Monk - which might also allow them to deal with the fact that they'd have trouble finding armor and might need to rely on unarmed strikes (with their antlers, for instance) without the use of opposable thumbs.

Seriously, I think you could, using the custom lineage rules, actually make a player character who is an awakened beast. Unfortunately, primate beasts (such as an Ape) are actually too smart to benefit from the Awaken spell (an Ape has an Intelligence of 6, meaning that they're actually just as smart as the druid from my original campaign).

But generally, as a DM, always remember that you can easily justify talking animals and plants in your campaign.

Changing the Goals in D&D Combat

 In my Ravnica-based D&D campaign, the group's cleric has something of a... complicated relationship with his guild. In the invented lore for the campaign, a spirit known as Grigorev was once one of the five members of the Obzedat Council, which rules over the Orzhov Syndicate. For reasons that the party has yet to discover in their entirety, Grigorev was outmaneuvered by a fellow member, Karlov (who is canonical) and cast out of the Obzedat, shackled away under a curse known as the Pillory of the Sleepless (an aura from the original block) while Karlov consolidated his power.

The cleric has been hearing whispers from Grigorev for most of his life, and Grigorev serves as the god that grants the cleric his divine powers (Grave domain).

While most of the campaign has been focused primarily on the external Phyrexian threat, the cleric has been hunted by a death knight known as Czernog the Butcher (pronounced "cher-nog") who serves as Karlov's deadliest weapon.

However, researching Czernog's backstory with the help of a high-ranking archmage in the Orzhov with his own reasons to undermine Karlov, the party discovered that Czernog was actually a righteous Boros Legionnaire before he was captured and tortured into forsaking his oath.

A death knight is profoundly hard to kill permanently, given that they will always return after they are slain until they repent, which most aren't inclined to do. So, the archmage devised a plan: to trap Czernog in a Magic Circle and then use the party's renown to call upon Aurelia and absolve Czernog of the evil committed under Karlov's control.

What this meant was an unconventional combat encounter: the party needed to fight Czernog, but they could not kill him - instead, they needed to ensure that at the end of ten rounds of combat (representing the minute needed to cast Magic Circle,) Czernog was in a particular place within the ruined chapel where he was first ordained as a paladin of the Boros Legion.

In some ways, this was a dream to DM, because it meant I actually got to use all my cool stuff (though with a new sorcerer in the party, spells quickly became unreliable as the sorcerer could always cast Counterspell, so he had to rely on his melee attacks).

Still, ten rounds with death knight I had turned legendary by giving him legendary resistance, legendary actions, and altered some aspects of his HP and gear was a lot.

Essentially, it became a healing endurance match. Czernog had a scythe that had a 10-foot reach and dealt 2d6+5 slashing damage as well as 6d8 necrotic damage, with two attacks per turn and the ability to attack with a single legendary action. He could also use a legendary action to force a wisdom save against any non-undead creature that could hear within 60 feet, dealing 4d8 psychic damage and frightening creatures for a minute on a failure, or half damage and no fear on a success. +11 to hit with the scythe and a DC 18 for the "Shriek of the Damned," which is based on the Ring Wraiths from Fellowship of the Ring.

Ultimately, what the fight wound up being was first a bunch of damage to him (which honestly wasn't really necessary at all) and fighting off a total of 22 minions (mostly skeletons and zombies, but a couple of blackguards and a homebrew monster called a Scourge Knight that didn't really get a chance to do anything) with a bit of help from two Necromancer Wizards the archmage brought in, along with the five zombies and five skeletons they raised for the fight.

Once the area was cleared of minions for the most part, the party overlapped as many difficult-terrain effects around the spot Czernog had to be once he was there, and then the Barbarian and Fighter/Paladin both grappled him, holding him there until the end of round 10.

Meanwhile, the Cleric had to pour out a ton of healing, aided by the Druid.

It was a fun, different sort of challenge, and while I was hoping to scare the party just a little bit more, I was happy to see that they pulled it off without any of the party members dying (one of the necromancer wizards made a sacrifice play, dying to draw one of Czernog's attacks off the Barbarian to ensure he remained grappled, though as servants of a powerful Orzhov archmage, they knew they could be resurrected).

With Karlov's champion taken away, the cleric awoke the next day to receive a personal invitation delivered by none other than Teysa Karlov to have a discussion directly with the Obzedat Council, with a magically-enforced guarantee of protection.

An Elden Lord of Stars

 Well, I wound up going with the Age of Stars ending, because, well, I think it's the coolest one (and the one I worked the hardest on).

I actually managed to down Godfrey on the first attempt - it helped that I had Nepheli Loux and my Mimic Tear, not to mention how high level I was.

The final boss was a bit tougher. I don't think I ever died to Radagon, but I did start one of my Elden Beast phases with only six crimson tear flasks left. Still, I think it was only four or five attempts to take down the Elden Beast. Seriously, if you've taken down Malenia, I don't think much else in the game can put up a fight.

The game is actually quite generous in letting you do clean-up after beating the final boss. You get a site of grace in Marika's room, and you don't actually have to pick an ending immediately. But even after you pick an ending, they put you in Roundtable Hold with the option, at the Table, to start "Journey 2."

I do think there are one or two things I missed - I never picked up Shabriri's Woe and I didn't get every Walking Mausoleum down (though I have every remembrance item that I can actually use with my build). Also, I don't know if Varré has more for you if you actually do some PvP.

I've got to say, the Dark Souls formula translated shockingly well to an open-world game, and I think this is a masterpiece. I think the difficulty is also balanced much more fairly than, say, Dark Souls 3.

I'm extremely curious to see what kind of DLC we might eventually get for this, and if I can truly sit on my finished playthrough without going to New Game Plus, I might leave him in NG for if and when the DLC comes out.

For now, though, I think this means I'm going to setting Elden Ring aside. A legendary game.

Into the Ashen Capital

 So, on my "thorough" playthrough of Elden Ring, I feel as if I've combed every tiny corner of the map. I clearly haven't actually found everything (I'm missing the two "scarseal" talismans, though I have the upgrades, the "soreseals." I also don't think I have Shabriri's Woe. But at this point I've gone through so much of the game, combed through dungeons and bosses, that I felt it was high time (at level 152) to finally face Malikith and go to the endgame.

Malikith is, I imagine, a very tough boss if you fight him at a lower level, or with a less powerful build. And he did manage to kill me on the first attempt when I was trying to make use of the special item you can get by defeating Recusant Bernahl when he invades you (on the bridge leading to Malikith's boss arena, just go down the bridge and explore there and you'll get invaded). Focusing just on killing him, I was able to do so on attempt number two, though that second phase gets significantly tougher given how much the dude jumps around.

When you slay Malikith, you Destined Death is unleashed, and the Erdtree truly begins to burn. You wake up in Leyndell, Ashen Capital. Now, I had sort of assumed I'd be looking at a similar map and a full dungeon like the first trip to Leyndell, but the city has filled up so much with ash that almost everything is buried. There's one gargoyle left, and beyond that it's just boss fights.

I faced down Gideon Ofnir, the All-Knowing, which was pretty quick and easy as my Mimic Tear and I slammed down on him before he could do much. From there, I'll be going to Morgott's old arena right in front of the Erdtree, where the penultimate (or pen-penultimate if you count Radagon and the Elden Beast as separate fights) boss.

As is often the case, I'm feeling that sense of trepidation - I don't want the game to end!

Also, I've been mulling over which ending to go with. I cleansed myself of the Frenzied Flame, so I think that one's out, but that opens up the others. I also waited too long to talk to Corhyn, and found his bell bearing and Goldmask's mask in Altus Plateau (Goldmask's mask is a bit harder to find). So Perfect Order is out, but that's the ending I'd planned for my Dragon guy.

Basically, I'm tempted to go with the Age of Stars ending because I usually think of the most complicated ending to get in these games as the preferable one. But I also feel like that fits my intelligence-based Sorcerer much better. So, that leaves the Age of Fracture (the one you don't need to do sidequests for,) the Age of the Fell Curse or whatever it's called (Dung Eater's evil ending, though not as evil, perhaps as the Frenzied Flame one) or, what I'm leaning toward, the Age of the Duskborn, which is based on Fia's quest.

Anyway, I sort of want to go down a checklist of all the mini-dungeons and make sure I hit them all (I'd missed one in the Consecrated Snowfield near where you fight the named magma wyrm that gives you a special dragon spell). But I spent a while falling off the branches at the top of the Haligtree to try to get everything there (come to think of it, the second giant envoy might drop a weapon that I should try to get). I also cannot get the leonine misbegotten in the Haligtree town to drop the Iron Greatsword, but I figure the Gargoyle Greatsword is doing just fine for me as my off-hand weapon (really I'd just like to be able to leave one Sacred and the other Flame Art so I could swap my damage type at will).

Also, I want to talk to Gurranq now that I've killed Malikith, given that it seems strongly implied they're the same person albeit in a weird timey-wimey alternate timeline... or Malikith is in the future, or something.

But hey, maybe when I finish Elden Ring I'll feel like playing WoW again.

A Hugely Powerful Build, and Mohg and Malenia Down in One Session, and the Plot to Spare Melina

 It's funny, Mohg has classic bad guy written all over him, but getting to him (in the "true" fight) is, I think, far easier than getting to Malenia, and his fight is, while not easy (though let's revisit that) he's definitely easier than the Goddess of Rot herself.

My Wretched character has been one on which I've tried to be very thorough - I intend to basically do everything in the game that I can. I cleared I think almost the entirety of Limgrave and the Weeping Peninsula before I even entered Stormveil Castle (though I still had a little trouble on Godrick - which I hadn't really thought of as that tough of a boss on my previous characters).

Anyway, I'm using Fextralife's Blasphemous Herald build, and boy howdy does this thing just destroy foes. It's a Strength/Faith build that uses the following weapons: Blasphemous Blade (one of Rykard's remembrance weapons,) Gargoyle's Greatsword (off the Valiant Gargoyle fight that leads you to Deeproot Depths) and the Gargoyle's Blackblade (off the gargoyle boss standing outside of Gurranq's Bestial Sanctum). Basically, depending on if you want holy or fire damage, you swap between the Blasphemous Blade or the Blackblade (fire, holy, respectively) and then swap out ash of war to make the Greatsword either sacred of flame art, and wield it in the off-hand.

You power-stance by using two greatswords, and then you get most of your damage with jumping L1 attacks, though both the Blasphemous Blade and the Gargoyle's Blackblade have very powerful weapon skills. You then use the Clawmark Sacred Seal to buff with things like Golden Vow, Blessing of the Erdtree, and Flame Give me Strength, which all come together to make your double-whammy strikes hit like a freight train.

I've found that a lot of bosses - especially the slower-moving, big ones, get carved up pretty quickly here. You can't use a shield or even block with a weapon, so you need to rely on dodging for survival, but this is why we use the Dragoncrest Greatshield Medallion (or a lesser version given that you don't find that until basically right before Malenia.)

While I think it does a little less damage, usually I'm happier to be in "fire mode" given that the Blasphemous Blade has a passive effect that restores a decent chunk of HP each time you kill an enemy, and its weapon art not only hits super hard and knocks foes over and has decent range, but it also heals you I think for some portion of the damage it does.

Anyway, because I'm being very thorough, I went down into the depths under Leyndell, slaying Mohg, the Omen (which I guess is a projection of the real Mohg - and even though I found Mohg's Shackle I didn't wind up using it on either fight) and went all the way down to the Frenzied Flame Proscription, where you have to strip down to nothing but your skivvies to meet with the Three Fingers, who grab you, marking you with the Frenzied Flame.

The visual effect here is pretty cool - your eyes now glow yellow and you have these fingerprint scars on your body. But this also leaves you only the "bad" ending (well, one of two that I think are really objectively bad - the Dung Eater one isn't exactly great). However, if you complete Milicent's quest line (which starts with meeting Gowry right before the town of Sellia in Caelid) and then beat Malenia, you can get an item that you can then use in Placudisax's arena in Crumbling Farum Azula to purge yourself of the Frenzied Flame and allow for the other endings.

Ironically, the ulcerated tree spirit you need to beat before you can do the last stage of Milicent's questline gave me more trouble than Mohg, and maybe even more than Malenia - though the latter was easier for an odd reason.

So, Mohg I beat on the second try - the first I think I only died because he hit me right as I was drinking my flask of wondrous physick with the tear that cures his curses, and I thought I had successfully quaffed it, but didn't, so I died to his bleeds. The second attempt, though, this build just showed how insanely powerful it is and I killed him before he could get into his second phase (not unlike when I took him out with Comet Azur on my sorcerer build).

Again, this Blasphemous Herald build is really, really strong. If you buff up for the fight before you enter, you're going to be landing such insane damage on the boss that the fight will be over very quickly.

Malenia was not so quick - she has to be the toughest boss in the game, though I still haven't actually done Malikith or the bosses that come after him (on this character, because I've been so thorough, I might not feel so hesitant to finish Farum Azula, as I think I've done just about everything in Leyndell).

Now, I did wind up winning thanks to an odd glitch, but I don't feel so bad because I got her down to like 10% on a previous attempt and only later realized I hadn't been wearing by Claw Talisman, so if I had, I would have already won, probably. Here's the glitch:

During the first phase of the Malenia fight, when she's listed as "Malenia, Blade of Miquella," right as she was at very low health, I staggered her, and I hit R1 to start a critical hit just as the damage-over-time of Black Knife Tiche's ability ticked her down to zero.

When the cutscene ended, my character performed the critical hit animation and knocked Malenia out of the sky, so she just fell prone rather than doing her big rot-flower attack that usually starts the Goddess of Rot phase. But more than that, apparently there was some glitch with how her health was calculated, and so my striking her as she spawned left her at 1 HP. I ran up to her as she was recovering from the fall and landed a nice jumping L1 and that took her out.

Pretty crazy. But, now I have Miquella's Needle and can rid myself of the Frenzied Flame effect once I get to Placudisax (who, while not easy, is probably not going to be as tough as Malenia).

I've basically not done any grinding on this character - he's effective enough that I haven't lost a ton of runes to death, and I've been so thorough that he hasn't hit any boss where I feel like he's just not powerful enough to face them. At this point, he's level 142, with 50 Faith, 45 Strength (and the Omensmirk Mask for an extra 2) and now I'm pushing his Vigor to try to hit 50 (the other points are in Endurance and Mind, and I think a tiny amount in Dexterity).

I am still kind of blown away by how many Runes the enemies past the Prayer Room site of grace in Ephael give - it feels like that's there to make it very easy to catch up if you're a little underleveled to face Malenia.

But oh yes, the plot to spare Melina. As you approach the Frenzied Flame Proscription, Malenia basically begs you not to go further. See, the Frenzied Flame basically doesn't like that there's any distinction between different things, and wants to melt reality back into a single mass. Oddly, there's a real emphasis on Birth as the distinction between the world as it is and the world the Frenzied Flame would create. Hyetta, the woman you feed all those Shabrir "grapes" to in Liurnia, is there as well, and encourages you to seek the flame. You can expose her to the flame as well, burning out her eyes and granting you the Frenzied Flame Seal, whose incant scaling works with Strength, Dexterity, Faith, and Intelligence.

The reason we do this, though, is because we can use the Frenzied Flame to burn the Erdtree instead of Melina - she leaves us, and even vows to kill us if we become the Lord of Frenzied Flame (the bad ending,) but the logic here is that if we can then purge ourselves, we get to burn the Erdtree without killing Melina, and then avoid the apocalyptic ending that the Lord of Frenzied Flame would entail.

It just means having to beat the hardest boss in the game and find some of the most obscure and difficult-to-reach places in the game.

New Capenna Decks I've Had Some Success With

 When a new set comes out, there's always this sort of awkward stage where it's really not clear what decks are going to be super good, and so I often make some new thing with a lot of new cards that I'm all excited about, only to be beaten down with decks that have spent the last card set cycle getting refined and tested.

However, in the five days or so of New Capenna being available on Arena, I've managed to cobble together (with a lot of help from online deck lists) some decks that actually seem to be able to win now and again.

First off, there's a Cabaretti (Naya) tokens deck. This one is very vulnerable to sweepers - something that we have a lot of in Standard these days, between Meathook Massacre, Doomskar, Burn Down the House, and Farewell. But if you can manage to build up a lot of creatures with things like Esika's Chariot, Join the Dance, etc., there's some great payoff. Jetmir, the legendary mob boss of the Cabaretti, can be the thing you plunk down on the battlefield and just win the game with - he gives bonuses to all your creatures based on how many you have out, and giving everyone +1/+0 and vigilance, then trample, then double strike is pretty nice (though the latter you need nine creatures out to get).

The next deck I've been playing is a Brokers (Bant) deck that uses Teleportation Circle for enter-the-battlefield recursion. Here, we have cheap creatures like Prosperous Innkeeper and Topiary Stomper to ramp up, but then things get really crazy when we get Workshop Warchief or Titan of Industry - the latter of which is going to bring a ton of pain to your opponent, as you can kill enchantments and artifacts, pump out 4/4 rhino warrior tokens, gain five life, or put a shield counter on one of your creatures, which is nuts.

A deck that I'm hoping to refine is a sort of Maestro (Grixis) control deck that make use of a few cards like A Little Chat - which is a simple but useful card-draw engine - and of course, Ob Nixilis, the Adversary, which is the new hotness in planeswalkers. Having a bunch of Eyetwitches and Shambling Ghasts means that sacrificing a creature for these cards is actually more of a bonus than a drawback.

It'll be a few weeks before the new, most powerful deck archetypes reveal themselves, and of course, a lot of fairly old cards at this point are still pretty dominant - I think we're going to have to wait for Kaldheim and Strixhaven to rotate out of standard before those nasty Izzet control decks go away.

Radiant Citadel and Spelljamming the Ethereal

 So, while I think a ton of D&D fans are super-hyped for Spelljammer: Adventures in Space coming in the summer, we shouldn't forget about Journeys through the Radiant Citadel, the upcoming adventure anthology.

While I've found that I'm less excited about adventure books, given that I tend to prefer homebrew campaigns (at least as a DM, though I think probably as a player as well) the core concept of Radiant Citadel is one that I think has a ton of potential.

The Radiant Citadel floats within the Deep Ethereal plane - a region that I think there's very, very little content for.

The exact role the Ethereal Plane plays is a little nebulous - before 4th Edition introduced the Shadowfell, the Demiplane of Dread (a.k.a. the location of the Ravenloft setting) was considered to reside within the Ethereal. The Shadowfell combined elements of the Ethereal and the Negative Energy/Shadow Planes (in 5th Edition lore, you basically can't exist within either the Negative or Positive Energy Plane, but in older editions these were basically just elemental planes).

The Ethereal seems to play a similar role to the Astral Plane as the "plane between planes," but while the Astral connects the Outer Planes, the Ethereal connects in the Inner Planes.

But it gets more complicated: in Forgotten Realms lore, there's a Fugue Plane that is kind of in the Ethereal, and it's here that the souls of the dead wait to be taken to their proper afterlives (generally in the Outer Planes,) and is where gods who are sort of judges of the dead hang out (also where devils hang out and offer to find a place for anyone who doesn't have a god to claim them - FR lore's not really kind to the irreligious).

The Ethereal is also sort of odd in that it has the normal spatial dimensions and temporal dimension, but then there's also the "border" and "deep."

In game mechanics, the border ethereal is basically "just to the left of reality" that usually is how you can do things like incorporeal movement. Ghosts, for instance, can slip into the Ethereal, and relatively low level spells like Blink let you slip into the Ethereal.

What I find interesting about the Radiant Citadel is that what we've seen of it suggests that travelers come and go, with different crystalline structures docking with it, and myriad cultures and peoples mixing in it... which, to me, sounds not too dissimilar to Spelljammer.

Now, it appears that 5th Edition Spelljammer is going to expand the purview of its setting - while Wildspace is still around, and you can totally sail your Spelljamming ship between different D&D settings, this version will also see these vessels sailing into the Astral Plane.

And really, once that's opened up, you could go anywhere. Why not the Ethereal Plane?

See, I'd love to see the 90s weirdness that was Planescape, but I think that Spelljammer could provide the underlying structure to allow for more plane-hopping campaigns - rather than through portals, we'd be flying ships (though to be fair, those ships are probably going through portals).