Building a Better Death Knight

 In The Lord of the Rings, we arguably get the most iconic death knights in all of fantasy literature - the Nazgûl, which translates in the Black Speech of Mordor to "Ringwraiths." (Nazg is clearly the word for ring, given the poem on the One Ring, and I wonder if it's simply "ul," or possibly "gul" that means "wraith." The latter seems more likely to me given that it links it to the real Arabic "ghul," which derives from "ghala," meaning "to seize" and is, of course, the basis for the English word "ghoul.")

Death Knights have a certain potency because they turn the most straightforward fantasy hero - the knight in shining armor - on its head. In D&D and many other fantasy RPGs, the Death Knight is a mirror of the heroic Paladin class, and the backstory is often that of a paladin who has turned their back on goodness to instead serve evil. This betrayal places them in a cursed state of undeath, but they have many of the same capabilities they used as paladins, only turned backward - where Paladins are adept at fighting undeath and wield holy light, Death Knights are undead themselves, often commanding undead forces, and wield evil darkness.

Now, more recent editions of D&D have introduced nuance to the Paladin class. Though originally all paladins were lawful good in nature, today the paladin is more simply defined as someone who wields divine magic born out of their conviction and adherence to a sacred quest. They swear an oath, and their faith is rewarded with power to accomplish their quest.

The DMG presents an alternate subclass to the paladin: the Oathbreaker. While this is primarily intended for NPCs, a DM can also allow it as an option for players. Personally, I'd recommend DMs avoid building NPCs as full player characters with a bunch of class features, because that is an enormous thing to have to run along with everything else at the table.

But the Oathbreaker Paladin is clearly meant to represent someone on the path to becoming a death knight.

Returning to our example of the Nazgûl, the Ringwraiths are ultimately servants. Indeed, I think you could fairly well approximate the Lord of the Rings using nine Death Knights that are servants of a Lich (the One Ring being Sauron's phylactery). I might argue that Sauron is more accurately a fiend, which means that the Ring might be more akin to the amulets used by the Demon Lords to survive death even in the Abyss (my headcanon, until contradicted, is that Orcus taught Vecna how to make a phylactery based on this process of creating a demonic amulet, and that liches have borrowed demonic magic to become what they are). Of course, Sauron is 100% Lawful Evil, not Chaotic Evil (Morgoth is the latter) but you get the gist.

And, in a sense, I suppose this is why in the Monster Manual they are not legendary creatures - they serve some greater power that corrupted them.

That being said, one of my other major influences is the Warcraft series, and its most iconic villain is Arthas, the corrupted prince of Lordaeron, who eventually becomes the Lich King - the lord of the Undead Scourge. While later lore would reveal that the Lich King was at least intended to be a puppet for a god-like entity of death, the Lich King is like a Death Knight who commands an army of liches and other, lesser death knights along with countless undead in myriad forms. (Before he becomes the Lich King, Arthas undergoes the classic paladin-to-death knight transition). The point is, Arthas would most certainly be depicted as a legendary creature in D&D.

Indeed, I think that even as a minion of some greater evil, I still find it odd that the Death Knight is not a legendary creature. A Death Knight is no rank-and-file minion, but should fill the role of top lieutenant. The Ringwraiths are the most powerful of Sauron's weapons, and the Witch-King of Angmar is the closest he gets to a second-in-command (indeed, the Witch-King is more or less the world's most dangerous evil when Sauron is in hiding in the early parts of the Third Age, and successfully destroys Arnor, Gondor's sister-civilization in the north where Aragorn's ancestors ruled as king).

(As a note, we should also remember that most stories don't have "levels," so we shouldn't read too much into the fact that a single ranger scared off five Ringwraiths with a torch when considering the power level of our stat block.)

Now, in terms of creature design, Death Knights have a number of paladin spells. However, given the new focus on moving away from player-style spellcasting in recent designs, we can shift things around. Death Knights are already quite formidable in melee, so I don't think we need to add any kind of ranged spell attacks as part of their general rotation.

We're going to aim for our DK to be CR 17, like the 2014 Monster Manual version of it.

But let's also think a little more broadly about what we want out of a Death Knight.

First, we want them to be really deadly with their weapons. This is already reflected in the fact that the 2014 version deals an extra 4d8 necrotic damage with their weapons. With a normal attack, the death knight deals an average of 27 damage per hit, and gets to attack three times a round, which means a total average damage output (assuming all three hit) of 81 damage. The necrotic damage dealt also lets them get around the fact that their weapon isn't inherently magical (they have the Magic Weapon spell, but we're going to get rid of their spellcasting trait, except perhaps for some utility stuff like dispel magic). Player characters almost never care whether the damage is from a magical weapon, though, so especially with the necrotic damage in there, I don't think we need to worry much about making their weapons magical. We're going to take this into consideration when figuring out their Offensive Challenge Rating, or OCR.

But just being able to put out a lot of damage isn't really that exciting. We've got to think about what it means for these dread beings to act. One thing that I think is core to Tolkien's sense of power is the effect of being able to inspire emotions in others. In the books, the army of the dead that Aragorn brings with him to break the siege of Minas Tirith works primarily by terrifying the orcs, not so much killing them as driving them into disarray and breaking their lines, so that the defenders can pour in and mop up the invading army. Conversely, one of Gandalf's most potent traits is the ability to inspire those around him - he rarely goes around casting obvious magical spells, but instead fills the mortals around him with the courage and resolve to fight against the darkness.

As such, I think that this could play into our Death Knight design. And, because they're related to paladins, we're going to borrow something from a paladin subclass - no, not the oathbreaker, but the Oath of Conquest, which is another "evil" subclass - and one that I think is more lawful evil than the out-for-themselves Oathbreaker. Essentially, I think that they should have something similar to Conquering Presence, but that they can do continuously, and potentially fold in the Aura of Conquest, or something similar.

Now, fear effects are relatively easy to overcome, thanks to Paladins' Aura of Courage and things like the Halflings' Brave trait. But the DC here should be relatively high and coupling it with immobility could be quite powerful. Still, generally speaking I think a lot of fights wind up locking down in melee, and it becomes a race of trading blows. Mobility makes monsters a lot deadlier.

On the other hand, the Death Knight is not nimble and quick. If anything, the dread fear they inspire is only enhanced by their slow, plodding advance. How do we square these?

Borrowing a little from Blizzard, both Death Knights in World of Warcraft and Leoric, the Skeleton King in Heroes of the Storm (Leoric had it first) have an ability called Wraith Walk, which allows them to slip into a ghostly form and move quickly for a moment.

I think this does a good job of making them seem like the implacable foe that they tend to be portrayed as. Thus, I might give our Death Knight as bonus action to let them break grapples and restraints, and possibly even avoid opportunity attacks. While I'm tempted to simply make this additional movement, I don't think Death Knights should be particularly fast - they should be able to follow you slowly, like a slasher villain, and take all the time they need to catch up to you.

The only downside to this is that if it's a bonus action it's always on, rather than being a special moment where the party realizes just how much trouble they're in. We could limit this to a certain number of times a day, or make it a recharge ability (though recharge abilities I feel should be scary and deal extra damage).

Instead, this might be best done as a legendary action (though I'm finding myself drawn more and more to "extra, powerful reactions" as we saw with Vecna or the Eldritch Lich in favor over legendary actions,) which would probably mean giving them extra movement, but it might work the most elegantly - and costing two legendary actions would be a decent price to make sure you're not spamming this.

Going back to the Ringwraiths, when I first saw the Fellowship of the Ring, the screams they unleashed were very loud in the theater. You could feel how their screeching would fill someone with dread and cause a sort of involuntary shudder. This is, to be fair, very specific to Lord of the Rings (and perhaps very specific to Peter Jackson's films). But perhaps that could just be one way to skin some kind of dread wail effect - if we wanted to make it very scary, we could have it not only do psychic damage but also stun those who fail (if we want it to be a little less powerful, we could make this "fail by 5 or more and you're stunned.) I think stunning, especially for a melee monster (to speak nothing of paralyzing, which would probably be too powerful) is quite strong, so the damage itself of this ability should be only around the same as their regular melee attacks (though with the potential multiplier thanks to it hitting anyone nearby.)

I was going to get into a whole thing about raising the dead, but I think D&D has an unfortunate lack of mid-tier undead monsters that can be a decent threat as henchmen to a high-level undead monster - ideally you'd just use a ton of zombies and skeletons, but I think that unless you are using MCDM's excellent minion rules (they have a zombie minion in the latest free pdf, and a simple chart for scaling these up in level) that tends to just be tedious.

One thing I think is a sort of interesting question is whether a Death Knight counts as corporeal. Often, they're depicted as skeletal or zombie-like, and sometimes still more or less living but with a kind of pale complexion. Tolkien's Ringwraiths, though, were fully ghost-like. The Witch King is described as basically being a pair of floating red dots for eyes in an empty crown, their physical form fully passing over into the unseen world.

Their armor and weapons are physical, though, so the only reason I bring this up is how we're going to handle damage resistances and immunities. Ghosts, Wraiths, and other incorporeal undead in D&D tend to have full immunity to necrotic damage (and poison, but that's basically all undead) and resistance to a most common elemental damage types like acid, cold, fire, lightning, etc. (While few actually have vulnerability to radiant damage, their resistance to nearly everything else kind of effectively makes this true.)

The Monster Manual, interestingly, gives them immunity to necrotic and poison damage, but none of the other resistances (even nonmagical weapons work fine on them.) This feels like a reasonable balance.

As always, when using the DMG to figure out the CR of a monster, we run into the problem that the "Making a Monster" CR chart doesn't actually have any place for ACs of 20 or higher - absurdly, even a CR 30 monster on that chart is shown to have an AC of 19. So we have to kind of eyeball it.

I think my approach will simply to be not to touch the AC, HP, and immunities, and to try to have our new Death Knight put out the same damage as the old one. We'll be making it legendary, but I think the intent is not to account for that in the CR calculation - it's legendary, and thus supposed to be tougher.

Essentially, we're really just swapping out their spellcasting and possibly their Hellfire Orb for some new features.

Like the new spellcasters, we'll likely keep a few utility spells like Dispel Magic, but we won't rely on this for their damage output.

Just attacking with the longsword (one-handed, as they use a shield,) Death Knights put out 27 damage per attack, and get three longsword attacks, for a total of 81 damage per turn. So we'll basically keep that the same and treat that as a baseline for what we should expect them to put out.

Once per day, they get to shoot off a Hellfire Orb, which does an average of 70 damage (half fire, half necrotic) in a Fireball-sized sphere. Generally, when doing AoE stuff, we treat this as if it's hitting two targets, so essentially this is 140 damage. But this is a one-time thing, rather than something we might encounter multiple times.

Unless this is just because I haven't read any Dragonlance novels, the Hellfire Orb feels kind of off-brand. Paladins don't have Fireball. The DK does have the Destructive Wave spell, which is a paladin spell, which does half that (and has friendly-fire protection so they don't roast their ghoulish companions.

But given that we're leaning into the simplifying of stat blocks, here's what I'm going to propose:

We have our regular melee attacks, unchanged.

Then, we give them an AoE option with a relatively small radius centered on themselves, but that they can use every turn in place of their melee attacks, and this is meant to feel a bit like Destructive Wave. Because it's no recharge, we make it on par or slightly less damage when hitting two targets than focusing the longsword on a single foe - this is for when they are truly surrounded and can hit three or more targets. Also, I feel like it should be cold and necrotic rather than fire and necrotic, because I like associating cold magic with undeath (perhaps a nod to Warcraft's Scourge).

Then, we give them a really nasty recharge ability (our stunning dread wail). This might then take the place of a fear aura, as we're getting that effect from this. This is going to be psychic damage.

For legendary actions, it might be a little too powerful to let them make a full strike with just a single legendary action, but I think we'll allow it just because of how legendary this foe should be.

So, I think we give them a single longsword attack for 1 legendary action.

We then take two to give them their mobility thing, which disengages them, frees them of grapples and restraints, and moves them perhaps only 20 feet (rather than a full 30).

And then, I think we give them something a little different that costs 3 legendary actions.

Here's my thought: zombies and skeletons feel worthless against high level players because they are so likely to miss and deal pitiful damage. However, one spell fixes this: Danse Macabre. This adds your spellcasting ability to both their attack and damage rolls, which means your Zombie can be attacking with a +8 to hit and dealing 1d6+6 damage - which makes them an actual threat. (1d6+6 isn't that amazing, but when you have five of them, it adds up.) I think we thus give our DK an aura that buffs undead creatures other than the death knight. We're not really changing their stats, so the DK is only adding 4, but that's enough to make these minions more than a nuisance. So, I think the 3 legendary action thing will essentially be Danse Macabre, but we're going to go back and fold that buff into an aura the death knight projects.

Let's bang out this stat block! (Also, we're doing the full legendary treatment). 

DEATH KNIGHT

Medium Undead, typically Chaotic Evil

Armor: 20 (plate, shield)

Hit Points: 180 (19d8+95)

Speed 30 ft.

STR 20 (+5) DEX 11 (+0) CON 20 (+5) INT 12 (+1) WIS 16 (+3) CHA 18 (+4)

Saving Throws: Dex +6, Wis +9, Cha +10

Damage Immunities: necrotic, poison

Condition Immunities: exhaustion, frightened, poison

Senses: darkvision 120 ft., passive Perception 13

Languages: Abyssal, Common (I might add "any languages they knew in life.")

Challenge 17

Aura of Unholy Command: Unless it is incapacitated, the death knight radiates an aura of unholy will, empowering nearby undead. Other undead creatures of the death knight's choice that are within 60 feet of the death knight add the death knight's charisma modifier (+4) to their attack and damage rolls. The death knight and creatures affected by this aura also have advantage on saving throws against effects that turn undead. A creature can only benefit from one of these auras at a time.

Legendary Resistance (3/day). If the death knight fails a saving throw, it can choose to succeed instead.

Magic Resistance. The death knight has advantage on saving throws against spells and other magical effects.

Actions:

Multiattack. The death knight makes three longsword attacks.

Longsword. Melee Weapon Attack. +11 to hit, reach 5 ft., one target. Hit: 9 (1d8+5) slashing damage, or 10 (1d10+5) slashing damage if used with both hands, plus 18 (4d8) necrotic damage.

Remorseless Chill. A cloud of darkness swirls around the death knight. Each creature of the death knight's choice within ten feet must make a DC 18 Constitution saving throw. On a failure, the creature takes 17 (5d6) cold damage and 17 (5d6) necrotic damage, and their speed is reduced by 10 feet until the start of the death knight's next turn. On a successful save, they take half this damage and their speed is unaffected.

Dreadful Wail. (Recharge 5-6): The death knight unleashes an ear-splitting howl, assaulting their foes with agonized terror. Each creature within 60 feet of the death knight that is not undead and can hear it must make a DC 18 Wisdom saving throw. On a failure, the creature takes 65 (10d12) psychic damage and is frightened of the death knight for 1 minute. If the creature fails this saving throw by 5 or more, the creature is stunned for 1 minute as well. A creature can repeat this saving throw at the end of each of their turns, ending both conditions on a success.

Reactions:

Parry. The death knight adds 6 to its AC against one melee attack that would hit it. To do so, the death knight must see the attacker and be wielding a melee weapon.

Legendary Actions:

The death knight can take 3 legendary actions, choosing from the options below. Only one legendary action can be used at a time, and only at the end of another creature's turn. The death knight regains spent legendary actions at the start of its turn.

Longsword. The death knight makes a longsword attack.

Wraith Walk (Costs 2 actions). The death knight ends the grappled and restrained conditions on itself, if it is affected by them, and moves 20 feet in any direction. This movement does not provoke opportunity attacks.

Marshall Undead Forces (Costs 3 actions). The death knight magically conjures five undead creatures that each use the zombie or skeleton stat block. These creatures are friendly to the death knight and obey its commands. They share the death knight's initiative, but act immediately after its turn.

Class Groups: Speculating on Mages

 Of the four class groups - a concept introduced in the "Expert Classes" Unearthed Arcana playtest document for One D&D (Expert being the group that includes Rogues, Bards, Rangers, and while not included in a revised form, Artificers) - Mage is the one that I think is the least controversial.

Before I got into D&D, I'd never even thought to draw a distinction between a Wizard and a Sorcerer. Fantasy fiction throws these terms around with zero consistency. In Marvel Comics and the MCU, the "Sorcerer Supreme" is someone who has used their great intellect to study and master the use of magic - which is precisely what defines a wizard in D&D. Wizards in Lord of the Rings aren't even mundane people - they're basically a special kind of angel that is sent to the mortal world in the form of an old man. Warlock often comes with a more sinister connotation, but, for example, Mages and Warlocks in World of Warcraft (Mages being basically the Wizard equivalent) are both scholars of magic - it's just that Warlocks use scary Fel magic (the magic of demons) while Mages use Arcane magic (associated more with the gods-as-engineers, the Titans).

But these three classes all fit together quite nicely as the ones that can perform "classical magic." All three use Arcane magic, which is now a defined and rule-based category. The Bard also uses this type of magic, but they cast spells with musical instruments, while all three of the Mages typically use staffs, wands, or grand gesticulation while shouting words of power like "abracadabra" or "alakazam."

In game terms, one thing that Arcane magic never seems capable of is healing - the exception being necromancy spells like Life Transference or Vampiric Touch, where you can only heal by drawing the life force from something else. You don't pick these classes to be a healer (except maybe a Divine Soul sorcerer). These are the classes that either pump out magical damage, or provide numerous useful utilities. In Final Fantasy terms, they're "black mages" as contrasted with "white mages" who are more like your Clerics.

We've seen with the Expert classes that the new approach to a class' access to spells involves using the Arcane, Divine, or Primal spell lists, and then possibly limiting a class to certain schools of those lists to make their "class list." Additionally, the Bard and Ranger were changed to let them swap out spells every long rest - preparing them in a manner similar to a Cleric, Druid, or Paladin.

It remains to be seen if this approach is a universal one, but I wonder how it would be implemented in the case of the Mages.

The Divine and Primal spell lists have a single half caster and a single full caster each. As such, I have to imagine that the full casters - the Cleric and Druid - will have unfettered access to their whole list.

With Arcane casters, though, all three Mages and the Bard are full casters (Warlocks are weird casters, but they do get up to 9th level spells). Thus, like the Bard, I could imagine that the restriction on spell schools could be used to distinguish their access to spells.

That said, I also think that there's likely to be less of a restriction to those spells for any one of the three. Bards are designed not to really be spellcasting damage dealers (outside of options like Magical Secrets) and are instead focused around enhancing allies and sometimes using weapons. But all three Mages can can be built to deal a great deal of magical damage.

The Sorcerer has always had a very similar spell list to the Wizard, but tends to have fewer options. In the current version, Sorcerers only learn a handful of spells, and are pushed to lean more into a combat-heavy role where they shoot off fireballs and such. One thing they lack that Wizards have in abundance are summoning spells - they got none of the "Summon X" from Tasha's, though they did get Summon Draconic Spirit in Fizban's, likely because Draconic Bloodline is one of the PHB subclasses. Still, they tend not to get summoning spells. Does that then mean that they might have Conjuration as their restricted spell school (if not more than one?) The problem here would be that this would also deny them various mobility spells like Misty Step.

By contrast, Warlocks get tons of summoning spells - nearly all of the ones that Wizards got in Tasha's, for example. This makes sense, given the way that Warlock gameplay really encourages high-value concentration spells that will last a while so that you can spend most turns just hitting things with eldritch blast. Speaking of which: Eldritch Blast is nowhere to be seen on the Arcane spell list. Given how central it is to how Warlocks work (and have since 3rd edition) I think that the spell is going to be made a class feature. But that also creates an interesting possibility: Warlocks, outside of certain subclasses, don't get big explodey evocation spells like Fireball or Lightning Bolt. Normally, they'd have to keep evocation as a school because that's what Eldritch Blast is. But if Eldritch Blast is not even a spell anymore, then you don't need to worry about it, and I think that Warlocks might not get Evocation spells.

Finally, Wizards. Wizards will, like I speculate that Clerics and Druids will with their respective spell lists, get the entire Arcane spell list. Not only are there subclasses for each school of magic, but Wizards have always had the most extensive spell list and are all about collecting and learning as much as they can.

The question I then have is: what of spellbooks?

In current 5E D&D, Artificers, Clerics, Druids, and Paladins can prepare any spell on their class list after a long rest. Bards, Rangers, Sorcerers, and Warlocks just learn spells when they level up and are stuck with them. Wizards, though, are similar to both. You don't have every Wizard spell, but you do get to prepare them each day, "learning" more spells than you can prepare but storing them in your spellbook - creating a mini game (and goldsink) for wizard players as they dream of having universal access to their list.

But if Sorcerers and Warlocks go the way of Bards and Rangers, what does that mean for Wizards' spellbooks? Kept as is, it would arguably be more of a penalty than a benefit. But if Wizards also got to prepare any Arcane spell they could cast each day, does that mean the spellbook as a thing goes away?

One thing that I think is very controversial (frankly, I think it's unpopular and unlikely to stay) is the idea that classes can prepare not just a number of spells equal to their spell slots, but that they must prepare spells of each level equal to the spell slots of those levels that they have: for example, your level 3 Bard, who has four 1st level spell slots and two 2nd level spell slots, must prepare four 1st level and two 2nd level spells. This is true of the Ranger as well (though of course at a slower rate as a half-caster) but this is quite different than the current system, where prepared-spell casters tend to get to prepare any spells they can cast of any level they can cast, and the number of spells they can prepare is equal to their spellcasting ability modifier and their class level (or half their class level rounded down for Artificers and Paladins). Thus, if your level 3 Wizard right now has a +3 to Intelligence, you can prepare six spells, but any of them can be 1st or 2nd level (I once again reiterate that I really wish they'd call them "spell ranks" to lessen the confusion of what we mean by "level.")

Broadly speaking, the reason I think this isn't such a good idea is that higher-level players might only use their 1st level spell slots for a handful of spells. I'd never recommend not preparing any 1st level spells (except maybe on a Paladin) but holding onto just something like Shield or Absorb Elements is not a crazy way to play, freeing up more options at the higher spell levels.

Now, for a Wizard, part of their appeal is having a ton of options for spells, and are sort of the ultimate utility spellcaster (on top of having the cool damage spells as well). I could, thus, imagine that a Wizard's spellbook might act instead as a sort of collectable "always prepared" repository. For collecting these spells, you get to basically have more spells prepared than other classes. Thus, like seemingly all other classes, you're getting full access to your spell list, but you still have that leg up over other Arcane casters (and actually all other spellcasters).

I don't love this solution, but it's what I could think of.

I somehow doubt that we're going to have all three of these classes get a shared named mechanic like Expertise, Fighting Style (something that has been signaled for Warriors - despite only one of those classes having them in 2014) and my theory of making "wild shape charges" into "Channel Nature," as the Druid form of Channel Divinity. These three classes feel sufficiently tied together already thematically that I think we won't need much to reinforce that.

Class Groups: Speculating on Priests

 The first of four class design UAs for One D&D introduced the idea of class groups, sorting the original 12 classes from the 2014 Player's Handbook into four categories - categories that will presumably also cover any other classes they add to the game moving forward (the Artificer, for example, is an Expert). The idea was to group thematically similar classes and then allow for some features such as feats or possibly magic items to be categorized by class group. The groups are Warrior (Barbarian, Fighter, Monk,) Priest (Cleric, Druid, Paladin,) Expert (Bard, Ranger, Rogue,) and Mage (Sorcerer, Warlock, Wizard).

It appears that the groups will share some mechanic that ties them together. Bards and Rogues have always had the Expertise feature, and Rangers in the new design also get Expertise (expanding upon the Tasha's revised Ranger's version of it to simply bring it in line with the other classes).

Conceptually, the groups could potentially help players build a balanced party, making sure they have one of each group. In theory.

I wanted to start with Priests because I think this is going to be a category where the included classes are a bit odd.

Though it was never a term in the official rules, players have often referred to "martial" classes, sometimes contrasting them with "casters." These weren't perfect categories - it wasn't clear if the Rogue, being a class that used weapons to fight, was one, or if, because it lacked the Extra Attack feature, it was not.

Still, I think that the new design for Rangers makes its role and strengths similar enough to the Rogue and Bard that I can understand why it is grouped with them. The Ranger bleeds a little into the Warrior category, reflected in getting access to Fighting Style feats.

But I wonder if Paladins will fit in as well with Priests.

The shared mechanic for the classes in the Priest category I think could easily be some variation on Channel Divinity. Already both Paladins and Clerics have this feature. Druids don't, but recent subclasses have started treating their Wild Shape feature as an ersatz resource - the three subclasses for Druids in Tasha's all have alternate uses for Wild Shape "charges," and so it might make more sense moving forward to have Druids use a "Channel Nature" feature that works like Channel Divinity (coming back on a short rest, just like Wild Shape does) and make Wild Shape one of the options to use with Channel Nature.

So, that's easily solved, with all three Priests "channeling" as their group mechanic.

However, I'm less convinced about the ability for all three Priests to fill the expected role in a group.

Clerics are D&D's standard healers. Druids, though, are also quite capable healers, even if they might lag a little behind with fewer healing spells than Clerics (though some that Clerics don't get.)

But the group role that a Paladin plays is much more similar to a Barbarian or melee Fighter. They are arguably the best front-line tank (thanks to the boosted saving throws on top of heavy armor). Paladins do have some built-in healing with Lay on Hands, but as a half-caster, they don't get any resurrection magic until level 9, and they'll never be able to pump out the massive healing that a Cleric or Druid can at higher levels.

So, are we then going to see the Paladin redesigned to function more as a healer?

I don't know for certain. The three Experts make a lot of sense sitting in that category, but they do go about their roles in very different ways - especially the Bard, who is not designed to put out damage like the Rogue or Ranger (in fact, I think the Bard is likely a more powerful healer with this new design than it was previously). Still, it makes sense.

Healers in D&D don't work like they do in something like World of Warcraft. A WoW healer is basically spending every fight doing little other than casting heals (unless the fight is going particularly well). And ultimately, mitigating damage is just as powerful as healing - damage reduced is as good as HP regained.

So, I wonder they are going to emphasize a Paladin's ability to reduce a party's incoming damage. Could that be enough to make a group that is, say, a Paladin, Monk, Warlock, and Rogue, not lament the lack of a dedicated healer healer?

The thing is, I personally love the Paladin as its is currently designed. It's one of the most satisfying classes I've played in D&D. So, I'm hesitant for it to undergo any huge changes. Getting their subclass capstones at level 14 will be a rather dramatic change - but at least more players are likely to actually use their "Ult." (I'm also hoping that they can be activated with a bonus action and repeated using a spell slot).

Currently, in my Wildemount campaign (the only game I'm regularly getting to play as a player) our group is two paladins, a fighter, and two wizards. While we thus have, as you can see, quite limited healing capabilities, both paladins have the interception fighting style, which honestly is probably saving us more HP than we would be getting from a Cleric who could heal us (we only just hit level 5). This, of course, is something that Fighters could use as well.

And, to be fair, Paladins are the only class (as opposed to subclass) that automatically have a built-in healing mechanism (other than the new version of Bards). You could build a Cleric with no healing whatsoever, but any Paladin is going to have it as a baseline option. Maybe that's enough to make a Paladin "priest-like."

What I think might be interesting to see is what Epic Boons are shared between Warriors and Priests. Right now, Experts share a fair number of them (and we've only seen the Epic Boons that Experts can pick up.)

Regarding Druids, I do hope that we're going to see Druids taken more seriously as fully-capable healers. They're already close to that point, but Clerics are built just a little better for it, especially regarding high-level spells like Power Word Heal or Mass Heal.

Lore-wise, I think it'll be kind of an interesting challenge to square Druids being priests, and delving into what it means, precisely, to be a priest. Clerics and Paladins channel Divine magic (now a rules-meaningful term,) which means the magic of the gods and the outer planes, which embody abstract principles and philosophies (a philosophy cleric or paladin can still channel divine magic because their commitment to, for example, a certain conception of duty and selfless valor to further perfect their souls embodies the ethos of Mount Celestia, even if they have no personal connection to a deity that inhabits that plane.) But Druids are tied instead to the Inner Planes, the raw material and "stuff" of existence. Is that spiritually fulfilling in the same way?

Also, if magic items are going to be tied to class groups, will paladins be able to use a lot of spellcasting items like staves?

There are a lot of pieces that we have yet to get a good look at, so this is all deeply speculative.

Should Artificers Not Have Been Spellcasters?

 So, a friend of mine recently tweeted (this is the usual DM of our Sunday games in which I have my Armorer (well, eventually) Artificer) in response to a prompt about D&D classes that responders dislike, and named Artificers, saying that the concept is cool but she does not like the execution.

Now, full disclosure, I have not asked her why she thought that, but it prompted some thoughts of my own.

I've been on record here that I adore the Artificer class, and while I haven't had a chance to play mine very much or at the levels where I think you start to get a real feel for it, on paper it seems awesome. (I also have an Artillerist Artificer in my Ravnica game, so I've been able to vicariously experience it that way).

But I was thinking a bit about the execution of the Artificer, and whether it lives up to the class fantasy, and I think spellcasting is potentially the real sticking point here (not the only one, but we'll get to the other in a bit).

The vibe of an artificer is typically portrayed as being a little Steampunk-y (or other pre-modern punk genres like Clockpunk, Stonepunk, or what-have-you). In a world with medieval knights and wizards, you're the one who is using anachronistically advanced engineering to give yourself an edge. This is particularly well-expressed with things like the Battle Smith's Steel Defender or the Artillerist's Eldritch Cannons. That sense of anachronism (which is admittedly less unique in my D&D campaigns, which embrace a lot of so-called anachronism - though remember that a fantasy world doesn't have the same history as our own, so there's no reason why, for example, ethnic diversity and modern ideas about pluralism couldn't thrive in a technologically medieval world) is what people tend to think of when they think of Artificers, and I think is also why the class might rub purists the wrong way (this is definitely not the source of my DM's objections, who once ran a combat encounter in an ilithid tiki bar hidden in Skullport).

But the class is actually a broader concept than that - the Alchemist subclass is actually a perfect match for a very medieval character archetype (and also great for a Gothic one if you're doing something in Ravenloft, especially a place like Barovia).

I think the crux of the issue here is that the Artificer's spellcasting is meant to represent something that is not quite the same as other classes' spellcasting. The requirement to use artisan's tools (or infused items) to cast even spells that don't have a material component is meant to demonstrate that the Artificer is not casting spells in the way that a Wizard, Druid, or Sorcerer would. And, arguably, they're not really casting spells - they're creating spell-like effects with the devices that they've created.

Now, simply giving them the Spellcasting feature like most of the classes in the game have makes them play a lot better with others. A Four Elements Monk, for example, uses an entirely different system, spending ki points to cast spells or produce spell-like effects, and that means that, for example, multiclassing is incompatible.

Arguably, Warlocks' Pact Magic being its own separate system for spellcasting is something that makes their class unique.

But this approach to the Artificer has created some odd consequences. One example is that, while all Artificers gain proficiency in firearms (technically optional, but if your DM has a world with firearms and doesn't let your artificer have proficiency with them, they better have a damned good reason) only one of the four subclasses (of a likely four to ever exist) will actually use them as a primary weapon. Artillerists and Alchemists rely on cantrips for their meat-and-potatoes action, while Armorers only get to use their Intelligence to attack if they're using the built-in weapons in their suit, leaving Battle Smiths the only subclass that has a reason to make a firearm their primary means of fighting monsters.

I actually think that there might have been a better way to do this: Battle Smiths get to use Intelligence to use attack with any magical weapon (which they can easily make any weapon thanks to Artificer Infusions.) I think maybe this should have been a class trait.

Because hey, isn't a weapon just a type of tool, ultimately? I mean, it's literally a tool that allows you to more easily inflict violence, just as a screwdriver more easily allows you to turn screws.

So, even if it looks like half-casters in general are getting broader access to cantrips, I actually think that Artillerists and Alchemists should have been designed to use weapons as well. And what's great is that you wouldn't have to change their level 5 features by much.

The Artillerist adds a d8 to one damage roll of spells they cast. We could just add that to ranged weapons as well. Perhaps at higher levels, more dice could be added to make up for the lack of cantrip-scaling. (If you're using Firebolt currently, which goes from 1d10 (5.5) to 2d10+1d8 (15.5) to 3d10+1d8 (21) to 4d10+1d8 (26.5), we could swap you to, say, a Heavy Crossbow, which could similarly go from 1d10+3ish (8.5) to 1d10+1d8+4 (14) to 1d10+2d8+5 (19.5) to 1d10+3d8+5 (24) - and don't forget that thanks to magical weapons, we're actually probably adding a point or two to the damage, which makes this almost identical). Something similar could be applied to weapons (maybe limited to ranged) wielded by Alchemists (obviously the scaling is different, as Alchemists add their Intelligence modifier, which they'd be doing already to their weapons, so we might have to come up with a different mechanic).

Now, I'll admit that things get a lot more complex when we get past damage cantrips. Spells are a major way that D&D introduces complexity to a player options without bogging down the individual class design. The Artificer wants to have tons of tricks they can pull to help out the party, and the best way to represent that without making an Artificer chapter that is fifty pages long is to simply make those tricks spells.

Artificer Infusions, arguably, act a bit like this. I could maybe imagine a version of the Artificer that simply leans much harder into infusions to replace spellcasting, but that seems really unwieldy, and would likely require far more unique artificer infusions, rather than simply covering things with the "replicate magical item" infusion.

Before we move on to the second (of two planned) issues, we can go a little more radical:

I've tended to flavor an Artificer's spell slots as taking the form of energy stored in some energy capacitor within their equipment. They have some sort of power-pack in their armor or carried on them, or an alchemist might have some "broad-use quintessence" that they have to pour into each vial as they cast a spell, which they then have to brew more of over the course of a long rest. It's pure flavor, of course, but it reinforces the idea that their spells are being cast through their equipment, rather than drawing upon some internal, direct connection to the arcane weave.

In practice, this is pure flavor, and practicalities of making this work in-game could get dicey - for example, what if my Artificer creates a second power-pack - does that mean that in the middle of the day, I could just refresh all my spell slots by swapping them out?

But I do think that this could maybe be reflected mechanically? One thing I've always been tempted to play with is Spell Points, an optional rule in the DMG. Here, rather than Spell Slots of particular levels, you simply have a pool of Spell Points equal to the combined levels of the spell slots that you'd have. You can then use a number of spell points equal to the level of a spell you want to cast (spending more if you're upcasting) to produce the spell. It's basically like most "mana" systems in other RPGs.

The consequences of this system are interesting - a player can cast a massive number of 1st-level spells if that's all they need over the course of a game. Conversely, a high-level spellcaster could cast several 9th level spells per day at the expense of being able to cast nearly as many lower-level spells. It's 100% a player buff, as it creates these options, but if you played exactly as if you had traditional spell slots, you wouldn't notice any difference.

But perhaps, especially as a half-caster, this could make the Artificer feel different.

Again, though, we have the "stepping on Warlocks' toes" issue (notably, the Spell Point optional rule does not apply to Pact Magic) but it also, again, would Artificers not play so well with multiclassing.

To reiterate: this was not the change that my DM suggested, just one that I'm speculating on. I think I really like the idea of letting every Artificer use Intelligence with weapons, but otherwise wouldn't rid them of spellcasting in general.

Now, the other issue is one that I think is a bit fraught, and that is crafting.

Artificers are the class built most to craft magic items. But item crafting, and specifically magic item crafting (which is the most impactful version) is a system that isn't very well spelled-out. For one thing, it can be trivially easy in some campaigns and impossible in others. In my old Sunday campaign, which ran for about three years, and took us from level 3 to level 12, I don't think we ever had a single day of downtime, instead sending us hopping from adventure to adventure. So even though my Eldritch Knight Fighter, possessing the Arcana skill, in theory could create magic items, I'd never have the time to do so. And the rules surrounding even crafting mundane items break down as expense crawls higher. I believe it's one workweek for every 50 gold the item is worth. Crafting a Longbow over a week? I can believe that. But if Split Armor can be made in four weeks, why does it take 30 weeks to make a suit of plate? (A quick google search said that a blacksmith in the middle ages could make a suit of plate armor in 20 days - a tenth the time.)

Now, Artificer Infusions are described in the class chapter as being "prototypes" for magic items that the Artificer intends to eventually produce for real, permanently. Here, game mechanics and flavor clash. I think it's perfectly reasonably as a game mechanic to limit the number of bespoke magic items the artificer can just have after a long rest, and picking infusions and figuring out which ones you want active at any given time is a big part of the strategy of playing an artificer (like the Warlock, I think it's a complex build/simple play class). But in theory, if an Artificer can make permanent versions of their infused items, they'd free up more and more infusion "slots" to do more things, and over time the Artificer would be a crazy arsenal of insane magic gear.

Granted, Infusions become a little less exciting when you're in a magic-item-heavy campaign. (My Ravnica game has showered the party with magic items, to the chagrin of the Artificer, and I can give them awesome weapons only for them to lament that they have no use for them, or they're full up on attunement slots).

Unless I'm pleasantly wrong, the Artificer as an object of ongoing design is basically in the rear view mirror. I'm hoping we at least get a document showing how to update the class for One D&D. So relitigating its design is probably moot. But as someone who loves this class, I thought it might be interesting to reexamine it and see whether some patches might have fixed up its cracks.

Malenia Down on a 3rd Character

 So, I got my Moonveil/Cold Uchigatana Samurai character to and now through the whole Haligtree part of Elden Ring, right up to Malenia, the deservedly-considered hardest boss of the game. Realizing I had caught up on that with my Arcane-focused Dragon incantation-based character, I switched over to him. But then, just trying to clear a dungeon in the Mountaintop of the Giants (I want to say it's a heroes' grave, but the only one without those bastard chariot constructs) I realized how frustrating I had found that build.

So, that character got respecced (I think he's the character I have the fewest Larval Tears left on - hoping that if we get some DLC, we'll get a whole bunch more) to use Rivers of Blood. This build focuses almost entirely on the katana Rivers of Blood's Corpse Piler weapon art, which has you slash forward in a 3-part combo in a relatively short but wide arc, dealing I believe fire damage (and maybe slashing damage) and building up bleed on targets hit by it.

Now, this being an earlier character, I killed Mohg before I got the invasion that gives the White Mask (I think... I should double check whether I just killed the one invader,) which gives a damage boost when something nearby has the blood loss effect go off. However, I do have the talisman, Lord of Blood's Exultation, which does the same. As usual, I've cribbed this build from Fextralife, a really definitive wiki for the game (and other FromSoft Soulsborne games).

And so, today, after about a half-hour of attempts (each of which was like 3 minutes - so I guess ten or so tries?) I took down Malenia. The key here was just burning her as quickly as possible, using a Mimic Tear to double my bleed build up.

Two things make Malenia so difficult. The first is that her healing can set you back significantly. This incentivizes pouring out damage as quickly as possible. The other is her Waterfowl Dance, which is insanely hard to dodge and will basically automatically kill you given the rapid damage it puts out.

In fact, Waterfowl Dance also pushes you to pour on damage as quickly as possible, as you want to kill her before she decides to use the ability. I can dodge the initial blow (which I think does more damage) about one in four times, so I'm much happier if I can get her down before she can do it. The Mimic Tear can actually tank this once or twice, so if you're lucky, she might target the Tear - she'll heal up a bit, but you aren't dead.

The good news is that Malenia doesn't have the best poise, so with that damage-pouring, you can sometimes interrupt her attacks or even get a critical on her.

And it's for that reason that this feels almost like the first "legitimate" kill I've gotten of three.

Ok, fair, the first time was pretty legitimate. I was on my Intelligence-based spellcaster (I later respecced him to use the Darkmoon Greatsword, but he's still got like 70 or 80 Int) and just chipped away at her with Stars of Ruin. What made this feel "cheap" was that on the second phase, she used the attack she always starts phase 2 off with a second time - an attack that is relatively easy to dodge, but forces melee characters to stay away from her for a good 5 seconds or so while you wait for her Rot-flower to dissipate. But as a ranged caster, I could just pummel her with Stars of Ruins from a safe distance for that full time with impunity.

The second time, I was playing my Strength/Faith dual greatsword build with Blasphemous Blade. Here, the moment I pushed her into phase 2, I staggered her and started a critical hit, but the cutscene began to play. The game clearly knew that I was supposed to be critting her at the moment, and somehow seemed to understand that her health should be very low at that point, so when the cutscene ended, I finished the critical hit animation while Malenia was stunned mid-air and dropped before making her usual Rot-Bloom-Dive attack... with 1 HP. I was able to close distance on her quickly and get off a hit, and got credit for the kill.

So, this third time, being on a melee (or at least short-range) character, I didn't get to take potshots (I did have a fire incantation that I tried using on earlier attempts, but I decided it was better to just buff with Flame, Give Me Strength when I got those moments of calm, or to pop a flask) when she did her rot-bloom dive, and so I felt as if I was really just bringing my build's basics to the fight.

With Malenia down, I figured that I was pretty sure I'd gotten Corhyn/Goldmask's quest far enough and decided to trigger the final phase, and I wound up taking Maliketh down in a single attempt (bleed works quite well on him).

D&D's Physical/Digital Bundle

 Dragonlance: Shadow of the Dragon Queen is going to be the first release from D&D in which you can order both the physical copy and get the digital version on D&D Beyond. This is a natural outgrowth of Wizards of the Coast's acquisition of D&D Beyond, and is, I think, a step in the right direction.

However, there's a flaw: You can only get this by purchasing the physical book directly from them. D&D, along with most tabletop hobbies, have a symbiotic relationship with game stores. My own local game store, NextGen, here in Los Angeles, is a great place where I know the manager, and whenever a new D&D book comes out, I order it from there. It's where we get our minis, and it's generally a place where I like to go and hang out.

It's certainly convenient to order these books online, but I'd rather be giving my money to a store like this, which is where I've been able to play through Descent into Avernus and meet new people who are into the hobby. I want to make sure that this place can continue paying what I have to imagine is ever-rising rent and keep their doors open.

So, at least in the case of the Dragonlance book, I'll be buying it from there. (I'll confess that the absolutely awesome-looking special cover for the book is tipping the scales for me in more selfish ways.) However, I've also had the frustration of not wanting to spend 60% of the price of books I already have to unlock their content on D&D Beyond.

I think when the 2024 Core Rulebooks come out, I'll probably be taking whatever physical/digital deal they have so that, at the very least, I can have my basics covered without relying on a DM to have that content available.

My hope, though, is that in two years, WotC will have figured out a way to work with local game stores so that the store can verify our purchase and then give us the code to unlock the book's content online.

Halloween Character Builds - The Necromancer

 Halloween holds a special place in my heart. It was always my favorite holiday as a kid, perhaps because growing up in New England, it was kind of the quintessential environment for such spookiness (though I'll acknowledge here that it's a little messed up how often we tell stories about actual witches in Salem, when a bunch of innocent people were murdered by religious fundamentalists). My mother ran the neighborhood Halloween party at the local community center, and so it was always a big production around this time of year. In fact, I'm going back to the East Coast for Halloween this year because a friend of mine is getting married with a Halloween-themed wedding.

But that aside: in D&D, Necromancy is one of the eight schools of magic, but it's the one that is kind of invariably the dark and spooky one. There's a classic archetype - usually a villainous one - of a powerful spellcaster who raises the dead to fight for them.

If we wanted to play such a character (perhaps playing against type and making a heroic necromancer... or not,) where to start?

First off, let's talk class options. The School of Necromancy Wizard is probably the most obvious option - it's right there in the name. This subclass gives you two features that enhance your rapport with the undead, one specifically enhancing Animate Dead, while the other allows you to (sometimes) force an undead creature to work for you (this can technically work on a Lich that has used up its legendary resistances, but the likelihood of success if very low).

But there are a couple other options. Among Wizards, we're not going to bother looking elsewhere, but we should mention options for Warlocks and Sorcerers.

The Shadow Sorcerer is the "dark" version of the class, but we run into an issue here, which is that the dead-raising spells - and really most spells that allow you to bring in new creatures to fight on your side in battle - are not available to Sorcerers. Thus, any real "necromancy-themed" Sorcerer is going to lean more into their necrotic-damage, life-stealing spells. The only real option for Sorcerers is the 7th-level Finger of Death, which is mostly a single-target damage spell that then has a bonus of giving you a permanent zombie companion if you kill a humanoid with it.

The Warlock, however, shares the Wizard's penchant for summoning conjuration spells and dead-raising necromancy (we'll be focusing on the latter). And, as it turns out, Warlocks have ample subclasses that are associated with Undeath as a force. The first of these is the Undying - which I think was kind of a dry-run for a better subclass that I'll mention in this paragraph. Undying goes out of its way not to explicitly have your patron be an undead entity - it could be something that has just extended its life magically. So screw that one. The Hexblade, then, is an instance where the patron itself is not undead (unless it's the a spirit bound to a weapon) but the subclass' connection to the Shadowfell (the plane most associated with the undead) and the 6th level feature that lets you draw a specter out of a foe you kill. But then, the Undead patron is the most straightforward option.

The somewhat left-field option here, though, is Cleric. Surprisingly, Animate Dead and Create Undead are on the Cleric spell list (they are not, notably, on the new "Divine Spells" list). A Death Cleric would certainly make sense here, but they miss out on the newer spells.

There are only a handful of spells that raise the dead as undead (as opposed to bringing them back to true life). Animate Dead and Summon Undead are 3rd level. Danse Macabre is 5th level. Create Undead is 6th level. And then, Finger of Death is 7th, and is somewhat less of a direct undead-creating spell. Of these, Warlocks oddly don't get Animate Dead - it's not even on the Undead Warlock expanded spell list, which I found shocking.

Thus, I think we're going to conclude that, for the quintessential undead-raiser, we've got to go Necromancy Wizard (though I do think Undead Warlock is in a pretty good position as first alternate).

Now, Necromancy Wizards automatically add Animate Dead to their spellbooks at level 6 if they didn't get it at level 5, and the spell grants you a bonus zombie or skeleton (so two total when cast at 3rd level). But they also get a number of other bonuses to any undead creature that has been summoned - first, adding their Wizard level to the creatures' maximum HP, and then also allowing them to add your Proficiency bonus to the damage they deal.

So let's take a look at the various spell options you have here.

For 3rd level spells, there are Animate Dead and Summon Undead.

Animate Dead takes 1 minute to cast, so you need to do it before combat starts. It raises one zombie or skeleton (depending on the material you're working with) though, thanks to the subclass, we're getting an additional one. Upcasting the spell adds two additional undead creatures for each spell level above 3rd, making this one of the rare spells where upcasting it grants greater value than casting it at its base level (though we're going to get linear scaling thanks to the subclass). The undead creatures don't have a set duration, but after 24 hours you will lose control of them unless you cast the spell again, making them potentially hostile. We're a bit incentivized to take this thanks to our subclass, though of course many of the benefits of "Undead Thralls" extend to any undead creature created with a necromancy spell.

    You're going to be limited by the corpses you find as to which stat block you use. Skeletons officially come with armor scraps and weapons, so you might work with your DM to see what kind of attacks they can do. Skeletons in the base stat block have shortswords and shortbows, but I think a DM could reasonably change that based on what the remains you find have on them. Zombies just make slam attacks, which any creature with limbs could do. Skeletons have far lower hit points and are vulnerable to bludgeoning damage, while zombies are relatively beefy (though with a profoundly low AC) and have Undead Fortitude to potentially survive a hit. So, if you have your choice of corpses, skeletons might be better damage-dealers, while zombies can be decently effective at tanking hits, and can be used as a shield between you and the monsters.

Summon Undead is in line with the other Tasha's-introduced conjuration spells, except it's necromancy. Compared to Animate Dead, it has the following upsides: first, no corpses required, as long as you have the material component (which costs 300g). Second, the undead spirit you summon is capable of putting out a lot of damage. Third, like all these spells, it scales very effectively with spell level, especially if cast at an even level. Fourth, you have three options for which kind of undead spirit to summon. And finally, it uses your spell attack modifier to determine its attack bonus, making it far, far more effective at hitting monsters than the +3 and +4 bonuses that standard zombies and skeletons (respectively) have. However, there are downsides. For one, it's concentration. Next, it lasts at most an hour. And third, it only ever summons one creature, which means you won't be able to use it to make, say, a zombie-wall.

    With Summon Undead, you get three choices. The Skeletal spirit is the obvious choice for damage output - it does the highest damage, and the damage is necrotic (which few things resist) and it's ranged, allowing you to put it far away from the action to take potshots from afar. The only downside is the skeletal spirit has low HP, but you're hopefully going to keep it out of the fray. The ghostly spirit has to get into melee, but it has a 40 foot fly/hover speed and its attacks (which also deal necrotic damage) can also potentially frighten targets - a pretty powerful effect, with no "if you succeed on the save you become immune for 24 hours" rider. It also has incorporeal movement if you have to deal with a bunch of cover, which also makes them decent for scouting. Finally, the putrid spirit is sort of ghoul-like, and this one does slashing damage, but it also has an aura causing nearby creatures that start their turn around it to potentially be poisoned, and then its attack can trigger a second saving throw to potentially paralyze a poisoned target.

    My instinct is that the putrid spirit will be amazing when it actually manages to paralyze a creature, but that's probably going to be unusual, given the need for both two failed Con saves and a successful attack and that the monster is not immune to the poisoned condition. The skeletal spirit is probably the default choice, but if you need some crowd control, the ghostly one could be clutch.

Moving on, we'll next look at Danse Macabre. This is a 5th-level spell from Xanathar's Guide to Everything, and, on its surface, looks similar to Animate Dead, but there are some benefits and a couple of downsides. Like Animate Dead cast at 5th level, you'll get five total undead creatures (though of course Necromancers would be getting 6 from a 5th-level animate dead). The first major benefit is that it takes 1 action to cast, meaning you can do this mid-combat. You can also cast this one any Small or Medium creatures, if your campaign doesn't have you fighting humanoids all the time. Third, you get to choose whether the undead are zombies or skeletons. And finally, the biggest bonus here is that you get to add your spellcasting modifier to both the minions' attack and damage rolls.

    That last part might be the most important. At level 9, when you can first get this spell, you likely have an Intelligence of +5, giving your zombies a +8 to hit and your skeletons a +9 to hit (though if your DM insists the skeletons have to find finesse or ranged weapons to use their dexterity to attack, that's down to +2/+7 with strength-based attacks). That actually makes it far more likely that they're going to connect even with pretty heavily-armored foes. Without something like Wand of the War Mage or an Arcane Grimoire, your own spell attack bonus at this point is probably +9 anyway. The damage the minions do is also not insignificant - a zombie's slam typically does 1d6+1, but with both this spell and your subclass bonus, you're now looking at 1d6+10 (13.5 on average) coming from five different zombies (for a total of 67.5 average damage per round!)

    Something I've really come to appreciate while running high-level D&D (15 at the moment) is that one of the deadliest aspects of high-level monsters is their high attack bonuses. You can hit pretty decent ACs even at low levels, but you hit a plateau in most cases around 20. Monsters then have a very hard time hitting you, but when you start to get monsters with a +8, +9, or even a +12 to hit, sitting at 20 AC still means getting hit a pretty high proportion of the time. And with every hit is HP lost, potential spell slots for healing spells lost, and overall hinderance to the party. Animate Dead might net you an extra zombie or skeleton, but when those guys are only getting a +3 to hit, you're realistically only hitting occasionally with those against a foe that has an AC of 17 or 18. A Necromancy Wizard's zombie minion is doing 1d6+5 damage with its hit, or about 8.5 damage. But Danse Macabre is adding your spellcasting ability modifier five times to the damage, which is 25 with an Intelligence of +5, which not only makes up for losing the sixth zombie, but that's before we even get to the idea that these zombies are going to be hitting far more often.

    Of course, because Animate Dead is not concentration, you don't actually need to choose one or the other.

Next, we have Create Undead. Create Undead functions similarly to Animate Dead, in that it takes a minute to cast and you get 24 hours of control over the undead creatures, after which you need to cast the spell again to reassert control. At the base 6th level, you can make 3 ghouls from Medium or Small humanoid corpses. Ghouls' primary benefit over Zombies is that they can paralyze their targets - which, to be fair, is a pretty huge benefit, though the saving throw to resist this effect is only DC 10 - you might have better luck with the Putrid Spirit from Summon Undead. Ghouls are also more mobile and harder to hit than zombies, but they lack Undead Fortitude. When upcast to 8th level, you can raise Ghasts or Wights in place of ghouls, and at 9th level, you can summon Mummies. This starts to get very complicated, as the effects these various undead creatures can create are not all pure damage.

    Once again, we should note that without concentration, you can have this spell active along with Animate Dead. If you have plenty of corpses to use, you can amass a fairly large undead horde. But in terms of damage output in the short term, I do think that Danse Macabre might be the best option.

But, just for fun, let's consider how many minions we could raise as a 20th-level character. We'll assume we take Animate Dead as one of our Signature Spells, so we get the chance to cast 4 of these per day (and thus maintain control of that many minions). So, we'll say we cast 4 3rd-level Animate Dead spells, giving us 8 minions. Then, we cast the spell 3 times at 4th level, giving us 12 more minions (up to 20). Then, we're going to cast it twice at 5th level and reserve one slot for Danse Macabre, giving us 12 more long-term minions and 5 1-hour minions, putting us up to 37 minions. Now, we'll cast Create Undead at 6th level twice, to give us 6 ghouls, putting our minion count up to 43. We spend our 7th level spell on Create Undead as well, giving us 4 more, putting us to 47 minions. At 8th level, if we're just going for minion count, we get five more ghouls, or 52 total minions. And then at 9th level, we'll get an additional 6 ghouls, for 58 total minions.

But actually, if we didn't care about the slightly-better ghouls, and just wanted to upcast animate dead, we can skip Create Undead and just upcast Animate Dead at 6th level twice, giving us 16 more minions (total of 53) and then at 7th level we get 10 zombies, so 63. At 8th level, we've got 12 more, giving us 75. And finally, at 9th level, we're getting 14 more minions, so we now have 89. (And if we wanted to go back and replace Danse Macabre with Animate Dead, we can make that an even 90).

This is, by the way, a good way to drive your DM and your fellow players insane, as your one turn in combat will probably be more creatures' turns than the whole combat encounter would likely take, and most of them will be "and that's a 12 to hit the Tarrasque."

Practically speaking, I think that the minions from Animate Dead and, somewhat, Create Undead, might be more effective when used for non-attack actions. Often, in combat, it can be somewhat painful to have to give up a turn to, say, drag an unconscious friend out of a Cloudkill, or to try smashing some evil demonic idol on an altar to see if that does anything. Having an extra undead minion to do those things while you focus on damaging foes can really free you up. I also think that minions can be great when used to grapple enemies (though this will probably be less effective if the new grapple rules from the One D&D UAs make it live). In terms of damage output, I think Danse Macabre is probably your best bet, unless you need non-physical damage. Summon Undead, I maintain, is very good as the ultimate flexible option, not just because you can pick the minion that suits your needs, but also because you don't need to have any corpses to raise. Indeed, the real downside to Danse Macabre as an in-combat trick is that you need to have a bunch of corpses lying around.

Of all the minions you can summon, the Ghostly and Skeletal Undead Spirits you can get from Summon Undead have the quite enormous benefit of dealing necrotic damage. Of all the summoner subclasses, only Circle of the Shepherd allows you to give your summoned creatures "magical" damage to overcome resistances and immunities. The one time I cast Danse Macabre, we were fighting Yeenoghu, and while the zombies managed to work very well as a wall to prevent the demon lord from getting to the spellcasters (though I think technically under the new rules he could have walked over them because they were two sizes smaller) but their attacks did nothing to him thanks to the immunity to nonmagical bludgeoning damage. There are monsters that are immune or resistant to necrotic damage, but far fewer than nonmagical "BPS" damage.

Now, minions aside, what spells might you pick up to supplement this playstyle?

The Necromancy Wizard gets healed if they kill a creature, and gets extra healing if the spell that was cast is a Necromancy one - though this doesn't actually apply to cantrips. So, technically you can run Fire Bolt as your main cantrip. However, I think Chill Touch is still a really strong choice (arguably overpowered, as it shuts down many creatures whose longevity is built on health regeneration) along with being thematic.

The Strixhaven spell Wither and Bloom can give you a bit of healing help to your party, making it an interesting spell choice. If you want to pay forward the healing you're receiving from Grim Harvest, you can pick up Life Transference to get a pretty powerful heal at the cost of your own vitality (you effectively can heal someone for 8d8, or about 36 HP, though you're going to be taking half of that). This is another one of those "good side of necromancy" spells that could fit with a good-aligned character.

Vampiric Touch can work in the opposite way, allowing you to drain foes of HP to help heal yourself up, though as a melee spell, this might be better reserved for desperate situations.

Enervation is actually very similar to Vampiric Touch, but with a longer range, and once it connects, you can automatically continue the damage and healing, a little bit like Witch Bolt, but with twice the range, making it harder for foes to break it simply by running away.

Negative Energy Flood is an interesting option, because it can be used to give a minion temporary hit points, or if used to kill a creature, you create a... zombie who is not under your control, but also not under your enemy's control either.

Finger of Death is a pretty obvious single-target bit hit attack, dealing 7d8+30 damage on a failed Con save, or half as much on a success. So, that's an average of 61.5 damage on a failed save. If you kill a humanoid with this, you get a permanent zombie pet. This is a necromancy spell, so you would also get the Undead Thralls bonus. Honestly, though, that amount of damage, while impressive, feels a little low for a 7th-level spell (a Danse Macabre at 7th level would raise 9 zombies, who would be dealing 1d6+11 damage each, meaning 130.5 damage per round).

Weirdly, Astral Projection is a Necromancy spell, but that's the sort of spell that you pick up for plot reasons.

Circle of Death is a 6th level spell that does a Fireball's worth of necrotic damage in a sphere that's three times the radius. Personally, I think it's rare you're going to need to hit quite such an enormous area - fireball's already huge, and Circle of Death, if I have the principles of basic geometry right, should be nine times the area (or twenty seven times the space). This is, make no mistake, an absolutely gigantic area, but that means that you're also going to have a much harder time avoiding your friends, and this will generally cover the entirety of most battle maps (on Roll20, the default is a 25x25 grid of 5x5 spaces, and this would be a circle 24 spaces long and tall). As huge as that is, it's still only a Fireball's damage - 8d6. That's nothing to sneeze at (and indeed, Fireball is intentionally overpowered for a 3rd level spell) but for casting a 6th level spell - a spell level in which you only get a second slot when you hit level 20 - I feel like you could have better uses unless you're facing an army of troops besieging a castle or something and you need to kill a lot of low-level enemies.

Abi-Dalzim's Horrid Wilting is similar, hitting a relatively small (though not tiny) 30-foot cube with 12d8 necrotic damage (average of 54 damage - which is just shy of two Fireballs' worth). This is particularly powerful against plants and specifically water elementals (as a DM I'd include any water-based elementals like Water Weirds,) who have disadvantage. But the real reason to consider this is that Constructs and Undead are unaffected by the spell. So, if you send your army of zombies at a group of foes, perhaps holding them down while your party is facing off against something outside of your 30-foot cube, you can drop this on top of all your minions without any fear.

Blight, back to lower level spells, is a single-target spell. This, likewise, can't affect Constructs or Undead, but if it hits a plant, they both make the save at disadvantage and also take max damage from the spell. The damage is only 8d8 (average of 36), but it's only a 4th level spell, making this a solid option in single-target situations or against some dangerous plant-monster like a Shambling Mound. A Fireball is still going to net you more damage if you can hit multiple foes, but this is a decent blast if you need something dead and quick.

One last necromancy spell that I think is easy to forget is Gentle Repose. This basically pauses the resurrection time limit on a dead creature for 10 days. That means that, if in the heat of battle, your Rogue dies while the Cleric is out of 3rd-level spell slots or doesn't have the diamonds to cast Revivify, you can give your party a leisurely window to fix the problem. In fact, it's a ritual spell, and there's nothing that says you can't cast it on a creature already under its effects (it's true that a creature can't be under the effects of the same spell multiple times, so I'd talk with your DM if you can keep this in effect indefinitely or if it can only give you a 10-day window). Especially in low-level play, where spell slots and gold to buy diamonds with are in short supply, this can seriously help a party member from being lost. It's also a great anti-necromancer spell, as it prevents the target from being raised from the dead, and also prevents it from decaying. We once used it on a deer to prevent the meat from going bad in my old Sunday campaign.

In terms of magic items, only Summon Undead is really going to benefit from items that boost your spell attack modifier. Most of these spells are somewhat independent of your stats, though remember that you need to be of a Wizard level that can cast those higher-level spells, meaning Create Undead requires you to have 11 levels in the class, even if some multiclass thing got you 6th level spell slots.

Anyway, there are some strong capabilities that a player can attain if they want to commit to the spookiness of Necromancy.

Speculating on Other Class Groups

 The "Expert Classes" UA introduced to us the idea of class groups. With twelve classes in the PHB (again, I'm sad that Artificers are not going to be published in it) they can fairly neatly put them into four categories of three classes each. Bards, Rogues, and Rangers are all Experts, which is reflected mechanically as their having the Expertise feature.

And I do think it helps, a bit, to carve out an identity for what those classes bring to the table. The Ranger, make no mistake, is much more powerful than it had been in 2014, but I still think you could make the argument that purely in terms of combat capabilities, it still might not outperform a Dex-based fighter with a ranged weapon.

But, what the new version of the Ranger emphasizes is that, even if they aren't keeping up in pure damage (and honestly, they're probably not that far behind) they have far more tools than the Fighter to help the party deal with myriad situations, particularly out in the wilderness. Their mobility is super-charged, and at higher levels they are better than anyone at sniffing out hidden foes (something that used to belong to the Rogue, but I think makes a lot more sense as a Ranger thing (as master hunters and trackers, Rangers feel like they should be the scissors to the Rogue's paper).

The other three groups are Mage, Priest, and Warrior.

Mage is, I think, the most obvious. The Sorcerer, Warlock, and Wizard have always felt like they fill somewhat similar archetypes (indeed, I don't think any two fantasy franchises can agree on what the difference between a Sorcerer and a Wizard is - in the MCU, for instance, the "Sorcerer Supreme" is 100% a Wizard by D&D terms, and the Scarlet Witch is definitely a Sorcerer).

But all three of these classes are arcane spellcasters, and I suspect will be far less limited in the schools of magic they can use. I do wonder, though, what will explicitly tie them together. One possibility I could imagine is that they might still simply learn certain spells, rather than preparing them, with Wizards having the hybrid system of preparing from among the spells they've learned in their spellbook.

Still, a drawback feels like a less fun way to tie a bunch of classes together. (Admittedly, the Arcane spell list is the most expansive, so it's more like a balancing handicap). Naturally, the Wizard and Sorcerer have historically had very similar spell lists, and can play similar roles in a group, if perhaps allowing the Wizard to have more utility while the Sorcerer has more in-combat flexibility. The Warlock, on the other hand, plays very differently from the other two thanks to Pact Magic.

So, I don't really have a great sense of what we might see with them (this could be a theme).

Priests are a little funny - Clerics and Druids make a lot of sense here, as they're both kind of spiritual spellcasters with a lot of healing spells. I assume that each will have full access to its spell list, with Clerics getting all Divine Spells and Druids getting all Primal Spells. Clerics still, I think, have a slight leg up on healing.

Now, of course, we should look at the Expert classes and recognize that within their category, there are some very different emphases. They are all experts at something, but not really the same thing - Bards are experts as social encounters, Rangers experts at exploration, and Rogues are experts in... well, they have less of a specific focus, but stuff like lockpicking and sneaking are classic choices.

The odd duck in the Priest category is the Paladin. While spiritual/divine in nature, the Paladin tends to emphasize its martial skills, and the Divine Smite mechanic (which I hope does not get changed too much) even encourages them to forgo traditional spellcasting and instead fuel their melee strikes.

If, for instance, you were to suggest that the Priest in your group could be the primary healer, I could buy that with the Cleric and the Druid, but even with things like Lay on Hands, I don't really see the Paladin as being able to play that role (there's even a better half-caster to do that, which is the Alchemist Artificer).

Paladins and Clerics, of course, share the Channel Divinity feature. I wonder, actually, if Druids might get a "Channel Nature" feature that works similarly. The default use (like a Cleric's Turn Undead) could be Wild Shape. We've seen newer Druid subclasses use the Wild Shape feature in different ways - Spores' Symbiotic Entity, Stars' Starry From, and Wildfire's Wildfire Spirit. Perhaps "Channel Nature" could make it clearer that not all Druids are going to benefit as much (at least in combat) from Wild Shape, and subclasses like Circle of the Land or whatever others they add to the PHB could use this for other things.

Finally, Warriors. Warriors are Barbarians, Fighters, and Monks. These are all fairly combat-focused classes, though of course a number of other classes fit in that category as well. I'd be tempted to say that the Extra Attack feature could be their signature thing, but of course Paladins and Rangers get that too.

What I'm curious about is if they bake in any way to significantly buff Warriors' resilience. Barbarians have Rage already. Fighters generally rely on having high AC (if they're built for melee). Monks, on the other hand, have always struggled a bit, because it feels like they want to be front-line fighters, but their AC is more in the Barbarian range, and their HP is no better than a Bard's. I'd like to see some buffs to a Monk's defensive capabilities. I'd suggested earlier that they could automatically subtract physical damage they take - like, they reduce incoming bludgeoning, piercing, and slashing damage by an amount equal to their proficiency bonus - to give them a niche as best to fight a mob of weaker enemies, while a Barbarian is better built for taking on the massive boss that is going to be hitting for a lot every time.

Of course, while it's certainly up for debate, there are arguments to be made that it's actually the Paladin who most effectively works as a front-line "tank." But we'll see what Warriors look like moving forward.

Ultimately, the real thing that's going to tie these together are things like magic items and other features that care about those tags. Right now, our best examples are the Epic Boons - something that, if current 5E is anything to judge by, very few people will see anyway.

This UA came out on September 29th, and the previous came out on August 18th. If we assume a similar pace, we might expect to see the next come out in early November. I suspect we're going to get all the classes first, as those are going to be needed to playtest subsequent content.

Tier 2 in Wildemount!

 Well, after over a year, our Wildemount campaign finally hit tier 2 as we got to level 5. Intentionally built to be a roleplay-heavy campaign, our milestones are built around the prophecy system that is detailed in Explorer's Guide to Wildemount.

Our party was also very much not built for balance - we have a Fighter (Rune Knight), two Paladins (one Oath of Redemption, one an unofficial one that's fire-themed) and two Wizards (Chronurgist and Scribes, the latter being my character).

In the fight resolving the plotline that got us to level 5, we had a rough go of it - a corrupted druid with a bunch of giant toad minions was holding two (other) paladins to power their corrupting blight, and we needed those paladins to testify on behalf of one of the characters' sisters. We just got very unlucky with attack rolls, failing to hit a bunch of AC 11 toads that didn't even have much health. As such, technically, one of the paladins died at the very end of the fight, but the DM allowed them to reroll their natural 1 death save and they got a natural 20 (while he said that this would not be a regular thing, I felt it was the right call, because the fight was actually over at that point, and you could have argued that we might be out of initiative).

Anyway, given the minions lasted way longer than they should have because of our crappy rolls, we ended that fight with every spell slot expended, every rune, channel divinity, lay on hands point, just everything spent. My wizard got knocked out toward the end of the fight, but luckily succeeded on three death saves in a row, so he stabilized and was woke up at the end.

It was hard-fought, and for me, personally, I think the only error I made (and arguably not a real error) was trying to blow the toads away with gust of wind rather than just trying to kill them quicker (this was a racial ability I used. I also put a fog cloud on top of the boss to buy us some time with the toads, preventing them from targeting anyone with spells while she was trapped in it and creating a big obstruction even when she got out). I also managed to land a Shatter on two of the toads that did nearly max damage (21) and both toads failed their save, allowing me to halve the number of monsters on the board.

We also perhaps wasted some actions trying to heal up the captured paladins, who seemed to have too many levels of exhaustion to do anything.

So, I'm hoping we don't have quite so desperate a fight again any time soon, but hitting level 5 is very nice. While I want to pick up Summon Undead, the costly material component (a 300-gold gilded skull - not consumed) is still a bit beyond my reach, so instead I took Dispel Magic and Lightning Bolt, while the other Wizard (a Fire Genasi - mine is a Triton) got Fireball and another spell TBD.

My character is a naive young Triton who basically just graduated from Wizard school (which I'm treating like college). With Wisdom as his dump stat, I've basically envisioned him as someone who will one day be a powerful, if a bit absentminded, archmage - a sort of figure like Merlin from the Disney Sword in the Stone, who would likely be a very good mentor to some kid with a heroic destiny, but right now he's the kid striving toward that destiny.

Anyway, I decided to defer to the fire-themed character to pick up Fireball, while I got the other classic, powerful damage spell. I also tend to think of lightning as blue (perhaps the result of playing a Shaman in World of Warcraft for so long) so it seemed to fit pretty well thematically (I also intend to copy the other wizard's fireball spell as soon as I can into my own spellbook). Lightning Bolt is, of course, a lot harder to hit multiple targets with (especially trying to hit more than two) but I also figure with three melee characters in our party, it might also be good to be able to weave a narrow bolt between them.

Gold and Silver Imagery in Elden Ring

 I don't know how deep I'll be able to get here, as I'm mostly going off the cuff (and procrastinating on redesigning tonight's D&D session given that one of the players whose character was going to play a prominent role in the session will be missing) but I wanted to talk about one of the key symbols in Elden Ring: Gold and Silver.

Gold is probably the element that is more obvious - the Elden Ring itself is golden, and we've got the Golden Order it represents. But there's also a fair amount of silver to be found.

Gold and Silver are, of course, culturally associated with wealth as the most prominent precious metals, used historically as currency. They're the 1st and 2nd place medals one gets in athletic competitions (bronze is kind of an odd choice for third place, as it's both an alloy and one of relatively base metals by comparison).

Symbolically, Gold and Silver are also often associated with the duality of day and night. It's actually, I believe, pure coincidence that the Sun and Moon appear to be the same size from the surface of the earth - their relative sizes and distances happening to match up in that way. But the Sun is also typically seen as golden, with sunlight having that yellow quality, while the moon - though pretty clearly chalk-white - is often associated with silver. We ascribe colors to these that are sort of interpretive, but we get a rather effective dichotomy of yellow and blue, and that's also a pattern we see a lot of in Elden Ring.

In the Lands Between, you might notice that there is no sun. The brilliant light that illuminates the day is actually, apparently, coming from the Erdtree. This is likely inspired by Tolkien's Legendarium, where Arda (the world upon which Middle-Earth is found) was first illuminated by two great lamps, but after their fall, the illumination was provided by two great trees, under whose light the elves first awoke. (Apologies if my Tolkien lore is not 100% accurate). The destruction of those trees then led to the creation of the sun, and it was under the sun that the first humans arose. (The first episode of Rings of Power has a prologue in which Galadriel, as a child, grows up under the Great Trees). (Also, if you had any doubts that Tolkien was a big influence on Elden Ring, consider the race of the "Numen" that Marika and the Black Knife assassins belong to, and compare them with the humans of Numenor from Tolkien).

Gold is tied to the Golden Order, and the Greater Will, but we can also imagine that the radiant gold that the Two Fingers promote might actually be of the same material as the sickly yellow that is the Flame of Chaos, promoted by the Three Fingers. FromSoft games often invoke elements of Cosmic Horror, obviously never as explicitly as in Bloodborne, but in their other works as well. The Chaos Flame, as a force of madness, is very Lovecraftian in nature, but even more terrifying is the notion that it may just be the other side of the same force that the Golden Order represents. If the Two Fingers and the Three Fingers were originally one Hand, it suggests the dangerous, eldritch nature of what presents itself as conventional holy divinity. Indeed, the Frenzied Flame seems to wish to melt down reality back into a single mass - while the Two Fingers reinforce a hierarchy of gods and nobles, separating reality and sorting it.

In a strange way, though, these are both paths of "gold."

The path of silver, though, is one that we can associate with the Moon, and the Stars. If you get the Age of Stars ending, you summon Ranni with a blue summoning symbol, rather than the golden one you typically use to summon allies or the red ones you use to invade others' worlds.

As laid out very well in VaatiVidya's recent video about the Eternal Cities, these locations, and their Nox inhabitants, seemed bent on subverting the will of gods and other "golden" entities, duplicating their divine magic through sorcery. The Nox created Silver Tears - amorphous blobs that could re-shape themselves into people and other creatures as needed (interestingly, the tears arguably serve a similar purpose to the Shoggoths of Lovecraft, which were made by the Elder Things, presumably, to serve as all-purpose servants). The Nox seek out the Age of Stars that Ranni ultimately brings about if you help her.

And it's also from the Eternal Cities of the Nox that the Albinaurics originally come. And let's break down that name: Albin, like the word albino, implies "white" while "auric" means golden. White gold. White gold is another name for an alloy of gold with some white metal - including silver (naturally occurring electrum is typically an alloy of gold and silver, sometimes with a little copper, making it "green gold.")

But we're all overlooking the biggest reference to silver, aren't we?

The Tarnished.

Gold, famously, does not tarnish. Golden artifacts from thousands of years ago are still brilliant and gleaming (they can still get covered in dust, of course) but Silver tarnishes - to keep it bright and shiny you need to polish and clean it regularly.

The Tarnished are descendants of Godfrey, who was divested of his grace and basically divorced by Marika, though it seems not to punish him, but instead to let him be his true self - a warrior out beyond the Lands Between, to fight and conquer. The divestment of grace is what makes them "Tarnished," but does that then imply that was left behind when the "golden grace" was removed was silver?

One thing that is very open to speculation and interpretation is Marika's motivations in Elden Ring. She seems to have set up the entire plot, but notably, when we come to actually face her, we instead see her transform into Radagon, who is the actual person we fight.

My personal interpretation is that Marika wishes to see the Golden Order undone, and for her tenure as god to end, but that Radagon does not, and wishes for her to remain the god, for him to remain Elden Lord. Though they might have been in full accord when they merged into one body (and yes, I interpret Radagon as having originally been a separate person from Marika) they parted ways, philosophically.

Given the ties between the Numen and the Nox, is it then possible that Marika was meant for some other fate? Did the Greater Will pick her as a god in order to prevent the Age of Stars? We've seen that the Shadows the Two Fingers send to guard over Empyreans (aka potential gods) can be "activated" to turn against them. Marika's was Maliketh, while Ranni's is Blaidd. And as loyal as Blaidd is to Ranni, once you slay her Two Fingers, he is compelled to attack against his will.

But back to the metals.

Completing Millicent's questline, we empower the Unalloyed Gold Needle, which for a time staves off the Scarlet Rot within Millicent (until she takes it out). Ultimately, with some kind of blessing from Miquella after we defeat Malenia, we can use this to purge the Flame of Frenzy from ourselves.

Now, let's consider a couple things: it's "unalloyed" gold, in other words, pure gold. That purity might be what keeps the Rot as bay. But it might also thus stand as a bulwark against the Flame of Frenzy, which seems bent on melting away all disparity (we might need a whole post to unpack why Melina describes an Age of Chaos primarily as one that has no more "births,"). The Unalloyed Gold stands for purity, which by definition requires separation (and yeah, we've got some old Dark Souls themes coming in here again.)

You know what you typically use to melt metals together? A crucible.

That's something that might take another post to unpack.

Broadly speaking, one of the things I find interesting about the apparent superiority of gold over silver is how it's somewhat inverted when it comes to a few bits of folklore. Gold is highly valuable, of course, but with that comes an association with avarice - King Midas destroying all he loves because of the greedy wish he made. Silver, on the other hand, is often associated with purity and holiness - silver is used to defeat monsters like werewolves (to be fair, it's also 30 pieces of silver that Judas is paid to betray Jesus in Christian tradition).

Looking at Dark Souls, there's also a bit of duality when it comes to the binary of souls and humanity. The souls one uses as a currency in that game (similar to Runes in Elden Ring) are white in color, while the dark soul of humanity is black. Elden Ring only has the single currency (Rune Arcs are the rough equivalent in terms of gameplay of Humanity) and while Runes are golden (implied to be tiny fragments of the Elden Ring) I don't know if there are any specific silver runes or rune-like things that we use. The closest I can think of are the Larval Tears that allow Rennala to rebirth us, but that seems like a stretch.

Tying into the associations with Sorcery and Miracles (silver and gold, respectively,) in Selivus' quest chain we give him Starlight Shards, which are blue, to get puppets from him (the puppets are also, unlike other spirit summons, blue in color) but when he tries to get us to trick Ranni into drinking his draught, he requires an amber shard, which could (in theory) dictate the fate of a god (which Ranni has the potential to become, as an Empyrean). Again, that duality of blue and yellow (or orange).

If we associate Silver with not just the moon, but also the stars, an irony emerges, which is that in most human folklore, the sun is seen as supreme of all the celestial objects - which makes sense, as it's the one that dictates the most about life on Earth. But once humans realized that the sun is, in fact, just the star that the Earth orbits, and is a rather middling example of one (perhaps even on the small side?) we learn that the stars are, in fact, a much bigger deal than either sun or moon.

Now, in Elden Ring, there is no sun, but the Golden Order and the Erdtree kind of stand in for that supreme presence. And yet, seen from another perspective, the establishment seems terrified at the prospect that the stars could continue and bring about a new age. Radahn, whose mind is completely gone from scarlet rot, still has at the very base of his mind the will to keep the stars from moving and fulfilling their destinies. (Which is sort of interesting, as he seems to be the only one of Rennala and Radagon's three children who are actually loyal to the Erdtree - Rykard has embraced total, brutal blasphemy, while Ranni is trying to usurp the godhead from Marika. I have no idea if Marika actually intends for Ranni to succeed, and that it's actually Ranni's father Radagon who would oppose her goal).

Anyway, the subtle richness of FromSoft's approach to lore is on full display in Elden Ring. I so hope that we can get some DLC or a sequel and see what hints the lore expands into.