Weapon Masteries for Monks (And Paladins and Rangers, Maybe?)

 So, we don't have the updated Monk yet, and we don't know how they'll work, and how Masteries will function with them. Personally, I hope that they can somehow transfer some of these mastery effect onto their unarmed strikes. Still, until we get an official UA for them (which I have to imagine will be the next one, though probably not for a long time) I think we can only assume that they'll get something similar to the Barbarian's weapon mastery trait, which starts off with 2 usable per day and then eventually going up to 4.

Monks in the current game can use Simple Weapons and Shortswords, and any of these that don't have the Two-Handed or Heavy property, and are also melee weapons, gain the benefits of the Martial Arts feature.

Thus, other than the Greatclub, all the simple melee weapons are available.

As the game currently works, there's little reason for a monk to dual-wield weapons because they already get a bonus action attack inherently. Unless the off-hand weapon is a powerful, magical one (and the second one they have,) they don't really get a benefit to it.

Thus, all other things being equal, I generally think that a Quarterstaff or a Spear is the best option. Quarterstaffs are, of course, the classic monk weapon, though I realize now (like 8 years into playing this game) that technically, a Spear is actually superior due to its having the Thrown property (though bludgeoning damage does help against skeletons). These weapons can be wielded with two hands thanks to the versatile property, and give you a d8 damage die. (D&D doesn't require any sort of action to swap between one- and two-handed stances on a versatile weapon, and even if they did, your unarmed strikes could be kicks or headbutts or anything else).

Once you hit tier 3, though, this no longer means anything, as all monk weapons will have upgraded to d8s thanks to Martial Arts. Weapon choices open up significantly at tier 3, and at that point you might even choose to just eschew weapons entirely to fight only unarmed. That being said, because there are not currently any "+1 handwraps" to give you magical benefits to your fists (other than the "counts as magical" thing you get at level 6) you'll still generally want to be making your regular attack action with some kind of magical weapon.

However, mastery changes some things up.

Among the masteries you can find on monk weapons, we have Slow, Nick, Vex, Sap, and Flex.

And as such, I actually think my future monks might be looking at very different weapon choices. Quarterstaffs and Spears both get Flex, but we don't really need that, because we aren't going to be wielding a shield in the off hand, and can easily release our off hand from a two-handed stance to make our unarmed strikes. Flex is already not even that good on a class that can truly benefit from it, like a Fighter with a Longsword, who is now only getting an average of one more damage per hit, and Monks are, in most cases, literally not going to get any benefit from it at all.

Slow and Sap are going to be situational, providing utility by either granting a little defensive bonus in the latter case or a bit of battlefield management in the former case. Of the two Slow options, the Javelin does more damage, and can also be thrown. Thanks to Martial Arts, we don't care that it's not a finesse weapon. However, Clubs are also light, which means that if we decide to dual-wield, we can consider it.

Only the Mace has the Sap property from among our choices. So, if we want that effect, we can use it.

Next, let's cover Vex. Our options for Vex are Handaxes and Shortswords. The only real distinction for us here is that Handaxes can be thrown, and that they do different types of damage. As with Fighters and Barbarians, I'll generally favor Handaxes, unless I expect to be fighting Ochre Jellies.

Vex is one of the strongest masteries, giving you more hits and crits over the course of a fight, so definitely worth looking at.

Finally, we come to Nick. Nick actually winds up doing something huge for us: it makes Monks find dual-wielding actually desirable.

Again, we don't know what changes might come to the Martial Arts feature, but if we assume it works more or less the same, we're usually going to be spending our bonus action on an unarmed strike. Nick takes the off-hand attack of the light weapon out of the bonus action and makes it part of the action, which then frees up our bonus action to do an unarmed strike.

The upshot?

At level 5, we're now doing four attacks per round. Or five with Flurry of Blows.

Now, on top of that, Monks, as Warriors, will likely be getting full access to Fighting Styles. We can pick up Two-Weapon Fighting to let us add our Dexterity to our off-hand attacks.

Now, admittedly, all the Simple Nick weapons have a 1d4 weapon die. That is lower damage, but given that we're enabling a whole other attack, I think it's fine. In this case, the Light Hammer and Dagger are both roughly equivalent for us (again, we don't care that the Light Hammer lacks finesse) while the Sickle lags behind only due to lacking the thrown property.

    Let's break this down:

Imagine we have a level 5 Monk with +4 to Dexterity. We're using a Handaxe in our main hand and a Dagger in the off-hand.

With our action, we attack twice with the Handaxe (1d6+4 for each, so 2d6+8, which comes out to 15 average damage) and then once with the Dagger (also 1d6+4 thanks to Martial Arts, so 7.5 more damage) and then we make one unarmed strike for... you guessed it, 1d6+4, or 7.5.

Our average damage per round - assuming we hit with all attacks, but still... is 30.

30 damage. At level 5. And that's without spending a single ki point.

If we compare this to the Quarterstaff, and say we take... let's say the Dueling Fighting Style, and then just using these with one hand (and thus gaining the benefit of Flex,) how do we look?

With our action, attack twice with the Quarterstaff (1d8+6 for each, so 2d8+12, which comes to an average of 21) and then once with the Unarmed Strike (7.5, as previously established). So, that's 28.5 damage.

Actually, not too bad.

I think Monks are going to really benefit a lot from both Fighting Style and Weapon Mastery, and helping them to bring the pain to their foes.

Now, interestingly, the introduction to the Weapons section of this UA mentions that when they revisit Experts and Priests in future UAs, some of those classes will gain access to weapon masteries. I assume this means the Ranger and Paladin, though I imagine that Rogues would be very happy to have access to this system as well (if they don't automatically get it, it's an obvious place for a feat investment if only to get some kind of Vex weapon, which is insanely good for a Rogue, given how much they love advantage).

Looking at Spellcrafting with the One D&D Wizard

 The Wizard in D&D is the sort of "arcane scientist" of spellcasters. They research and learn their spells, and copy their formulae into their spellbooks. Wizards are among the most legendary lore figures in D&D, and their names grace the names of many famous spells - Mordenkainen, Bigby, Melf, Tenser, Tasha.

More than any other class, Wizards understand magic on a deeper, more rational level, and in the lore, it's Wizards who go around inventing spells, teaching their creations to apprentices, who then teach those to others - or, rival wizards might conspire to steal one another's spellbooks almost like a form of industrial espionage - to reverse-engineer the new magical capabilities of a rival and replicate the results.

The One D&D Wizard introduces a new way for Wizard players to not just add found spells to their spellbooks, but to create spells of their own. With enough gold and time, Wizards of a certain level will be able to permanently add spells of their own design and name to their spellbooks, and potentially to the game itself (at least among the same group of players).

Wizards will now automatically get four spells added to their spellbooks at various levels. One of these is Scribe Spell, which turns the process of adding spells to your spellbook into a spell itself, but one that no Wizard will be without. Memorize Spell is another one of these that now gives the Wizard the chance to swap out prepared spells in the middle of the day, given enough time.

These spells are also rituals, except for the final one, so you can safely keep them unprepared and bust them out only when you want to make use of their functionality and avoid spending spell slots on them.

The latter two, however, are where we really get into that spell-design realm.

The first is Modify Spell. This allows you to remove a spell component (as long as it's not a consumed material component,) remove a concentration requirement, change a damage type, increase its range, give it the ritual tag (only if the spell normally takes 10 or more minutes to cast) and can cause it to only affect allies or enemies.

You can change an additional element of the spell with each spell slot above 4th level, so at 9th level, you can change every single element of the spell listed in Modify Spell. Notably, to do so, you're not going to be able to cast this as a ritual.

    I think it's notable that, aside from changing its damage type, all of these changes make the spell strictly better than the original version. On its own, that's fine, given that at the very least we're spending 11 minutes at the beginning of our day performing this alteration. This spell is "Modify Spell" after all, and so it makes sense to be something that tweaks something that already exists.

Create Spell is the other piece of this puzzle. This is the only free wizard spell that is not a ritual spell, but, interestingly, it more or less requires you to cast it immediately following Modify Spell, and then you need to immediately (or within 10 minutes) begin to cast Scribe Spell to actually make the 1000 gold and hour+ poured into the task worth it.

So, on a day-to-day basis, I can start the day by making my Fireball into Thunderball.

But let's say I have lots of time and money to throw at making a new, awesome aoe spell. I want to make Vodalos' Thunderball, which deals thunder damage and does not hit my allies.

First, I'll need to cast Modify Spell at 5th level, in order to make these two changes, and that means expending a spell slot. It thus only takes one minute to cast, at least. At the end of that minute, I immediately (as a reaction) cast Create Spell, consuming some 1000 g rod or wand or something. To complete the process, I need to concentrate for one hour. Hopefully my day is uneventful - we're between adventures at the moment - and so I finish my hour without incident. Now, within the next ten minutes I start Scribe Spell.

Now, ritual casting still counts as casting, so I think I can actually complete this process even if I ritually cast Scribe Spell - as long as I've started within 10 minutes of finishing Create Spell, I should be ok.

This is a 3rd level spell, so I'll need to spend 150 gold and 6 hours in order to complete the Scribe Spell... spell. Or, 6 hours and 10 minutes because it's a ritual (granted, Vodalos is a Scribe Wizard, so make those 6 hours into 6 minutes, but we'll ignore that for now).

So, ignoring the subclass, that means that we've got to spend 1150 gold and 7 hours and 11 minutes, and two 5th level spell slots. But now, we have Vodalos' Thunderball, a 3rd level spell that does 8d6 Thunder damage to creatures within a 20-foot-radius sphere or half as much on a successful Dex save, and which ignores any allies of the caster.

I am slightly conflicted. This system will allow Wizards to make objectively better spells (it also has the added benefit of letting a Scribe get spells of desirable damage types at each spell level,) but which still work more or less like they normally do.

However, you aren't going to be able to create any truly new or unique effects using this system. These aren't going to feel like truly brand-new spells, just upgrades to existing ones. And they will be pure upgrades in almost all cases.

Now, let's talk about the really insane thing:

Concentration has been a part of 5th Edition to prevent "buff stacking." Yes, you be invisible, or you can fly, or you can have all the benefits of Tenser's Transformation, but typically you won't be able to do all of these at once.

Not so anymore!

If I just chop the Concentration requirement off of Fly, Greater Invisibility, and Tenser's Transformation, I'll be able to have these crazy bonuses all running at once - and even if I get hit (which is much harder to do, what with being invisible and all) for 60 damage, which normally would be impossible for all but the most specially-designed wizards to successfully concentrate on, I'll still be trucking.

It's a big investment, to be sure, but this could genuinely be insane. In fact, even if I'm killed, if I've made our Paladin invisibly flying, they should still get the full duration of those spells.

This is one of those things that I expect will require iteration in design. Nothing else here, even the Ritual tag, feels totally overpowered, but I could see Concentration getting removed in a future version.

Ultimately, I don't think this totally fulfills the fantasy of coming up with entirely unique spells, but what it does do is allow players to alter enough aspects of existing spells to make something original to their own characters, while still remaining reasonably balanced (again, I think nixing concentration is way too powerful - maybe replace it with "damage can't interrupt your concentration on this spell" instead).

Mathing Out Graze and Cleave

 That warlock post bummed me out. So let's look at two of the many very cool Weapon Masteries.

Graze comes on Greatswords and Glaives, while Cleave comes on Greataxes and Halberds.

How much will these boost your damage? Let's break it down.

Let's star with Graze. Graze can be put on heavy melee weapons by Fighters. When you miss with a Graze weapon, you can deal damage equal to the ability score modifier you used to make the attack. This damage does not get increased in any way, and doesn't take the benefit of, say, a +1 weapon or damage from class features or spells. It's just that raw amount.

But, it's guaranteed, which is pretty damn good.

For the sake of sanity, let's imagine two level 5 characters - one Fighter, one Barbarian, and ignore subclass features. We'll assume each has an 18 in Strength.

Now, Graze of course gains value the harder a target is to hit, so scenarios with a tough enemy are going to favor this mastery. At level 5, we'll say that a lot of foes we face have an AC of, say, 14.

So, if we have a mundane Greatsword, we're attacking with a +7 to hit and dealing 2d6+4 when we hit, or 4d6+4 on a crit.

We now use my usual hit array, but we actually have a damage value for missing.

Miss Damage: 4

Hit Damage: 11

Crit Damage: 18

We hit on a roll of 7 or higher, and we crit on a 20.

Miss (1-6) 30%, Hit (7-19) 65%, Crit (20) 5%

Average Total Before Graze: 7.15 + 0.9, or 8.05

Average After Graze: 8.05 + 1.2, or 9.25

This then becomes 16.1 before Graze and 18.5 with Graze when we use our second attack. In both cases I believe it's approximately a 15% increase in damage.

Now, let's do this as a Barbarian.

The only real distinction is that the hit and crit will now get 2 extra damage, from raging.

So, our hit damage is now 13 and our crit damage is 20.

Average Total Before Graze: 8.45 + 1, or 9.45 average damage.

Average Total With Graze: 9.45 + 1.2, or 10.65

With two attacks, we get 18.9 versus 21.25, with an average boost in damage by about 12%

    Now, let's look at Cleave. We'll assume that there are now two creatures with 14 AC here, standing near one another.

The damage of the cleave attack is more or less the opposite - the secondary creature takes all aspects of your damage except the ability modifier. In this case, that means we'll be rolling the die and adding our rage bonus for our Barbarian.

The cleave attack does not take a bonus action, but it can still only happen once a turn (somehow this feels like it pairs really well thematically with Great Weapon Master, even if it kind of means the same thing flavor-wise, but in two different expressions).

We've also got a different weapon die, but the hit array will at least be the same.

Fighter:

Average Main Hit Damage: 10.5

Average Main Crit Damage: 17

Average Cleave Hit Damage: 6.5

Average Cleave Crit Damage: 13

Average Main Damage Per Attack: 6.825 + 0.85, or 7.675

Average Cleave Damage Per Attack: 4.225 + 0.65, or 4.875

    So, our average total damage per turn without Cleave is 15.35. With Cleave it becomes 20.225. That's a 31% increase in damage.

Barbarian:

Average Main Hit Damage: 12.5

Average Main Crit Damage: 19

Average Cleave Hit Damage: 8.5

Average Cleave Crit Damage: 15

Average Main Damage Per Attack: 8.125 + 0.95 or 9.075

Average Cleave Damage Per Attack: 5.525 + .75, or 6.275.

    So, our average total damage per turn without Cleave is 18.15, and our average with Cleave becomes 24.425, which gives us a 34% increase in damage.

Ok, so that seems to reinforce my initial guesses. The Barbarian, getting to add its Rage bonus to the cleave, winds up getting a little more bang for its buck out of it, while losing that bonus on Graze makes it less of an increase for them (even if, at this level, they're outdamaging the Fighter - again we're ignoring lots of factors).

I think it's also appropriate that in both cases, the damage boost of Cleave is significantly higher. The reason for this is simple: any time you're attacking something on its own or in groups, Graze will have some relevance. But if a monster is either encountered alone or just happens not to be next to one of their monster allies, Cleave isn't going to do anything for you.

Cleave definitely increases martials' ability to help clear out large groups of enemies. And especially at early levels, you will be able to take down a lot of kobolds.

    OH! I MISSED SOMETHING!

Cleave only triggers if you hit a target with the main hit.

Our chance to not hit at all during our turn is our miss chance times our miss chance (unless we action surge as a fighter, in which case it's our miss chance to the fourth power... er, tesseracted?) That then means that the... not inverse, but the, um... the "1 minus that amount" value becomes our chance to attempt our cleave. So in our scenario, with two attacks, we have a 9% chance to not hit at all, which means that 91% of the time we're going to hit at least once, and so we need to multiply our cleave values by .91.

I'm too lazy to do this now, but it does mean that we're getting slightly less value out of Cleave than I calculated above.

Still, I think this shows that if you want something that will absolutely always be useful at least a bit, Graze is great. And if you're a high-enough level fighter, consider getting both of them on a single weapon!

Converting my Hexblade Warlock to the PHB Playtest 5 Version

 The Warlock is the most radically redesigned class in the One D&D playtest so far, and I'll be honest, while I love the way they've redesigned Pact Boons (mainly the folding-in of several invocations and particularly the Hex Warrior feature of the Hexblade into the Pact of the Blade, more or less) the conversion of them to half-casters-but-you-can-still-cast-high-level-spells-in-this-complicated-way feels not just overly complex but also potentially undercuts the fantasy of the class.

I actually settled on the idea that if they want to make Warlocks conventional spellcasters, they should just give them full spellcasting like a Wizard or Sorcerer, but let's walk back and take the new version on its own merits.

And the best way to do that, I think, is to use a character I've actually played. While my original character was a Great Old One Warlock, the character I played through Descent into Avernus and hit my highest watermark (outside of one-shots) for character level is Old Knox (a version of which has actually become a character in the novel I'm writing).

Old Knox is a Half-Elf Hexblade Warlock with the Sage background. Despite being a Hexblade, he's actually got Pact of the Chain.

Rather than going through everything here, as I did on the conversion of my Eldritch Knight Fighter, what I'm looking to do is instead to figure out what his spellcasting capabilities would be, and what invocations he could have.

So, let's look at him as he currently stands:

Old Knox is wearing a shield and half plate. The shield he still only gets from being a Hexblade, but the half plate will now grace any warlock who want it and can afford it.

Setting aside those he gets from his Staff of Frost, Old Knox knows the following spells:

Cantrips: Eldritch Blast, Mage Hand, Minor Illusion, Prestidigitation

1st level: Armor of Agathys, Find Familiar (through Pact of the Chain), Hex

2nd level: Shatter, Suggestion

3rd level: Blink, Fly, Remove Curse, Summon Shadowspawn, Thunder Step

4th level: Charm Monster

5th level: Danse Macabre, Synaptic Static

6th level: Mental Prison

7th level: Finger of Death

    Ok, so that's a total of 2 mystic arcana, 12 spells known (not counting Find Familiar, as we don't "know it" except through our Pact Boon) and 4 cantrips. You'll noticed I loaded up on a lot of 3rd level spells, and I believe swapped out several when I leveled up, which is why I have so many at that level and relatively few at 2nd level.

In the new version, at level 14, I can have 11 spells known. Ok, so I'm losing one, but before we pick which one, we also need to address some other aspects here.

At level 14, I have 4 1st level, 3 2nd level, 3 3rd level, and 1 4th level spell slot.

That means that I can't have Danse Macabre or Synaptic Static "known," but will need to get these as Mystic Arcanum options if I want them.

Ok, so we strike those from the spells known and we now actually have one free option.

Actually, we also get another free option, because we automatically know Hex. So we've got two free spells.

So, in order to have all of our higher-level spells, we need to spend 4 eldritch invocations to get mystic arcana for those spells.

However, we cannot have both Danse Macabre and Synaptic Static, as these are the same level.

Ok, so let's replace Synaptic Static with Fireball (same damage, lower spell slot) and now we have used up one of those two freed-up spells known. Danse Macabre, Mental Prison, and Finger of Death each cost an invocation. But now we kinda-sorta have our spells back.

At level 14, we have 6 eldritch invocations. 3 of these are spent on mystic arcanum to give us those three spells. That leaves us with three left.

Old Knox currently has 6 invocations, but mystic arcanum does not require investment in these, so all six are in use for other things.

Those things are Agonizing Blast, Repelling Blast, Gift of the Ever-Living Ones, Tomb of Levistus, Trickster's Escape, and Maddening Hex.

Now... um, yeah, there's no way to have all of these. I guess I'd keep Agonizing Blast and Repelling Blast, and drop all but... I guess Trickster's Escape? No, wait, I can just learn Freedom of Movement with my last open spell known and drop that. So, instead, I'll keep Tomb of Levistus, I guess.

Ok, now let's go back and think about spell slots.

Currently, Old Knox has 3 5th-level slots, but can cast Freedom of Movement for free once a day, as well as Mental Prison and Finger of Death. With a single short rest, he can get off 6 5th level spells a day.

The new version gives him a total of 11 slots per day, but 4 of these are 1st level and thus can only be used on Hex or Armor of Agathys - both spells that I like to upcast to 5th level, honestly.

We can use our second level slots on Shatter and Suggestion, which we can do a total of 3 times, or we can upcast Armor of Agathys (Hex doesn't really benefit from 2nd level slots).

If I want to cast any 3rd level spells, I can technically cast it one additional time using my 4th level slot, but only if I don't get any short rests - in the latter case, I get more chances to cast these spells at a higher level.

I am high enough level to upcast Summon Shadowspawn at 4th level, but only because I just got the ability to do so at level 13 - while I would have been able to cast it in such a way to give my monstrosity two attacks per turn at level 7 using the old system, now I can't until mid tier 3.

So...

Guys, this does not work. Yes, this is a character built on the old system, and I might have designed him differently and chosen different spells if I were building him on the latest playtest version. I probably would not have picked up those high level spells and instead have focused on... well, some of the defensive things I got in the old version.

But if we compare this to the kind of unmitigated excitement and joy I felt converting my Fighter to the new version, this demonstrates that I really, really don't agree with the direction they've taken the Warlock in the current playtest.

I don't know how long it will take to see the designers' reactions to feedback. We're not even getting the survey for this packet for likely a couple weeks, and that survey will be open for a while.

I don't want to make the mistake that people on the internet always do and say that my opinion is the obviously correct one, but as much as I love some of the ideas around the pact boons that they've come up with for Warlocks, I really, really hope they don't commit to this mess of a spellcasting system.

I think you could solve Pact Magic the following way:

Just make it recharge on a long rest and give you somewhere between twice and three times as many spell slots. Keep it limited to 5th level slots, with Mystic Arcanum (not as an invocation, but as a free feature) covering your 6th, 7th, 8th, and 9th level slots.

Getting rid of the scaling spell slots ruins spells like Hex and Armor of Agathys, and Summon Shadowspawn.

Making Warlocks traditional full casters could solve a lot of these problems, and I think is honestly the best compromise solution. Indeed, this would even open up the possibility of having, for example, Summon Shadowspawn scale up all the way to 8th level (don't waste your 9th level slot to get 1 more damage per hit).

Full caster Warlocks might need nerfs, but I think testing them out at least in this structure would be warranted. I don't know if you'd need to go after Eldritch Blast or something else.

But I just do not in the least like this half-caster structure for the Warlock, and I hope they change it.

Does PHB Playtest 5 Balance Firearms for 5E?

 I remember when I went on a two-week exchange to France my junior year of high school. we spent the first week in a town in the Loire valley. It was February of 2003, and there was a kind of crazy cultural tension between America and France. After 9/11, the Bush administration had swiftly launched our invasion of Afghanistan, but in a broadening of the "War on Terror," the administration also made it clear that they wanted to go into Iraq and depose Saddam Hussein. Today, the Iraq war is almost universally recognized as a misadventure, but it certainly felt in America at the time that if you were skeptical about its merits (as I and my family were) you were in a minority. However, outside the US, some of our allies were willing to express doubts.

Chief amongst them were the French, and this led to some baffling political theater, which included renaming "French Fries" in the Congress cafeteria "Freedom Fries," as those who were behind the war saw this skepticism as a betrayal - or at least wanted to paint it that way.

Now, the war had not started yet, but it seemed (and proved to be) inevitable when I did my short visit to France. I had been there before, as I have some family in Paris (my great-uncle on the Jewish, Hungarian side of the family was either in medical school or had become a doctor there during World War II, and his French wife's family hid him from the Nazis during the occupation, and he remained there with his family after the war until he died in the late 1990s). Anyway, I was studying French in high school, and took part in this trip because it seemed like a cool opportunity.

We were paired with French kids of our age, and lived at their homes and went to their schools. When I went to my counterpart's I believe history class, the teacher asked us about life in America. He asked me how many guns I owned. I told him zero. He laughed and clarified that he meant how many guns did my family own, and again, I had to emphasize that, yes, I was an American, but no, we didn't keep guns in the house. Indeed, as far as I knew, none of my friends had guns in their houses either.

This long preamble is to give some context. I'm not a gun person. I don't really intend to ever own a gun. My dad did marksmanship as his high school sport, but I don't think he ever actually owned a firearm. I've never touched one.

But our country has a gun problem, and that problem is so pervasive that a high school teacher in France could not seem to believe that we weren't all, to the very last citizen, loaded for bear. And so I can feel a great deal of empathy for those who, in their escape into fantasy, want to escape from the very idea of firearms.

That being said, I also like to mix up my genres.

One D&D (yeah, believe it or not, this is about D&D) has taken the statistics for "Renaissance-era" firearms and added them to the core weapon options for the new version of 5th Edition. The statistics, other than adding the Weapon Mastery feature like all other weapon types, are unchanged from how they are found in the Dungeon Master's guide. However, the clear intent here is that players who wish to use firearms should, by default, be able to pick these two options - the Pistol and the Musket - when they're building their characters, and that we should be able to assume that these weapons exist in most D&D worlds.

So, if we are taking that as given, let's actually see: How do these weapons stand up compared to other ranged weapon options?

Modern and Futuristic weapons are not included here, so on the surface, all of these weapons are using a single damage die, meaning that they won't do a ton more damage than other weapons (of the default weapon options, only the Greatsword and Maul use multiple damage dice, and they deal the highest average damage of any weapon type).

The Pistol is a martial ranged weapon. It has the Ammunition and Loading properties, and has a range of 30/90. It deals 1d10 piercing damage and has the Vex property. It weighs 3 lbs and costs 250 gold.

You'll notice that this price point is very high - among the 2014 weapon options, the most expensive weapon is the Hand Crossbow, which costs 75 gold, so we're talking a little over three times as much. But if we assume that our player is simply picking this as a "martial weapon" at character creation and then holding off for a +1 option later on, which they're just going to get as a treasure drop, we might not care so much about that.

The pistol does as much damage as a Heavy Crossbow, meaning it would be one of the highest-damage ranged options if not for the existence of the Musket, which we'll talk about afterward.

The Pistol is also notable as one of only a few one-handed ranged weapons. While the Ammunition property will usually mean you still need a free hand to reload it, even if you have a way to ignore the Loading property, this could still be a good option for a hybrid spellcaster, giving you a free hand for somatic spell components when you aren't reloading - though with two-handed weapons, you generally only need to actually hold it in two hands if you're in the act of firing it. Really, this might just be niche like if you're an artificer with repeating weapon, you can put that infusion on this and then use a shield in the off hand.

Two really big downsides present themselves with the Pistol.

The first is simply the Loading property. Now, as it stands, we don't know if the Gunner feat from Tasha's Cauldron of Everything will be present in the 2024PHB. Loading as a property is designed to make these weapons less usable with the Extra Attack feature, but there are also feats that overcome that to allow you to make these weapons your primary armament. Crossbow Expert removes the loading property for all crossbow weapons. Gunner does this for firearms (though not, technically, Reload, which shows up on more advanced firearms in the DMG).

Now, Gunner from Tasha's should still be available for you given One D&D's backwards compatibility, but if you're in a group that treats the new Core Rulebooks as a fully new edition, and you have a DM who wants to stick only to the newest version of the game, you might find that this becomes a dealbreaker. That is, though, only assuming that they don't add Gunner or a similar feat to the 2024PHB. Given that I think this decision to add renaissance firearms to the PHB was a relatively recent one, I think it's highly possible they will.

So, just as if you were going to be a Crossbow Expert, you might choose to invest a Feat in Gunner or its equivalent to make these weapons viable.

However, the next issue is that the Pistol has a very short range. To fire within the normal range of the weapon, you'll need to do so while within the standard movement speed of 30 feet, meaning that you'll need to get closer to your foes than you might want to be as a ranged character.

This is less of a deal-breaker, I think, but certainly places limits on you, and may put you in a position where you need to begin a fight with some dash actions to get in range - while someone with a Longbow is needling foes with arrows from a block away.

This, too, can be remedied by picking up the new Sharpshooter feat, and if you pick up both this and Gunner, these will add up to a +1 bonus to your Dexterity modifier, meaning you aren't falling behind too far.

However, unlike other ranged weapons, the long range for firearms is only 3 times the short range, as opposed to 4 times, so even at long range, your limit is only 90 feet. That's going to cover you in most cases, but it's conceivable that you can have some fights on large maps where you're hitting that range limit.

The Musket is also a martial weapon, and has the Ammunition, Loading, and Two-Handed properties, and a range of 40/120. It deals 1d12 piercing damage, and has the Slow mastery. It weighs 10 lbs and costs 500 gold.

Now, here's something interesting: the Musket is not Heavy. That means that Small character can still use it unimpeded. What I don't understand is how the Musket, which weighs 10 lbs, is not Heavy, while the Longbow, which weighs 2lbs, is Heavy. Surely what we mean here is not heavy, but bulky? Even the pistol weighs more than the Longbow.

Longbows are actually enormous in real life - some are about six feet long - and you could imagine why a Halfling might struggle to shoot one. But I digress.

The Musket has higher damage and a slightly better range than the pistol. The higher price is, I think, usually going to be irrelevant as it is for the Pistol (assuming, of course, that players will be able to select them as free starting equipment - and to be fair, if you now look at the Fighter's starting equipment, you don't get to just choose any old martial weapons - it specifies a Light Crossbow and either a Greatsword or Longsword and Shield).

In fact, I might argue that the price of these weapons should be brought closer in price to the other options - I don't think that price in gold should be a balancing factor, as DMs will not always be consistent in how much gold you're getting, and on top of that, ideally the weapons themselves should be balanced.

Thanks to the different masteries, these two guns can play different rolls - though given Fighters are the most likely to be able to make use of them, and Fighters can learn to swap these masteries out, there's a bit more flexibility.

However, the Musket will be a little better for characters who want to keep foes at bay - between the 40-foot standard range and the ability to slow your foes, you can more easily kite a target. The Pistol, by contrast, seems built more for damage-dealing, taking advantage (literally) of Vex to keep striking more consistently.

I can actually imagine a kind of melee-gunslinger who can easily fight in melee with their pistol. In this case, you don't even truly need Sharpshooter, and you're more of a melee fighter with a 30-foot reach. Honestly, that doesn't seem too bad compared with someone fighting with a Glaive or other polearm - though again, this requires at least one feat.

Fighters who use the Musket can swap Push onto it with Weapon Adept, which can be very powerful, though you're more likely to push it out of your own normal weapon range than you would with a Heavy Crossbow.

I think my conclusion here is that these weapons are only really superior in their damage dice - but I also don't think that those dice make a huge difference. All things being equal, I think I'd rather have a d10 weapon with a 100 foot range than a d12 weapon with a 40-foot range, especially if I can get the former for a tenth the price.

I think I'd be open to changing the statistics of these weapons to put them in greater balance with the other ranged options, but I also think that they've created enough nuance here that they are both appealing but also not so appealing that they'll be mandatory.

A Longbow is still the best no-fuss ranged weapon in the game (not counting the Modern and Futuristic firearms) and will be the go-to choice for a lot of Rangers and Dexterity Fighters.

But as a DM, if I have players who use ranged weapons, I'm definitely going to be tossing magic Muskets and Pistols into the mix, and I'll have NPCs use them.

If anything, I think they're a little underpowered and overpriced. But none of them are so underpowered that they become a pure RP choice, like the Blowgun or Sling.

Weapon Mastery and Barbarian/Fighter Builds

 Weapon Mastery was hyped a bit in the run-up to the 5th playtest packet for One D&D, but honestly, it's one of those things that gets cooler the more I think about it.

We have yet to see how Monks will work - they're the last remaining class whose first revisions we have yet to see - but we can at least comment on these two.

While Fighters can learn to swap out these masteries, we'll be building around the default ones to accommodate Barbarians and, later, Monks.

Let's go through the broad archetypes of weapon loadouts for these two classes. In melee, Barbarians and Fighters have similar options, though I think Barbarians will like to dual-wield more given their Rage bonus and the Fighter's extra attacks, the latter of which dilute the additional damage of a single other strike.

Strength-based builds come in what I'll call four varieties, which Fighters and Barbarians both might use. These are:

Dual Wield

Sword-and-Board

Great Weapon

Long-Range Polearms

Barbarians are locked into using Strength builds due to Rage, but Fighters can also go for Dexterity builds. These come in the following forms:

Dextrous Duelist

Dextrous Dual Wield

Marksman

Ok, with those as the archetypes we're going to look through, let's pick what masteries will be most appealing.

Dual Wield:

A dual-wield build focuses on light weapons. There are two weapon masteries that the Light property makes possible, and another that can go on any weapon. These three properties are Slow, Nick, and Vex.

Here's what's really interesting: I don't think you need to have Nick on both weapons in order to gain its benefit. Given that this property only affects your off-hand attack, you can probably only worry about having a Nick-capable weapon for your off-hand. The only martial weapon with Nick is the Scimitar, which has the highest damage die at 1d6.

For our main-hand weapon, our two best options are the Shortsword and the Handaxe. Oddly, the Handaxe, despite being a simple weapon, is almost strictly superior to the martial Shortsword, given that it has the thrown property while otherwise having the same statistics.

So, I think Handaxe and Scimitar is probably your best bet here, unless you hate slashing damage.

Sword-and-Board:

Here, we want a one-handed melee weapon, but that's our only real requirement. This rules out masteries that require a two-handed weapon, and effectively any heavy weapons with one very interesting exception.

Actually, let's cover that exception now: you can use a Lance in one hand if you're also mounted. This will do more damage than other one-handed melee weapons. The Lance has the Topple mastery, which we can also get on other one-handed weapons, so we'll just fold it in as a special case.

Ok, so now we can talk about other properties we can get. While some could be swapped around by a Fighter, we're only going to look at the standard masteries of weapons we can use. These include Slow, Nick, Vex, Sap, Flex, and Topple. (Interestingly, while Push can be put on versatile weapons, none actually have it inherently.)

So, then, which of these are the most appealing?

If we're using a shield, we might be eager to focus on our protective, defensive capabilities, which means we might like something like Sap. For that, we'd take a Mace, Flail, or Morningstar. Of the three, the Mace is strictly worse than the Flail, as it does less damage while being otherwise more or less the same.

If our goal is not strictly avoiding damage, we might instead want more battlefield control. In these cases, we might go for Topple or Slow. Topple, on a success, will likely inflict a more grievous condition, but can be saved against. Our Topple options are the Battleaxe and the Trident, while our Slow options are the Club, Javelin, and Whip. Notably, the Slow melee weapons are all lower in damage. The Whip does also give us reach, but it and the Club are both only d4 weapons. So, for this, I think the natural choice would be to go for the Battleaxe or Trident, and the latter is generally slightly better, due to the fact that it can also be thrown.

Note here that Lances will actually come with a lot of benefits, and become the best one-handed option, but only if you're fighting from a mount. In this case, the Lance becomes a reasonable alternative to the Trident, and pulls ahead of the Battleaxe.

Now, if we want to maximize our damage, perhaps to balance out the sacrifice from using our off-hand for a shield, Vex or Flex are our two best options. Flex is found on the Quarterstaff, Longsword, War Pick, and Warhammer. The Quarterstaff has lower damage than the others, so we'll generally want to pick from one of the three other options, which conveniently also give us one option of each of the three main weapon damage types, so choose the one you like best. For Vex, our options are the Handaxe, Shortsword, and the Rapier. The latter deals more damage, but the former has the thrown property, so this depends very much on whether you are willing to do slightly less damage for the ability to throw your weapon. The Shortsword winds up being the loser here, as aside from its different damage type, the Handaxe, despite being a simple weapon, is actually strictly better, with the same properties and then thrown in addition.

Nick is irrelevant to us given that it's only for dual-wielding.

Great Weapon:

The idea of this fighting loadout is to use the highest-damage melee weapons in the game.

Here, we want to maximize the damage we deal with the heaviest weapons. The highest-damage-potential melee weapons are still the Greataxe, Greatsword, and Maul.

The Greataxe falls slightly behind due to the fact that 2d6 does slightly higher average damage than 1d12 (basically because its lowest roll is a 2, rather than a 1) but this also gives you the Cleave mastery. This bonus attack benefits someone who has lots of bonuses to their damage outside of their Strength, and is diluted, like dual-wielding, by a class that already does more attacks. So, I'd say Barbarians are more likely to favor Greataxes.

Meanwhile, Greatswords have the Graze property, which allows you to deal your Strength modifier (interestingly, the very thing that Cleave doesn't) to the target even on a miss. This will be good against targets with high ACs, like bosses.

And then, Mauls have Topple.

This one's kind of a situational thing. Cleave is amazing when it can actually do something. Graze is a wonderful way to feel like you're always contributing something. I don't think there's a right answer here. Mauls will work equally for both, but I'd say Cleave slightly favors Barbarians while Graze slightly favors Fighters (by level 18, you could miss four times in a row and still deal 20 damage to a target).

Long-Range Polearms:

If we're looking to make use of Reach weapons, we have actually a fair number to choose from. Glaives, Halberds, Lances, Pikes, and Whips.

The masteries, then, that we get to pick from are Graze, Cleave, Topple, Push, and Slow.

The Glaive/Halberd choice here directly parallels the Greatsword/Greataxe discussion, but I will say that if you go with Polearm Master, Graze (from the Glaive) will shine a little more on your bonus action attack given that the damage die is so low anyway - you were mainly there for the Strength bonus anyway.

For battlefield control, the other three masteries are each on one weapon. Before we continue, though, we need to remember that Slow is just on the Whip, which is probably not what we're going for with this build, and probably instead using it more in a sword-and-board situation. The Lance gives us Topple and the Pike gives us Push, so whichever you think will be more useful to you, you can pick it. I will say, though, that with our longer reach, Push might wind up being more useful, as we can really hold off a foe this way while remaining safe. Indeed, Push can be very good with the "brace" opportunity attacks you get with Polearm Master, which you probably are getting if you want to play this way.

Dextrous Duelist:

We're now looking at melee-dexterity-fighters. The Dex Duelist is going to be fighting with a finesse weapon, but is not dual-wielding, and likely instead has a shield.

A lot of the same considerations from our Sword-and-Board discussion is relevant here, but now we need to only fight with finesse weapons.

Once again, Nick weapons are irrelevant here. But among one-handed finesse weapons, we can also get Vex and Slow.

If we want Vex, our options are Rapiers and Shortswords. The only thing Shortswords have over Rapiers is that they are light weapons, but if we're using a shield, we don't need that, so Rapiers become the clear option if we want Vex.

The only alternative is getting Slow with the Whip. This also has reach, and is actually a very solid choice if you want to use the range and slow effect for battlefield control, but your damage will definitely suffer, dealing 2 less damage on average per hit

Dextrous Dual-Wield:

Once again, we want to use an off-hand weapon with Nick, but this time we need it to be a Finesse weapon, which cuts Sickles and Light Hammers out of the conversation. What's left here are Daggers and Scimitars. Again, daggers can be thrown, so they could be a viable (and classic) option for a "main gauche" weapon, and only deal an average of 1 damage less than Scimitars, so it's actually a pretty viable option.

For our main hand, though, the other light finesse weapons all have Vex. These are... let me check my notes here... just Shortswords. So... yeah, you're going to use a Shortsword.

As a note, technically you could swap these around - I think you only need one or the other light weapon to have Nick to benefit from it, so you could have a Scimitar in the main hand and a Shortsword in the off-hand, but given that Vex can activate multiple times a turn, I think it's best to have that on your main hand weapon.

Marksman:

So, now we come to ranged weapons. While there are a lot of options for ranged weapons, there are only a few masteries that are associated with them, and I think your choices are going to be more about the other properties.

Ranged weapons only have Vex, Slow, and Push. All of these are relevant to ranged characters - Vex will, of course, translate to hitting more often, but Slow and Push will both potentially make it easier to keep enemies at range and preserve your safe position.

However, I'd say that Push is more powerful here, given that, as a ranged character, you don't have to chase the target to keep pushing them, and if you're trying to set enemies back, you can get more with multiple attacks.

The only weapon with Push on it natively is the Heavy Crossbow. This is a decent option, but remember that you'll need to invest a feat in it to make sure you can shoot this more than one time per turn due to the Loading property. Crossbow Expert will open up a lot here.

If you don't want to commit to the Heavy Crossbow but still want that battlefield control from Slow, you have a lot more options: Light Crossbows, Slings, Longbows, and Muskets. Among these, the Musket does the most damage with 1d12 - the highest of all ranged weapons - but it also has the Loading property. If you can pick up the Gunner feat, which has not yet been confirmed to appear in the new PHB (though theoretically you should be able to pick it up from Tasha's given backwards compatibility,) this becomes pretty great, though.

Bear in mind, though, that firearms actually have fairly short ranges - the regular range on a Musket is only 40 feet, so you might also need to invest in Sharpshooter to fire normally at its long range, which is 120 feet.

The Light Crossbow does less damage than a Musket, and would need the Crossbow Expert feat to ignore its loading property. The Sling does less damage and has an even shorter range, but doesn't have Loading. But these are simple weapons, and naturally do lower damage. Among the martial weapons that have Slow, the only other option is the Longbow. The Longbow deals less damage than the musket, but its range is far, far longer - in fact, its short range is longer than the Musket's long range. There's also no need to invest any feats to get it to work with Extra Attack.

Now, if we instead want to get Vex, we have other options. These include the Dart, Shortbow, Blowgun, Hand Crossbow, and Pistol.

For pure damage potential, the Pistol easily wins with 1d10 damage, but its range is also very short - only 30/90, and with the loading property, you need a feat.

But:

The Blowgun somehow manages to be worse in nearly every respect, with a normal range of only 25 feet and a damage die of... a d1. That is to say, it just does 1 plus your Dexterity modifier. Technically, you can hit farther targets than the Pistol, as it has a long range of 100, but you're looking at an average of 4.5 lower damage with each hit, and no feats that let you ignore loading here.

I have no idea why the Blowgun is a Martial weapon. It's barely a weapon at all.

That aside, let's look at Darts. Darts are thrown-only, letting you get a dagger-like effect but with Vex instead of Nick. This is a weird edge case that I honestly think could be ok for Rogues that take the Weapon Master feat, but probably doesn't make sense for most others. And you can have a lot less fuss and a better range with a Shortbow.

The Shortbow is probably the best no-fuss ranged vex weapon. But then we have the Hand Crossbow. This is the only ranged weapon with the light property, and while I don't know if there are still issues with whether you can dual-wield these even with Crossbow Expert (or if even ignoring the loading property still requires you to be able to draw another bolt) and the new version of the feat doesn't just let you fire the same hand crossbow, this is at the very least a way to have a melee/ranged mix.

So... um... what is our conclusion?

Basically, unless you have to cut out Heavy weapons, your best choices as a Ranged dex build are probably going to be the Longbow, the Musket, the Pistol, or the Heavy Crossbow, though only the firearms if you have access to the Gunner feat or some other way to ignore the loading property. The Hand Crossbow could also be a viable option for a dual-wielding ranged build, though we'll need to see if this receives more clarification (in fact, I think it's not the Loading property that creates problems for it, but just the Ammunition property). The Musket, Pistol, and Heavy Crossbow will all require feats to fully make use of them, so if you're averse to delaying maxing out your Dexterity, the Longbow will serve you well. But these other options can be very good as well (while Sharpshooter is also probably a must for all of these, you'll probably want to grab it as soon as possible if you're using Firearms so that you can get a decent range).

Now, as a note, the Fighter feat progression now lets you pick up a feat at level 5, right after getting one at level 4. As such, you could wait on Crossbow Expert or Gunner until level 5 and grab Sharpshooter at level 4 - and these two should combine to give you a total of +2 to your Dexterity, letting you nearly keep pace with other characters. There is one redundancy, as Crossbow Expert, Gunner, and the new Sharpshooter all prevent you from suffering disadvantage for shooting in melee, but each gives a lot of other important stuff.

    There is no doubt that the weapon mastery system has introduced a lot more nuance to picking your weapons. I'll be curious to see how mandatory the Weapon Master feat will be for non-Warrior martial classes. Vex seems like it would be insanely important for Rogues to get their hands on, as it would seriously enable Sneak Attack constantly. Paladins and Rangers are also probably going to want to invest in these if they can.

Now, we don't know how this system will interact with, for example, a Monk's unarmed strikes. If they don't, the Monk will probably want to still mostly use weapons for their actual attack action. Bladesinger Wizards, melee Bards, and Blade Warlocks will also likely want to take a look at this.

Presumably, Monks will still only get proficiency in Simple weapons, so we'll need to revisit these a bit to look at their options. Nick could actually be really useful assuming that Martial Arts still uses a bonus action for their unarmed strike. But we just don't know enough to comment on that just yet.

I will say, though, that imagining playing with these on a Fighter or Barbarian has got me excited. You can look to the previous post where I imagined how I'd do things on my level 12 Eldritch Knight Fighter, and it genuinely sounds insanely awesome.

Converting my Fighter to the One D&D Playtest Version

 The longest-played character I have is my Eldritch Knight Fighter, Jax Sardare, a blue dragonborn who is level 12.

Jax is built to be very hard to hit. He has the Defensive fighting style, and wears a set of adamantine plate and a +1 shield. This puts his AC at 22, but when a creature rolls a 22-26 on their attack roll, if he has a reaction, Jax will cast the Shield spell. Thus, until he's out of spell slots, he has an effective AC of 27.

At the point in the campaign when things sort of fell apart, between one player whose individual story was central to that of the campaign having to step away given that he had become a father and did not have the free time he used to and our DM taking on a lot of new work that made her too busy, we had been on a sort of tangent where we were dumped into the Nine Hells through a cursed portal that had stripped us of all of our gear (we were all literally naked when we landed in Avernus). We managed to rebuild a small collection of gear, which for me meant some chain mail, a shield, and a +1 Mace.

So, this dropped my AC to only 19, but I still had all my class abilities. I had a non-magical Flail as well.

Let's look at how we'd convert Jax to the new D&D system.

First off, he gets a free feat. Jax already has the Tough feat, which he likely would have taken as his 1st level feat. His other feats have been spent on ability score improvements (maxing out Strength with his level 4 and level 8 feats, and bumping Con up from 12 to 14 at level 6. I had assumed that Intelligence was going to be more important than it wound up being for an Eldritch Knight, so had prioritized it over Con, starting with a 14 in it. Charisma was 12, Wisdom was 11, and Dex was 10). With the level 12 feat freed up, I suspect he would have taken War Caster at level 12, which I'd intended to do before I realize I wanted higher HP as a higher priority. Despite being an Intelligence caster, the 1-point bonus would have allowed me to bump my Wisdom score to 12 and thus get a +1, so I might have gone with that.

So, with these, we get a Strength of 20, Dex of 10, Con of 14, Int of 14, Wis of 12, and Cha of 12. (I might have also chosen to boost Intelligence or Constitution instead of Charisma if I had made the character after the Tasha's rules around racial ability score bonuses were introduced, but I'm going to leave those for now).

While I never got to play him as such, I had converted him to a "Chromatic Dragonborn" from Fizban's Treasury of Dragons. But if we want to fully move forward into the One D&D version of him, we can try the most recent version of the Dragonborn Species.

So, right off the bat, we lose the Lightning immunity that you can get from the Chromatic Dragonborn, but gain a couple things.

He can now use his Breath Weapon in place of one of his three attacks on a turn. This deals 3d10 Lightning damage on a failed save with a DC of 14. That gives us 16.5 average damage compared to the 14 from the old breath weapon (2014 version) and becomes just one attack among many. It's also usable four times a day, compared to typically 2 per day with a single short rest.

Jax would also now have Darkvision.

Finally, Jax would be able to gain a fly speed of 30 feet for ten minutes once per long rest as a bonus action.

    So far, Jax is almost strictly better, and only possibly better if we have four or more short rests per day.

Now, let's take a look at his capabilities via his class.

We don't yet have the updated version of the Eldritch Knight, which I presume will be reprinted in the 2024PHB, but with the new version of the Fighter, we can take a look at a few things.

Fighters, as I looked at with the post I made on Fighters, pretty much didn't lose anything with the changes made here. Indomitable is far more powerful than it was, and Jax would, by this level, have access to Weapon Mastery and Weapon Expert.

The one true loss, though, is that he can no longer use Action Surge to cast two leveled spells in a turn. Action Surge is now limited to a set number of actions (including attack) which means no double-Shatter. To be fair, I only did that I think once in the whole campaign, given that I was pretty conservative with spell slots to retain the chance to cast Shield, and mostly used my spellcasting feature for Green-Flame Blade and Booming Blade cantrips. Now, I also can't cast these twice with action surge, but typically I wouldn't anyway, as I think the math only made it worth casting these cantrips thanks to War Magic if I couldn't trigger their secondary damage - one cast would allow the bonus action attack, and then I'd want to just make three normal attacks using the Attack action.

So, at this point, we just need to look at how Weapon Mastery and Weapon Expert would apply to his situation.

He has a +1 Mace and a nonmagical Flail. Interestingly, both of these weapons have the Sap feature.

This actually plays into his identity as a tank, as he'd be able to impose disadvantage on attacks with his weapons. This should work even when hitting a creature with the attack that is part of Green-Flame Blade and Booming Blade.

With only two weapons on him, he's actually got three other masteries to spare. His previous weapon was a +1 Battleaxe, so he might have kept that mastery active in the vain hope he could get back to the Prime Material Plane and get his stuff back (even if that campaign is over, I'd love to do a quick one-shot where we at least get to not be in the Nine Hells anymore).

Now, what might I replace Sap with on these weapons? I'm likely to be using the Mace, given its magic property - 1d6+1 is the same average damage as 1d8, but especially in the outer planes, having a magic weapon to overcome resistances is very important (not to mention being able to hit more often).

Unfortunately, neither weapon actually qualifies for a lot of these masteries. In fact, the only alternative either of them get is Slow. I think Sap is usually going to be better than that in most cases, so I'm not really inclined to swap it out in either case. At the next level, I'd slap Slow on there as the second mastery - and swapping between these makes sense, as both are limited to one effect on a target per turn.

Let's imagine that I got my +1 Battleaxe back, though.

Natively, the battleaxe comes with Topple. That's actually pretty good, especially in a group with a Monk and a Paladin, who would enjoy the advantage bestowed with the prone condition. The DC here would be 17.

The Battleaxe is also eligible to get Flex, Push, and Slow.

Of these, I think Push is the one that appeals to me the most. Especially given that, as a Fighter, I can potentially hit three times a turn, if I followed after each hit, I could push a Large or smaller monster back a full 30 feet, which would got a long way to protecting the party's Ranger, Cleric, and Warlock/Wizard. It would also let me push the targets into harmful AoEs - the aforementioned Warlock/Wizard could drop a Hunger of Hadar and I could shove the monster right into it.

Flex I generally think is underwhelming in damage - it's only an average increase of 1 damage - so I think if anything I'd be more likely to trade that out for other properties when possible. Slow could be good, but I think Push is more versatile.

And, if you successfully Topple a target, that's usually going to be better at slowing them than Slow.

I will also say that, to me, the mental image of the Battlemage-like Eldritch Knight is all about creating shockwaves in the earth as they swing their mighty weapon. Both Push and Topple fit that fantasy to a T, and even if these are available to non-magic Fighters, I'd definitely flavor this as some arcane, magical technique.

So, if you read the last post about my ambivalence about the design of the ranged Warlock, this post has given me the opposite feeling. I am freaking excited for this version of the Fighter. I want to play this so, so badly (though let me get my old weapon back, please!)

For a sword-and-board style of combat, I think that Topple and Push are probably my favorite masteries to pick up. Now, Weapon Adept allows you to put two new properties on a weapon, not merely preserving the original in addition to a single added one.

Therefore, I'll be fine as long as my weapon has the Versatile property, which is the common property that makes them eligible for both Push and Topple. This makes Battleaxes, Longswords, Tridents, and Warhammers eligible to work for me, as well as Quarterstaffs and Spears if I'm willing to use a lower damage die in exchange for some great magic bonus.

Among these, the Trident is actually the stand-out. This now does the same damage as the other martial versatile weapons, but has the Thrown property on top of that (it also has Topple inherently). While I think Bludgeoning is usually slightly better than Piercing in terms of resistances, both are less often resisted than Slashing. And, as an Eldritch Knight, I'm particularly adept at throwing weapons, as I can call it back to me with a bonus action if I have it Weapon Bonded.

Yeah, I want to play this so very badly.

EDIT: So... this might be busted, but...

Push works if I hit with the weapon, regardless of if that's part of the attack action.

Booming Blade deals an extra 2d8 thunder damage up front, but then also 3d8 thunder damage if the target moves before my next turn. Now, sure, this punishment damage only works if they move willingly, but it means I can kind of bully the target - Booming Blade, blasting them for 3d8+6, then knocking them back 10 feet. Now, if they want to attack me, they need to walk toward me and take 3d8 more thunder damage.

With PHB Playtest 5, What Are Warlocks?

 I wrote about my skepticism toward the new Warlock design in the recent playtest. My current hope is that there is some major rework of the latest design to address the issues I have with it, but let me talk about what those issues are, and then examine what it would look like to play the Warlock as presented in this UA.

The absolute biggest issue I have with the current system is that it makes it harder to feel like a true pure spellcaster, specifically in regards to the rate at which you get access to each level of spell.

Currently, Warlocks get a new spell level every other class level, which is the same as for the other pure spellcasters (Bards, Clerics, Druids, Sorcerers, and Wizards). The way this is achieved is different - you have a small number of spell slots that simply scale up as you level until they are 5th-level, and then you get a Mystic Arcanum every other level starting at 11, which lets you cast your one spell of 6th, 7th, 8th, and 9th each once a day - almost like a single spell slot of each of these but which can only be used for that one spell.

But let's set aside Mystic Arcanum for now and just focus on the Pact Magic spell level progression.

At level 3, your two 1st level Pact Magic slots become 2nd level slots. Any 1st level spells are now going to be cast at 2nd level if you use these slots, and you can get 2nd level spells. This continues until you hit level 9, at which point the slots become 5th level slots, and you just get a third and fourth slot, but don't upgrade their levels, when you hit later tiers of play.

Now, obviously, the biggest operative effect here is that you can pick up higher level spells as quickly as any class. Hunger of Hadar is a 3rd level spell, and you can grab it at level 5 while the Sorcerer is taking Fireball and the Wizard is taking Fly. All 3rd level spells, and each theoretically on the same power level.

The second operative effect here is that a Warlock really loves spells that scale up with higher level spell slots. While you might not always be able to pick Thunderwave up as a Warlock, if you do, this spell actually winds up always doing the same damage as Shatter - Thunderwave does 2d8, but when up-cast to 2nd level, it does 3d8. Shatter is natively a 2nd level spell, and does 3d8 thunder damage at its base power. Thus, once you're using 2nd level spells, these 1st and 2nd level spells are actually doing identical damage - the only differences are the shape, range, and secondary effects of those spells (a pushback for Thunderwave and disadvantage on saves from inorganic things for Shatter).

Generally, spell-scaling in D&D tends to fall slightly behind casting natively higher-level spells. There is no reason to cast Fireball at 9th level when you have access to Meteor Swarm, for example, as a 9th-level Fireball only does 14d6 damage, while a Meteor Swarm deals 40d6 total damage over a larger area. Warlocks, given that they don't even have the lower-level spell slots anymore, love to find spells that scale well with spell level - including, for example, the many "Summon" spells from Tasha's Cauldron of Everything, which get a big boost to damage when they hit even-numbered spell levels (admittedly this makes the fact that Pact Magic stops scaling at 5th level somewhat non-ideal for such spells, but it does mean that 3rd-level summon spells like Summon Fey, Summon Shadowspawn, and Summon Undead really benefit from this).

The new design practically reverses all of this. When it comes to spell slots, Warlocks will not actually get 5th level spell slots until level 17. They get to cast natively 5th-level spells as early as 9th level, but only through Mystic Arcanum. Upcasting becomes far more difficult - an Undead Warlock who has Summon Undead will have to wait until 13th level to upcast it as a 4th-level spell, whereas currently that happens for them when they hit level 7 - just over half that level.

Now, thankfully, you are still going to be able to cast natively high-level spells using Mystic Arcanum starting at level 5, but to do so, you need to engage in a complex system.

Let's say I want to cast Remove Curse. When I hit level 5, I only have 2nd level spells, but I also have Mystic Arcanum, which lets me now choose that as my only 3rd level spell I can cast. Cool. I have it, albeit only once a day, but I have it.

Now, I level up farther and eventually hit level 9. At this point, I want to grab Danse Macabre, which is a 5th level spell. I can now un-learn Remove Curse as a Mystic Arcanum to free up the invocation to get Danse Macabre, and then I can swap in Remove Curse as a known spell now that I have 3rd-level slots.

But I'm going to be doing this constantly over the course of my leveling experience - if I want to use my maximum-level spells, I'll need to trade out spells known and Mystic Arcanum invocations basically every other time I level up.

Now, yes, I also get a new Invocation nearly every two levels (2, 5, 7, 9, 11, 13, 15, and 17). But the lower-level Mystic Arcanum is probably going to feel "wasted" if I'm using it to get a spell I already have spell slots for in the first place.

On top of that, even if there are 9 Eldritch Invocations to get now, in order to wind up at level 17 with 6th, 7th, 8th, and 9th level spells the way you do now, you'll need to spend four of your nine to do so.

Now, to be fair, the Pact Boons in and of themselves have now incorporated some of the popular invocations of the past. Pact of the Blade now comes with Thirsting Blade for free (not to mention most of the important parts of Hex Warrior from the Hexblade patron). Pact of the Tome likewise gives you the equivalent of Agonizing Blast (with a rider that makes sure you can't/don't have to double down by actually taking Agonizing Blast). And between having access to the full Arcane spell list and the new uses for Mystic Arcanum, a lot of the "you can cast this one spell with a Warlock spell slot" invocations aren't necessary anymore. Thus, you could argue that you don't need so many invocations anymore.

But we can also take a wholly new perspective on this.

What if we just think of this Warlock as a wholly new class and take it on its own merits.

First things first, we now identify this as a half-caster class. Ok, cool. It now sits with Artificers, Rangers, and Paladins.

These classes generally focus more on repeatable, resource-neutral (not counting ammunition) standard activities - Paladins and Rangers focus on weapon attacks, while Artificers go 50/50 between weapons and cantrips as their default moves.

Warlocks were already kind of built that way. Between Eldritch Blast and the weapon-fighting of Pact of the Blade, Warlocks are doing their main thing each turn without expending any resources.

So, then, if we think of Warlocks as a half-caster class, how does that caster half supplement the other half? Paladins, for instance, get their auras, their smites, and a few other features that allow them to be great in combat while not having as martial a focus as Fighters or Barbarians (especially with the introduction of weapon mastery). Rangers, admittedly, have struggled with this, but they now play with some enhanced mobility and a lot of enhancements to their skills to be the kings of environmental exploration and traversal. Artificers are the masters of tool proficiency, and bring their item-enhancement capabilities to have mastery over gear and equipment.

In that context, if we start the Warlock from the perspective of a half-caster, we see that their special kit is getting limited access to higher-level magic, along with invocations that give them highly customizable utility.

And I think that that might actually wind up being a very cool class that could feel great to play...

If we didn't have the Warlock as it exists now.

See, the thing is, in my mind, the flavor of the warlock suggests that they have just as much magical proficiency as a Wizard or Sorcerer. The whole reason they were willing to make a pact in the first place - one that might even severely compromise them - is that they wanted to have access to the very heights of magic.

If a Warlock is standing around and feeling like the Wizard and Sorcerer are running circles around them when it comes to advanced magic, they're going to feel extreme buyer's remorse.

There are a couple of proposals I might suggest to resolve this:

Let's start conservatively:

Pact Magic's only real flaw was that at any given time, you have very few spell slots to cast with. Now, my interpretation of this, and how I think most people who like the current Warlock think of it, is to simply pick really solid concentration-based spells so that you can have one spell cast per combat that then carries you through it. A Barbarian typically only Rages once per combat, and a Warlock should be able to pick a spell that covers them for the rest of combat and possibly into multiple combats, then filling in their turns with Eldritch Blast or weapon attacks.

if we want to move Warlocks away from recovering things on short rests, we can solve both of these issues the same way: instead of getting 1 - 4 Pact Magic slots back on a short rest, we should let them get 2 - 10 spell slots back on a long rest. (The max number is open to debate - I could see it going as low as 6 or as high as 12.) These would still only scale to 5th level, and you'd need Mystic Arcanum to get your once-a-day 6th, 7th, 8th, and 9th level spells, but this lets Warlocks work similarly to how they did and also breaks the exploitations of coffee locks and gives the Warlock a chance to cast lots of spells in a climactic encounter.

The more radical design?

Just make Warlocks pure spellcasters, with a Spellcasting trait that works just like Bards, Clerics, Druids, Sorcerers, and Wizards.

Honestly, this is what the people who don't like Warlocks wanted in the first place. They want to feel like they've become just as adept at arcane magic as a Wizard, but via different means.

Now, this would require serious rebalancing. Many sacred elements of the class would need to be nerfed. I don't even know if you could let Eldritch Blast be as good as it is - the reason the class relies on this cantrip so much is its limited spellcasting.

But I think that if we can let the Colleges of Valor and Swords for Bards and the Bladesinger Wizard be fully-capable weapon-based combatants while still having the full access to their pure spellcasting ability, I see no reason why Warlocks can't be built from the ground up to effectively be this class-wide (with Eldritch Blast playing a similar role to weapon attacks).

And honestly, the more I think about it, the more I think this actually solves everyone's problems. It risks a bit of homogenization between the classes, to be sure, but as long as you keep the customization options of Pact Boons and Eldritch Invocations to give Warlocks their flavor, you now wind up addressing the biggest issues - both taking Warlocks off the short-rest reliance and letting them have the spell slots they need to cast lots of different and powerful spells.

And now, you just get rid of Mystic Arcanum entirely - there's no need if you're now getting those higher level spell slots.

If a nerf is needed to keep them from being too powerful (though, I'll be honest, I don't think they will be,) perhaps you get fewer Eldritch Invocations now - maybe as few as four. If you really want to soup up your Eldritch Blast, you're going to have to fully commit to it, and won't be able to get all the things you want until higher levels. The invocations might also be weakened as well - maybe Repelling Blast only works once per turn, or something like that.

I'm only throwing out these nerfs in the case that they feel an otherwise-unaltered Warlock with full spellcasting would be too powerful, but again, if we compare this to the melee subclasses for other pure spellcasters, I really don't think this change would make them any more powerful than they should be.

I suspect I'll write as much when the survey opens for this playtest packet.

The Warlock has always had a strong mechanical identity and a strong flavor identity, but those two identities haven't always really matched up. I think the changes in playtest 5 are nobly intended to address mechanical issues, but they do so by moving even farther away from the flavor identity of the class.

I want the new Pact Boons as they are (though I'm still skeptical of Intelligence or Wisdom warlocks) but I'd honestly rather just go back to Pact Magic and the old Mystic Arcanum as they stand than to use the new version of Warlock spellcasting.

Thankfully, I've felt that the designers have been very responsive to player feedback so far, and I think that if I am not in the minority with these opinions, we'll see some new takes on the class the next time they're ready to try testing it.

PHB Playtest 5: Odds and Ends

 Ok, we're in the home stretch here. The massive 50-page Unearthed Arcana that dropped yesterday brought five whole classes and the new weapon mastery system. But there are also a handful of other things to cover.

First, let's look at Feats.

This UA brings a few revised or new Epic Boons, the feats one can take at 20th level or beyond if your campaign is going into super overtime. There is also one standard, 4th-level+ feat.

Epic Boon of Dimensional Travel.

This feat is for Experts and Mages. It increases your choice of Dexterity, Intelligence, Wisdom, or Charisma by1. (Max 30)

Immediately after you take the Attack or Magic action, you can teleport up to 30 feet to an unoccupied space you can see.

    This is relatively simple. It essentially causes most in-combat turns to give you a free, no-action-required Misty Step. I think if you wanted to push this a little further, letting you choose to do this before or after your action could be cool. This will give you excellent mobility, and free teleportation could be very powerful. But is it flashy enough? I honestly don't even know what expectations to set for level 20. I think this is good, and I think it will be appealing. Actually, it's obviously good. The question is whether this will wow your fellow players at the table.

Epic Boon of Energy Resistance.

This feat is for Experts and Mages. It increases your choice of Constitution, Intelligence, Wisdom, or Charisma by 1. (Max 30)

You gain resistance to two different damage types from between Acid, Cold, Fire, Lightning, Necrotic, Poison, Psychic, Radiant, or Thunder. When you finish a long rest, you can meditate to change those choices.

Additionally, when you take damage of a type to which you have Resistance, you can use your Reaction to force another creature you can see within 60 feet of you that isn't behind Total Cover to make a Dex save (DC determined by the ability increased with this feat) or take 2d12 + your constitution modifier damage of the type that triggered it.

    So, I think the adaptability of the damage types is very nice, presuming your DM does enough foreshadowing to let you predict what kind of damage you're likely to face. ("Oh, we're going to the Caustic Labyrinth of Agathys? I might take Cold and Acid resistance.") The energy redirection is fun, though I think this has to be treated as the cherry on top rather than the main feature, given how often creatures (especially high-level ones) that deal certain types of damage are often resistance and immune to them. That's maybe focusing too much on, say, Dragons, so maybe I'm overestimating how much that will be impacted (and of course, you don't need to redirect it to the creature that damaged you in the first place - splash a little of that red dragon's fire breath onto their archmage ally).

Epic Boon of Irresistible Offense.

This feat is for Experts and Warriors. It increases your Strength or Dexterity by 1 (max 30).

The bludgeoning, piercing, and slashing damage you deal always ignores resistance.

Furthermore, when you roll a 20 on the d20 for an attack roll, you deal extra damage equal to the ability score increased by this feat. You can use this benefit only once per turn.

    So, we don't really have enough information to see how powerful this will be. Are +1 or other magical weapons going to still be doing B/P/S damage, or are they going to, as we've seen in some newer stat blocks, be dealing Force damage instead? In the current Monster Manual, very few things have resistance to nonmagical weapon damage, and by level 20 I sure hope your character has a magic weapon. So I really don't know whether this anti-resistance thing will be amazing or worthless.

    Now, let's look at the crit bonus. When I first read this I didn't see that you had to roll a natural 20, and thought it was just once a turn, which would be utterly bonkers powerful. But this also means that you can't benefit from other ways to increase your chance to crit, such as the Champion's Superior Critical or using "Hold Monster" to get an automatic crit. Still, when this goes off, 5% of the time, you're going to likely be dealing 23 or more extra damage on your crits. Technically that amounts to an increase of 1.15 damage per attack (it's a little lower due to the once-per-turn rider) but this will feel epic when you get off that one shot with your +2 pistol that's dealing 2d10+7+23, or 41 damage on average.

Epic Boon of Recovery.

This feat can be used by all class groups. It increases your Constitution by 1 (max 30)

When you would be reduced to 0 hit points, you can drop to 1 hit point instead and regain HP equal to half your Hit Point Maximum. Once you gain this benefit, you can't do so again until you finish a long rest.

When you take damage while you have 0 hit points, you can make a death saving throw instead of suffering a death saving throw failure.

    Now this, I think, might be the most epic of the ones here. Effectively, your HP has just expanded by 50%. On top of that, by this level, a DM is well within their rights to have monsters go for the killing blow and attack you when you're down (and getting you down will be harder given the first part.) But now, even if they're slashing the crap out of your unconscious body, you're still more likely to survive than not. If you are attached to a character and want to make it very, very hard for your DM to kill the character you're probably very invested in at this point, this is the epic boon for you.

Epic Boon of Speed.

This feat is available to Experts and Warriors. It increases your Dexterity score by 1 (max 30).

As a bonus action, you can Disengage. When you do so, you end the Grappled and Restrained conditions on you. Additionally, your speed increases by 30 feet.

    This does what it advertises, but on top of that, it also gives you a Freedom of Movement-like effect. This can be huge. Did you just get swallowed by the Tarrasque? You're level 20 - that's not outside the realm of possibility. With this boon, you can just bonus-action disengage to slip easily from the Tarrasque's mouth and back onto the battlefield, and then run far, far away. I think this is one of those boons that gives you a powerful ability that you'll really be grateful for in high-level play.

Epic Boon of the Night Spirit.

This feat is available to Experts and Mages. It increases your Dexterity, Intelligence, Wisdom, or Charisma by 1 (max 30).

When entirely in dim light or darkness, you can become invisible as an action. This condition ends after you take an action, bonus action, or reaction. While entirely within dim light or darkness, you have resistance to all damage except force, psychic, or radiant.

    This was a case where I read the first part and thought that was the main bit, but I think the second is the real benefit. Invisibility on-demand is nothing to sneeze at, but so many tough monsters at high level have blindsight or truesight that I think its utility will be a little underwhelming. However, depending on your campaign, you might very frequently get the benefit of the damage resistances, which covers a ton of damage.

    As a note, though, the current design for a lot of demon lords and other scary monsters does see their weapon attacks dealing Force damage, which this does not protect against. We'll have to see how things look in the new Monster Manual.

The final feat is Weapon Master, which we covered in the Weapons post when we started this UA, so I'll direct you there to check it out.

The work on Epic Boons is cool, but it only matters at all if taking a campaign to level 20 becomes something that works better in D&D. I think we could use more high-level published adventures. Currently, I believe that the only one that even hits tier 4 is Dungeon of the Mad Mage. The new DMG could also use some guidance on how to build adventures for parties that have the full suite of "Scry and Fry" spells at their disposal, which is where traditional dungeoneering kind of falls apart.

This concludes my overview of the largest playtest document we've gotten for this whole test. It's been a lot. I think rather than doing a conclusion post to summarize my thoughts, I'll just do a brief summary here and address things in regular posts moving forward.

Generally, I think that the Weapon Mastery system looks good and simple enough to implement, though it inarguably adds complexity to a game that is fairly complex. I don't think martial classes have fallen behind spellcasters in 5th Edition the way that they might have in earlier editions. Still, this is primarily a buff to the Warriors in particular, who might be more in need of a boost like this. We didn't see the Monk, which I assume means that it's in for some heavy revision, and perhaps if any Warrior needed something to jazz them up, it's them.

The Sorcerer and Wizard are both, I think, looking pretty good here. The use of spells-as-class features is something that is new and different to me, but I don't know that it's bad.

The Warlock I have the strongest opinion on. I love the new design of the pact boons, and in particular, I think that the Pact of the Blade is basically now fixed at this point. However, I'm deeply skeptical of this UA's implementation of Warlock spellcasting. It feels as if Warlocks have been demoted to half-casters, when previously they were just pure spellcasters with a different spellcasting rhythm. I think Warlocks should never feel like they're scrambling via Eldritch Invocations to keep up in terms of spell power (even if not the number of spells they can cast) with other Mages.

Still, overall, as has been the case with this whole playtest, my general impression has been good. I have very few doubts that I'll be getting these new core rulebooks and using them for future campaigns. I wish that the company that published them wasn't so shitty (most recently, for future readers, they evidently hired the actual, literal Pinkertons, which I didn't know still existed, to bust someone for having unreleased Magic cards) but I have a ton of respect for the actual game designers like Jeremy Crawford and Chris Perkins who work on D&D, and I think it's those people whose work is showing through on this.

The genuine intent here does seem to be to get D&D working the way the players want it to, and the team has shown a responsiveness to player feedback that I think is commendable.

PHB Playtest 5: Wizards

 Appropriately, I took a break from writing these posts to play my Wizard in our Wildemount D&D game. The session was fairly mechanics-light, mostly dealing with plot and character stuff and no monsters to fight, but it put me in that headspace.

Wizards are the sort of ultimate archetypal spellcaster, and while I'd say that the class doesn't get reworked as extensively as others (especially the Warlock) there are some changes to examine here.

Let's delve in!

At 1st level, Wizards get Spellcasting and Wizard's Spellbook.

The former is fairly familiar. I think the only change is that the Wizard class table now gives you the number of spells you can prepare, which follows a similar, if perhaps slightly slower progression than it does normally (a level 20 Wizard today will probably be able to prepare 25 spells, while this gets 22, though that does not count the free Wizard spells.)

Another change is that you can use your Spellbook as a focus for your Wizard spells.

Wizard's Spellbook formalizes the spellbook as a class feature, rather than, bizarrely, sitting in a sidebar. As before, you start with six 1st level spells of your choice and get two free spells each level, and can scribe new ones into the book.

Doing so now uses a new spell called Scribe Spell, which is added to your spellbook automatically. While it is not always prepared, because it is a ritual, you can always cast it as a ritual even when it's not prepared.

Scribe Spell is a 1st level spell that can be cast as a ritual, with a casting time of 2 hours per level of the scribed spell. As before, it consumes 50 GP of ink per spell level. If you cast this to copy your spell into a new book but have already inscribed it in your old one, the cost and time to scribe is halved. Spells inscribed in your book is understandable only by people who are casting Identify or Scribe Spell, and casting this into a blank book makes it a spellbook.

    This formalizes the spell-copying system as a spell itself. One thing this does is also add 10 minutes to the scribing process if you don't want to expend a spell slot - not a big deal for most Wizards, but an Order of Scribes one will now have to take significantly more time (currently, if my Wizard wants to inscribe a 3rd level spell, it only takes him 6 minutes).

At level 2, you get Academic and Arcane Recovery.

This gives you advantage on the Intelligence checks of any Study action. This includes basically all typical intelligence checks - including when you recall information or look over a room with Investigation.

    This is a fun way to reinforce that Wizards are the ultimate smartypants of classes, even when paired with other Intelligence-based classes like Artificers or some Warlocks.

Arcane Recovery works the same as it did before.

    I had, for some reason, thought that this was limited to 5th level spells or lower, but evidently I've been wrong. So, other than bumping back a level, this is unchanged.

At level 3, you get your subclass.

At levels 4, 8, 12, 16, and 19, you get feats.

At 5th level, you get Memorize Spell.

This adds the Memorize Spell... er, spell to your spellbook.

This is a 3rd level spell, and is again, a ritual, with a casting time of 1 minute.

When you cast this spell, you can swap one spell from your spellbook that is not prepared for the day and replace one of the spells you do have prepared. This lasts until you cast the spell again or finish a Long Rest.

At higher levels, you can replace additional spells for each spell slot expended above 3rd.

    Here, we see the Wizard getting that massive flexibility that the spellbook allows. With a little downtime, you can swap in, say, Water Breathing when you realize that part of the dungeon you're exploring is flooded.

At 7th level, you gain Modify Spell.

Once again, we get a free spell for your spellbook.

This 4th-level ritual spell has a 1 minute base casting time and lets you alter a spell you have prepared in one of the following ways:

• You can remove one of the spell's Verbal, Somatic, or Material components, though you can't remove a component that is consumed.
• If the spell requires concentration, you can make it so that damage can't interrupt the concentration.
• If the spell has a damage type, you can replace that type with Acid, Cold, Fire, Lightning, Necrotic, Poison, or Thunder Damage. If the spell does multiple types of damage, you can only change one of them.
• If the spell has a range of 5 feet or more and doesn't have a range of self (is that redundant?) you can increase the range by a number of feat equal to 30 times your Wizard level.
• If the spell lacks the Ritual tag and has a casting time of at least 10 minutes, you can give it the Ritual tag.
• If the spell affects one or more creatures and doesn't have a range of self, it now only affects your allies or enemies (choose when you cast Modify Spell).

The alteration lasts until you cast the spell again or finish a Long Rest. This version of the spell can't be added to a spellbook or a Spell Scroll without first casting Create Spell (which we'll handle at level 9). At higher levels, you can make one more alteration for each spell level above 4th.

    So, this is basically the Wizard's answer to metamagic. It can't be done improvisationally, but gives you a lot of similar ways to alter the spells you have. I think this is cool, and while its ultimate functionality is similar to metamagic, the use of it is far more Wizardly in form.

At level 9, you get Create Spell.

We now get our final free Wizard spell. This is the only one, though, that is not a Ritual (though can you modify this spell with Modify Spell to make it one?) The casting time is a reaction, in response to your own casting of Modify Spell. It requires an Arcane Focus worth at least 1000 gold per spell level altered by Modify Spell, and can last up to 1 hour with concentration.

You spend 1 hours mediating on the spell you just changed with Modify Spell. If you finish this hour without concentration being interrupted (which causes this spell to fail,) you must then start casting Scribe Spell within the next 10 minutes to add the modified version of the spell to your spellbook. Once the spell is in your spellbook, it becomes one of your known spells, gaining the Wizard tag (rather than the Arcane tag) and gains a name of your choice.

    This is it: the ultimate fantasy of the Wizard - to create a spell of your own design. Limiting it to Modify Spell's types of changes keeps the spell from becoming insanely overpowered, but it would allow me to, for example, to make Sarpadiath's Protective Depth Charge, casting Modify spell at 5th level to turn Fireball's damage to Thunder and then making it not hit my allies. The total would cost 3150 gold to complete, but I'd have this rather awesome spell at my disposal.

At level 15, you get Spell Mastery.

This is unchanged, other than being bumped down to 15th level from 18.

At level 18, you get Signature Spells.

Likewise, this is identical except that it comes two levels earlier.

    Ok, so there we have it. Overall, the Wizard is honestly not too different, mainly just adding this new spellbook functionality. We'll have to see how it works out to have spell copying now a spell itself, but the Wizard's ability to ritually cast spells they don't have prepared makes this pretty accessible.

I can't really complain about any of these changes, and I think this system for creating new spells is very cool, even if I might add a few new ways you can change a spell, such as changing the shape of an AoE spell. But I think this is a great way to give Wizards options for how to make a new spell based on an old one without letting its power run away from it.

The one exception might be the Ritual thing. There are probably spells that are too powerful to be rituals. But we'll see.

The default subclass is the Evoker, which is the update to the School of Evocation. These subclasses are now meant to describe the wizard, rather than their area of study. Presumably, for example, mine would be a "Scribe Wizard" rather than an "Order of Scribes Wizard."

At 3rd level, you get Evocation Savant and Sculpt Spells.

Evocation Savant works similarly, now taking into account that Scribe Spells is a spell, but you also get two free Evocation spells from the Arcane List that are no higher than 2nd level and add them for free to your spellbook.

Sculpt Spells works the same.

    Free spells. Great.

At 6th level, you get Potent Cantrip.

This works similarly to the current version, but now also works on missed attack rolls as well as successful saving throws, so you can use spells like Fire Bolt or Ray of Frost with it.

At 10th level, you get Empowered Evocation.

This works the same as before, though it specifies that the spell must be both an Evocation spell and on the Arcane spell list.

    So, you can't put this on something like Guiding Bolt if you picked that up with Magic Initiate or multiclassing. I think you're probably fine.

At level 14, you get Overchannel.

This works identically to its current version.

    So, the Evoker is barely changed, and lightly buffed with the free spells at 3rd level and the expansion of Potent Cantrip to work on all damage cantrips. Looks like a solid choice for anyone who wants to be a blasty wizard.

And with that, we've covered all five classes in the new UA, along with the weapon masteries. Next post, we'll cover the remaining odds and ends, and conclude with some final thoughts.